Playing Wing Commander 3 for the First Time

F

FrostyNSO

Spaceman
Right now, I'm in the middle of playing Wing Commander 3 for the first time ever, thanks to my wife, who hooked me up on my birthday.

I "found the keys left in the ignition" of the Excalibur, and though it is a good ship, I find myself returning again and again to the Arrow.

The Arrow, I must say, must have been made for me. Because there is no finer piece of machinery in the Wing Commander Universe in my opinion. Even the Piranha of Prophecy, though fun to fly, doesn't do it for me like the Arrow now.

Cheers! To the Arrow!
 
Yeah, I never liked the Arrow much either. I like the design of the ship. But I don't care much for any of the light fighters either. I like to have a good balance of gun power and medium shields and armor. The Vindicator is one of my favorite ships for this reason. Some people don't like the combination of plasma guns and lasers but I thought it was a great idea.

And in most cases, I never really need a ship that goes super fast. That's why whenever I flew the arrow or any other light fighter I would divert power from my engines and pump into my shields and guns.

At any rate though, I honestly don't see how you could like the Arrow more than the Excalibur.
 
It's nimble, and it's a small target. I would never call it TOO fast. I use a lot of afterburner when I fly, so having a very high non-burner top-speed is a thing I love. As far as the shields and armor, I'm playing my first time through on the default mode and the only time I've worried about taking too much fire is strafing capships. I jump around too much for enemy fighters I guess with autoslide and all.
The guns I've had no problem with either, despite them being a little light. They fire a lot of shots with only a short burst, and have great range. Then 8 missiles is more than enough for me.
 
i found the arrow to be a good fighter, but when i had the choice between it and the excalibur, i would always choose the excalibur.
 
I think the Thunderbolt is the most balanced fighter in the game - and probably my favorite from the entire series. The only thing is that its not so hot for missile happy pilots.

WCIII - like many other players - remains a highwater mark with my gaming because it was the first in the series I played. Sure, I had been madly addicted to X-Wing for a year but Heart Of The Tiger was so much more tangible than most other games and it still holds up amazingly well after all these years. It's still my second favorite game of all time.
 
The Arrow is my #2 most hated ship.... Way too fast and way too weak!
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How? The Arrow was unstoppable when I used it. You could just hold down fire and the lasers had such a small recycle time that they never stopped firing. I've taken out Kilrathi Cruisers with an Arrow. They're so fast that nothing can catch them. But, alas, I would always take the Excalibur over the Arrow. The Excalibur had all the speed and manuverability of the Arrow, with like 10 times the firepower.

Longbow is my #1 hated ship!
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You have to be really good to fly a Longbow well. I barely manage to make it back in one piece usually.
 
I thought the Bearcat from WC4 was better than the Arrow. I guess the Arrow just screams A-Wing at me too much.
My fav fighter would have to the Banshee. I don't know why, but I just like it.
I hated the Longbow.
 
So it runs fine under Windows? Or is it Kilrathi Saga? I'm thinking of trying to track down a copy myself, but the demo of the original version didn't work for me.
 
FrostyNSO said:
Right now, I'm in the middle of playing Wing Commander 3 for the first time ever, thanks to my wife, who hooked me up on my birthday.
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Wait... your wife hooked you onto WC3? That's very kind of her! :)
 
SoulSkorpion said:
So it runs fine under Windows? Or is it Kilrathi Saga? I'm thinking of trying to track down a copy myself, but the demo of the original version didn't work for me.
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The original release of WC3 will run fine without any problems on Win9x/ME, and I believe with some fiddling can work on 2K/XP, but not having that installed I can't say for sure.

Hell, just surf the tech support forum, I'm sure it's been covered hundreds of times before. :)
 
The arrow is a good fighter, but somehow doens't fit.. the design differs a lot from the other WC3/4 ships....

the excalibur is a good fighter, but like someone already mentioned, the banshee would be nr 1, it feels like flying a bolt of lightning, that ship is truly an exeption, since prefer heavy strike fighters, the raptor, the sabre, the dragon...

the banshee just seems to have the extra edge with the stormfire as secondary guns combined with its speed.
 
I too, really enjoyed flying the Banshee, that was an outstanding ships also. I think WC4 had the best offering of craft out of all the games so far.

The other thing I like about the Arrow though, is just how small it is. I'm not a big missile guy (I like to save them for tough targets), but I like that the WC3 Arrow rocks 8 missiles. Where the banshee really has an edge I think is in it's stormfire, and the ability to mount dumbfires.
 
I haven't played WC4, but in WC3 I think the thread creator is right in loving the arrow (but more than the Excalibur!!?? let's be reasonable!). I think the arrow is by far the best of all 4 non-Excalibur ships. You have UNLIMITED afterburners when you combine them with the shelton slide! You also have 8 missiles! This light fighter has more punch that even the heavy fighters! And too fast? Not sure what the poster meant by this but in WC dogfights speed is life. Try dogfighting with Flash on the Nightmare level without using missiles, and you'll see how tough the arrow can be to hit at full speed while darting around. An acceptable complaint is that the guns are weak, but as long as the enemy can't hit you back you'll have all the time in the world! Look under the WC3 strategies posts to see how you can destroy capships with no prob. while flying the arrow.
 
The Arrow can kick the Hellcat's ass anyday. The Thud is also great. And the Excal is my favorite superfighter of the entire series.
I was really annoyed in WC4 when you were limited to the 2 WORST fighters in WC3, the Hellcrap and the Longblow. Luckily I soon got my hands on the BW ships. The Banshee rocked.
 
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