WC1 (probably) perfect score + WC1 SM1 work in progress...

Don Meu

Veteran Spaceman
WC1:
1) won all missions;
2) killed ALL ships available in the game;
3) awarded all medals (except the not-so-meritorious one for ejecting from the ship..).

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That may well be optimal if your definition of "perfect" includes never failing a mission.

Sorties

If you fail Gimle, you get three additional sorties in Brimstone, and if you fail Kurasawa, you get three additional sorties in Rostov. Flying lots of sorties probably isn't itself the mark of a skilled pilot, but it can lead to more medals and kills.

Medals

I don't believe that the Brimstone diversion gains any net medals. You can get a Bronze Star there, but to fail the Gimle series, you have to forgo the Gold Star on Gimle 1 or the Bronze Star on Gimle 3. You definitely can get additional medals if you go via Rostov, including a third Gold Star on Rostov 3.

Here's some additional discussion on medal counts. Some people say you can score more medals if you leave Kilrathi aces alive until specific missions; I haven't experimented with that myself. The WCSAV utility also comes with a text file called "MISSIONS.WC" which claims to know the criteria for every possible medal in the game.

Kills

I'm pretty sure I missed at least one kill on the road to 199 in the screenshots below. While I successfully completed Kurasawa 2 to get the Silver Star, I didn't manage to destroy every ship in that mission. Then I ejected after destroying every fighter and escorting the Exeter in Kurasawa 3, just so I could go to Rostov. Trading a 100,000,000-credit Rapier for shiny gold star on a ribbon? Totally worth it.

Wingmen

I'm impressed that you completed Venice 4 with a Pewter Planet after Hunter's death. While WC1 wingmen rarely score kills, they do an excellent job of distracting one or two Kilrathi in each wave. While the Vega Sector campaign is mostly easy, those 4 Gratha at the Star Post still ruin my day if I don't bring along some additional bait. If I want to keep him alive, I send him home before the Jalthi wave.

The Secret Missions
It is possible to export your Vega Sector pilot to the Secret Missions 1 and 2, keeping your kills and medals. There are two programs called TRANSFER.EXE and TRANS2.EXE to do this. If you're using the GoG installation of Wing Commander 1 + 2, these programs are present, but not readily accessible without launching a DOSBox session with its own prompt. If you happen to be using Mac OS, here's a guide for exporting your pilot in the GoG version of WC1.

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I always loved how the medals were dynamically awarded for completing the secondary mission objectives. It's too bad that the system was dropped for the later games.
 
That may well be optimal if your definition of "perfect" includes never failing a mission.

yes I mean that, I won every mission and killed every ship, I had to get Hunter killed on Venice 1 to get the silver medal too...

Here's some additional discussion on medal counts. Some people say you can score more medals if you leave Kilrathi aces alive until specific missions; I haven't experimented with that myself. The WCSAV utility also comes with a text file called "MISSIONS.WC" which claims to know the criteria for every possible medal in the game.
....
The Secret Missions

It is possible to export your Vega Sector pilot to the Secret Missions 1 and 2, keeping your kills and medals. There are two programs called TRANSFER.EXE and TRANS2.EXE to do this. If you're using the GoG installation of Wing Commander 1 + 2, these programs are present, but not readily accessible without launching a DOSBox session with its own prompt. If you happen to be using Mac OS, here's a guide for exporting your pilot in the GoG version of WC1.

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interesting, thanks!


now I'm playing the SM1 and it seems more difficult than the original to get a perfect score!.....
I'm even stuck in the first mission, difficult to kill ALL the enemies and even to keep the Diligent alive!....
 
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now I'm playing the SM1 and it seems more difficult than the original to get a perfect score!.....
I'm even stuck in the first mission, difficult to kill ALL the enemies and even to keep the Diligent alive!....

SM1 and SM2 are designed to be harder than the Vega Sector Vampaign. SM1 achieves its difficulty through vast numbers of opponents; SM2 has less enemies, but they're smarter and stronger. That is fair enough, but there are a few genuinely obnoxious missions where they give you a Hornet and then tell you to escort something. Doing so for the very first mission was particularly rude. You need to be really accurate with those laser cannons to chip each opponent down to zero before they destroy the ship you're escorting.

(Incidentally, for anyone wishing to just play through SM1, the outcomes of the first two missions have no effect - you'll always end up in the Border Zone. If you really can't complete the Goddard missions, accept the failure and move on.)

It's still possible to destroy almost everything in SM1 (except the Sivar, which jumps out a few seconds after its first appearance). It demands a more cautious flying style; where it's rare to meet more than 4 opponents simulatenously in the Vega Sector, you'll frequently see 5 or 6. It's often worth manually choosing nav points, either to take on the toughest enemy wave first, or to avoid meeting for escort until you've cleared everywhere else. (This may be considered cheating. If the simulation kept running for ships out of your sight, the ship to escort would be destroyed while you were messing around at its destination nav point.)

SM2 is another story. It has several missions where you're specifically told to scout out an area without engaging. In some of those, you're flying the Dralthi and don't get attacked unless you initiate hostilities. Winning the mission is easy, but doing so while destroying everything is not. This mission is hard but manageable, but in this one I either get shot to pieces because I don't evade enough, or run out of afterburner fuel because I evade too often.
 
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this first SM1 mission is very difficult, kill all the 16 ships is almost impossible. the problem are the Salthis: or they escape or they are killed by the wingman or by each other.... but the real bigger problem is the shortage of afterburners..... without it you can't expect to kill all the Salthis around...
 
It's also interesting to consider how this might extend to later games in the series.

You cannot kill all the enemies in WC2. In the third mission you are sent against a phase-shielded target ship while flying a craft which does not carry torpedoes. Similarly with SO1. SO2 you can kill everything yourself if you're fast enough. WC3 has at least one instance where there are a non-finite number of enemies at a nav point, so you can't possibly kill "everything". Even ignoring that, you could come close by picking wingmen who obey orders and sending them home all the time, but I think you'd likely struggle to beat the Sheffield and the Coventry to some of the capital ships. WC4...well, nobody plays WC4 for the flight engine. But again, it features infinite waves of enemies, and occasions when you're required to fly with wingmen you can't order back to base; and given how lethal missiles are in WC4 beating him to all the kills is unlikely. Prophecy and Secret Ops both send you against capital ships without the necessary torpedoes, not that you'd be able to take out all the enemies in those much larger engagements by yourself anyway.
 
this first SM1 mission is very difficult, kill all the 16 ships is almost impossible. the problem are the Salthis: or they escape or they are killed by the wingman or by each other.... but the real bigger problem is the shortage of afterburners..... without it you can't expect to kill all the Salthis around...


and finally I got it!!!



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damn, I perfectly completed the 2nd mission the first time I played it! but I didn't make a perfect score in the first mission on that saved game, so I retried since then.... and only now I get it again.......

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So... what do you all think the white lines around the margins of the chalk board are? Cracks? Stray chalk marks? Spider webs? I look at them every time and can't make up my mind.
 
I always assumed they were spider webs. I mean a ship with leaks ill also look aged otherwise. Logically it must be cracks IMHO, because as the chalk board is updated regularly the webs would have to be removed as well.
 
they are something of undefined, they are there just to make the image more realistic..
:)
 
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They were cracks, caused by angry pilots banging their heads against the board upon seeing another pilot beat their score :).
 
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