Star*Soldier Gloss: Page 12 (August 24, 2008)

Bandit LOAF

Bandit LOAF

Long Live the Confederation!
This is the Star*Soldier gloss for the eighth Joan's page:
CONCEPT: These were the ships I really got to build, since they were actually 'maps' in the game without most specifications. I just had to stick to the right number of turrets on the cruisers and the established history on the Midway. Note that the screenshots seen here were taken by the game's Producer in-game, since the team didn't have time to render new ones before we went to print.

REFERENCES-
  • "Midway" - A Midway-class ship makes up the single player gauntlet map in Arena. I was so jazzed when I saw this for the first time. "The front, that looks like a Midway..." "It is!" One of those great happy moments, in my mind.
  • "differ only visually" - The Producer was very concerned with explaining why this Midway looked 'different' from the one in Wing Commander Prophecy. I honestly believe the whole thing is my fault and that they put out that cool 'wallpaper' image of the ship early on because of how genuinely excited they saw I was to find it in the game. I felt, I still feel, terrible that some fans were so obnoxious about it. It's a cool treat for you guys, not the end of the world (I know the artist felt awful too). Anyway, I did go through great lenghts (as requested) to explain the appearance - this reference was only the start, and was more geared towards explaining why the specifications could be the same.
  • "Confederation flagship" - I thought our previous home deserved some glory!
  • "Length," "Mass," "YPR," "Velocity," "Acceleration," "Shields," "Fighter Complement" - These numbers all come straight from Wing Commander Prophecy.
  • "Armor" - 2,000 cms was the most common 'component' armor strength in Prophecy.
  • "Weapons" - The laser turrets and the IR missile launchers are from the official specifications (and they're what you find in the game). The heavy ion cannons are mentioned in Rachael's article in Waypoint! and the CapShip Missiles are seen in-game when the Midway is fighting the first Tiamat.
  • "TSY Arcology" - TSY Arcology was the site which repaired the Midway in Secret Ops, location of some sort of intrigue involving a bombing that... didn't go anywhere?
  • "Indomitable" - I'm so lucky in that I got to name and write the backstory for the coolest part of the game! I wanted a strong age-of-sail style name for the human ship. It was actually "Indefatigable" for quite a while until it was decided no one would know how to pronounce that.
  • "battlecruiser" - Sean Penney was very concerned that the large ships be given a unique backstory in the Wing Commander universe, to separate them (and their lack of shields) from the sleaker capital ships we had seen before. I came up with the 'battlecruiser' background, most of which is actually presented later in the manual (which is why these descriptions might seem sparse - although they appear early, they were written later with knowledge of what a battlecruiser was already in my head).
  • "The only ship capable of... with coordinated fighter support." -A direct explanation of how the CapShip mode is played.
  • Specifications - These numbers were all mine. As you can see, they're designed to be similar but 'varied' between the two ships (just like their appearances). I will admit here and never again that I included, very late in the game, the large fighter complements for anyone who wanted to imagine them fighting a Star Wars Star Destroyer and winning...
  • "Shields: None" - This was a requirement from the development team, who didn't want to confuse anyone given that the point of the ships was to blow up their components with your guns. It's a little weird, I'll admit...
  • "Mk. V Plasma Cannon" - You see massive batteries firing from cruiser to cruiser in the game, I made them the apparent successor to the plasma cannon found on the Cerberus in Secret Ops.
  • "Trojan IV Naval Yard" - The yard where, according to Claw Marks, the famed TCS Tiger's Claw was built.
  • "Kiranka" - I wanted something similarly regal for the Kilrathi name... and what's more regal than the former Imperial clan?
  • "Hari Fleet" - The appearance of similarly giant "battleships" in Fleet Action has always bothered me. Hunter identifies them when he's scanning the hidden Kilrathi fleet... and then they never appear again. Were they not finished in time for the invasion? What happened to them? Now you know!
  • "basically a pound for pound..." - A nice way of saying that they're exactly the same.
  • "Nokhtak Clan" - The clan of Murragh from False Colors. I liked the suggestion that they were tying themselves to the Imperial legacy in this manner (and that they still existed at all).
Click to expand...


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Original update published on August 24, 2008
 
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Hehe - I think it's just a matter of how it 'reads' to someone who isn't familiar with the word (which would theoretically be a lot of people - but I'll bet most longtime Wing fans would have been fine.)
 
Perhaps, but at least it would have been an interesting name. Still, Indomitable is pretty nice as well.
 
I agree, Indomitable is cool but Indefatigable would have been ever cooler!

I had hoped we would get some clarification whether the Midway is still active and the flagship, though.
 
I feel badly that there was negativity surrounding the artwork for the Midway in Arena. Were the comments really as negative as this explanation suggests?
 
Then you didn't find all of it. There are a couple of threads I found just by searching for "Midway Arena" in which a handful of people really attempt to tear the model apart because they didn't feel it was a good design. Of course had they considered that actual real people who were proud of their work and cared about the opinion of the community designed the model they might have acted differently.

Or maybe not.
 
A lot of it had to do with the fact that there wasn't much context surrounding the image. If you follow the threads once that is given the burning hatred dies down considerably.
 
Dundradal said:
A lot of it had to do with the fact that there wasn't much context surrounding the image. If you follow the threads once that is given the burning hatred dies down considerably.
Click to expand...

Yeah, that happened with a lot of the Arena stuff unfortunately. People saw pods jutting out of the deck of a Midway and threw a fit. When stuff like this happens for the next Wing Commander game, people really need to just step back and be amazed that there is a Midway (or whatever) ship at all. And just like in this case, later on they'll find that the crazy-looking pods have a valid gameplay justification reason and a pretty interesting in-universe backstory as well.
 
Nomad Terror said:
Then you didn't find all of it.
Click to expand...

heh, yeah, I was being sarcastic. I was overwhelmed by some of what was said. I can understand how people could have had those feelings initially, but it is important to wait and see how everything will fit together before passing judgement.

I'll be thankful just to have another chance to look at new artwork from an upcoming WC title...
 
Not reading the forums as I once used to, I completely missed the backlash regarding the Arena Midway design. Personally, it didn't bother me too much, but having the in-universe explantions is really helpful.
 
In a sense it was a good thing, if it lead to things like Star*Soldier... but I certainly got sick of seeing Pedro bring it up over and over and over.
 
I do agree that it is interesting and actually really fitting for Wing Commander that the developers were 'asked' for some accountability to explain why screen shots appeared the way they did - and then actually answered with a document like Star*Soldier. It's just too bad that the request occured the way it did.
 
Yeah... because the whole history of the project is one of trying to do whatever is possible to accomodate and even specifically excite our small group of fans. Good people got burned because our community was so awful to them, and I feel terrible about it. I know how hard they worked to do things like replace their generic space station map with the Midway and to stick in all the little cameos *just* for us.

The edict from on high was to make an arcade shooter for Xbox Live -- everything Wing Commander about it belongs to Sean Penney from EA and the team at Gaia. They deserved a lot more respect than we showed.
 
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