Scimitar fans

Toast

Space Marshal
We've had so many fighter "gripes" threads here that we even covered the fighters almost everyone likes. So let's turn things around. Tell everyone why you love the Scimitar! Favorite stories, favorite missions, closest calls, best moments in WC Academy or the novels, anything you've seen in the WC continuity or experienced yourself that exemplifies why this old bird holds a place of honor in your pilot's heart.



That ancient standby, the CF-105(?) Scimitar. Over a hundred years old, a gun-heavy slug that handles like a Centaurian mud pig. But hey, by and large we love the Scim anyway. Tough, good guns, and about as handsome as a Mack truck. Its handling characteristics made flying missions in WC1 a completely different experience from flying the Rapier or the Raptor:
- you had to worry about missiles, since your shields couldn't absorb them entirely
- you had to guesstimate and reguesstimate how much front/rear armor you had during combat, since the indicator wouldn't tell you (although the music sometimes would)
- no green inside the cockpit, with VDU's over the pilot's head. A totally different feel.

WC1, Brimstone series
It was with the Scimitar in Brimstone that I learned the obvious: asteroids and minefields must be treated differently. Pick your way through the rocks, but afterburner through the mines.
- I can't remember just how many mines I hit during that patrol with Maniac! 9? 10? I kept thinking the next mine was going to total the ship. But it never did - I still landed. And I even still had both of my mass drivers.

Things like these made missions in Scimitars intense, to be sure, but that didn't mean they weren't fun. You had powerful guns and shields too thin to keep you totally safe. A mission in a Scimitar could be handled like a good-old-fashioned slugfest, with the tension mounting as your armor gets burned off one centimeter at a time, or executed as a tour de force of piloting expertise as you use slides, kickstops and 'burners to dodge fire you normally wouldn't care about in a Rapier or Raptor. And every maneuver had to pulled off with more urgency and better situational awareness, since she didn't have the Rapier's agility or the Raptor's speed.

She was a inferior fighter very long in the tooth, but the missions were more exciting. It was this that made the difference between a welcome challenge and a frustrating bore.
 
One of my favorite Scim missions was fighing ALL the Kilrathi aces navpoint after navpoint during the losing path in Hell's Kitchen.
 
The Scimitar is what got me into Wing Commander honestly. My first experience with it was seeing it in the TV series and thinking "man that is so cool" after that I was hooked watching the show in large to see more Scimitar action, I was devistated when they didn't appear in the movie.

I remember downloading a rom of the original game (because I was too young and poor to have gotten it any other way) and thinking "I have 24 hours to get to the part where I get a Scimitar!"

Once I had it I had more fun piloting it than any of the other fighters, maybe it was the biased mind of a child but I really felt like nobody could touch me in that baby (when they did I didn't notice much because I was too busy getting them back much worse) I absolutely loved it, once I had it I didn't stop playing for so long I ended up doing no homework whatsoever and missing a few hours of sleep, I still remember being grounded from the computer for a few weeks after that.

So yeah, the Scimitar is about the main reason I took to the series, it was the main reason I pursued Wing Commander outside of the animated series, and it is one darn beautiful ship no matter what anyone else says.
 
A Wing Commander fan created by the animated series!

This is exciting. I love hearing about fans created by WC media outside of the main PC game series.
 
The Scimitar is what got me into Wing Commander honestly. My first experience with it was seeing it in the TV series and thinking "man that is so cool" after that I was hooked watching the show in large to see more Scimitar action, I was devistated when they didn't appear in the movie.

I remember downloading a rom of the original game (because I was too young and poor to have gotten it any other way) and thinking "I have 24 hours to get to the part where I get a Scimitar!"

Once I had it I had more fun piloting it than any of the other fighters, maybe it was the biased mind of a child but I really felt like nobody could touch me in that baby (when they did I didn't notice much because I was too busy getting them back much worse) I absolutely loved it, once I had it I didn't stop playing for so long I ended up doing no homework whatsoever and missing a few hours of sleep, I still remember being grounded from the computer for a few weeks after that.

So yeah, the Scimitar is about the main reason I took to the series, it was the main reason I pursued Wing Commander outside of the animated series, and it is one darn beautiful ship no matter what anyone else says.


Hey, welcome!
 
I always liked the Scimitar personally. While its not the most glamorous craft you get to fly in in WC1 I thought it had pretty good set of statistics. It wasn't so lightly armed and armored that you couldn't slug it out with the Kilrathi when outnumbered but it wasn't so overpowering in weapons or defensive components that you felt like you were invincible.
All in all I rather enjoyed flying the Scimitar more than anything else in the game and was kind of disappointed to never really get back to it once you get the Raptor or the Rapier.
 
I loved the Scimitar because the game told me to hate it. It was the missions in the Scim that define Wing Commander for me - those desperate times when all you have is a sputtering mass driver, about 2cm of armor on your side, and your wits... and the first two are about to give out. It still gives me such warm fuzzies to survive and win a mission like that and have the mechanic say "Glad to see you made it back alive, sir!"

That and the paint job and design are right up my alley.
 
I have to say I enjoyed the Scim as well. Rapier and Hornet felt a bit too new, too fragile and too 'clean', if that makes any sense. The WC1 heavyweights felt like they had character and a lived in feel, even down to the gun and missile choices.

You fought a Scim or Raptor rather than dancing with it. Great fun.
 
That ancient standby, the CF-105(?) Scimitar.

CF-105 is the correct designation -- it comes from the Confederation Handbook, which is basically a 'manual' for the Wing Commander movie (done by the same creative team who did most of the game manuals.)

This is exciting. I love hearing about fans created by WC media outside of the main PC game series.

One of the really surprising things I've encountered is people who love the series because of the movie. You don't find them online, but whenever we're plugging the site at a convention we get a steady stream of old school sci fi fans who come up to us to say they loved the movie and want to see another one... I guess it takes all kinds.

The Scimitar was the first 'reward' ship ever -- and those of us who remember way back then know it was quite an honor to get assigned to one for the first time. A lot of the arguments about what's wrong with it are entirely practical... but they aren't clear the first time you get behind the stick. I'll say that it's excellent game design that allows the game's setting to color so many people's reactions against the 'upgraded' gameplay element.

(And, welcome Scimitar guy.)
 
The most satisfying Scimitar mission I've ever done was the hit-and-run on the Kilrathi supply depot during the Secret Missions.

The "gauntlet" mission at the end of Hell's Kitchen would rate as a close second.

Even on the more mundane missions, managing to land back home always gives me a sense of accomplishment like no other WC1 fighter can.

I think the scimitar serves as a significant "penalty" ship as well as the first "reward" ship. After flying the raptor, you don't really want to go back :)
 
I have to say I enjoyed the Scim as well. Rapier and Hornet felt a bit too new, too fragile and too 'clean', if that makes any sense. The WC1 heavyweights felt like they had character and a lived in feel, even down to the gun and missile choices.

You fought a Scim or Raptor rather than dancing with it. Great fun.


They did feel a generation apart, but in a good, solid way. Energy weapons? Deflector shields? All these flashy, newfangled things are good for the stayin' power an' all... but buckets of lead and durasteel work as well as they ever have for takin' down cats. Always have. Always will.
 
Although the Scimitar is a poor ship for dogfighting and is arguably the worst WC1 ship overall, it really isn't that bad. The missile loadout is pretty good, and the mass drivers are excellent - heck, I think the Scimitar may actually have better guns than the Rapier. The armor can take a lot of hits, too.

Okay, so objectively speaking, it sucks (try playing Rise to Honor if you don't believe me - flown by the computer, the Scimitar could quite possibly be the worst enemy ship ever!), but when it's flown by the right pilots, it can be quite powerful.
 
Our perceptions of the Scimitar's toughness might be influenced by the extra leeway often afforded the player. In Prophecy, WC3, and WC4, the hero's ship has higher core strength than normal. I don't know if this was also true for WC1 and WC2. But computer-controlled Scimitars might have lower core strength than the player's ship.
 
I like the scimitar, I was sold on it by the cartoon series (looks totally cool) but its a very sturdy and reliable fighter.

Unlike the twitchy hornet, or the under-armored rapier.
 
"Worst WC1 ship overall"? In a game with the Dralthi? Sharpshooter, time to put down the crack pipe. :p

Toast, beefed-up defenses for player ships didn't come into play until WC3 (or maybe Armada, not sure off the top of my head), by which time the Scimitar had been long since retired as a mainstay Confed fighter.
 
Toast, beefed-up defenses for player ships didn't come into play until WC3 (or maybe Armada, not sure off the top of my head), by which time the Scimitar had been long since retired as a mainstay Confed fighter.

Cool. Nice to know, then, that the Scim's resilience/core strength isn't entirely imaginary.
 
"Worst WC1 ship overall"? In a game with the Dralthi? Sharpshooter, time to put down the crack pipe. :p

Toast, beefed-up defenses for player ships didn't come into play until WC3 (or maybe Armada, not sure off the top of my head), by which time the Scimitar had been long since retired as a mainstay Confed fighter.

Since Armada was a multiplayer game, it wouldn't make sense for your fighter to have more core strength than your opponent.
 
"Worst WC1 ship overall"? In a game with the Dralthi? Sharpshooter, time to put down the crack pipe. :p

Toast, beefed-up defenses for player ships didn't come into play until WC3 (or maybe Armada, not sure off the top of my head), by which time the Scimitar had been long since retired as a mainstay Confed fighter.

The Dralthi Mk2 is a much better ship than the Scimitar.
The "Laser" Dralthi is about as bad as the Scimitar (though possibly still slightly better).

When computer-flown, you can't help but notice the Scimitar's awful manoeuvrability. It can actually take quite a few hits to destroy it, but it doesn't matter because you can both hit the Scimitar and dodge its hits very easily.
 
Really, the gameplay balance isn't so much that the Scimitar is slow as it is that the Raptor, which has stronger shields and armor and weapons, is FASTER than the Scimitar. If the Raptor had a speed of 320/1000 instead of 400/1200, then the Scimitar would have been marginally faster and felt more balanced on the light/medium/heavy scale.
 
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