Part 119: Sol System, Sol Sector, Mission 1 and Losing Ending (Gameplay)

15th September 2669, Sol System (Mission 1), Sol Sector
TCS Victory

The Confederation fleet marshals itself for a last-ditch attempt to prevent the Kilrathi overruning Earth.

Pre-mission conversations (Youtube) (Polsy/Gamerstube)


Briefing video (Youtube) (Gamerstube/Polsy)



Mission Video (Youtube) Mission Video (Gamerstube/Polsy)

Kills this mission: 25, including a Hvar'kann-class Dreadnought. All in vain, of course - there's no way to win this mission. Once you get to Proxima, that's it, Earth is lost. Speaking of which...



: Sir, all our shields are down! We can’t stop them!
: They are not taking my ship!
: Sir! What are you doing? You’re heading right into their fleet!
: We’re going to take as many of them with us as we can! Make your peace, Mr Rollins–



Things don't really turn out better for Blair, either:



Flight Deck, KIS Hvar'kann




: At last, we meet face-to-face. The Heart of the Tiger...
: You’ll never truly conquer Earth, you know. Not before you have to destroy it.
: It is of small consequence. Your Homeworld is a watery planet, not an environment I have ever cared for. It is a pleasure, at last, to have finally, and completely, conquered you. The Kilrathi are not, however, without what you Humans call mercy. We shall grant you the opportunity to plead for your miserable life.

There's actually a choice here, but I didn't really think it was worth slowing the LP down even more for. You can beg for your life if you want to, but if you do, Thrakhath just has the guards shoot you rather than...well let's just say (partially because trying to find a non-blurry screenshot of it is looking impossible) it ends up like this:

[beckons Thrakhath closer]: Screw you.
: For you, Heart of the Tiger, a warrior’s death.



Gloating over with, the cats then get on with the important work of genocide.



There are no survivors. The Kilrathi are, in fact, without mercy.



I talk a bit about the whole "losing path" concept in the video. You might notice that the previous mission wasn't amongst the ways I list to get to Proxima. That's accurate; I put the final losing missions in here because it's the place it makes narrative sense for you to lose the war despite winning every mission that's actually winnable. What actually happens after Alcor 1 is rather different.

Ship of the day:
Hvar'kann-class

Class: Dreadnought
Length: 22,000 m
Mass: 290,000 tonnes
Max Velocity: 100 kps
Maximum Yaw/Pitch/Roll: 5/5/5 degrees\second
Weapons: 15x dual laser turret, around 5x Anti-Matter gun at least.
Shields: 8000 cm durasteel equivalent all sides
Armour: 1500 cm durasteel equivalent all sides
Core Strength: 80,000 cm durasteel equivalent

(I'd show you the other two sides, but they're the same - top/bottom and left/right are identical. Never mind what the manual says about Kilrathi ships not being symmetrical).

It's hard to explain quite how many things there are wrong with the Hvar'kann. Let's start with basic physics. The ship is 22 km long, and the aspect ratio looks to be about 5:1, so let's say 5 kilometres wide/tall (it seems to be symmetrical about its long axis). Even assuming that the Dreadnought only fills a tenth of the volume of a cylinder of those dimensions, that's a volume of 55 cubic kilometres, or 5.5x10¹⁰ cubic metres. At 20 Celsius and Earth sea-level atmospheric pressure - conditions which seem comfortable enough to Hobbes, so they can't be that far removed from Kilrathi normal - air has a density of 1.2 kg per cubic metre. That is, if the Hvar'kann contained within it a breathable atmosphere, that alone - ignoring the materials used for its construction - would weigh 66 million tonnes, or well over 200 times as much as the listed mass. Trying to build an object with solid-like mechanical integrity and a density 200 times less than air would be an...interesting exercise, even in 2669, I suspect.

Then we have narrative plausibility. Standoff actually took a swipe at this, in Thrakhath's easter-egg message to Bradshaw. We know that, about seven to eight months prior to WC3, the Kilrathi engaged in a fake peace treaty with the Terrans in order to buy enough time to finish the Hakaga-class carriers and various escort ships. A class of Dreadnought warships substantially larger than the Hakagas is never mentioned as existing or being under construction by anyone throughout this crisis - not the Emperor, nor Thrakhath or Jukaga, or anyone on the Confed side. So apparently they - and as we saw, there's definitely more than one - must have been built inside about eight months; which also means building the necessary construction infrastructure for a ship ten times the size of a Hakaga-class supercarrier - the production of a fleet of which was supposed to have strained Kilrathi logistic support up to and beyond breaking point.

We also have some good old plot inconsistencies (though this also applies to the Behemoth). It comes up a couple of times that it's actually extremely difficult to get ships above about the size of the TCS Concordia through a jump point using a conventional drive system; you're in danger of the jump closing with half the ship still on the wrong side. Thrakhath reports that the Hakaga-class is the result of a Kilrathi breakthrough in the field of jumping large vessels; how the hell they managed to scale up by another factor of 10 so quickly is anyone's guess. Again, WC3's manual gives a quick summary of Fleet Action when it's describing the backstory, so it's not exactly unreasonable to expect the plot to take it into account.

Finally...what role does it play? What narrative purpose is served by giving Thrakhath a comedically-oversized flagship? Is it to emphasise the crushing superiority of the Kilrathi fleet? If so, then why isn't it actually invincible, rather than destroyable quite straightforwardly by anyone with an Excalibur and a lot of patience? Is it to emphasise Thrakhath's vanity? If so, why doesn't he brag about it more? I don't think there is a level I do get the Hvar'kann on, other than, as the Standoff team had it, "a sequel must always have bigger ships".


Total kills (Wing Commander III): 27 missions / 266 kills
Total kills (this thread): 52 missions / 607 kills
Total kills (including previous thread): 162 missions / 1524 kills

Next time on Let's Play Wing Commander:
Good question. I'm not sure whether to do Alcor 1 sober or just jump straight ahead with Alcor 2; my plan for this was originally the former, but given how slowly I'm updating these days (things might improve once I stop playing cricket matches, since that's eight hours or so a week that can go back to making videos) you guys might prefer I just got on with things. Any opinions?

e: oops, forgot an image