Making the Game: Cap Ship Constituate Parts (February 11, 2009)

Bandit LOAF

Bandit LOAF

Long Live the Confederation!
Today's update is the plan for Wing Commander Prophecy's "component" capital ship system. Clearly inspired by X-Wing, the system was a response to the idea that capital ships were simply fat fighters in Wing Commander 1, 3 and 4. You can see the genesis of one of the game's biggest bugs here - in the rush to include an option for preventing enemy ships from launching fighters, the developers forgot to note that such damage suffered by the Midway would break the game. Note also the larger variety of capital ship weaponry: ion, plasma and flak turrets did not make it into the finished game (although ion cannons are mentioned in the ICIS manual).

These updates are thanks to John "Captain Johnny" Guentzel, who provided several CD image archives of material used by the Wing Commander Prophecy development team!

MTG2_Cap_ship_constituate_partst.jpg


Cap Ship Constituate Parts
Download (17 kb)

Date: August 14, 1997
Project: Wing Commander Prophecy
Donated By: John Guentzel
Pages: 3

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Original update published on February 11, 2009
 
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Nice ideas but the end result wasn't perfect.

Interesting how the Ion turrets would be heavier anti-fighter weaponry, like the Tachyon turrets in WC4 and SOPS, but Waypoint lists them as anti capship weaponry.

Also, doesn't the WCP guide have stats for Plasma turrets? I wonder where they got the stats from...
 
Hmm...looks like a lot of this was incorporating at least in part in Secret ops. No ion turrets but there were tachs added esp. to the Plunkett. Such a shame that the plasma and particle turrets were never fully implemented. It would have been cool to see those things actually destroy capships without in-mission scripting....and the sheer lack of punch to the alien ships really was a letdown.

I must admit, though, that most of these ships seem more like sitting ducks....even the Plunkett (with all of those turrets, it still only has two main components both of with are easily destroyed. A Murphy really seems to last longer due to the additional engine.

Oh well, still were a couple of good games.
 
Just to be clear, I do not mean the cap ship Maser turrets that dot the hull of the Nephilim cap ships, these are desribed seperately.

There's also an entry about Plasma turrets for the Nephilim. It implies that they serve primarily against cap ships but can also shoot at fighters. I don't think they were implemented in the game.

Stats are as follows:

Speed: 3600
Range: 6000
Energy: 35
Damage: 60
Refire Rate: 1,5

It's the German official guide maybe that means something.
 
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