Part 67: Orsini System, Epsilon Sector, Mission 1 (Gameplay)

It makes sense that as a war goes on for longer and longer the weapons and tactics used will get progressively nastier. The lighting, though, is beginning to really annoy me, because it makes getting even halfway decent character portraits difficult. I can understand why some parts of the Victory are at low light, but Tolwyn's office makes no sense at all.

edit: Oh, and WC4 doesn't really make sense in isolation. It needs the Terran-Kilrathi War in the background to make the story plausible.

5th August 2669, Orsini System, Epsilon Sector
TCS Victory

The Victory sends fighters out in response to reports of increasing Kilrathi activity in the Orsini system.

Cutscene videos:
The thread voted 8-1 that Blair was skeptical about what High Command tells him; which happens to be the attitude of both the "morale up" responses, so people saying "be nice to Vagabond" are also happy. For those of you playing along, the choices are "Play along with him..." for Rollins and "He's got a point" for Vagabond. It worries me slightly that I didn't have to look that up. And yes, I will get around to explaining morale. Eventually. When I'm not introducing new characters and new fighters all the time. It doesn't do all that much so you aren't really missing anything.

For this video, I've also included the transitions, to show how Blair gets about the Victory. Unless for some reason there's continued demand to see them, after this time I'll cut them out.

Pre-Mission Conversations (Youtube)

Mission Briefing & Loadout:

Briefing Video (Youtube)

No choice about our loadout or fighter in this mission; we're taking a Hellcat with all Image Recognition missiles. What's a Hellcat? Scroll down a bit for that; Ship of the Day is continuing in Heart of the Tiger. Tactics Corner isn't, because a) Wing Commander III doesn't have a tactical map and b) for most missions the tactics are pretty much "blast them"; there's far fewer fighters than in Standoff so there's not so much to talk about.

Mission Video (Youtube)

(Pictured: Wing Commander III shows you what it thinks of the concept of shield spheres).

Kills this mission: 3

It's a first mission. Wing Commander I's is a patrol with 3 Dralthi at Nav 1 and 2 Salthi at Nav 3. Wing Commander II's is a patrol with 3 Sartha at Nav 1 and 3 Drakhri at Nav 3. This time we have 2 Darkets at each of Navs 1 and 3. The only real surprise is no asteroids at Nav 2.

This mission is also a pretty good introduction to why Nightmare difficulty in WC3 is so different to Ace difficulty. On Ace Darkets use their afterburners much more sparingly and don't evade anywhere near as well; this makes them much easier to destroy. In small numbers and showing no inclination to launch missiles they're not much of a threat, but they do take some time to go down.

Ship of the day:
Hellcat V

Class: Medium Fighter
Length: 27 m
Mass: 14 tonnes
Max Velocity: 420 kps
Afterburner Velocity: 1200 kps
Maximum Yaw/Pitch/Roll: 60 degree\second
Weapons: 2x Neutron Guns, 2x Ion Guns, 6x Missile Hardpoints (default loadout is Image Recognition missiles)
Shields: 22 cm durasteel equivalent all sides
Armour: Front: 10 cm durasteel Left: 8 cm Right: 8 cm Rear: 10 cm
Missile Decoys: 24

Official Strategy Guide: The Hellcat is the current workhorse of the Confederation fleet. It balances offense, defense, speed and maneuverability into an efficient and economical package. It's the perfect ship for a beginning pilot on a mission where he doesn't know precisely what to expect. It's fast and maneuverable enough to go head-to-head with light fighters, and well armored enough to withstand simultaneous attack by multiple foes. It features a nice, low silhouette that makes it hard to target from the front, rear or sides. Like the Arrow, it can fire about a dozen shots at full guns without having to worry about energy drain. Even veteran pilots often prefer the Hellcat when they suspect they're going to be facing a mixed force of fighters and light cap ships. The Hellcat is fast and maneuverable enough to hold its own in a dogfight, and its superior armor and shields make a crucial survivability difference when going in against a cap ship's turrets.

I say: Actually, the Hellcat just sucks. We're talking more Scimitar than Rapier here - the Hellcat is barely more heavily armed than the Arrow and barely faster or more manuverable than the Thunderbolt. This is almost the only time you'd ever normally fly it - the Arrow and the T-bolt between them have more or less every situation covered and thankfully this is the only time in WCIII that the Hellcat is compulsory. The standard justification for why this fighter exists is "it's cheap, and the Rapier II was expensive". Against Kilrathi fighters it lacks the speed to run with them and the shields to shoot them up; against capships it lacks a highly useful evasion feature that the Arrow does have and I'll document then, and also the shield power to just trade shots with turrets (which the Thunderbolt has). Oh, and it has the lowest missile carrying capacity in the game. Fuck the Hellcat.

Total kills (Wing Commander III): 1 mission / 3 kills
Total kills (this thread): 28 missions / 370 kills
Total kills (including previous thread): 139 missions / 1296 kills

Next time on Let's Play Wing Commander:
Damn cowboys... (alternatively, "why did it have to be snakes?")