X-Wing (1993)

[LarryTyphoid]

I heard this game was hard, but damn, it really is kicking my ass. I haven't even got past the first tour. It's hard enough surviving 5 of the shuttles constantly on your ass while you're trying to disable the shuttle carrying the hostage, aided only by two useless wingmen who usually hyperdrive out halfway through, let alone trying to play defense with the TIE Interceptors. Any tips for this game, or do I just have to get good?

 

[Data4]

I heard this game was hard, but damn, it really is kicking my ass. I haven't even got past the first tour. It's hard enough surviving 5 of the shuttles constantly on your ass while you're trying to disable the shuttle carrying the hostage, aided only by two useless wingmen who usually hyperdrive out halfway through, let alone trying to play defense with the TIE Interceptors. Any tips for this game, or do I just have to get good?

Been a hell of a long time since I played X-Wing, but IIRC, that's the one that had the convoy of shuttles you had to scan in order to find the hostages, right? I remember it being a pain in the ass, but just keep at it. And yeah, the wingmen were completely pointless.

 

[Nathaniel3W]

I loved X-Wing! I don't remember any particularly awful missions. X-Wing was a hell of a lot better than that Star Wars: Squadrons game that was released a couple years ago. If you want to turn on Easy Mode, play it with a mouse.

I remember thinking that shields recharged really slowly even when you set all your power to shields. I would normally put all my power into weapons, and then transfer stored energy directly into shields when needed.

 

[LarryTyphoid]

Been a hell of a long time since I played X-Wing, but IIRC, that's the one that had the convoy of shuttles you had to scan in order to find the hostages, right? I remember it being a pain in the ass, but just keep at it.

Yeah, I got past it eventually. The trick is to save your torpedoes for the TIE Interceptors; it's tempting to use them on the shuttles, especially since they're so aggressive, but it's pretty much impossible to play defense against the Interceptors with only lasers, because they can outpace you easily.

 

[LarryTyphoid]

Does anyone know what adjusting the S Foils does? In Lucasarts' previous WW2 flight sims (which X-Wing is based on), there's a similar feature where you can adjust folds, but in those games, it decreases your speed in exchange for a lower risk of stalling while ascending. Stalling isn't a thing in X-Wing, on account of it being in space and all, so I don't know if S Foil adjusting is anything more than flavor.

 

[Nathaniel3W]

I think you just have to close the S foils before jumping to hyperspace. That's all. And the fighter will do that automatically when you press H, so there's really no reason why you would have to do it on your own.

 

[LarryTyphoid]

I think you just have to close the S foils before jumping to hyperspace. That's all. And the fighter will do that automatically when you press H, so there's really no reason why you would have to do it on your own.

When your S foils are closed, you can't fire your lasers, which would imply some kind of tradeoff in actual gameplay. I think the only reason to ever close them is when you need to evade enemy fire without the expectation to fire back, like when you're rushing towards an objective while being hounded by Interceptors, since the hitbox of your ship is presumably smaller with them closed. You can fire your torpedoes, so you could close your S foils to help evade fire while doing a quick torpedo run on a target.


I'm on Tour 3 now. An interesting detail of this game that I don't see mentioned often is the light permadeath aspect, which is similar to an arcade game. If your pilot can survive missions without getting captured or killed, your score goes up and you get new titles. You get captured if you eject in an area with heavy imperial presence (otherwise, a rebel ship rescues you and you preserve your score), and you die if your ship explodes without you ejecting. If you get captured or killed, you have to "revive" your pilot which resets your score to zero. This is a pretty interesting mechanic that I haven't seen before (it appears to be included in Lucasart's previous WW2 flight sims, which served as foundations for X-Wing's mechanics). I didn't really realize that it existed for awhile, which is why I just now got promoted to Officer (from "Rookie", the lowest rank) on the third and final tour of the original game (I've gotten better and managed to survive a few consecutive missions without dying).

Since you can't replay tours of duty on the same pilot (outside of the historical battle simulator, which does not contribute to your tour of duty score), there's a theoretical highest possible score any given pilot can acquire from the beginning of the game. If I were a kid and playing this game with my brothers or something, this would be a cool little bit of competition. Lucasarts were geniuses for putting this arcade-style high score feature into a space sim of all things. Someone should run an X-Wing score contest.

 

[Nathaniel3W]

If I remember correctly, you can use your alts as wingmen, and their AI improves based on that character's score. And little 12-year-old-wannabe-hacker me figured out that you can just copy the TopAce.plt file with other pilot names and you can have as many top ace wingmen as you want.

Edit: Also, I made backups of my own plt file so that I could get my old score back in case I ever died or got captured. Man, I had forgotten all about that.

 

[LarryTyphoid]

If I remember correctly, you can use your alts as wingmen, and their AI improves based on that character's score.

Wow, really? Damn, that explains the pilot assignment screen before tour of duty missions. That's super cool. The GOG copy of this game didn't come with the manual so I knew nothing about little hidden features like this.

 

[Nathaniel3W]

Yeah man, if you haven't been assigning your wingmen, you've been missing out. I think the generic top ace file comes with one of the expansions. Do the A-Wing and B-Wing both have their own expansions? If you have the expansions, you should have a file named "TopAce" and you can copy that to make as many top-tier wingmen as you want.

 

[LarryTyphoid]

Yeah man, if you haven't been assigning your wingmen, you've been missing out. I think the generic top ace file comes with one of the expansions. Do the A-Wing and B-Wing both have their own expansions? If you have the expansions, you should have a file named "TopAce" and you can copy that to make as many top-tier wingmen as you want.

I won't do any of the file business, seems like cheating. I'd just make multiple pilots legitimately if I wanted to make use of this feature.

When your pilot-assigned wingmen are taken out during a mission, is that pilot considered dead as well? My wingmen are dying a lot in tour 3, and it'd be a shame if the pilot entry was also killed. Wingman permadeath kinds reminds me of Wing Commander 1.

 

[Nathaniel3W]

No, the death of an AI wingman doesn't affect that character's actual score or rank.

And wow, this is really bringing back memories. Not all of my wingmen were copies of the same file. My brother and some of our friends created their own pilots and we would all assign each other to help during our own campaign missions. It's probably not the same 30 years later when you're the only one playing, and there are so many ways to play games online with your friends now. But I remember playing with your friends' characters was fun and it created a bit of real-world connection. Modern gaming definitely has its benefits, but I think we've lost something too.

 

[Luka-boy]

There was also the thing with your pilot's photo depending on the name you chose for him.

Can't remember the details, though.

 

[LarryTyphoid]

I've confirmed that pilots assigned as your wingmen can, in fact, be captured. Just happened to one of my wingmen, who got shot down pretty far into enemy territory near a star destroyer with loads of enemy ships all around. Whether or not they're captured is probably determined the same way it is for the player. I can't confirm whether or not they can die, because player death depends entirely on whether or not the auto-ejection system was functional when your ship blew, and I doubt your wingmen have each of their individual ship systems simulated the way the player's is.

 

[Stokowski]

Don't know about the original X-Wing, but the campaign in X-Wing Alliance repeatedly beat me to a soggy pulp. Weirdly difficulty for a somewhat kid-themed game.

 

[LarryTyphoid]

Weirdly difficulty for a somewhat kid-themed game.

I don't think the X-Wing games were made with children in mind. Who else is going to be playing a hardware-intensive PC flight sim in 1993 besides balding nerds? Maybe I'm off the mark, since I wasn't alive back then, but I figure PC gaming was mostly marketed towards adults, or at least teenagers.

 

[Nikanuur]

I heard this game was hard, but damn, it really is kicking my ass. I haven't even got past the first tour. It's hard enough surviving 5 of the shuttles constantly on your ass while you're trying to disable the shuttle carrying the hostage, aided only by two useless wingmen who usually hyperdrive out halfway through, let alone trying to play defense with the TIE Interceptors. Any tips for this game, or do I just have to get good?

Hmm, from what I recall, it certainly wasn't easy. However, as in most of the simulators, not staying in one place, always turning, rolling, changing speeds, etc. was the game-changing key to survival while also having the mission objective in mind.
Btw, don't believe the Dark Side users who are talking you down. Taking down entire Cruisers/Star Destroyers is also possible, albeit a strenuous task of disabling their shields by 1% in 5 seconds at the max-distance.

 

[Modron]

Weirdly difficulty for a somewhat kid-themed game.

I don't think the X-Wing games were made with children in mind. Who else is going to be playing a hardware-intensive PC flight sim in 1993 besides balding nerds? Maybe I'm off the mark, since I wasn't alive back then, but I figure PC gaming was mostly marketed towards adults, or at least teenagers.

Me and my brother certainly both beat Xwing as kids granted it may have been more around 95ish though certainly before I got Fallout 1.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

Weirdly difficulty for a somewhat kid-themed game.

I don't think the X-Wing games were made with children in mind. Who else is going to be playing a hardware-intensive PC flight sim in 1993 besides balding nerds? Maybe I'm off the mark, since I wasn't alive back then, but I figure PC gaming was mostly marketed towards adults, or at least teenagers.

I played TIE Fighter before X-Wing (I was 12 or 13 when TIE Fighter came out), so can't speak specifically to X-Wing's marketing, but TIE Fighter was definitely targeted at me on release. It had huge ad-buys for a computer game of its era, and also benefited from all the cross-promotional media SW was getting from Dark Horse/Zahn kicking the EU into blockbuster sales. It was for sure the talk of my friend-group back in junior high.

I also played and completed both games. Yes they are very difficult, but the audience (even the kids) just expected that back then. As a kid I got one or two games a year, if I was lucky, of course I didn't mind spending several hundred hours playing each of them. TIE Fighter really went the extra mile with the secret missions which elegantly function as a dynamic difficulty setting. One of my absolute Top 3 computer game levels ever made is B5M1 from TIE Fighter. Just an absolutely bonkers hard level that then also keeps slyly ribbing the player to ratchet up the difficulty just a little more, and all the while it completely gels and reinforces the tone and plot of the game. It's a pure chef's kiss.

 

[Stokowski]

(XWA: ) The between mission stuff was cheesy and childish ... and then you launched into a mission with rapidly changing and accumulating goals while the Empire throws an Archimedean Dynasty finale's worth of trouble at you. Good fun ... but odd.

 

[Luka-boy]

B5M1 from TIE Fighter

(I agree it's brilliant in many ways, though)

 

[Galdred]

If I remember correctly, you can use your alts as wingmen, and their AI improves based on that character's score. And little 12-year-old-wannabe-hacker me figured out that you can just copy the TopAce.plt file with other pilot names and you can have as many top ace wingmen as you want.

Edit: Also, I made backups of my own plt file so that I could get my old score back in case I ever died or got captured. Man, I had forgotten all about that.

It was the same in their previous WW2 game, Battle of Britain. It had a cool dynamic campaign, and you could assign your "pilot files" to wingmen, so copying/renaming it allowed you to get better wingmen, and even have them succeed on their own (as you could assign missions to them, that would modify the course of the campaign).

 

[Keshik]

I still hate that Redemption mission. The flight recorder was handy in dealing with difficult missions, you could deduce what would trigger new waves, I solved the last mission of B-Wing that way.

 

[LarryTyphoid]

It was the same in their previous WW2 game, Battle of Britain. It had a cool dynamic campaign, and you could assign your "pilot files" to wingmen, so copying/renaming it allowed you to get better wingmen, and even have them succeed on their own (as you could assign missions to them, that would modify the course of the campaign).

And in that game's sequel, Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe, you create multiple characters to fly a squadron, and they all gain experience as you go along. You can even switch which character/crew you control from mission to mission. X-Wing's system is actually paired down from the devs' previous WW2 games.

 

[LarryTyphoid]

Biggest problem with X-Wing is all the time you spend waiting around in each mission. Really wishing they had brought over the time dilation from Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe in X-Wing, rather than waiting till TIE Fighter.