Part 19: First Engagement, Mastif System, Sol Sector (Gameplay only, no story)

22nd December 2668, Mastif System, Sol Sector
Episode 2, Mission 3 - First Engagement

The Firekka's fighters engage a pair of Kilrathi corvettes which are patrolling the jump point to the Weslyn system.

Mission Briefing:

Briefing Video (Youtube)


Mission Video (Youtube)

Kills this mission: 7

Fuck this mission so much. It's really easy to play, that's not the problem, I'm pretty sure if you parked your fighter off in a corner the other five Confed fighters in this mission would accomplish the mission without you. And that's actually the problem. It's practically impossible to successfully Let's Play, because in a strike mission against some Corvettes you want a video of attacking the Corvettes, and the AI fighters have this habit of dogpiling (catpiling?) me so that by the time I've finished dealing with everyone trying to kill me the Kamekhs are already dead. This video was something like take 15, practically none of which were actually failed missions. This version isn't too bad, though I kind of hate my own flying at times due to taking far too many risks to get kills, just because I know how easy the mission actually is so I'm not in any danger.

Tactics Corner
Friendly Forces:
3x Rapier medium fighter
3x Gladius fighter-bomber

Enemy forces:
In transit:
6x Krant medium fighter

The safest thing to do here is just to sit back and let the Rapiers clean things up, but that's dull, so you can try and taunt Krants into going head to head with you and blasting them with full guns - yours outrange theirs after all. Or you can try some missiles; you want to save some for the next encounter but you have got 8 and that's more than you'll need in the next fight.

Jump Point:

3x Jalekhi heavy fighter
5x Krant medium fighter
2x Kamekh-class corvette

This is your classic Wing Commander capship strike mission - the enemy fighters are between you and the targets, and you don't have enough escort fighters to keep them off you, so kill the fighters first then go after the heavies, which in this case, as Corvettes in the Vision engine, both do not need and cannot be locked onto by torpedoes (and in any case your Gladius has a fighter loadout so isn't carrying any). The Jalekhi are much slower than the Krants and are probably therefore slightly easier targets, since the Gladius is at least heavy enough to more or less be able to shrug off rear turret fire at least long enough to discharge the gun capacitors. On the other hand, if you can taunt the Krants into charging you they don't have much in the way of firepower so they're easy kills. I tend to use missiles on the Krants because they're easier to kill with them and more annoying, but really it's mostly a case of what comes up in your targeting. The Rapiers will be racking up kills so in order to get in on the action liberal use of missiles is advisable. You don't win any awards from bringing them back.

New characters:
Lieutenant Benoit LaHaye ("Popsicle")


Popsicle shares not actually being French despite the accent with Angel; she's Belgian, he's Quebecois. It's rare for a Terran-born pilot to end up out on the frontier in a sector like Gemini unless they're a major screwup, but Popsicle actually requested assignment to the Firekka, figuring he'd see more action on an escort carrier than a fleet carrier like Concordia. He was right - the Firekka conducted a classic escort carrier deep raid in one of its' first deployments, earning Popsicle a Bronze Star and a promotion.

Err, yeah, I'm not even sure if he has another scene to be honest; I'm guessing a couple more in the later episodes roughly describing how screwed we are (which is very). I'm pretty certain he never gets a solo scene. He's just someone else that the writers can give lines to if they want them to be a generic pilot rather than one of Bradshaw/Sparrow/Spoons/Cougar.

Ship of the day:
Krant Mark II

Class: Medium Fighter (Kilrathi)
Length: 32.01m
Mass: 16.6 tonnes
Max Velocity: 380 kps
Afterburner Velocity: 1200 kps
Maximum Yaw: 70 degrees/second
Maximum Pitch: 100 degrees/second
Maximum Roll: 70 degrees/second
Weapons: Mass Driver Cannons (2x), Heat-Seeking Missile (2x), Friend or Foe Missile (1x), Image Recognition Missile (2x)
Shields: Fore: 80 Aft: 80
Armour: Fore: 100 Left: 90 Right: 90 Aft: 100

Game says: In 2650, the Krant was far more effective than Confed's Scimitar*, with better maneuverability and armour. Now approaching obsolescence, it is still used extensively, especially on older vessels.

I say: The Mark II Krant is a Standoff innovation, I believe, since I don't think that any other game replaces the Lasers with Mass Drivers as Standoff has here, but it's a logical extension to make given the identical Dralthi refit. The regular Krant would have been essentially totally ineffective, so it's a sensible thing to do. The Krant was never very dangerous in WC1, it just took far too long to kill, and that's more or less been preserved, but as in the Vision engine everything (including of course your own ship) is easier to kill than it was back in WC1/2 they're mostly just cannon fodder, probably the least dangerous of the regularly encountered Kilrathi fighters.

*lies. Well, probably. Wing Commander isn't set until 2654.


I think the Gothri overload at the start of Episode 2 is a little window into the mindset of the devteam. You see, the reason we run into Gothris before anything else is because Gothris are the long-range jump capable heavy fighters that the Kilrathi would have sent out ahead of their fleet; then the next fighters we run into are Jalkehi (which I believe have a jump drive) and Krants (which can be equipped with a single-use jump drive according to some background fiction) accompanying recon corvettes. Once Kilrathi capships with hangar bays reach the Mastif system, other fighters begin to appear.

Of course, it would probably have made for a more interesting mission to have a greater variety of fighters, but the people who make these sort of mods are all about the versimilitude.

Total kills (Standoff): 9 missions / 72 kills
Total kills (including previous thread): 122 missions / 994 kills

Next time on Standoff:
An actual enemy capital ship to destroy (and, yes, more Gladius, potentially for the last time depending on how much you guys hate me).