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
That armament was quite heavy for WW2 American fighters (which largely relied on four to six 0.5 inch machine guns) but German and Britsh fighters usually mounted multiple cannon. The RAF Beaufighter (used as a night fighter and anti-shipping strike fighter) mounted four 20 mm cannons in the nose and six 0.303 inch macine guns in the wings. The Mosquito carried four of each (all in the nose), and German night fighters had similar weapons. Among single engined fighters, there were variants of the Focke-Wulf 190 which carried a pair each of 20mm and 30mm cannons, as well as a pair of machine guns. Most marks of the Spitfire had two 20 mm cannons and four 0.303 inch machine guns, and some carried four 20 mm cannons.

Best, Raptor
 
Originally posted by Raptor
That armament was quite heavy for WW2 American fighters (which largely relied on four to six 0.5 inch machine guns) but German and Britsh fighters usually mounted multiple cannon. The RAF Beaufighter (used as a night fighter and anti-shipping strike fighter) mounted four 20 mm cannons in the nose and six 0.303 inch macine guns in the wings. The Mosquito carried four of each (all in the nose), and German night fighters had similar weapons. Among single engined fighters, there were variants of the Focke-Wulf 190 which carried a pair each of 20mm and 30mm cannons, as well as a pair of machine guns. Most marks of the Spitfire had two 20 mm cannons and four 0.303 inch machine guns, and some carried four 20 mm cannons.

The irony is that in the Pacific, iirc, the armament on the American fighters was considered on the heavier end. IIRC, the Japanese fighters were usually restricted to just light machine guns.
 
It depends on the fighter. The Japanese Navy's Mitsubishi A6M (called Zeke, or more comnonly the Zero) mounted a pair of 20 mm cannons in addition to tyhe machine guns. So did some of the more advanced Army fighters, IIRC. The advantage allied fighters had was that the Japanese aircraft lacked damage resistance (they had very little armour, and lacked self sealing fuel tanks), so the American machine guns had a devastating impact on them.

Best, Raptor
 
Don't forget the Americans were able to capture a Japanese plan on the Alaskan Islands and salvage it. This allowed them to create the P-38 and other aircraft that completely out did the Zero in every aspect.
 
The captured Zero certainly allowed the Americans to learn the Zero's weakness' (especially the lack of armour and the limited engine power) and allow them to develop tactics that would defeat it. IIRC though, the first test flights of the F6F Hellcat (the aircraft that more than any other helped defeat the Zero) took place about the same time the captured Zero was being evaluated, so it wasn't developed as a result of the capture.

PS: I'm pretty sure the captured fighter was found on the Aleutian Islands, not the Alaskan Islands.

Best, Raptor
 
Originally posted by Raptor
PS: I'm pretty sure the captured fighter was found on the Aleutian Islands, not the Alaskan Islands.

Best, Raptor

Oh hhho! But the Aleutian Islands are Alaskan Islands! They are part of Alaska :p

GO TEAM ELMENDORF!!
 
Well... Battle of Earth/Terra's my pick for the following reasons:

1) Several missions available in the same battle: you have bomber escort, torpedo runs, carrier defense, flying unarmed ships to act as a kamikaze... escorting marines in... :D

2) Numbers. While the Battle of Kilrah had a CVE with several starbases and a few carriers worth of Kilrathi... the Battle of Terra had 5 of the supercarriers with several THOUSAND fighters present to battle you. And there's only a few of you left; several hundred veterans, untrained civilians and cadets...

3) Desperation: Yes, the Tarawa retreat was a close thing. But there weren't THAT many Kilrathi who could reach you. When a few thousand Kilrathi are out for your blood.. now that's fun. :D

4) Death-wishes: Imagine the Kamikaze possiblities..
 
Originally posted by Raptor

PS: I'm pretty sure the captured fighter was found on the Aleutian Islands, not the Alaskan Islands.

Best, Raptor

Yea I know I just didn't know how to spell it. I apologize for my ignorance. Slap me next time RAPTOR. Pacific Theater is my passion.
 
Originally posted by Haesslich
When a few thousand Kilrathi are out for your blood... now that's fun.
That's not fun. :(

Originally posted by Haesslich
Death-wishes: Imagine the Kamikaze possiblities...
One life against all those capships? It's not as if you can concentrate them in one area and turn yourself into a black-hole...
 
Originally posted by Wedge009
That's not fun. :(

One life against all those capships? It's not as if you can concentrate them in one area and turn yourself into a black-hole...

And actually, if you could imagine the possibilities there - if you've got enough pilots there, so you could switch to another pilot's view after one dies... so to move from a civilian flying a large transport to catch shots meant for a Marine lander to the Marine lander itself as you pilot it into a Kilrathi supercarrier's bay.

I mean, that's one way to vary your gameplay. And overwhelming odds is fun if you've played WC3's endgame... the Dreadnaught against Earth. ;)
 
But that's cheating. You can't say you can do that in a game because in every WC game you've only ever had one 'life' at a time.

Originally posted by Haesslich
And overwhelming odds is fun if you've played WC3's endgame... the Dreadnaught against Earth.
Nah, that gets terribly boring after blowing up the dreadnought (as if!).
 
Originally posted by Wedge009
But that's cheating. You can't say you can do that in a game because in every WC game you've only ever had one 'life' at a time.

That's untrue. In Armada you could take control of another friendly fighter after you died.
 
Oh, whoops. Forgot about that. Okay, you got me there :) I still don't think it feels like WC if you could do that, though...
 
Originally posted by WildWeasel


That's untrue. In Armada you could take control of another friendly fighter after you died.

That sort of thing only happens in multi-player games, though. Otherwise, one player could die in the first few seconds and spend the rest of a long battle sitting around and staring at the ceiling while he (or she) waited for everyone else to finish up.
 
What do you mean? If you're talking about Armada, I believe you could still take control of active fighters in a single player game.

If you're talking about other multi-player games, then it depends on the type of game you're playing. If it's an all out death match, then players usually spawn (or whatever) right after dying. If it's an objective-oriented game, then they usually stay dead until the end of the round.

I'm still not sure exactly what you're getting at, though...
 
Originally posted by WildWeasel
What do you mean? If you're talking about Armada, I believe you could still take control of active fighters in a single player game.

If you're talking about other multi-player games, then it depends on the type of game you're playing. If it's an all out death match, then players usually spawn (or whatever) right after dying. If it's an objective-oriented game, then they usually stay dead until the end of the round.

I'm still not sure exactly what you're getting at, though...

X-Wing v. TIE does the same thing regardless of whether you're playing in single or multi-player. X-Wing v. TIE was made primarily for multi-play - to the extent that single play was rather crippeled - although the expansion took care of this to a certain extent. IMHO, Armada followed a similar idea - single-play is nice, but the big draw is the multi-player ability.
Other than that, every single other space combat sim (to the best of my knowledge) allows respawning only in multi-player games. This is probably due to the idea behind the single-player game. It's typically a campaign, and there is supposed to be some sense of continuity with regards to the pilot that you represent. As little sense of immersion as there may be in some of these games, its kind of destroyed when "your pilot" keeps coming back from the dead.
While I might be interested to see a game that made allowances for suicide tactics, I'd only want to see such tactics result in an ending similar to the "Caught in the Nova" ending in FS2 (which was a REALLY poor use of that kind of ending, IMHO, given how you really couldn't affect anything by sticking around for a minute until the blast from the Nova caught up with you).
 
Back
Top