Ejection bashings

Originally posted by Earthworm
He means that Blair and Maniac are the only ones to enlist after shields became stronger, therefore making ships harder to destroy.
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Well, technically it makes YOUR ship harder to destroy as well.

Personally, I would say that having shields makes it easier to get high kill scores. Say you are twice as 'good' as the average enemy pilot, in that if they do 50% of the damage that you do to them. Without shields, you're dead after two kills. With shields, your 50% damage regenerates. Therefore it is much easier to get high kill scores WITH shields.

Unless, of course, those other 38 were scored when Confed had shields and the cats didn't :D.
 
Originally posted by Bandit LOAF
Training new pilots is cheap -- 100,000,000 credit fighters are not. :)
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Well, I got that idea from the X-Wing novels. New personnel were very expensive to train, not to mention that in losing them, you'd also lose any skills and expertise they might have. Thus, having pilots eject was much preferable to them dying.
 
Originally posted by Wedge009
Originally posted by Bandit LOAF
Training new pilots is cheap -- 100,000,000 credit fighters are not. :)
Click to expand...

Well, I got that idea from the X-Wing novels. New personnel were very expensive to train, not to mention that in losing them, you'd also lose any skills and expertise they might have. Thus, having pilots eject was much preferable to them dying.
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Just wondering, how do starwars pilots have any bearing on Wing Commander pilots?
 
I wasn't saying that they did... I was just saying that's where I got the idea from.

Of course, whereas in SW, pilots have to work together as a team, in WC, it's a one-man-army/navy/whatever. Blair! :)
 
I always figured that, in a full-on war like the Kilrathi war, the desire for replacement pilots on the front lines would outstrip the supply from any 'Top Gun' style acadamy style training program. It would be like the good'ol days of WWI and II - give 'em a weeks basic training and get 'em in the air. There's no point wasting a couple of years acadamy training if they're going to be turned into spacedust in five minutes. That, to some extent, could be used to explain the high kill scores recorded by a number of pilots. A new pilot runs a pretty fair chance of buying it in the first few missions. The old survival of the fittest policy means that, should you survive long enough to gain some experience, the chances are you're pretty good and should go on to make a high score. Most of the enemy pilots you're up against will also be green, so you're only really in trouble if you run up against a fellow ace.

As for a medal for ejecting - that seems fair to me, depending on the circumstances. Seriously, no pilot is going to eject unless he has to ... I'm sure they all have a fair idea what happens to pilots picked up by the Kilrathi. If you are forced to bail, then the fighter is probably as good as lost anyway. There's no point losing an experienced (or really any) pilot as well. If you eject needlessly, then obviously they are going to warn or court-marshal you. The ejection medal is like the purple heart - noone deliberately goes out to get injured in combat, but it does happen.
(btw. it's been a long time since I played WC1, but I seem to recall you could get a medal for being injured in combat?)
 
Shields existed early on -- they just weren't particularly effective. A few hits killed a ship.

Anyway, every pilot we've ever encountered in WC has been an officer, and thus either an Academy (don't confuse 'Top Gun' with the Academy -- two very different things...) graduate or someone who did SFROTC in college. (Academy/College would have been first, and then a several week advanced flight school program would have been next). Certain pilots (in WCA...) later went on to a special command school, after having been blooded in combat (Or, they were enlisted personel who served in combat and then were sent to flight school and officer training school at the Academy, like Hawk).

Note that the Kilrathi kill-scores are *not* that significant -- Kilrah's highest known scoring ace had only 99 kills to his credit.

As for the Golden Sun... think the WC equivalent of a SF specific Purple Heart (there was no medal for specifically being injured, though... although if ejecting in WC has the same effect as ejecting in-real-life, I suppose that would count:)).
 
Did anyone manage to get the "Pewter Planet" (Terran Confederation Medal of Honor) anytime besided after the final mission of WC I?

I only managed to get it ONCE so I could save the game, before the last mission of SM1... :cool:
 
There are only two points where the Pewter Planet is 'possible' -- Venice 4 and one of the last missions of SM2.

I don't think there's anything wrong with editing your WC1 saves to add in the kills and medal recieved in the last mission, though.
 
Hey, I never thought of that! :)
Using the programs available at the CIC I suppose?

Only back when I played WC I for the first times, internet wasn't even developed for the common PC user yet and the program probably didn't even exist...

Well, I guess I'll be replaying the missions soon if I get hold on one of those Kilrathi Saga copies...
 
But you were the lucky (?) resident of the Stars and Stripes country back thwn, weren't you? :)
 
Ok, I guess you got me here...

Croire que moi aussi j'étais en France à cette époque en plus... :)
 
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