Part 114: Mission #109: The Grimalkin, Canewdon system
Mission #109: The Grimalkin, Canewdon systemPreviously on Wing Commander: We've joined Paladin on his newly acquired "stealth" Kilrathi freighter, renamed as the Grimalkin. It's all so special!
And so, a few minutes later...
Wait, why is HE being so sensible?
See, it's possible to refer to him without using quotes!
We've barely landed and again we find ourselves back in space. Anyway, we'll be escorting Paladin's ship over to a jump point that should take us to Ayer's system where the Mandarin base is located. Let me tell you right at the start: Paladin's may be flying a different ship now, but he still has full supply of that indestructible armour, so do not worry about him at all as he cannot be destroyed. Oh and another thing, there may be a nuclear explosion in this video.
Ayup. That was an explosion for sure. But more on that later. Again, this is one of those missions that can be a little hard, mainly due to the presence of two Imperial guard Gothri, which if you fight them normally, can pose quite a bit of trouble for some reason.
Of course, the Strakhas are so weak that they are no match for us at all, especially with the ridiculous range of a particle cannon. I love how Maniac didn't even get the chance to ask to be ordered to attack before they were both already dead! The Jalkehi are not too much trouble, but try to stay relatively undamaged for the Gothri.
And finally the two Gothri: fighting those two guys can be absolutely brutal--they literally don't even care about Paladin and will zero in on you immediately and never let go. Unfortunately, Maniac is not the kind of wingman to watch your back so you might as well be fighting them alone. Or you can try to use the mace like we did--it didn't work out quite as well as it could have since I believe one of the enemies triggered it before it got close enough to them; but you can still see how it nearly destroyed them anyway. And that certainly was a pretty impressive looking explosion! On a related note, judging the distance when to trigger the missile can be difficult due to how the scaling works (especially scaling of smaller objects like missiles); but in general, when you think it's gone far enough, you need to let it go a bit farther because it somehow looks smaller than it should or something. I always seem to trigger it too soon when I look at it relative to other objects. And since game is not in real 3D, actually judging the distance is more or less impossible.
One general comment seems to be inevitable: designed by Maniac or not, the Morningstar certainly seems to be more efficient in dealing with enemies that most other ships.
And this is the end of this set of missions; next time we move on to the final set of four. As I've explained previously, the victory condition is those three transports in previous mission...
...and here's what you miss if you don't fail that mission!
As always, if you fail, you get an extra mission at the end of a set which you must win in order to get back on track. Those missions often feature some interesting dialogue that I regret they haven't been able to include in the regular script.
This mission in particular is probably the one that I regret the most for not being included and when you see the scene you'll understand why. It's awesome/funny/cringeworthy/creepy, all at the same time. It also gives us an advance glimpse at the actual Ayer's Rock base.
So, without further ado, here it is:
Wait, how did they--- That thing is HUGE!
DO. NOT. WANT!
Also check out how even Jazz refers to himself in quotes!
Current kill total: 109 missions/896 kills
Next time on Wing Commander
Yep. There's a strike force coming. What else is new.