Best Wing Commander Add-On

Best Add-On

  • Secret Missions 1: Goddard Incident

    Votes: 7 31.8%
  • Secret Missions 2: Crusade

    Votes: 6 27.3%
  • Special Operations 1: Ghorah Karr Rebellion

    Votes: 2 9.1%
  • Special Operations 2: The Mandarins

    Votes: 3 13.6%
  • Proving Grounds (Armada)

    Votes: 1 4.5%
  • Righteous Fire (Privateer)

    Votes: 3 13.6%

  • Total voters
    22
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If you still have an XP build, throw SM1-2 into compatibility mode. I couldn't get them working until I did so, either.

EDIT: Oh hey, up to Major now! ^_^

Congrats on that, but sadly i don't. I tried to tweak the computer's processors and w/e I did caused it to explode... literally.:(
 
I loved the pursuit seen in SM1...while the Drayman escort missions in SM2 drove me insane to no end when I first played it.

SM1 gets my vote because who doesn't love blowing the crap out of an important capship?
 
I wonder why not? Its not like there would have been insufficiant space on the CD. The manual even includes pilot profiles for Jazz and Doomsday as I recall.

Afraid not, Only the usuals - it's differently laid out to pc clawmarks i think but no jazz/doomsday :(

It's a shame as the speech etc make the game considerably more immersive imho - and the voice acting is much MUCH better than swc's (also easier to emulate on the old pc - as i have neither a mac or a sega-cd but have original discs for both).
 
I'm not going to encourage a stupidly wrong personal interpretation contrary to the facts.

I'm not going to speak to Academy, because I haven't played it, but I think I kind of agree with Quarto and the pollster on the issue of Secret Ops. I think considering that game as an "add on" is subjective, and not necessarily "stupidly wrong".

If by "add on" you mean "expansion pack", in the sense that you need one game to get the extra content in the add on to run, then, no, Secret Ops isn't an expansion pack, because it runs even if you don't have Prophecy and have never played Prophecy.

However, if you take a looser definition of "add on" as a game that uses essentially the same engine (with possibly a few tweaks), has you flying the same kinds of missions against the same enemy, requires that you have played the preceding game to know what is going on plot wise, and mainly just adds additional content that occurs immediately after the events of the previous game have concluded, then Secret Ops is most definitely an "add on" to Prophecy.

No other stand-alone game is as similar in engine and mission design, and so closely tied chronologically and characterwise, as SecretOps is to Prophecy.
 
Afraid not, Only the usuals - it's differently laid out to pc clawmarks i think but no jazz/doomsday

I think he's right - they're in there. There's a note about how some transfer pilots will be visiting the Tiger's Claw and then there are bios for both of them (separate from the other pilot profiles).

They were reprinted in the Kilrathi Saga

However, if you take a looser definition of "add on" as a game that uses essentially the same engine (with possibly a few tweaks), has you flying the same kinds of missions against the same enemy, requires that you have played the preceding game to know what is going on plot wise, and mainly just adds additional content that occurs immediately after the events of the previous game have concluded, then Secret Ops is most definitely an "add on" to Prophecy.

Like how Wing Commander II is the addon to Wing Commander I!

Secret Ops is not an addon, it's a stand-alone release.
 
I think he's right - they're in there. There's a note about how some transfer pilots will be visiting the Tiger's Claw and then there are bios for both of them (separate from the other pilot profiles).

They were reprinted in the Kilrathi Saga


I checked last night, and didn't see them - am at work now so no chance to look - but i'm pretty sure theyre not in there.
 
Like how Wing Commander II is the addon to Wing Commander I!

Secret Ops is not an addon, it's a stand-alone release.

Secret Ops is most definitely a stand-alone release, and is most definitely not an "expansion pack". But the thread poll didn't ask about "expansion packs", it asked about "addon"s, and I would argue that the definition of "addon" is subjective. While I don't doubt that the pollster likely meant "expansion pack" and is therefore in error, I think calling it a "stupidly wrong" mistake is taking a rather narrow view.

As to the WC1-WC2 thing... I thought about that, but I don't think any but the most ridiculously wide view would consider WC2 and addon to WC1. Look at my criteria. WC2 uses a similar, but not the same engine, as WC1. I imagine a significant percentage of the source code was re-written. Some of the game mechanics (phase shields, capship attacks, torpedoes) are dramatically different, leading to a very different gameplay experience. The artistic look of the game was dramatically changed--compare the ship designs or the animated character avatars. And, story wise, WC2 starts ten years after WC1, after most of the characters from WC1 have been killed or have moved on, which separates the story and allows new ships, new weapons, new technologies, and new characters to be present. Finally, WC2 has a great deal of background and a lengthy intro that makes it possible to jump into the game never having played WC1.

On the other hand, SecretOps used essentially the same engine as WCP. There are no stunning new capabilities (heck, even Secret Missions and Special Ops introduced more new material, gameplay-wise, than Secret Ops did, because they added new flyable ships and weapons like the Mace with dramatically new capabilities, instead of re-using existing things with slightly tweaked stats). It looks like a large part of the game source code--everything except the bits relating to the story--were re-used wholesale, with only possible minor tweaks to some of the statistics. All the same graphics and models were used. The artistic look of the game was essentially the same, and the differences were mainly omissions (no cutscenes) instead of additions. And the story is set immediately after WCP, with mostly the same characters. Finally, to really understand what was happening in SecretOps, it's kind of necessary to play Prophecy.

I think, if one uses a loose definition of "addon", WC4 is far more likely to be considered an addon to WC3 than WC2 is to WC1. But Secret Ops is the most likely to be considered an "addon" of any of the "standalone" games.
 
An addon is an expansion pack, something that you add on to an existing game. It's not subjective at all.
 
This Internet reference totally kicks that Internet reference's ass. Thousands agree! We can only hope that one day the terms used to describe video games will be standardized, and the killing will finally stop.
 
This Internet reference totally kicks that Internet reference's ass. Thousands agree! We can only hope that one day the terms used to describe video games will be standardized, and the killing will finally stop.

1. The thing being discussed was Secret Ops. NOT SM1. Secret MISSIONS is a different word from Secret OPS.

2. Yeah, and I'll bet thousands of people agree that the earth is flat, or some such nonsense. Let's not forget Xenu. The opinions of several thousand people are not statistically significant... especially not when their opinion relies entirely on using words together in ways that don't make sense.

Since you insist, however, I'll provide you some simple rules of thumb:

Stand Alone- something that is it's own package. Like WC1, WC2...
Expansion- something that EXPANDS on something else. Logically you cannot expand nothing, so it needs a base. SM1-2, SO1-2.

Now, take a good look at those words, and remember that the opinions of thousands of people are not significant if they are wrong. Now tell me, where the heck do you get this notion of a Stand Alone Expansion? It's a misnomer, plain and simple.
 
Pine - a certain type of coniferous tree. Also, the wood of said tree.
Apple - the fruit of an apple tree. Give nutrients, repels doctors.

Now take a good look at those words, and a better look at this picture:

1fggewrgrga.jpg


Now tell me, how the heck can you call it a pineapple? It's a misnomer, plain and simple. Every time you've eaten a fruit cocktail, you've eaten LIES.

Breaking news: people on the internet are stupid.

But me and you are on the Internet!

... oh.
 
This argument is starting to suck so much it's on the verge of creating a black hole.

For the most part, gaming industry already is standardized, except when someone wants to look like they're S-M-R-T smart by citing a toy encyclopedia to back up their argument from ignorance. As Twain said, calling a dog's tail a leg don't make it so.

Now, can y'all get back to actually discussing the addons, instead of providing support for the notion of requiring a license to use the internet?
 
Alright look, Loaf, death, could one of you do me a favor and lock this thread before someone gets themselves banned?

I should have worded the thread better, I was trying to say that those games were made to enhance to storyline of the original base games WCA as far as I was concerned was a mission editor for WC2 and WCPSO looked like it fit the bill as an add-on to WCP. But I admit I was wrong... can we either please get back to the topic at hand or just forget about it all together? I don't want someone getting banned because of a mistake I made.
 
Theres been some interesting points made here;

There does seem to be an increasing theme of stand-alone expansions (see red-alert 3 uprising) the idea presumably being that instead of expanding on the game itself you are expanding on the ideas/mechanics/story of the game, and doing so in a package that doesnt require the original.

That said, I don't think academy could ever be called such as it is clearly not continuing story/ideas but is only a "make your own missions in the wc2 engine" and even then doesnt have all the same ships (Jrathek anyone?)

Secret-Ops is however a tough one, let's compare to wc1 and sm1:
Both continue the story with the same characters.
Both use the same engine (to most purposes, there are slight updates here and there, sm2 for instance has the frameskip)

now the differences:
the ships are the same in sm1 (a couple of newbies) but are mostly different in secret-ops

you are basedon the same ship in sm1, but on a different ship in secret-ops (now granted this is like wc2-special ops)

Basically Secret-Ops is like half-life2 episodes, its a continuation of the story, probably using the same engine and with many similarities, but ultimately its a seperate install, for me that makes the "expansion" it's own game, its no different from lemmings and lemmings 2 - same idea, continues where we left off, similar engine.

On the other hand, if we consider the games as a whole then we get

games
wc1
wc2
wc3
wc4
wcp

spin offs
armada
academy
privateer
privateer2

expansions (games that continue the themes of existing games and are a bolt in addon)
secret missions
special ops
proving grounds
righteous fire

other (games that continue the themes but are NOT a bolt-in addon)
secret ops

do we really want secret-ops to be all alone down there - with no friends. the only friend it has is proving grounds because it was free too!
 
do we really want secret-ops to be all alone down there - with no friends. the only friend it has is proving grounds because it was free too!

In your taxonomy, Secret Ops would be the sixth 'main' game; it continues the same story and was developed by the same team.

Most of the claims you made apply to Wing Commander 2 and Wing Commander 4 - same engine, continued the previous game's story. This is by design; the idea was that every other game would get a longer development cycle to create a new engine... and then the even numbered ones would be developed quicker with the same engine (and thus turn a profit more quickly). This wasn't even limited to Wing Commander, it was something that Origin applied to most of their series'. Sometimes those sequels got a lot of money (Wing Commander IV, Ultima VII Part 2) and sometimes they got very little (Crusader: No Regret).

Obviously, Secret Ops is at one end of this spectrum (next to No Regret and Longbow 2) - but no one in 1998 would have called it an 'addon' because it didn't *add on* to an existing game (... except itself? Episodes 2-7 are addons). You can all stupid til you're blue in the face about how *any* word can technically mean *anything*, but it's just an argument for the sake of argument.

I should have worded the thread better, I was trying to say that those games were made to enhance to storyline of the original base games WCA as far as I was concerned was a mission editor for WC2 and WCPSO looked like it fit the bill as an add-on to WCP. But I admit I was wrong... can we either please get back to the topic at hand or just forget about it all together? I don't want someone getting banned because of a mistake I made.

Since you're all all foamy I hesitate to talk about this... even though it's interesting... but I believe Academy and Secret Ops both *started* their development lives as expansion packs. Academy was going to be a mission builder that you plug in to Wing Commander II and Secret Ops was going to be a Command and Conquer: Covert Ops-style mission pack.
 
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