WC1, Cheng-Du 1. Where's the Ralari?!

N

Nathanael Ligon

Captain
Title says it all. I'm trying to get the gold medal. I've played it through 25-30 times and have only encountered the Ralari three times. The first, I killed everything and then the Tiger's Claw simply vanished, making the mission incompletable. The second, I killed everything but it said I only got 5 kills. No gold. The third, I killed everything, but when landing, the "landing" sequence never initiated and I crashed into the tip of the Tiger's Claw.

I digress.

Has everyone gone through this much pain trying to find the ralari? I searched the forums and Google but didn't find anything about it other than a walk through which suggests running the mission through SM2, which will make it appear every time (I tried; it doesn't).

Help?
 
Nathanael Ligon said:
Title says it all. I'm trying to get the gold medal. I've played it through 25-30 times and have only encountered the Ralari three times. The first, I killed everything and then the Tiger's Claw simply vanished, making the mission incompletable. The second, I killed everything but it said I only got 5 kills. No gold. The third, I killed everything, but when landing, the "landing" sequence never initiated and I crashed into the tip of the Tiger's Claw.

I digress.

Has everyone gone through this much pain trying to find the ralari? I searched the forums and Google but didn't find anything about it other than a walk through which suggests running the mission through SM2, which will make it appear every time (I tried; it doesn't).

Help?
Click to expand...
I should also mention that I memorized where it appeared last time to try to go back to that place on the map. It's really difficult to navigate to a spot on the map without having a waypoint. Is there a trick to this?
 
One last weird thing. In order to get the credit for the first four kills, I have to be extremely aggressive! I only have about a minute; then whoever is left just blows up on their own. So bizarre. I'm still new to WC, but together with all the other anomalies, I'm beginning to get the impression that it's really fun, but also one of the buggiest, glitchiest games I have ever played.
 
Update: ok, I am beginning to suspect the ralari only shows up (sometimes) when I register all 4 kills. I'm not sure how to make this happen, though. I consistently get 3, even when I do kill all 4, end even when the last guy blows up on his own. Again, I've played this so many times at this point (50? 60?), I nail the whole mission in about 2 minutes. Sometimes I kill 2 and the last 2 blow up on their own as I'm shooting at them.

No idea what's going on at all.
 
Have you tried just waiting at the navpoint for a few minutes, not flying away trying to find the Ralari, just sitting. You don't have to fly anywhere special, it will just appear after a certain amount of time. After you've taken out the fighters, just kill your speed and sit sit floating in space, she should just show up after a few minutes. No more than 3-4 mins though.

If that doesn't work, try to stretch out your dogfight with the Krants, it could be she won't appear unless they're still alive but honestly I don't remember that being the case.

It's not really necessary to kill the Ralari to advance here, your main objective is to protect Valkyrie - but I guess you want that Gold Star.
 
Thank you for the help. Indeed I did want the gold star.

I actually ended up staying up til 7:40am and I got it eventually, probably after a couple hundred tries, just by luck I suppose. Now I'm on Kurasawa 2 and have also done that 100+ times. I've gotten it so I can save the ralari just about every time, but only if I bypass the 4 salthi in the asteroids. Winning does not concern me... I want that silver fucking star. :p I think too many boyhood hours of TIE Fighter and piano practice has bred into me a truly unique combination of persistence and perfectionism, and now that I'm single, I find myself doing things like staying up all night trying to get all the medals in a 1990 space shooter.

I think part of the problem on trying to make silver on Kurasawa 2 is the frame rate, at least on my rig. I've tried all the tricks I've seen online, to no avail. I'm getting a copy of the Kilrathi Saga in hopes that the mission will perform for me on that.

Haven't found any guides or discussion anywhere for getting silver. Just for saving the ship in the first place.

Thanks again for the pointers, -danr-.
 
Kurasawa 2 is probably the most infamously difficult Wing Commander mission in the entire series, we all know it's a total bitch - but I've (sadly) reached a stage where I can almost always nail it down first time. Only pointers I can give you are to ignore the Salthis in the asteroid field, slip past them, use Afterburners sparingly through the rocks, but don't autopilot - fly manually to the nav point with the Ralari waiting. I'm not sure why but if you autopilot, the cats are always a lot closer to the Ralari when you arrive.

Go for the nearest Gratha with a volley of full guns and a dumbfire missile, hit the second one in a similar way but fight as dirty as you can - I normally ram it if I haven't killed it with a few volleys of gunfire. Once the first two fighters are out the way, half the battle is won.

That mission is a notorious bitch, but after 24 years of playing the game, I've finally gotten used to beating it. Enjoy!
 
Thanks for the advice -danr-. Not sure if you saw everything I posted - I also nail it on most tries, but what I'm trying to do is get the silver, which means I can't ignore the salthis in the asteroid field, nor can I go back for them (they magically vanish along with the asteroid field once you save the ralari). To get silver, you have to take out the salthis, then go save the ralari. I haven't managed it yet. Also, the framerate is total insanity (choppy).
 
Sorry, that'll teach me to skim read using my phone. Ok, which version of WC1 are you playing, is it original WC1 via DOSBOX? (The GOG release?) If so you might be able to seek out an optimised DOSBOX config file for WC1 to improve frame rate.

Otherwise, I'd reccomend using the Kilrathi Saga version of WC1, which is available exclusively free from wcnews.com - you may be able to transfer your existing savegame across to it, for me it provides the most stable frame rate for running original Wing Commander on modern systems.

All else fails, make an MS DOS boot CD or floppy, and load WC1 in the original DOS environment for which it was designed.

As for those Salthi, have you tried crawling up to them, then throttling back your speed to zero, letting them approach you head on and just pick them off with full guns? Might be easier to fight standing still if you're getting choppy performance.
 
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-danr- said:
Sorry, that'll teach me to skim read using my phone. Ok, which version of WC1 are you playing, is it original WC1 via DOSBOX? (The GOG release?) If so you might be able to seek out an optimised DOSBOX config file for WC1 to improve frame rate.

Otherwise, I'd reccomend using the Kilrathi Saga version of WC1, which is available exclusively free from wcnews.com - you may be able to transfer your existing savegame across to it, for me it provides the most stable frame rate for running original Wing Commander on modern systems.

All else fails, make an MS DOS boot CD or floppy, and load WC1 in the original DOS environment for which it was designed.

As for those Salthi, have you tried crawling up to them, then throttling back your speed to zero, letting them approach you head on and just pick them off with full guns? Might be easier to fight standing still if you're getting choppy performance.
Click to expand...
Honestly terrific advice; thank you. I actually came into possession of a copy of the Kilrathi Saga version, and was floored by the perfect framerate. Problem solved! Unfortunately, it seems the music is removed from this version, so I was contemplating just purchasing the damn things on ebay (though it seems a bit wasteful to shell out for three games when all I want is working sound on the first). If the version you linked works on all levels, I'll consider this issue resolved. Thanks again.

As for getting silver: I'll try picking off the 4 salthis at 0 speed in interests of saving time, though I'm not sure I'd survive if they all launched a volley at my sitting-duck rapier. The issue for now seems to be that I save the ralari most (half?) of the time because I come out at the same spot and have memorized the perfect strategy for decimating my opponents in seconds. When I fly around in the astroid fields taking out those salthis... well, who knows where I'll wind up when I get to the ralari. Still haven't managed it, but will persist.

Thanks again; very helpful.
 
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I'm glad it worked out :) Regarding that copy of Kilrathi Saga you have: There's at least one online outlet selling Kilrathi Saga for download, but they're distributing pirated copies. Ebay is really the only place to legitimately get KS, anything you find for download online is ripped-off, which might be why the music is missing. This could well be an honest mistake on your part as like I said there's a sketchy online vendor.

The WC1 KS version from this wcnews includes working music ;)

You'll get the Silver star with persistance, I tried for like 10 minutes last night and came pretty close. Practise makes perfect.
 
Nathanael Ligon said:
In order to get the credit for the first four kills, I have to be extremely aggressive! I only have about a minute; then whoever is left just blows up on their own. So bizarre. I'm still new to WC, but together with all the other anomalies, I'm beginning to get the impression that it's really fun, but also one of the buggiest, glitchiest games I have ever played.
Click to expand...

The spontaneous explosions are by design... mostly.

Probably as a memory management issue, WC1 defines 2 fighter graphics and 2 capital ship graphics to be loaded for each encounter. If you reach a new encounter while ships from the previous encounter are in your field of view, the old ships will explode. If you're not worried about medals, you can complete almost any mission by afterburning back to the Tiger's Claw while using rear view (F4) or floating view (F9) to keep an eye on the enemy.

Venice 4 appears to exploit this by design. If you don't destroy the Fralthi at Nav 1 and fly back there after reaching Nav 2, the Tiger's Claw and its escorts will jump in, and all the Kilrathi will obediently explode.

In Chengdu 2, the action tends to drift back towards the Tiger's Claw. Get too close, and it will load in, destroying the Kilerathi before you can. However, in that particular mission, it seems that sometimes you can get too far from the Kilrathi encounter even if the Claw isn't in view yet, and they will explode in deep space. You are also correct that, once this happens, you will never find your way back to the Ralari.

Nathanael Ligon said:
The issue for now seems to be that I save the ralari most (half?) of the time because I come out at the same spot and have memorized the perfect strategy for decimating my opponents in seconds. When I fly around in the astroid fields taking out those salthis... well, who knows where I'll wind up when I get to the ralari. Still haven't managed it, but will persist.
Click to expand...

You could always destroy the Salthi, then fly back to the Tiger's Claw, then autopilot towards the Ralari from there for consistent placement. The Ralari and Gratha will happily snooze until you turn up.

Good luck in your effort to win all the medals. Just don't wear them in the cockpit, or their combined mass will send you tumbling to the left...
WC1VegaMedals.png
 
-danr- said:
Sorry, that'll teach me to skim read using my phone. Ok, which version of WC1 are you playing, is it original WC1 via DOSBOX? (The GOG release?) If so you might be able to seek out an optimised DOSBOX config file for WC1 to improve frame rate.

Otherwise, I'd reccomend using the Kilrathi Saga version of WC1, which is available exclusively free from wcnews.com - you may be able to transfer your existing savegame across to it, for me it provides the most stable frame rate for running original Wing Commander on modern systems.

All else fails, make an MS DOS boot CD or floppy, and load WC1 in the original DOS environment for which it was designed.

As for those Salthi, have you tried crawling up to them, then throttling back your speed to zero, letting them approach you head on and just pick them off with full guns? Might be easier to fight standing still if you're getting choppy performance.
Click to expand...

This version worked like a charm for me. I'm extremely grateful. Sound is vastly improved, framerate perfect, and the music sounds great. Thank you!
 
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