- What? Yes, you did meet your Chief Tech - it was a man, looked like one to me! You totally pulled something of a side note out of what I said about the three different sources having completely different premises. Blair probably had several anyway.. seing how he was jumping squadrons.
And the guy who welcomes you back to the ship has to be the chief tech because...? Surely someone with your (please take a moment to turn off any electronic devices which might be damaged by unusually heavy amounts of sarcasm)
advanced military knowledge knows that there will be entire teams of technicians for each fighter on a carrier... and, of course, that (militarily speaking) it is very difficult to determine rank *or* position using only the back of someones head as a point of reference.
Anyway -- this is symptomatic of your whole problem. You've *decided* that the guy who salutes you when you land
has to be the chief tech... even though there's absolutely no reference to that effect anywhere. But that's fine -- everybody makes dumb assumptions. I do it all the time... but I'm willing to change my mind when more information comes along -- and I certainly don't blame my personal problems on some nice guy I don't know.
The associated fiction (mostly Academy, and there is the cutesy 'yearbook' part in the KS book..)? There isn't indication during the WC 1 game that they knew each other before hand "Hi, I'm Maniac!". Manaic also has kills on the killboard before you fly your first mission. If they were graduates in the same year, big deal, our military officer program has 3 sub-classes that graduate every year, and we aren't fighting an intergalactic war with 7 foot tall cats. Did you know all the people in your graduating class? I didn't, and I only graduated with 400 people.
I would certainly *recognize* someone I went to school with. That aside, Academy is neither the first nor the most major source for Blair and Maniac's background. The Official Guide to Wing Commander 1 & 2 is a 'novelized' guide published way back in 1991 -- it follows the players career through the first two games, described as though it were a story he was telling. It also goes through his Academy years as a pretense for describing general tactics and such... and that's where the Maniac/Blair relationship that is followed henceforth came from (well, it actually came from background fiction for WC1 -- but I have no way to sufficiently prove that, and so you have no reason to believe me).
(Other references to their time *together* at the Academy include descriptions in the WC3 novel and Maniac's bios in the ICIS manual and Prophecy guide.) The point is clear: you are raging against the movie for something that has been a common fact in the Wing Commander canon long before the film was a glint in anyones eye. You're just looking for a reason to complain.
As for stealth fighters in SM 2 - it is a bug.
Whenever you see something like that -- a wizard did it. (Actually, I have no idea what you're talking about -- I was referring to Knight's dialogue late in the game... but if there are invisible 'bug' fighters in SM2, it would make a bit of sense... since SM2 was developed by the same team specifically as a 'bridge' game into WC2s plot.)
And as for Super Wing Commander - in Super Wing Commander the Kilrathi fly ships that look like Talons but they are Gratha or Krants or some other thing, and thier transports looks a lot like a magical flying supply depot. I won't even try to IMAGINE what goes through some minds here because they used the Armada ship's design for the Tiger's Claw in Super Wing Commander (ohh, another refit, right!). So I don't consider SWC to be much more than a quickie or doing some paid-for experimentation and not worth considering because if you do you have to reconsider too many things to reasonably reconsider "So, the Talons are used by the Kilrathi... and the Diligent is too?"
Your understanding of linear time is remarkably poor -- Super Wing Commander was developed *before* Privateer and Armada... it is the source of those ship models, not vice versa. Does that, then, make Privateer and Armada ignorable 'experimentation'? (Of course not -- you like and understand those games! Not so, SWC.)
The Movie - Blair and Manaic are on a freighter with Paladin as the ship's master, enroute to the 'Claw. A couple days later, and you give exact date ranges I see, and they have: easily become aces, saved the Earth, saved the war effort, saved the 'Claw. Huge heros.
Neither of them score five kills over the course of the movie, so neither is an ace. Nor is there any indication anywhere that they recieve any recognition for having saved Earth -- even in the movie continuity novels, which explain what happens directly afterwards. Presumably, something like that would be credited to Tolwyn and *not* the pilot who was ordered to carry a message to him. (Consider: who gets credit for the campaign to retake Heaven's Gate? The courier that brought information from Talbot or the man who lead the fleet?)
You don't have any kills on the board - Manaic does. Manaic should have been there as long as you, right? Or has he already established himself? But when would he do that if he came the same time you did...
Ah, of course, the in-game kill board numbers are the true indicators of whether or not something is part of the continuity! Goodbye, Wing Commander 3 and Wing Commander 4 -- I truly loved you both.
(As for when Maniac established himself -- suggest you read the little blurb about his scoring his 5th kill in the Super Wing Commander manual. It was originally written for WC1 Claw Marks, and was used in some advertising. It reappears in the KS manual, too.)
"You’re Maverick, right? They call me Hunter, mate" - Hunter
{quote snipped for post size limit}
And Angel introduces herself.. " I am called Angel", you weren't slobbering over me for the past couple of days at all!
I'm just gonna quote a slice of e-mail between the WCRevival.de webmaster and I. We had a great conversation about all this exact stuff a few weeks back:
Here's the eight "initial greetings" of the Tiger's Claw pilots...
Angel: Bonjour, Lieutenant. You are called Maverick, non? I am called Angel.
Paladin: Och, laddie, take a seat an’ tilt a glass with ol’ Paladin.
Hunter: You’re Maverick, right? They call me Hunter, mate.
Knight: Maverick, right? I’m Knight. Welcome to the Blue Devils.
Iceman: Maverick. They call me Iceman.
Spirit: Konichi-wa, Blair-san. Please take a seat.
Bossman: Sit down, Maverick. They call me Bossman.
Maniac: Hey, Maverick. I’m Maniac. Glad to meetcha.
Hunter, Knight, Iceman and Bossman make sense -- since they didn't really introduce themselves to Blair Blair over the course of the movie (well, Hunter tried to kill him, but they weren't introduced
).
Spirit's and Paladin's aren't introductions, which makes sense since they'd both already met him (Paladin especially, who acts like he's old friends with Blair when they 'meet' in WC).
My take has always been that Maniac's was *always* a joke -- since even back in 1990 they had created the backstory that the'd gone to the Academy together.
That just leaves Angel as being a bit odd.
And... when the heck would the rest of Wing Commander Academy happen in this timeline of yours? Would you be a cadet getting breifings from Tolwyn and every now and then as a Lt from Halcoyn? Why would a cadet be on the front lines on a fleet carrier, with an admiral TALKING to him no less? When does Blair stop being a cadet? Why doesn't anyone call him a cadet in the movie? Did he get bounced back to cadet after the movie, or does Tolwyn just give Blair a petname of 'Cadet'? I mean, crapsakes, you can probably be a Major halfway through WC1 or even a caption at 1/4 the way through. When could all of this cadet business happen?
Great -- if there's one thing I love, it's making timelines. And cake. Timelines and cake. Academy is pretty self explanatory, though. Clearly, the last episode takes place on the 2654 Sivar-Eshrad ceremony (just after the Venice campaign)... so the rest of the episodes can go right around that point. They also have to happen *after* the WC3 novel's reference about a time when Tolwyn took command of the Tiger's Claw from Captain Thorn (which can be placed any time before SM1, when Halcyon is apparently in command).
The cadet bit is actually explained in the WCA press release. The series isn't about their Academy (as in, what happens before flight school) training -- in fact, the first episode is set at flight school, which would be after they graduated (referenced in the Handbook). It's literally a 'Wing Commander Academy', where promising young pilots are being groomed/trained for command positions.
[QUOET]Legnthy and pointless? It is typical, and the what-if scenarioes are certainly MORE plausable than having the Tiger's Claw apart of a class that was decades old before the war started only to have the class be upgraded several times to the point of not resembling the old class at all, only because the class's name isn't "Tiger's Claw". The what-if scenarios are not unusual - they most certainly can happen.[/QUOTE]
Oh, yeah, ships are *never* upgraded. The concept is crazy! Crazy!
/me flies off in his P-64D Super Ferret.
As to asking what my experience is with the military - books, lots of websites, more books, reading the Budget Highlights, the strategy/doctorine publications "..From the Sea", testomonies to the Armed Services Comittee. I follow it pretty closely even though I haven't served. So many questions around here are about ships, what-ifs about ships, unanswered questions about ships we never saw and ambigous things about the ships we do know about --- and it seems strange to me that you seem to have no knowledge of real-life ship histories. DANFS is a great read, so is "The Encyclopedia of Ships" ( a book basically produced for Barnes' and Noble, a little out dated now but basically good for the last 250 years). How can we expound about make-belief without even having a grasp on how REAL ships and fleets are built and organized?
I'm going to ignore the fact that 'I'm special, I read a book!' is one of the lamest troll techniques ever for the time being... and point out that you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. Because I like the Wing Commander movie I must know nothing about history? *THAT* makes sense!
My statement - "depending on what you call launching" isn't flimsey at all. Lots of people think launching is when you are done building the ship and send it off to war. It isn't, launching has formally been when the ship slides down the building skids. Maybe in Wing Commander launching is when the ship runs under its own power for the first time and then has to be fitted out - or maybe its when it is towed out of the building yard - or maybe the way Trekkies do it, a ship is launched for the very first time totally ready to go do its 5 year mission thing.
There you go -- and *why* to the Trekkies do it that way? Because they've had to create a series of rediculous explanations for conflicting statements about the Enterprise' age.
Just like you're doing now.
Incidentally -- your IP is a match for some of Concordia's old Aces Board posts. So, perhaps that's why you aren't posting under whatever your registered 'nick is? Why the ruse, though -- I'm certainly just as willing to debate with him (G)
I'd personally say that a ship's hull plating and core structure in the WC universe *may* be replaced once every decade (as in repairs. this is logical speculation, don't hurt me)... eventually that the ship's hull integrity would start to wear out, and probably before the full hull's plating is replaced. Only way it wouldn't... is if it were sent to the back lines... then a refit is plausable, but they'd probably be placed on light duty afterwards, due to the weakened overall hull strength. (again, logical speculation) Which leads to an explination of why Blair might have been upset with his assignment to the Victory... Who'd want to be on backwater patrols, when there's a whole race of oversized kittens to shoot? Especially after being stationed for so many years on a base in just that sort of situation... The Bengal-class and Concordia can be explained away of sorts by way of thinking. I mean, the US went through a phase where it thought that big(innacurate) guns, and lots of them were the priority. Which they were, at the time. (potentially explaining innacurate but hard-hitting flak cannons and the beastly PTC) these days, it's all capship(cruise) missiles and light cannons with big punch and presice(spelling sucks I know) control("modern" laser turrets as opposed to flak). Ship turrets and computers can be replaced, as the modern-day navy has shown. What I personally find confusing... is the lack of turrets on the WC3 and beyond bases, after dodging flak for two games. Anyway, I'm wandering off-subject. The point is... you're both right. Ship design changes, and often. They try something, it works(Tigers Claw), they try it on a bigger scale(Concordia), and it doesn't work quite so well. So they switch back to the old designs(Vesuvius), then integrate the two concepts(Midway). Existing ships can (and often are) refit, in terms of weaponry and hardware. So SHADDAP ALREADY! 
