WC Ships, 1996 style

Delance

Delance

Victory, you say?
I was doing some random google searching, and end up finding some old drawings from the past. Yeah, copyright 1996! When it was a cool fan-thing to design your own ships. Those are long lost files, and I didn’t see this stuff in a long time. All four ships were made using Corel Draw! They are simple 2D-drawings, what was something very common back then. There were not a lot of people doing 3D models, and there was basically no fan-made mods, games, or movies around.

When I see how similar those ships are to the ones on WC4 I realize what a good job the designers did to renew the whole concept on WCP. The sense of continuity from WC3 to WC4 was great, but the series needed some new ideas.

1996 was a fantastic year for Wing Commander. The franchise was amongst the most important in the game industry. WC games were setting new standards for quality and technology since WC1 in 1990. Origin was leading the way and building new worlds. It appeared as if they could keep making those great interactive movies / space combat sims for a long time. WCIV had just been released, and Privateer 2 and the next WC game were in the works. It was also a nice year on alt-games.wing-commander. It was so old that the CIC and #wingnut didn’t even exist yet.

The pictures could use a little retouching, but I decided to present them as I found. Any comments will be appreciated.


falcata.jpg


Falcata Light Fighter

Weapons

4X Laser
2X Light Mass Driver

Missles hardpoints:

2X3 IR
2X2 HS

Performance:
Speed: 580kps (1500 AFB)
Acc: 300kps
Yaw/Pitch/Roll: 95dps

Armor
85 Fore
60 Aft
50 Left/Right

Misc
Decoys: 30
Jump: No
Atmosphere: Yes

Typical light fighter. After WC1 they didn't make many ships with big pointy guns on the wings.


cavalier.jpg


Cavalier Medium Fighter / Interceptor

Weapons

2X Tachyon
3X Laser
1X Neutron Gun

Missles hardpoints:

3X1 IR
2X1 HS

Performance:
Speed: 480kps (1200 AFB)
Acc: 230kps
Yaw/Pitch/Roll: 70dps

Armor
130 Fore
90 Aft
70 Left/Right


Misc
Decoys: 30
Jump: Yes
Atmosphere: No

---
Well, not as good as the WASP.


lancer.jpg


Lancer Heavy Bomber

Weapons

2X Heavy Mass Driver
2X Heavy Tachyon
(alt) 4X Fission Cannon
(double rear turret) 2X Light Mass Driver

Missles hardpoints:

3X4 IR
2X2 FF (back)
2X2 Torp

Performance:
Speed: 360kps (680 AFB)
Acc: 180kps
Yaw/Pitch/Roll: 30dps

Armor
250 Fore
250 Aft
190 Left/Right

Misc
Decoys: 50
Jump: Yes
Atmosphere: No

---

I tried to optmize the attack angle on the rear turrents. It also seemed like a good idea to fire FF missles to the back.

crusader.jpg


Crusader Heavy Fighter

Weapons

2X Heavy Plasma
4X Heavy Tachyon
(alt) 2XFission Cannon

Missles hardpoints:

4X2 IR
2X2 HS
3X1 Torp

Performance:
Speed: 450kps (1100 AFB)
Acc: 200kps
Yaw/Pitch/Roll: 80dps

Armor
200 Fore
190 Aft
160 Left/Right

Misc
Decoys: 30
Jump: Yes
Atmosphere: Yes

---
Back then we were all very impressed by the Dragon (Or Lance, if you prefer)
 
Uh, I can see them... the first one is pretty good, but then again, I'm biased towards Rapiers :p
 
Maybe my server is not allowing people not from Brazil to see the pictures or something. Well, I should attach the files, then. Here's the Falcata and the Cavalier.
 

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And now, for your viewing pleasure, the Lancer and the Crusader!
 

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Hey, I was around in 1996! That was when I was 16, the old Origin WC board was still around, I was an op in #wing-commander (sad, but true :(), old school guys like Byydo, ace, LOAF, Wildfire, Jibbo hung out on IRC, etc etc. That was also when the WC Aces were around, (Delance, they also had a lot of fanboy designs too), and the SRA was still around with ol' Herr Borty (for you new guys who don't know, ask Haesslich one day about it . . .).
 
Yeah, 1996 was amazing - Wing Commander IV, Kilrathi Saga, Privateer 2... two hintbooks and a novel... and weekly episodes of Wing Commander Academy. The first rumors of the movie. It may not have had the CIC and #WingNut... but it had WCHS and #Wing-Commander. Great days.
 
yeah that was a long time ago...good times though spent on IRC and on WCHS...and even before that the terran confederate underground
 
psych said:
Hey, I was around in 1996! That was when I was 16, the old Origin WC board was still around, I was an op in #wing-commander (sad, but true :(), old school guys like Byydo, ace, LOAF, Wildfire, Jibbo hung out on IRC, etc etc. That was also when the WC Aces were around, (Delance, they also had a lot of fanboy designs too), and the SRA was still around with ol' Herr Borty (for you new guys who don't know, ask Haesslich one day about it . . .).
Click to expand...

I already have :(
 
As an aside, those are very nice ships, though they seem like predecessors of SubSpace ships. A bit fanboyish, but I guess you can't not expect that :) With all the superfighters in WingIV, it'd be kind of hard not to be.

I slapped together a simple Lancer model, too.
 

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I discovered Wing Commander when I was 8, and that was 1996. The Net was pretty new for Singapore then, and I didn't really know how to use it.

and none of the pics are loading! arrghh...
 
Thanks for the model, Bob, it looks fantastic!

dacis2, try to load the pics I've attached in the following messages.
 
Danm, I remember Borton quite well. There were some nice guys hanging around the SRA, like Brian Trimble and Christa Davis, very sweet girl. And some others whose names I unfortuBut Mr. David "spyder" Borton.... *chills*. I do remember the SRA was in a permanent state of war with the Aces.. blah.
 
Aaaaah, those were the days.

I used to be into SW back then and did ships like that for the Empire before I decided I wasn't nearly as nerdy as the other people who were into SW :)
 
I created a fanship too. It was pretty nice, I had only the Specs. it was a Cloak Interceptor, meant to find and kill cloacked ships. It had some nifty ideas I had.
 
Edfilho said:
I do remember the SRA was in a permanent state of war with the Aces.. blah.
Click to expand...

Yes, and we effectively won too. The SRA is gone, while the Aces still exist even to this day.
 
Good riddance!
I mean, there were some nice people there, but we're all better off without certain individuals...
 
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