Star*Soldier Gloss: Page 20

This is the Star*Soldier gloss for the second systems page:

CONCEPT: See the previous post!

REFERENCES-

• "Space Station" - This is the space station map which is shared by at least two of Arena's modes. It's an all-encompassing superstructure that surrounds all of the level's action (and features neat fly through bays and so forth).
• "Polaris Roads Naval Station" - I was so happy to add this to the canon. Polaris Roads is a wonderful name that was created in an early Wing Commander movie script for Admiral Tolwyn's base of operations. It's such a fantastic mix of pulp sci fi and classic naval imagery, just in those two words... I love it.
• "15th Fleet" - One higher than we've seen before - Wing Commander 2 featured the 14th Fleet.
• "Hvar'kann and Behemoth-class dreadnaughts" - I did several things here: I officially named two classes of Wing Commander III ships (and gave a class to one!)... and I also confirmed (I hope) that more Behemoths were built to fight the Nephilim (or for other reasons; the Wing Commander Prophecy guide half-suggests that more are in service in 2681).
• "Kilrathi Durasteel" - Refers to the 'cat colored' version of Wing Commander's regular metal.
• "biopolys from the distant Tri-System" - Listen: I love Privateer 2. A lot. I wanted to do whatever I could to connect it to the Wing Commander universe... but I also wanted to make sure I stuck with Origin's dictates, that it existed a hundred years in the future in a distant and unconnected place. So instead of going whole hog like I did with some other explanations, I just snuck some bits like this in. Biopolys were one of the game's commodities and of course the Tri-System was where it took place. The mythology I want to advance here is that it's reallllly far away and that only ultra-long-range explorer/traders have any contact with that area of the universe.
• "continual melee" - Since this is the game's melee map (well, one of them)!
• "engine upgrade" - Refers to the gameplay of Privateer plus the fact that Wing Commander Arena had originally hoped to include an economy system.
• "Odell" - Odell Lake, a classic Apple ][ game.
• "Grissom" - Astronaut Gus Grissom.
• "Population" - That's a lot of people! Wing Commander has always been sort of odd about populations: always way over or way under. The WCP official guide says that 2.1 trillion humans (and 7.4 trillion kils) died in the Terran-Kilrathi War... but then the Wing Commander universe bible has major star systems with 200,000 people in them.
• "New Detroit" - The 'Blade Runner' planet from the original Privateer.
• "Arcologies" - I imagine that these are a real thing, but I and everyone else knows them from Sim City. Secret Ops' fiction also mentions an arcology.
• "Vengeance strikes" - Doesn't that do something for you? My thought is some futuristic equivalent to the late-war Kamikaze strikes that the Japanese launched (which were never really emulated in our Pacific War allegory-games).
• "Trafalgar System" - Trafalgar was spoken of in a Wing Commander III newsbrief but never actually visited. I put the game's "meteor storm" mode here and attempted to come up with a reason why you would be playing asteroids in Wing Commander (and, honestly, I think it works!). I've connected it to our 'just barely holding on' story for the Epsilon Sector and hopefully made your work important instead of just an arcade run.
• "Tanhauser Nebula" - Also from the Wing Commander III newsbriefs and organized in the Wing Commander Universe map.
• "sharpshooters, top credit" - I hope someone else appreciates this mix of folksy warfare plus futurustic plugin terminology.
• "Kilrathi pandemic" - The Kilrathi Saga calendar confirms that Trafalgar was one of three worlds hit by the Kilrathi in 2669 (Wing Commander III - we flew at Locanda, another of them).
• "Quarto" - One of the great Wing Commander fan project leaders!
• "mining bases and refinery outposts" - The two types of stations seen in Privateer. From the description here, though, I'm also clearly imagining Known Space's Belt.