The Best Wing Commander Battle

What would the best battle be to either watch in a movie or actually play in a game?

  • Vukar Tag

    Votes: 1 1.7%

  • Battle of Earth

    Votes: 31 51.7%

  • Tarawa's END RUN to Kilrah

    Votes: 23 38.3%

  • Invasion of the Kilrathi and start of the war

    Votes: 5 8.3%
  • Total voters
    60
Originally posted by pygmypiranha
Does no one know what the Battle of Vukar Tag actually is?
Click to expand...

Vukar Tag - an off-screen battle in which a few Confed carriers ambushed and wiped out a larger group of Kilrathi carriers at the cost of one Confed carrier lost and one crippled.

My pick for the battle to show would be the Tarawa's End Run. While admittedly, I haven't read Fleet Action, I suspect that both Vukar Tag and BoT would be somewhat similar - huge swarms of fighters going after each other and the carriers. End Run, in contrast, is a lengthy chase, which always makes for a good story. In addition, the smaller numbers of fighters involved would probably make for more fun in the engagements. Sure, it LOOKS cool to have hundreds of fighters - at least the first couple of times, but the battles themselves are a lot more fun when you don't have to worry about a dozen fighters all simultaneously deciding that you're next on their hit list (which could easily happen in something like BoT). I suspect that some of the climactic missions would end up playing out like the SSD mission in X-Wing: Alliance - i.e. "Kill 'X' number of fighters and wait for your bombers to sink the cap ship."
 
I'd just like to know what the reason and year was in WC that the name of our planet changed from 'Earth' to 'Terra'.
 
Originally posted by Saturnyne
I'd just like to know what the reason and year was in WC that the name of our planet changed from 'Earth' to 'Terra'.
Click to expand...

Terra is another word for Earth even today.
 
ah... well, it's not used often enough. you'd think we'd still be called Humans, and not Terrans though. It's interesting that the Kilrathi as a species are named after their planet (or is it vice-versa?)

Maybe it's just a marker kind of thing... humans live on all sorts of planets, so maybe Terran was used to denote humans on Earth specifically... (shrug)
 
junior~

I agree with you on that. END RUN certainly would be a really fun chase and since the carrier is a CVE it would have to be protected considerably. Like some of the posters on this sight I am a supreme fan of the carrier protection missions. I think that that kind of a game would be well based and certainly worth the money to produce. The constant barrage of so many fighters on your tail at a given point at Vukar Tag and The Battle of Earth certainly would make both battles very low in the survival aspect. Either way, I'd love to give it a try.

Wasn't someone working on a Tarawa mod for Prophecy?
 
Originally posted by Saturnyne
ah... well, it's not used often enough. you'd think we'd still be called Humans, and not Terrans though. It's interesting that the Kilrathi as a species are named after their planet (or is it vice-versa?)

Maybe it's just a marker kind of thing... humans live on all sorts of planets, so maybe Terran was used to denote humans on Earth specifically... (shrug)
Click to expand...

You call members of other groups by the term that denotes them. People from Europe are Europeans, for example. Its the same thing with the Kilrathi. Either humanity encountered the Kilrathi and applied the name to the star, or they learned what the Kilrathi called their home and gave the name to the new species.
Terra and earth are largely synonymous in meaning, as they both originally come from words meaning 'dirt'. Terra is, I believe, Latin in origin, and can be found intact in other languages. It has survived in modern day English only in a modified form. The most familiar usage is probably in the word terrain. Since Terra is Latin, its frequently used by science fiction authors to denote the name of our home planet. Also frequently encountered is the name 'Sol' (Latin for sun) being used to denote the name of the solar system Earth is a part of.

There's an amusing piece in Star Control 2 concerning the names of home planets. One of the races you encounter, the Supox (a race of plant intelligence) just happens to call their planet 'Earth' as well, which makes for an odd first conversation. All things considered, its a surprise that more planets don't come through the universal translators as Earth or a varient thereof.
 
Ohhh no.... I sense another Hairless ape conversation coming on... concerning the kilrathi and how they were without hair in the movie.... Ohhh boy... hehe
 
Originally posted by pygmypiranha
Ohhh no.... I sense another Hairless ape conversation coming on... concerning the kilrathi and how they were without hair in the movie.... Ohhh boy... hehe
Click to expand...

??
 
gotta go with the Tarawa's End Run. All of the attack was quite cool, you had several small battles happening in sequence, as well as longer/larger ones. Would be very good stuff for a movie, and better to fight in the game, would have a sense like the last missions in WC4, of you just got out of the cockpit and then get right back in again
 
For the campaign, it would have to be the End run on Tarawa.

For one battle, it would have to be the battle for terra (providing of course that the flight engine could handle several hundred or more fighters per side:) )
 
I don't even know if a really good computer could handle that many targets... It would have to be something like they saw them really far away and then they came into focus really fast. I don't really know how it would work, but it certainly would be a task. I don't even know if my P4 could handle that many...

"There's too many of them..." -Republic fighter Pilot attacking Death Star II
 
It'd be a long time before any flight engine and hardware could support that many capships/fighters. And besides graphics, there's individual AIs (especially for aces), individual ship statistics (damage, missiles remaining, etc), 3D sound FX, to name but three aspects.

BTW, they're still Rebels in RotJ. ;)
 
Originally posted by pygmypiranha
I don't even know if a really good computer could handle that many targets...
Click to expand...

A way around that might be to have "movies" of fighters and cap ships fighting in the distance and have the mission setup like the last one in WCP where there's a lot of fighters that are continually regenerated...
 
Or place it in a more "nav point" battle area. While this would detract from the "total fleet" fighting, it would permit hundreds of fighters to be brought in at different intervals.
 
if the nav points were close to each other, you'd be able to just wander into other ones without autopilotting...
 
I think that End Run would make a really cool campaign to play. Of course, for maximum story effect you would probably want to have the player play as Bear. The player would have the Super Ferret (from SO2--Ferret with HS missiles), Rapier II (WC2 version) and Sabre as available spacecraft, and would have to make his way through the missions. The prologue would tell of the "Milk Run" of the TCS Johnny Greene, and would show Bear being assigned to his new position as Wing Commander aboard the Tarawa. The player would then rendevous with the marine/transport convoy and take part in the seizure of Vukar Tag, after which we would be briefed on the End Run assignment which would take up the rest of the game.
 
I chose Tarawa's Battle at Kilrah because a lot of deception, stealth, and cunning were involved to pull it off before the actual fighting began. Then, when all was set up, there's the Cats to the front, nothing but me and my comrades beside me, and my carrier, the jump point, and a whole lot of prayers behind me!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top