Part 102: Mission #97: Olympus station, Ghorah Khar system

Mission #97: Olympus station, Ghorah Khar system

Previously on Wing Commander: That ejected Kilrathi pilot turned out to be none other than the annoyance that is Prince Thrakhath! Unfortunately, due to a power failure on the Bonnie Heather, he managed to escape, leaving us to fight his 'estranged' cousin Khasra and his squadron of Gothri. Needless to say, they lost.

And so we find ourselves arriving back at Olympus...







Um, why on earth would you think that?


Oh.












Yeah, let's take that Ferret!






You have no idea...












Fifteen minutes later...


















Alert sounds...







And hey why not, we already did this kind of thing ALONE in the last mission of WC2, didn't we? And this time we even have a wingman too! There is no starbase this time, but I'm sure a cruiser or two will be on hand to distract us.

• Mission Video (YouTube)
  

Yeeeah, this mission is not quite as easy as that video may have made it look. First of all, there's that Bear dude again, and at least he proves to be somewhat useful in this mission as got in one torpedo! But eventually all your wingmen will either leave or be forced to eject by the Fralthras, there's not much you can do about that.

Let's start at the beginning though... as usual, I'm not going to waste words about those Sartha, I have no idea why they are even there since they can't do anything against us. So moving on to the Gothri. The way they are flying in formation, you really don't want to wade in, so just use taunting to get one guy to come to you, and by the time you are done with him the rest will have dispersed all over the place. There is nothing special about these guys, they are just ordinary Gothri, not even Imperial Guards. Be VERY careful that they don't lure you over into the range of the two Fralthras guns as that is a VERY BAD THING. Apart from usual flak, these carriers will also shoot the dreaded anti-matter guns at you! If you hear them firing, immediately change direction and hit afterburners--after firing, the shots travel slowly and you are sure to avoid them by doing this even if you can't see them.

So, of course, what this means is that when doing the torpedo runs, you will also have to contend with the anti matter guns--and one hit is fatal or will at the very least leave heavily damaged without armour and shields. Not only that, but these Fralthra are quite aggressive, and will keep coming towards you! So the usual tactics of waiting at safe distance for torpedo lock isn't really going to work. Essentially, you will have to dodge the anti-matter shots the best you can. One option is to kind of stand to the left (or right) of the Fralthras and as soon as you hear the AMG fire, dodge immediately as far as you can to the other side without losing the torpedo lock. Other than that, careful use of afterburners will make sure you take little or no damage doing all this. Chances are that your wingmen will get one or possibly two torpedoes in before they are forced to eject, so this will be helpful.

And how about ending up completely undamaged at the end? Yeah well, that was a combination of lots of luck and great flying ski--- actually, scratch that, it was just lots of luck, that's all.

And that's that for the final mission of SO1. Now let's celebrate!























Triumph, you said? I think I know someone who may beg to differ on that subject...







Wait, what!


Groan. I knew it was too good to be true. On another note, THEY PLANNED ALL THIS? SEROIUSLY?


























Uh-oh...



Current kill total: 97 missions/795 kills



And if we lose?

It's time for the usual end-game update from the losing side, of course. If you fail to destroy either of the two Fralthra, then you lose this mission--but you don't yet lose the game; you are given one extra mission to fix things albeit this ends up causing heavy casualties on Ghorah Khar; this is the dialogue you get:

Hey, does anyone know much longer until we're in strike range of the enemy fleet?
At least another two hours. I hate waiting.
And the Kilrathi forces are already bombing the ground installations on the planet. Two hours is a very long time for an orbital bombardment.
I heard that they're moving their forces away from Ghorah Khar so that they'll be in assault formation when we arrive.
That's just terrific. So they'll be ready and waiting for us. I should've taken that transfer to the Agincourt. Too late now, I suppose.

Good old Stingray. But anyway, then you have to fly the mission in which you encounter another Fralthra (no escaping them I guess), but only one this time. Also there are two waves of Gothri this time, for a total of 9. If you win, it's the same as above; if you lose (again the victory condition is the Fralthra), then you finally lose the game, but you get the same losing scene which we've already seen earlier, so I'm not going to repeat it here.



Next time on Wing Commander
No time to rest, in the next update we'll be starting on Special Operations 2, the second and last expansion mission pack for Wing Commander 2. Like this one, it contains 16 more missions, some new ships and some new characters. It begins at the court-martial of one Zachary "Jazz" Colson...