Academy Gauntlet

LarkInFlight

Rear Admiral
Has anyone beat the Wing Commander Academy Gauntlet?

I tried several times in Wraith but I've never beat it. Do you know how many rounds are there? (I managed to get to round 11th against several wraiths).
 
The gauntlet has 15 levels, each with 3 waves.

Do we have a list of what ships appear in each one somewhere? Someone should make that and we'll post it.
 
Oooh i made a small editor for this... some 10 years ago! It's still on my site at the Archive:

http://hcl.wcrevival.de/archive/wca-gaun.zip

Place it on the Gamedat directory and run wca-g.exe. This was a really simple program, actually. It read the gauntlet file, displayed the configuration for each wave and allowed you to change each one of them, so you could build your own gauntlet if you wanted to. You could specify ship type, number of ships and pilot skill level (1-4) for each wave.

The Academy gauntlet is configured to throw at you the following waves:

Level 01, Wave 1 - 1 Sartha, skill 1
Level 01, Wave 2 - 1 Drakhri, skill 1
Level 01, Wave 3 - 1 Jrathek, skill 1
Level 02, Wave 1 - 2 Sartha, skill 1
Level 02, Wave 2 - 2 Drakhri, skill 1
Level 02, Wave 3 - 2 Jalkehi, skill 1
Level 03, Wave 1 - 2 Grikath, skill 1
Level 03, Wave 2 - 2 Strakha, skill 1
Level 03, Wave 3 - 3 Ferret, skill 1
Level 04, Wave 1 - 1 Wraith, skill 1
Level 04, Wave 2 - 2 Epee, skill 1
Level 04, Wave 3 - 3 Sabre, skill 1
Level 05, Wave 1 - 3 Epee, skill 1
Level 05, Wave 2 - 1 Sabre, skill 1
Level 05, Wave 3 - 3 Broadsword, skill 1
Level 06, Wave 1 - 1 Dorkathi, skill 1
Level 06, Wave 2 - 2 Crossbow, skill 1
Level 06, Wave 3 - 1 Morningstar, skill 1
Level 07, Wave 1 - 1 Wraith, skill 1
Level 07, Wave 2 - 2 Jrathek, skill 1
Level 07, Wave 3 - 3 Drakhri, skill 2
Level 08, Wave 1 - 3 Jalkehi, skill 2
Level 08, Wave 2 - 2 Morningstar, skill 2
Level 08, Wave 3 - 3 Sabre, skill 2
Level 09, Wave 1 - 4 Grikath, skill 3
Level 09, Wave 2 - 4 Strakha, skill 3
Level 09, Wave 3 - 3 Crossbow, skill 3
Level 10, Wave 1 - 4 Rapier, skill 2
Level 10, Wave 2 - 5 Epee, skill 2
Level 10, Wave 3 - 7 Ferret, skill 2
Level 11, Wave 1 - 5 Grikath, skill 3
Level 11, Wave 2 - 4 Wraith, skill 2
Level 11, Wave 3 - 4 Rapier, skill 3
Level 12, Wave 1 - 6 Jrathek, skill 2
Level 12, Wave 2 - 2 Dorkathi, skill 2
Level 12, Wave 3 - 9 Drakhri, skill 3
Level 13, Wave 1 - 5 Crossbow, skill 2
Level 13, Wave 2 - 4 Morningstar, skill 4
Level 13, Wave 3 - 6 Epee, skill 2
Level 14, Wave 1 - 6 Jrathek, skill 4
Level 14, Wave 2 - 7 Ferret, skill 4
Level 14, Wave 3 - 10 Sartha, skill 4
Level 15, Wave 1 - 7 Morningstar, skill 4
Level 15, Wave 2 - 8 Wraith, skill 3
Level 15, Wave 3 - 8 Jrathek, skill 4

However, i seem to recall that, as you started to hit memory limits, Academy stopped adding ships to the action sphere. For this reason, you may not actually face 10 Sartha on Level 14/3, for example, but slightly less than that.

And by the way, I don't think i ever got past Level 11 either... :)
 
Wing Commander I and II's command line cheat code was "Origin -k"

... but Academy, coming out a year later, is "ERTS -k" (Electronc Arts).
 
I don't think I've ever made it past level 8 wave 3.

Strange thing is I always thought the guantlet was random rather than having fixed waves.
 
(8 Jrathek skill 4 - no way I can beat that!)
I'd worry more about the 8 Wraith - one missile hit and your shields are gone, the Reapers'll do the rest... Though, on the other hand, should you ever make it through that, you'd certainly not be in a good shape to take on those Jratheks ;) . And don't forget that there also are 7 Morningstars before both of these waves...

The ships that usually caused me the most trouble were Sabres (anyone said "missiles" ? Not to mention the rest of the ship...) , Crossbows (flying forts, and maneuverable, too) and of course Wraiths (dam*ed leech missiles...)

The ships that I made my best runs in, though, were the Morningstar, Broadsword (yes, just that) and, last but not least, the Sabre :cool: .



I know for sure that my best record was Level 13 Wave 3 - though those Epees merely needed to sneeze for my ship to fall apart after what those Crossbows and Morningstars in 13-1 and 13-2 had cost me...

I'm not completely sure with which of the three abovementioned ships this was, though. I do know that with the Morningstar my record was Level 13 Wave 1. I'm mostly sure thogh that it was the Sabre with which I got to 13-3 (as defeating 5 Crossbows with a Broadsword seems pretty unpropable to me).

Still, with the third of them I got to somewhere near Level 12 - that'd be the Broadsword, then. Proof those turrets were more useful in WC2/Ac then in Standoff, isn't it?

With the Wraith I never got that far - too uncontrollable with that high speed, and also kind of under-armed compared with the Sabre (missiles & turrets, remember ?) .



I took noticing this thread as reason for testing my flight skill again the day before yesterday - 2 tries with a Sabre, got to 9-3 and 10-3 respectively. In the latter the Ferrets only nailed me because the first crashed into my cockpit, taking out MFDs and the like. Still got one or two more, but then I was done in. But to be fair - I only got there in the second try because 2 of the 3 Crossbows in 9-3 killed each other by colliding, so I shouldn't lament about colissions in that try.
Seems I need some more practice again... :eek:
Tried a Jrathek, too, but got proven the point of "underarmed" - though I might have fared better with Photons only instead of full guns; will have to try that again one day...



Oh, and for the records, I also still have my old highscore-file, which reads as follows:
92815 - me (propably Sabre 13-3)
90060 - a friend of mine (propably Jrathek, he loves cats; also propably 13-2, judging from the points)
83850 - me (Morningstar 13-1 ?)
75905 - my friend again (dunno which ship, but look above)
73910 - me (Broadsword 12-x ?)

On a side-note, it might be that the Broadswords and Morningstars point-assignments were just the other way around; I seem to have some faint memory of accumulating more points per wave with the Broadsword then with the others - though it seems pretty strange to me that the difference should be THAT big... :confused:
 
I don't think I've ever made it past level 8 wave 3.

Strange thing is I always thought the guantlet was random rather than having fixed waves.

I just installed WCA again and i got to that exact level and wave. I couldn't pass the sabres, i had already my sabre crippled, but at least i managed to kill one of them. I'll try again later with a wraith.
 
I just installed WCA again and i got to that exact level and wave. I couldn't pass the sabres, i had already my sabre crippled, but at least i managed to kill one of them. I'll try again later with a wraith.

Did the same here, but got to Level 9 Wave 2. I was too damaged for any kind of stand up fight and a Strakha got a lucky hit. It sure was fun to jump back into WCA after so many years away.
 
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