Part 32: Mission #28: 14 June 2654, Bifrost System

Mission #28: 14 June 2654, Bifrost System

Previously on Wing Commander: Ambushed by the famous phantom ship, the Gwenhyvar! Well, it will haunt pilots no longer...

Norse mythology corner: Bifrost (Bifröst) is a rainbow bridge between Midgard (the world of humans) and Asgard (the world of gods). It is guarded by the god Heimdall, but nevertheless will be destroyed by the fire demons during Ragnarök.


I'm willing to bet that Hunter and Paladin will get into a fight!





Anyhow, you heard the latest news? Grapevine says we lost sight of the enemy ships. They're out there somewhere, and we can't find them. We fly all this way into Kilrathi space, and lose so many people... and for what? There's no way we can afford to turn back now.









A lot of the pilots have been hearin' that we lost the Kilrathi fleet. They're expectin' us to turn tail and run back for Terran space. Some of 'em are tickled pink about it. Some of 'em are thinking about proppin' a gun 'gainst their chin an' pulling the trigger.



















If we keep losing pilots, there won't be enough of us to fly... and then it'll be over.






Woah, calm down there, buddy!



Mission Time!

As usual, flying an actual mission brings some relief.









Two Fralthi with additional heavy ships, if they know where to catch us will reduce Tiger's Claw to molten slag. Personally, I'd prefer not to command a slagged ship. So we're going to have to launch an attack on them very, very soon. We don't know exactly where they are. But we do have some good data....











You're going to fly scouting missions. With the information you'll bring back, we should be able to locate the supply depot. Here's the setup. Make sure you scout each of these Nav points.



But back down from overwhelming opposition. We need the information more than we need a few dead heroes.


That is very interesting...











You might have noticed that briefings used to spend a lot of time on detailing our mission on the map, but nowadays they mainly serve the purpose of plot dissemination with actual objectives being given almost as an afterthought! But, on to the mission: it's just a normal patrol, with a chance (probably 100%) of meeting that big guy that we haven't seen before.

• Mission Video (Youtube)
  

So, as expected, there was the big guy, but it jumped out before we could get a good look at it. However, apparently our cameras did pick up enough info to be able to figure out where he was going and the location of the supply depot. This is somewhat similar to how we did it in Vega sector with the starbase, except here the starbase is not the ultimate goal, just a way of resource starving the enemy fleet that we are following.

But anyway, the big ship was being protected with no less than 6 Jalthi, and that fight would be an iffy proposition even with someone like Iceman, but with Paladin and his constant 'de-kilting' it's pretty much an impossibility; you aren't really even expected to fight there and in the debriefing you are still commended for gathering info on the unknown Kilrathi ship. Note that you can actually fail this bit if you don't get close enough before it jumps!

You may have noticed that the conversation in the debriefing was actually very much in the positive tone; so again, why the losing music? The answer is, I don't know! It's not because of the 6 Jalthi--they don't give you any points for destroying them. And it is not possible to destroy the big ship because it will always jump out before you can get close enough to it to even target it. We've destroyed all the other enemies in this mission so it can't be those... so ultimately, it's either a bug of some sort or simply one of those 'screw you' things that pop up occasionally in this game, i.e. you lost the mission because the big guy escaped even though you can't destroy it even in theory. And when I say a bug, what I'm thinking of is that maybe the layout of the mission changed late in production, but they forgot to update the minimum required score for winning or something like that.

Speaking of which, I've been talking a lot lately about mission and sector scoring... is anybody interested in a more detailed explanation how it works?

In any case, we are ready to attack the supply depot now, and just wait until you see how we are supposed to do it!

The kill board:





Next time on Wing Commander
A raid on the supply depot, or something resembling it!