Revenge of the Persian: Let's play Wing Commander special missions!

[Neckbeard Shitlord]

After the salthis and the transport, I fight a bunch of krants in asteroids. Most of them crash into rocks.

Remember the last mission where I got shot down by four gralthi? This time there's SIX of them alround a frali cuiser. This is a terrible fight. I finsally got the fralthi but then I was completely surrounded by 6 gralthi and in the middle of this not only does spirit do NOTHING but once they are halfway done she decides to return to base on her own!

 

[Neckbeard Shitlord]

Finally, it's over. What a fight.

 

[Neckbeard Shitlord]

I got a promotion, but the rec room is empty so guess it's time for another mission.

 

[Saduj]

Loving the LP. Brings up memories of playing the hell out of this game and expansions on my 386 in EGA graphics mode using keyboard controls.

 

[Neckbeard Shitlord]

Glad you're enjoying it! I might need to take a break, though, the difficulty is really kicking my ass now. This next mission is almost unbeatable. I will give it one more try and if it doesn't work out I will hit the eject and pray it lets me continue on the campaign.

Yes, a veeerrrry likely story. I am sure you can see where this is going after a daily hint.

 

[Neckbeard Shitlord]

You mean you'll do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING as my wingman, not even distract them a little. I think this is because her AI is set to 'maneuver' instead of being aggressive, so the enemy ships NEVER go after her ALWAYS me.

Ok, first off, 4 grathas yet again. These guys are pretty difficult with spirit as wingman, who never draws their fire.

 

[Neckbeard Shitlord]

Eventually though, I take down the grathas. Immediately, along come four Jalthi heavy fighters.

This time, I don't ram anyone but they DO ram me. TWICE! I have never seen them do it on purpose before but I don't know how else to explain what happened. I don't remember this ever happening before.

Suffice to say I take quite a bit of damage by being rammed by these heavies.

 

[Neckbeard Shitlord]

You can see in that last pic both of my VDUs are knocked out. I actually caught my consoles in mid explosion with sparks flying out. Before getting rammed twice in a row I was in good shape.

 

[Neckbeard Shitlord]

What's this, a Rapier?! Ok, so I am sure this tactic would work well in real life. Even knowing basically something will happen, I still stared stupidly for quite a while before I did anything at all. Unfortunately while FLYING the lightly armored Rapier is not a great dream to me, its high speed makes FIGHTING it very difficult.

With my previous damage, I lasted maybe 30 seconds.

Since then I replayed and refailed several times.

 

[Neckbeard Shitlord]

And again. It must be the missiles killing me because I didn't really get any laser hits and it was basically INSTANT. Maybe I will try again, not sure how to get past this though.

 

[Azira]

Can't remember if I played both of the secret missions add-ons back in the day, but I'm pretty sure I at least finished the first one.
So yes, the battle is winable. Don't remember what I did in particular though.

 

[Neckbeard Shitlord]

This time I did take one out. I locked the target in and that is probably a necessity due to all looking the same and the fact that the shields on rapiers are so strong and regen so fast.

However my shield generator got hit and Spirit informed me she was chickening out, so I hit eject. Before I managed to do so she got killed off anyway.

Looks like it didn't send me to the retreat scenario so I will keep flying from here. If I feel masochistic I will give it another try before I go on to secret missions 2.

 

[Neckbeard Shitlord]

You are the weakest link on my wingman roster. Goodbye!

 

[Infinitron]

that's not canon

 

[Neckbeard Shitlord]

Looks like Maniac's little story arc is next up on the list.

 

[Saduj]

I definitely don't have this kind of patience anymore, but at the time these expansions first came out I really loved the tougher missions that I'd have to retry multiple times before getting them right.

The one exception being a mission in one of the WC2 expansions (the first one, I think). It involved taking out multiple capital ships in a short time frame before they jumped to another system. I easily tried that one dozens of times because the game would end after a failure. On about the 8th attempt after I started promising myself "If I don't beat it this time, I'm going to give up", the game gave me credit for completing the mission successfully even though I hadn't. The "successful" run wasn't even one of my top 10 ten closest misses. But I took the false victory and moved on. It is a shame I still carry twenty years later.

 

[Neckbeard Shitlord]

Well, I like completing everything I can but I don't want to hold up the Let's Play too much. I know me, and I suspect if I let it languish too long I will forget about it for months, maybe forever. If I spend 20 tries to get past this mission this is a big possibility.

Just to make sure I was not jacking up the LP I looked up a walkthrough. Turns out that the mission is totally optional. I had remembered that any screwup led to losing but there's quite a few missions that only require nominal conditions for victory. I will keep from looking ahead so I don't spoil myself.

Anyway, on to the next mission. Another tough one but not so bad as the last!

We've lost track of the fleet but they seemed to be heading this direction. Of course now I wonder...how did we have track of them before?! If they were in radar or scout range they'd know about us, too.

The mission debriefing is a lot longer than I show but it is just a fancy way of saying to run a standard patrol that we have been doing in every new system since the original campaign.

 

[Neckbeard Shitlord]

Large groups of heavy fighters is the norm now, it seems. They pop up everywhere we go. It also seems ships like krants fire missiles waaay more than in the original campaign.

 

[Neckbeard Shitlord]

I muscled through the heavy fighters and then the krants, who were guarding a Fralthi Crusier-Carrier.

 

[Neckbeard Shitlord]

The wingman concept comes from an American Naval pilot in World War II. The American planes were slower and less nimble than the Japanese ones, which had a hot new design called the Zero which they had invested heavily into. THE USA had not really invested too heavily in aircraft and many of the planes were a generation out of date, and the newest were slow and heavily armored and proving to be little match for the Jap rice rockets.

Fortunately someone clever realized that if you work in groups you can always have one plane able to take position behind someone attacking his buddy if they both work together in concert, even if they are in much slower and less maneuverable craft.

This concept applies to wings as well, so if you are attacking one wing then theoretically you are making yourself vulnerable to any nearby wings.

This is all just a fancy excuse-making, really. That's why having six jalthi which are capable of one hitting you makes for a really hard fight even though they are slow ships.

 

[Neckbeard Shitlord]

The second time through the fight went much better.

 

[Neckbeard Shitlord]

In actuality it jumped out before I could even see it. Damned plot armor.

At least we know what ship we are gunning for now, though.

 

[Neckbeard Shitlord]

Number one!

The bar is in missing man formation.

This is the middle my friends, this is the middle. Middle. Not much to say in the middle-end of the game, I guess. Spirit being dead likely doesn't help.

 

[Neckbeard Shitlord]

So basically we tracked the enemy death star into a system and are now looking for a supply depot that it was headed for. Presumably we got the jump on it and this is our chance to get there ahead of it. If we manage that then it won't be able to refuel and we will be able to take it down.

 

[Neckbeard Shitlord]

Salthi are the smallest and generally easiest to beat, but they are quick and I am slow so it takes some time.

I am back in the scimitar again, which is not good at all for taking on light fighters.