Part 116: Mission #111: The Grimalkin, Ayer's system
Mission #111: The Grimalkin, Ayer's systemPreviously on Wing Commander: Another enemy strike force ends up like all the ones before. Also we have regular contact with 'the Scorpion', Paladin's undercover agent in the Mandarin organisation.
Speaking of whom...
Yep, these guys do appear to have better security than the Concordia, at least where communications are concerned.
...I shall say this only once!
Interestingly enough, until now I really never got the impression that the Mandarins are some kind of massive organisation, with bases and leadership and all that; but I guess we can assume that they are somehow being financed and given the resources by the Kilrathi (and what we'll see in this mission will only serve to confirm that assumption).
...kill them all?
This sort of thing seems to happen to the Concordia way more often than it should.
Soon after...
So we aren't even told exactly what we are supposed to be doing in this one; but I'll tell you: it's just a search and destroy everything in sight one last time before we go on to assault the base. The enemies we encounter in this mission may come as a bit of a surprise.
Huh, yeah, seeing human pilots in Sarthas may be a bit weird, but they are no better than their felinoid allies, so that fight will, as usual, be over before it even begins.
The Sabres and Fralthras on the second nav point are a bit more of a problem. Most importantly, those two Fralthras will absolutely shoot at you with their anti-matter guns! Imagine dogfighting in such an environment! There are two viable options here really: one is to try and draw the Sabres away from the Cruisers and fight them without worrying about getting one-shot by the Fralthra. The other option is to destroy at least one of them so as to reduce the amount of defensive fire. I chose this option in the video, and normally the easiest way to accomplish this is to simply nuke it. Fralthra is a big enough target that you can simply point and shoot and it will trigger on impact.
The Sabres can deal quite a bit of damage (and these are even the weirdo special ones with three particle guns instead of 2 particle+2 mass driver, no idea why probably some kind of technical limitation of the engine; we'll see normal ones in next mission), but overall aren't actually that bad as they make for an absolutely HUGE target and are very easy to hit. Also, none of the Mandarin sabres have gunners in rear turrets, so won't be shooting at you when you are on their tail.
I guess it had to happen sooner or later that Maniac would eject; it's fun to hear his comment when that happens--of course since Morningstar has no tractor beam or even turrets for that matter so we couldn't pick him up ourselves.
Next mission will of course be the base assault and then there is one last one left. Anybody care to take a guess what that will be about?
Current kill total: 111 missions/912 kills
Next time on Wing Commander
