Part 120: Alcor System, Vega Sector, Mission 1 (sober, mostly) (Gameplay and Story Recap)

5th September 2669, Alcor System (Mission 1, sober edition), Vega Sector
TCS Victory

Sobered by his realisation of the consequences of just a moment of unprofessionalism, Christopher Blair straps himself into an Arrow and prepares to take out his rage at Thrakhath on the Kilrathi strike force pursuing the Victory.

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



: Do you want some company?
[after giving his drink a thousand-yard stare]: Company. Yeah. But you better put that [the drink bottle] away - before I put it away.
: Hey, kick in a bulkhead or something, get it out somehow, okay? Don't wait till you get in the cockpit.
: Red alert! Red alert! All pilots up! We are being attacked! This is not a drill!

No briefing video of course - if the scramble alarm going off, and the fact that we've already played this mission once and it was a scramble then weren't enough clues on their own, I'd better make it clear. This mission is a scramble.


Mission Video (Youtube) Mission Video (Gamerstube/Polsy)
(the TCS Sheffield guns down a Kilrathi corvette)

Kills this mission: 29, which is in my opinion a bit lower than the number I deserve credit for, but I'm not getting kills for a) the mostly-dead Dralthi I rammed, b) any of the several fighters which collided while trying to draw a bead on me, or c) any of the Sorthaks, near as I can tell. Still, from Hobbes ejecting to joining the Victory and her CAP at the last nav point, I faced off against 29 Kilrathi fighters solo, a series of battles which I survived and none of them did. That's easily the hardest section of Wing Commander III; not least because we'll be in the Excalibur for much (though not all) of the remaining game. So now I've done the ego-trip of proving I can beat that on Nightmare, I might be persuadable to use a sensible difficulty for the other levels.

Ship of the day:
What, you thought you'd get two in a row? 12 missions left, two more ships to cover.


Mission Tree
By special request...if there are two possible directions to go from a series of missions, winning the series takes the left path, and losing takes the right.


We're currently in Alcor, and we've done the losing path (I branched off from Blackmane (losing) to do it, not that it changes in any way other than your available wingmen inasmuch as if you've lost any they won't be around). There's three more missions left in Alcor and then two more systems before we reach the endgame. After the next mission we're pretty much into win-or-die territory, since most failed missions send you straight to Proxima.

Total kills (Wing Commander III): 25 missions / 251 kills
Total kills (this thread): 51 missions / 617 kills
Total kills (including previous thread): 160 missions / 1534 kills

Next time on Let's Play Wing Commander:
Turns out that Alcor wasn't exactly an accidental direction of retreat for the Victory...oh, and that an old friend is dropping by to ask a favour. When will it happen? Who knows...well, the storyline update ought to appear in relatively short order, but this is another long mission, so it could be quite a while (hopefully less than a month, this update is at least 2x the effort that I'm likely to have to put in to any other).