Part 75: Tamayo System, Vega Sector, Mission 1 (Gameplay)

Merry Christmas, thread. Here, I got you an update:

13th August 2669, Tamayo System, Vega Sector
TCS Victory

The Victory comes under Kilrathi attack in the supposedly peaceful Tamayo system.

Cutscene videos/thread vote:
The thread wants to teach Flash a lesson, an opinion I wholeheartedly endorse and will get right on with. You'll have another chance to really piss the guy off in the next vote, because I'm not entirely sure I have your authorisation to do what that one will cover (and it'll be fun).

Here's the video for the pre-mission conversations:
Pre-Mission Conversations (Youtube)

Mission Briefing & Loadout:
There is no briefing. This mission is a scramble ("magnum launch" is a term which will show up somewhat later in the plot for this, though I'm not sure if it's quite the same thing - a scramble is certainly a magnum launch but I'm not sure if every magnum launch is a scramble, it might just mean all fighters up). And you know what that means? Scramble music! One of the things I was most disappointed with when I first started playing WC3 was that the old launch music had been replaced with something much less dramatic...until I got this far through, and learned that at least it wasn't completely gone but just being saved for scrambles. Having scrambled, we're in the Arrow, with mixed IR and HS missiles, and Maniac and Mitchell (who is a generic redshirt wingman) on our wing.


Mission Video (Youtube)


Kills this mission: 6, including I think 5 of the 6 Paktahn bombers the enemy sends at you on this mission. WINGMEN. Unsuprisingly, the Kilrathi got a couple of torpedoes into the Victory (damage which will be miraculously repaired by next mission). Now, you might say I should have ordered my wingmen to attack the bombers. There are two reasons I didn't - a) when I tried that, it seemed to backfire and I lost the Victory on several occasions, and b) one of them was Maniac who would have ignored me anyway. The easiest time I had of this mission was when Maniac rammed the first Paktahn and ejected and I got to do the rest of the mission with Vagabond on my wing. (Why didn't I do that one as the video? Because it would have involved a lot of commentary of me saying "and here's how not to attack a Paktahn" as I get shredded by turret fire. I like to maintain some illusion of competence).

Ship of the day:
Paktahn

Class: Bomber
Length: 37 m
Mass: 30 tonnes
Max Velocity: 340 kps
Afterburner Velocity: 600 kps
Maximum Yaw/Pitch/Roll: 35/40/35 degrees\second
Weapons: 2x Ion Guns 4x Plasma Cannon 1x Mass driver turret, 2x Torpedo hardpoints (3 torpedoes each) 4x Missile Hardpoints (default loadout is Friend or Foe missiles)
Shields: 30 cm durasteel equivalent all sides
Armour: Front: 18 cm durasteel Left: 18 cm Right: 18 cm Rear: 10 cm
Missile Decoys: 6

Official Strategy Guide: Take a look at that silhouette! The Paktahn just doesn't care if you target it. And why should it? It's the best armored offensive ship in the game. Paktahn are veritable floating bunkers. Always take out the Paktahn first in any Kilrathi squadron. After all, the only reason to send a Paktahn out at all is because it's after one of your cap ships. Killing all Paktahn will certainly cripple the Kilrathi plan of attack. Also, it's just good sense to be firing at the Paktahn rather than waiting for the Paktahn to fire at you. They have impressive arsenals front and back, and a plethora of FF missiles that they won't be at all shy about sending your way. Always try to approach the Paktahn from an angle, preferably an angle in their rear quadrant. (Just remember not to let the Paktahn's Dralthi or Darket escorts line up behind you
while you're pounding away at the bomber.) Don't waste your missiles against a Paktahn, just nibble away at his rear shields with guns. (Save the missiles to scatter those pesky escorts.)

I say: This game's Kilrathi bomber shares the traditional traits of big, slow and lumbering with those from previous games, but adds "annoyingly well shielded and armoured". The rear turret is just about powerful enough that even a Thunderbolt can't just hang around on a Paktahn's tail (though an Arrow can Shelton slide back and forth across it to evade the turret fire, which works fine until your finger slips off caps lock and you don't notice) but has to break off, recharge its guns and come around again. Fortunately Paktahns are practically never encountered in large numbers, at least not when you've got an objective to defend. On lower difficulty levels they're also fairly cowardly and tend to break off from runs on capital ships when you start pelting them with cannonfire, even if it's cannonfire they could reasonably expect to shrug off for a while. On Nightmare they seem to be terrifyingly single-minded. In terms of dogfighting skills there's not a huge amount of difference between the difficulty levels with the heavy ships - the Paktahn will freely use afterburners and missiles, it's true, but its ABs make it only just faster than an Arrow or a Darket not using burners and Kilrathi FF missiles tend to suck. I originally typoed and called the armament "friend of foe missiles" above, which is actually pretty accurate.

You know what I don't have to do this mission? I don't have to introduce a new wingman, because the game automatically assigns Maniac to you and then launches Weasel (who then dies) and Mitchell, so that's someone we've already done and two pilots we never actually encounter. If Maniac ejects, Vagabond launches, and as far as I know the game will happily run through the entire roster that way. That means it's time to talk about morale values!

Each wingman has a set of numbers which govern their personality as a pilot - how likely they are to obey orders, how much damage they'll take before ejecting, how much incoming fire causes them to break off from an attack, when they're most likely to launch missiles, that sort of thing. I've been quoting what the official strategy guide says they are when I introduce each wingman. Each wingman also has a separate "morale" value, which ranges from 0 to 15. It starts at 8 and goes up or down depending on our conversation choices and the outcome of a few missions. Most choices and events just raise or lower morale by 1, but some have bigger effects including one near the end of the game which just flat-out sets the morale value to a new number and doesn't care what it was previously (no, speculation on which event this is is not welcome, but it's pretty obvious if you've played the game before). If a wingman's morale is above 10 they have "high morale" which almost always makes them more likely to follow orders and sometimes it also makes them less likely to eject or have other effects; conversely if a wingman's morale is below 6 they have "low morale" which makes them less likely to obey orders and in general more erratic - frequently too aggressive and more likely to eject (or "more like Maniac"). The TCS Victory also has its own morale value, but I don't know if this actually does anything. It might make the Victory's turret gunners better or something but since they only have laser popguns that hardly matters anyway.

So far we've picked mostly the "raise morale" choices, so if my reading of the chart in the official strategy guide is correct, current morale values for the characters are currently:
(As such, only the "group" morale is high, and I don't think that actually does anything - the strategy guide says it makes certain conversations available, but I'm pretty sure that's not true).

Total kills (Wing Commander III): 5 missions / 27 kills
Total kills (this thread): 32 missions / 394 kills
Total kills (including previous thread): 143 missions / 1320 kills

Next time on Let's Play Wing Commander:
An arm clothed in blue polycotton, that held a fair sword in that hand...