Wing Commander: Blood of the Emperor

Flying Target

Swabbie
Banned
What happens after the Nephilim War? Is the Confederation safe at last?

No, that would be too easy. Tensions along the frontier between the humans and the Kilrathi are rising once again, and a growing insurgency is pushing the erstwhile allies back towards war; some would say that is how it is meant to be, for we all know 'the Kilrathi do not co-exist'.

Here is the beginning of my new fan project, the next novel in the Wing Commander series. Set thirty-three years after the destruction of Kilrah, the Nephilim War has just ended but peace is as far away as ever.

Initial progress has been rapid, leading me to expect that with enough community support I can have this done within a year. While it is not a long-awaited game, the shorter gestation period means that this could provide a little bit of Wing Commander sustenance while we all wait for the likes of Saga to arrrive. And, if you are like me, the books are almost as important a feature of the Wing Commander experience as the games.

I have decided to go back to the spirtual roots of Wing Commander, putting our old feline adversaries back at the centre of events. I am trying to write this in the same spirit as the original books, avoiding gratuitous sex and expletives. As much as I can, I am hoping to keep tight with the existing canon, seasoning the tale with as much background and history as possible.

What I would love to get back from everyone is support and interest most of all, and some help with keeping my facts straight where I've erred. Please let me know what you think!

Right, I have blabbed on long enough; here's the story so far (about 10%):

http://www.mediafire.com/?menqudhd3yo
 
Okay. First question here: what do you think about Panda's 'crash' landing? I tried to mull over a way to best describe WC carrier landings, taking into consideration certain dynamics that the games didn't touch on.

The big issue I had was that within the airlock fields, there is actually gravity and air resistance, so the way the figher behaved would change completely as it passed into the hangar/flightdeck area. This wasn't modelled in any of the games, and I'm reading through all the books now to see if any of the authors considered this.

What do y'all think?
 
I've only had a chance to read the prologue - looks good though.

Couple of questions:
Is this going to require me to have read the canon novels first (have them, havent read them yet!)
Why Stilletto? and do we not have the St Helens as destroyed? (thought it was)
Any connection here to the WC:Arena ideas?

On the subject of landing, both wc3 and 4 have you flying into the bay of the ship with minimal problems. I always imagined that it was a matter of once ships had landed the hull sealed and pressurised, likewise to take off, the forcefields shut off once everyone was off the deck. Any thoughts on this? otherwise, we have to assume that all the fighters can operate in atmosphere - even though we are told that the excalibur and hellcat are specially designed for this (victory streak i think)
 
Yes, the TCS Mount St Helens was destroyed in WCSO.

As for keeping the air inside the people box, I can't recall the details, but it's an electromagnetic shield of some kind. In Freedom Flight it briefly touches on the issue with Ralgha's ship, which doesn't have the tech at that time so it relies on plain old physical doors to keep the air in, evacuating the hangar bay for flight operations.
 
Madman - thanks for the encouraging words and the canon info. I'll answer you properly in my next post. In the meantime, please read the other chapters if you get chance!

Death - this is why I need you guys :) I had it in my noggin that it was TCS Eisen that got trashied in WCSO; thanks for confirming Madman's info. I've now swapped St Helens for the Vesuvius-class TCS William Eisen, which I'm actually very happy to do, especially after just finishing WC4 with the late Jason Bernard starring as the eponymous captain. I rather like the WC3/4-era ships, you see.

Please don't tell me the Eisen also got trashed, or that it wasn't a Vesuvius-class... unless of course I am wrong!
 
Right, Madman's questions:

Will you need to read the novels? - it wouldn't hurt. I am mainly using the games, then the manuals, then the books, then anything else I like so a pure gamer would be fine to pick this up. Most of the references are going to be explained if critical to the story. By the time I finish this off, you'll have had time to read the books anyway, I'm sure.

Why Stiletto? - I guess it was an easy, non-contraversial choice of character to bring back. This is set about twenty years after Prophecy, so it had to be one of the young 'uns. I plan on bringing back Lance Casey too, and maybe having a poll to see who else you'd like to return: Maniac, Maestro, Zero... Blair??????????

Connection to Arena? - I plan on using the Arena manual, yes. I am assuming from it that the Nephilim War is just over, hence setting my novel a year or so after the StarSoldier magazine issue. I don't have an XBox though, so if there is a story to Arena I will need someone to give me the lowdown.

The airlock forcefields - in the games ships are seen flying in and out while there are crewmen on the deck. Likewise the coffins leave during the funerals and the honour guard fire their rifles out while un-spacesuited (WC3/4), so I'm pretty sure that the hollow interior of the through-deck carriers is pressurised at something like Earth's sea level, with one g of gravity. The way I'm going to approach this is to assume that the field needs to be breached at a speed fast enough to not just bounch off, then the skills of the pilots come in as they have to handle the sudden change in flight dynamics. I know it's adding extra layers to the existing canon, but it doesn't conflict with anything I've witnessed and it would help to explain why we still do US Navy-style landings on 27th century space carriers.
 
Why Stiletto? - I guess it was an easy, non-contraversial choice of character to bring back. This is set about twenty years after Prophecy, so it had to be one of the young 'uns. I plan on bringing back Lance Casey too, and maybe having a poll to see who else you'd like to return: Maniac, Maestro, Zero... Blair??????????
I think stilletto would have made CAG at least, by the time of your SAGA, also, if you do put a main character in your story, you might contradict future canon or non-canon. Ofcourse it's okay to have Maniac accidentilly crashland a fighter through your hangar boy, and shout "sorry, my mistake", and call for a shuttle and talk to what he did on past events, talk about his novel, or something, but not make up war stories that might contradict Bringing back blair would sturr things up, better to take one of the fan-based mods permission to use one of their characters...

The airlock forcefields - in the games ships are seen flying in and out while there are crewmen on the deck. Likewise the coffins leave during the funerals and the honour guard fire their rifles out while un-spacesuited (WC3/4), so I'm pretty sure that the hollow interior of the through-deck carriers is pressurised at something like Earth's sea level, with one g of gravity.
As visible in maniac's landing in the movie, all laws of gravity apply to the hangars, the funeral in WC1/2 takes place outside the hull of the ships, that's why everyone is wearing space suits and i think magnetic boots? in WC3/4 Coffins are launched, but they actually have their own propulsion and antigravity systems it looks like(watch the funeral scenes again)

The way I'm going to approach this is to assume that the field needs to be breached at a speed fast enough to not just bounch off, then the skills of the pilots come in as they have to handle the sudden change in flight dynamics. I know it's adding extra layers to the existing canon, but it doesn't conflict with anything I've witnessed and it would help to explain why we still do US Navy-style landings on 27th century space carriers.
How about they simply match/circumvent the shielding using frequencies of the fighters shield so they can penetrate it for landing/takeoff? (This could also explain the working of the torpedo locking time)
 
I'll be careful in my handling of canon characters not to mess around with anything that already exists, believe me! And I fully expect to be ticked off and corrected if I inadvertently do. This is meant to be quite a respectful piece of work, I promise.

I was half-joking about Blair. I personally consider him dead and gone. I do like the idea of bringing back an aged Maniac, but only if it adds to the story and not just for the sake of it. There has to be a good reason for bringing characters back, especially given their age in 2702. Prophecy characters are easier as there is less existing backstory, their age is fine (middling) and we have enough familiarity with them that it adds to the story.

Stiletto is CAG of TCS William Eisen, and Casey will return as a Space Force Brigadier. I'm leaning towards them having had a relationship following Prophecy/WCSO that ended by the beginning of WC:BotE. Any thoughts on that?

Using a fan-mod character or referring to its events in my story is something I am strongly considering, as long as the mod team themselves are happy for me to. Why not, huh! I kinda like the idea of fan projects interacting with each other a little. Certainly there's room for Standoff as that is nearly finished and I'll begin playing it soon. WC Saga events might have to go into a revision. It's something I'll think about and talk to the relevant teams if I do it.

From the sounds of it we can agree that there would be a sudden change in dynamics between inside and outside the hangar field. Good.

Shield modulation for the airlocks is another possibility... we'd be saying that they work on a similar system to the ship's shields and can be circumvented in the same way the torpedoes do... I like the idea. Could work. This shield-bypassing technique is described in 'Fleet Action', I believe. I want to keep the idea of the fighters having to come in at some speed though. Unfortunately there's contradiction in the games on this: in WC1 you come screaming in, on WC3/4 it's somewhere inbetween, and WCP/SO you positively plod.

I would suggest that the landing techniques were 20th century-styled on the Bengals and through-deckers, hence their long inner decks, then something else a bit more sedate for the Midway with their shallow bays. Any ideas?
 
in WC1 you come screaming in

You don't. You slow down, and land outside on the flightdeck, in the SNES version of WC1's secret missions, you land in the exact way the dilligent does in the WC movie, you slow down, and you "ease her in", the only "screaming in" entries I ever saw was Maniac setting down his rapier in the movie, all but crushing a greasemonkey :)

You do see the shield penetration sequence in the movie. but not in WC3 or 4, in wing commander 2 you never see the ship crossing the border between shielded enviroment and space, and in wc1 you land outside the shields.

Also you can easaly claim the hellcat(wc4), the scimitar(WCA), the ferret(WC2), the talon(WCA), The Excalibur(WC3), the arrow(WCA) are also atmospheric capable. and probably some others too(The Dralthi is(WC1/WCA)) And i think salthi's are too(WCA, the episode blair was could on the arctic-planet)
 
Hey Mace - I was kinda in your locale not too long ago, as I took a little vacation in Amsterdam with a brief visit to Nijmegen. It was a relaxing break.

Back on topic, I've ploughed ahead and am now up over the 17,000 words mark.

On the subject of landings, I guess we shouldn't labour this point too much more. I've had a play at WC1 and 2 to have a bit of a think... on WC1 you do come belting along down the bow of Tiger's Claw, but you don't actually make contact with the runway. You slow to a crawl, hover in the "hangar", then land vertically. Meanwhile WC2 has you absolutely belting out on takeoff for no reason I can quite discern, while also winging in to a vertical dead stop on landing. Um... End Run also has war dead being pushed out the field, so that kinda wipes out the shield modulation idea (which is a shame as I liked it). The best I can come up with is the field is something you either have to hit fast enough or push yourself through with some measure of force proportional to the frontal area being resisted. Going slow and gliding causes you to bounce off. And I'll just leave it at that.

So, next question: Kilrathi racial variation!

In WC3 they all have that lion-esque appearance and are far larger than us, plus kinda ungainly (probably due to technical costume constraints than intention). WC1 cutscenes have them roughly human-sized and I don't think they had tails. The books have 'em big, with variations mostly in the markings, the exception being Jukaga's clan who are a bit effete by Furball standards. WC Academy cartoon has them like that too, only less fluffy. In WC2 the Emperor kinda looked more tiger-like to me than a lion. The cat aces in the WC1 manual (Claw Marks) look like all sorts.

Where am I going with this? Well, I'm thinking that maybe just like us, the Kitties have quite considerable variations in their appearance, size and build. The Cats we saw in WC3 were mainly of the Kiranka hrai, so they were more bulky, while the WC1 human-sized marines were from a clan/racial group that is smaller and more nimble. It would also explain why Dakhath "Deathstroke" nar Sihkag looks like a very angry Sylvester.
 
Back
Top