Paradigm change in Wing Commander Fan Games, A Proposal

Eder said:
TIE Fighter was a great game in which you played an imperial pilot conveniently stationed onboard the only Imperial ships in the universe that spent less than 1/10th of their time chasing down Rebels.
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There are, I suspect, reasons for that (other than not wanting to damage the good guys too much). It's all about the fighters - in X-Wing, it took a fair amount of effort to take down a Rebel fighter, while the TIE Fighters... well, for the most part they were one-shot kills. In TIE Fighter, you start off flying a one-shot kill craft... so naturally, they prefer to pit you as much as possible against other one-shot kill ships.

Such reasons, of course, would not be relevant in a Kilrathi game, since their ships are not significantly inferior to ours. And given that there has already been Armada where it was firmly established that shooting people is as much fun as shooting cats, I don't think anyone would really consider making a cat campaign where you spend less than 1/10th of your time shooting Confed pilots.
 
What people forget is that the idea that Rebel fighters are 'superior' to TIE Fighters is a conceit created *for* X-Wing -- in the movies one or two hits seems to kill any fighter regardless of faction.

TIE Fighter did many good things, but "... and then another Admiral defects!" got pretty tiresome.
 
Quarto said:
There are, I suspect, reasons for that (other than not wanting to damage the good guys too much).
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A reason that makes sense is that the Rebels have a small fleet that avoids direct confrontation and the Empire is very large. A "realistic" game would have the player flying patrol missions around a large fleet of star destroyers and parade around the windows to make Vader look good.

Not that any of this matters, since it was a game design decision. It got tiresome to simply keep fighting other imperials and it'd be more fun to fight more rebels.

TIE Advanced and TIE Defender also messed with game balance.
 
hmm....usually its a 'paradigm shift' but...anyway. it'd be pretty neat to fly as the cats. i'd definately see it as the flip side of what you did in the original wc games. a kilrathi pilot shooting down confed craft. i could see in there missions where your carrier is detailed off to deal with some upstart kilrathi lord and you have to ruthlessly suppress them or something, but overall i'd see it as a constant fight with confed. i'd even see raider missions in there somewhere, harrass terran colonies and blow up civilian ships. it'd be interesting for sure. it'd be nothing but straight ruthless brutality...heheh, how many people would be up for that?
 
To expand on Brad's idea, I would like to see a WC2 Kilrathi POV game where your ship commanded by perhaps your father is assigned to take part in an offensive along the front lines. However when the fleet jumps your navigation officer miscalculated the jump time and you arrive thirty minutes after the rest of the floatilla. All you find is wreckage and a few remaining Confed fighters that have remained to sweep through the debris. YOu clear the fighters and the next 4 to 5 missions focus on the carrier trying to fight it's way free. Upon its return to Kilrathi territory the carrier is docked for extensive repairs and your father is severely reprimanded since his ship is the only survivor of the fleet and command thinks that he ran from battle. Disgraced and dishonored he is transferred to a little converted freighter. Despite being exonerated from any charges of cowardice against you personally you can choose between requesting transfer to your father's freighter or being reassigned to a front line action aboard a new carrier.

If you follow your father you do a couple of routine patrol missions fighting pirates when rudely discover that your family's bitter rivals have decided to take advantage of your father's misfortune to destroy him. After defending off an heavy assault on the freighter your next mission you bait their Ralatha into an ambush and manage to capture it. With control of a Ralatha you return to the front lines in time to assist in repelling a Confed assault in which you save a valuable supply depot. Your father's reputation is cleared and your ship assigned a position in the front lines for a continued offensive in retaking certain sectors that had been lost in WC1.

If you didn't follow your father then you are assigned to the front line position and fly multiple strike and patrol missions until you receive word that your father and his ship has been destroyed in a "pirate" attack.

Hmm, really needs some fixing up and tweaking...doesn't sound quite as good as it did a few minutes ago.
 
Maj.Striker said:
Hmm, really needs some fixing up and tweaking...doesn't sound quite as good as it did a few minutes ago.
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No indeed, it sounds a great deal like one of those TIE Fighter storylines where you spend your time shooting at the fellow bad guys instead of the good guys :p.

(also, just about every source indicates that the Kilrathi take their reprimands a bit more seriously than that)
 
Doesn't Thrakath mention wiping out an entire confed fleet in WC2? That could be something to try to flesh out.
 
t.c.cgi said:
Doesn't Thrakath mention wiping out an entire confed fleet in WC2? That could be something to try to flesh out.
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6th Fleet, in Deneb sector (what it was called then, I forget what the area is labeled now, and I can't find my WCP map). However, there was only a passing mention of it at the end of SO2 (and IIRC a bartender message in Privateer), so there's not a whole lot of info to work from, for either the line of battle on both sides or the specifics of the outcome beyond "humans lose".
 
I made a patch for WC1 many many many years ago that let you fly Kilrathi ships against confed ships in each mission, but it didn't change the plot at all. Just flipped the ship images and ran a modified executable. In theory, PiArmada will eventually allow you to play as the Kilrathi, but that's pretty far down the to-do list, behind things like "make the game stable" and "make the game pretty". And beyond THAT is... whatever the hypothetical superArmada gets called, which should at the very least allow you to fight the entire war from either side. Look for that in a decade or so, at this pace. :)
 
Death said:
6th Fleet, in Deneb sector (what it was called then, I forget what the area is labeled now, and I can't find my WCP map)...
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Just checked my WCP map now -- Deneb Quadrant is in Epsilon Sector -- quite a few WC3/4 missions are played out there (Orsini, Locanda, Torgo, Peleus, Orestes, etc).

My memory's a bit vague on the mentions in SO2 and Privateer, but as you said Death, I seem to recall it being referenced as "Deneb Sector" / "Deneb Fleet?" Quite how a Sector in WC terms can be relegated to a Quadrant I don't know, although it may have been explained in a subsequent game/literature.

Cheers,


BrynS
 
Blame Captain Johnny... (G) Two sectors that were often referenced but not central to any games, Deneb and Antares, became the Epsilon Sector on the WCU Map.

The human force defeated at Deneb was the Sixth Fleet. The Kilrathi took the sector command in a matter of hours and the major battle was fought in the Midgard System.
 
The fleet was referred to as "6th Fleet", they were just stationed in Deneb.

As for the map terminology, 2667 and 2681 are a fair ways apart, there's nothing saying (at least as far as I can recall from canon) that there couldn't have been a mapping system reorganization at some point.

(Of course, the production explanation is probably closer to "oops, we didn't mean that" or somesuch. :p )
 
Flying for the Kilrathi is likely to screw up the 'underdog' image which all the Wing Commander parts after WC2 is about. In the game, you are always put in an "inferior" position on every mission in which you actually have to put effort into, and seeing how Kilrathi are always on the winning till they lose the Death S... I mean, Kilrah, it's likely to be too easy.

Then again, I never played TIE Fighter.
 
Well it depends from what point of view you're coming. Sure, Thrakath and the main fleet are easily pulverizing Confeds from game 1-3 without ever being beaten (not even after the destruction of Kilrah). But think of all those poor cannon fodder fighters Blair and his men take down 2 a minute. If every single one of these pilots had a role comparable to a confed pilot (a "personality"), that would be a whole lot of funerals on their carrier (or disintegrations if they make it home alive anyway...)
 
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