Don´t you hate Maniac...

Cobra and Vagabond are my two favorite WC3 wingmen. They both are pretty aggressive and very loyal to your orders. I only took maniac when I had too otherwise he flew on someone else's wing.
 
One of my favorite features of WC4 was the secondary wingmen that didn't get screen time but were great in the cockpit. I took Primate almost every mission. He made a small appearance in WC3, but in WC4 he really shines when you defect to the UBW.
 
Do we know anyone else on this list?
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Nope. The Wing Commander Prophecy guide claims the rest of the Top 40 are all people who enlisted before Custer's Carnival and served earlier in the war.

Blair's edge on Flight is pretty impressive, he's 5.1 points ahead of the second place. Maniac bested him on Marksmanship for just 1.7, so it was more of a close call. This score also tell us that 3 people were actully worst than Maniac on Safety! Yikes. I suppose navigation is pretty important on WC, even if on the games all we had to do is press "A".
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The fallacy there is that we don't know what's behind the scores at all, so it's impossible to compare them. There are some courses where getting an A means coming to class... and others where you have to work your ass off for each percantage point.

well, maniac wasnt court martialed only because no one died. the transport was crippled, but the crew could escape in escape pods...
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There's two distinct tellings, which must be separate incidents. The second, in the game, isn't really Maniac's fault... the first is the one where he certainly killed a transport crew.

The 'well known' version is from the Wing Commander I & II Ultimate Strategy Guide. Maniac and Paladin are escorting a Drayman back to the Tiger's Claw.

Four Gratha attack and a dogfight breaks out... when three more enemy fighters appear. Maniac fires both of his Darts at one Gratha, and then targets a second. Thinking he still has a Dumb Fire toggled, he fires another missile... which is actually a Pilum FoF. The Gratha ducks behind the transport to evade, the Pilum locks onto the friendly ship (which has already been damaged) and destroys it. Maniac claims (immediately afterwards) that 14 people died on the transport... Origin's Official Guide to Wing Commander Prophecy says 16. Maniac did face a board hearing over the this incident.

(Here's an interesting question -- what is Maniac flying? It has two Dumb Fires, a Pilum FoF and Mass Drivers... not one of the standard WC1 loadouts!)

The in-game version (which happens slightly later) has Maniac firing a Javelin at a Dralthi, which loses lock and then aquires a transport. The missile cripples the transport which is soon picked off by the Kilrathi.
 
When did he appear in WC3?
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He's one of the five or so 'extra' Wing Commander III wingmen -- Styg, Bacon Boy, Mitchell, Ragtop and Primate.

They show up in scramble missions. You'll see him at one of the nav points when you scramble to defend the Behemoth at Torgo... and the Victory will launch him eventually if your wingman keeps dying at the Tamayo scramble. I believe they show up during the Alcor 'drunk' scramble mission, too.

(There's also Weasel, who appears only when he dies at Tamayo... and there's a simulator-only computerized wingman for some of the trainsim missions).
 
it's too bad they don't get more screen time than a handful of missions. one thing of that the early WC's missed, was the feeling of being in the middle of major fighter engagements with several wings engaged.
 
Bandit LOAF said:
The fallacy there is that we don't know what's behind the scores at all, so it's impossible to compare them. There are some courses where getting an A means coming to class... and others where you have to work your ass off for each percantage point.
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Or perhaps the scores simply mean what they are supposed to, since there's no indication otherwise.
 
Or perhaps the scores simply mean what they are supposed to, since there's no indication otherwise.
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I have no idea what that means. You can't compare two different fields without knowing what they involve... which we don't.
 
Interesting that his navigation score is so low, if he was good academically. I would think it'd be a lot of calculation and landmark memory.
 
t.c.cgi said:
Interesting that his navigation score is so low, if he was good academically. I would think it'd be a lot of calculation and landmark memory.
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Except that Maniac seems like one who might just get bored when on autopilot between nav points.... (like at the charybdis quasar in the movie)
 
t.c.cgi said:
Interesting that his navigation score is so low, if he was good academically. I would think it'd be a lot of calculation and landmark memory.
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Maybe it's not Maniac's navigation score that's low, but rather Blair's score is particularly high - Blair's navigation score is almost certainly supposed to be a reference to his Pilgrim abilities.
 
Maniac finished 88th in navigation, which puts him at around the 75th percentile--still significantly above average within his class.

I think the IFF missile bit might be a typo, and it could have been a heatseeker instead, which would mean that Maniac was flying a Scimitar (he was with the Blue Devil squadron most of his time on the Claw, I believe).

As for Primate, he seems to be the pilot who can last the longest before ejecting in WCIV, so I like him when I need somebody to cover my back.
 
I think the IFF missile bit might be a typo, and it could have been a heatseeker instead, which would mean that Maniac was flying a Scimitar (he was with the Blue Devil squadron most of his time on the Claw, I believe).
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I don't think it's a typo -- the story wouldn't make sense if it wasn't a Pilum... because a Heat Seeker or a ImRec would require a lock. He fires it off thinking it was a Dumb Fire.

Also, he seems specific that he's used up *both* his Darts... and the Scimitar has three.
 
Scimitar has two dumbfires and three heatseekers.

I thought (and this has been repeated both in Claw Marks and Victory Streak) that a heatseeker that has lost its lock would lock onto the first heat source to enter its target cone, whether friend or foe?

Anyway, if it was an IFF, the that would mean that Maniac was flying a Raptor.
 
I thought (and this has been repeated both in Claw Marks and Victory Streak) that a heatseeker that has lost its lock would lock onto the first heat source to enter its target cone, whether friend or foe?
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The point is that it doesn't lock at all -- he fires of a missile assuming it's a Dumb Fire. That wouldn't happen if it were a heat seeker, which wouldn't fire without aquiring a lock first. The story is based around the fact that Pilums are the other missile that fires like a Dart -- it's not a typo.

No Dumb-Fires on a Raptor, IIRC.
 
Hmm, it would seem likely to me that a missile configuration could be fairly easily changed on a ship...much easier than a gun configuration. Just because the Raptor (for example) doesn't have a normal loadout of a dumbfire doesn't mean it couldn't carry one. In Claw Marks we have records of Raptors being specially configured to carry extra porcupine mines when they set the ambush for the Kilrathi fleet. Ship loadouts can be changed and there are numerous instances of that happening in WC.
 
I agree, Striker. In both of the games where Blair is Wing Commander for a whole carrier, he is allowed to choose the loadout for himself and his wingmen (IIRC your wingmen carry the same as you if they are flying the same ship type).
 
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