Just finished my first-time playthrough of WC4 and Prophecy (some ?'s, SPOILERS)

[Rovlad]

First of all, sorry for making a whole friggin' thread.
Please feel free to move it wherever it may be more appropriate.

I've been Wing Commander fan for a long time. I've finished WC1/2 countless times back in the days when steam engines were all the hype. Okay, maybe not that long ago, but 199x is really an ancient history by today's media standards. Due to some circumstances I was not able to play the latest two games until recently. Which I did now and have only finished the last Prophecy mission like an hour ago.

Well, of all the WC games, I must say that WC4 seems like a winner to me, story-wise. As I browsed through these forums and guides on wcnews.com, I've been trying hard as hell to not get hit by spoilers. Which I must say, I've almost succeeded in. Still, I had a true and genuine shocker out of Tolwyn's "grand entrance". My jaw literally dropped at that moment. Oh, and I also ditched the Confederation and still haven't played the other game path. So, more reason to come back later.

The problem with this game? Missiles. How come they're almost harmless in all other WC games, and deadly as hell in this one? When one missile takes you down in any ship with full shields in like 9 cases out of 10 - that just seems far more random than it should be. You can forget the guns, just target an enemy, get close to his tail, press enter, repeat. If you hear the lock tone, weaver around like mad, toss ECM's around like confetti and pray (optional).

Prophecy seemed a bit... undeveloped. Like they had a budget cut or something. There are no people to talk to between missions most of the time (and the closer to the ending, the less intermissions you get) and it's almost only generic briefing movies in that part of the game. At least, the final battle was really climatic.

Now, for my questions:
- Are Dallas and Hawk condemned to die? I never really tried to replay any missions, I just went with failures (I think there were like 5 or 6 missions I blew) so I was wondering about that.
- What is Hawk's problem? He was disgruntled by having to work with the cats in WC4, and in this one he's lunatic about them. Was it simply Casey's presence on board that reminded him of Iceman's death?
- ...I have to run now, but I'll ask more questions later.

Thank you in advance!

 

[Aginor]

I don't have much time at the moment, but I can answer your questions shortly:

Hawk was born on Mylon 2. The Kilrathi bombed it, killing his family.
He has been fighting them for a long time, losing a lot of friends during the war.
He hates them. That's all.

btw: I think Hawk's story is told during WC4 or Prophecy.... You might have missed that.


And yes, both Dallas and Hawk die and you can't save them. I hated that, because Hawk was my favourite character in the game (side note: My favourite characters in movies, books, or games die almost every time...)

Concerning the missiles: I think missiles were also quite deadly in the other WC games. I'm not sure though...

 

[Farbourne]

The missiles are the way they ought to be in WC4, in my opinion.

In WC1 we hear Hunter talking about how great missiles are, but they're really not. In WC 1-3, they'll get you a quick kill if you've already worn down the enemy shields with guns, but won't do much otherwise unless you're shooting at a Darket. And you can pretty much ignore enemy missiles in WC1 and 2 regardless of your ship condition, and in WC3 as well as long as your shields are in decent shape. Maybe some of this was due to the AI...maybe the computer just wasn't being intelligent about when it fired its missiles?

But in WC4, you have to be aware of them. A missile SHOULD kill a target that it hits most of the time. That's the way missiles work in air combat today, and that's the way that a lot of the Wing Commander fiction and in-game implications imply they should work. And it's OK that they are so deadly, because everyone gets a limited number of them.

The AI in WC4 is some of the best AI in all of Wing Commander...you'll see enemies pull creative maneuvers at appropriate times, use team tactics to try to take advantage of superior numbers when they have them, pull maneuvers that are appropriate for their ships, etc. And this includes using missiles when optimal. It forces us as pilots to learn how to cope with missiles.

A few suggestions:
- Do NOT be complacent about fighters on your tail. Remember Claw Marks...if you have another enemy in your sights and it will only take one more hit to take him down, and you have full shields, it is acceptable...barely...to ignore the guy on your tail for a moment, but only then. You should know from your own experience that a missile fired at someone's "six" is far more likely to hit than one fired at a deflection angle, so keep your own "six" clear.

- When a missile locks on to you, your first priority, eclipsing all others, is to make it miss. This is a change in mantra from previous (and subsequent, like Prophecy, where they dumbed down enemy missiles again) games.

- Certain tactics work better at making it miss than others. Don't just weave wildly while spamming decoys...that's the best way to run out of decoys and die later in the mission. Figure out which direction the missile is coming from. Break hard, preferably across the missile's nose if it's coming in from an angle (to increase the deflection angle), drop a decoy or two (no more), and hit your burners. If that fails, make another 90° break in a random direction and drop another decoy, and hit your burners again. If that still fails, try turning into the missile, while intermittently (not continuously) pulsing your burners, and occasionally dropping decoys. But don't waste your decoys!

- If you're outnumbered, the enemies will try to use team tactics on you...one will fly defensively and try to bait you, while the other tries to maneuver onto your six and shoves a missile up your tailpipe. Try to discourage this. If you see them doing this, switch targets...the defensive one will take a little time to figure out that he should now be getting aggressive. Or hit your burners and try to lure the aggressive one far away from the other. Or just constantly keep maneuvering defensively, getting in your own shots when possible.

These tips will force you into a more defensive style of flying, but this makes the game experience richer, more like a flying game, and less of a 3D first person shooter where you just turn, aim, and fire, rinse, repeat. My biggest issue with Prophecy is that the flight engine went back more to this kind of experience...it's undoubtedly a more user friendly game approach, easier for beginners to master, with wider gaming appeal, but it diminished the experience for me.

 

[Rovlad]

Hawk was born on Mylon 2. The Kilrathi bombed it, killing his family.
He has been fighting them for a long time, losing a lot of friends during the war.
He hates them. That's all.

Okay. So it takes a couple of phrases akin to 'katz ar gud now haha' from Blair in WC4 to make him not mention this anymore, and then he wants to skin every last one of them alive in WCP. If he really hates them that much, I'd think there would be a little more conflict about it in WC4?

I agree about WC4 AI being the best of the bunch. WC3 Nightmare is also a viable challenge, but even then there were obvious exploitable patterns in enemy behavior. Prophecy was a bit dumbed down, last difficulty level being way more easy than it should be (I had to replay that 2-mission segment three times, and that was the most difficult part of the game for me; the rest of failed missions came from my own mistakes).

Still, I consider missiles to be way too deadly in WC4, if you take into consideration how difficult it can be to shake them off. You can skimmer through the mission and have the last dying enemy kill you with a heat-seeker while you're on his tail (AI cheats in WC4 and doesn't need a missile lock or even to have you in his sights - he only does that on higher difficulty levels though).

 

[Jason_Ryock]

The missiles are the way they ought to be in WC4, in
- Do NOT be complacent about fighters on your tail. Remember Claw Marks...if you have another enemy in your sights and it will only take one more hit to take him down, and you have full shields, it is acceptable...barely...to ignore the guy on your tail for a moment, but only then. You should know from your own experience that a missile fired at someone's "six" is far more likely to hit than one fired at a deflection angle, so keep your own "six" clear.

Missiles firing head on seem to work well for me, and they can for you too if you're smart about it. Don't fire it straight into enemy fire, fire it at range, then fly up down left or right and force the enemy to change his angle of approach on you, that way your missile is outside his line of fire. As has been mentioned here, the AI is generally too dumb to turn away from the missile in this situation.

- When a missile locks on to you, your first priority, eclipsing all others, is to make it miss. This is a change in mantra from previous (and subsequent, like Prophecy, where they dumbed down enemy missiles again) games.

I'm either Maniac Lucky or Maniac Stupid but I've always had good odds turning into the missiles and blowing them away before they get close to me.

These are some good tips he listed here, it's obvious he's an experienced pilot and he knows what he's talking about.

Especially what he said about saving decoys - you can never have enough decoys.