MOD:WCU:WC0:Excerpts

Forum post, Mon Mar 12, 2007 9:34 am

I always wanted to play a sort of "wing commander prequel"battle : a space campaign starting from the iason incident up all the way to the mcaulliffe battle and the cluster carnival. Knowing the fact that this would be quite impossible, why not instead try to create that kind of campaign in WCU? Naturally, this would mean adding new ships, such as a pre WC1 true carrier (name unknown) , and perhaps other things such as WC movie sivars, movie snakeir super dreadnaughts (standard and command 4km long versions) and perhaps a corvette precursor to the kamekh named spikeri (design in SWC ship section on the cic site).

And who knows, if the story could continue up to the Wc2 era, perhaps we could recreate the academy storyline and add ships such as the agon ra sivar class dreadnaught...

Private message: Fri Mar 16, 2007 1:37 am

All right: as far as the plot goes:

In fact: I realise now that there are going to be 2 different plots:

the pre WC1, and the between WC2 and WC3. I'll start with the pre WC1 as it remains the clearest:

This plot will fill in a few holes in the WC storyline, so we will meet several Wc1 caracters: the player will play major chen "ripper" (later to become the famous bossman). The player will start the action on the alexandria space station orbiting mcauliffe and will make a series of space recons abord scimtars (which is the first confed wc fighter to be flown). Animated sequences before the plot begining will evoque the iason incident (first encounter with the kilrathi), several acts commited by them, the anna magdelana incident (the thing that started it all) and the war declaration.

Once the mcauliffe battle is engaged and alexandria destroyed, the player will go abord the tcs greywolf (an exeter destroyer) and do additionnal missions there.

Then, during the last phase of the plot: the exeter will be destroyed during one of your missions (which is to hinder the kilrathi fleet in order to let confed ships rejoin terran space), you will then dock on the tiger's claw, and start the cluster carnival diversion. After the plot, the player's character and several friends stay abord that vessel were we see them again in WC1 (this allows a certain continuity in the storyline).

Naturally: this is a crude resume, but here you can find a few ships (confed) you'll need:

WC2 station (those things served since the beginning of the war), exeter destroyer, bengal strike carrier.

fighters (confed): will be (by order of appearance): scimtar, talon, hornet, raptor, rapier MK1 (movie rapier).

Concerning the rapier:

the rapier will sport an original weapons layout: 2 wing mounted laser cannons, and ONE nose mounted rapid firing mass driver (directly in front, below the cockpit). to link the 2 weapons will be impossible which means the player will have to choose which weapons to choose during combat.

Email: Sat Mar 17, 2007 8:08 AM

I got a nice pdf manual for you here: you'll find the chronological events of the war. WC0 would start from the beginning up to the cluster carnival.

Also, there is a mistake in this section: after the mcauliffe battle: the kilrathi forces do not return to mcauliffe and take 250000 hostages there, but they do this in the enyo system.

Regarding the ships, keep in mind that phase shields were not invented before WC2, therefore even weapon fire is enough to down a cap ship (this is why there are no true bombers neither torpedoes transported by small fighters or bombers in wc1).

ps: the ships in WC armada yeld no purpose in WC0, yet for the second plot between WC2 and WC3, the kilrathi carrier (called shiraak) might be interesting along with several fighters (jrathek, wraith, and I'm unsure of the rest).

Forum post: Tue Mar 20, 2007 9:50 am

............. As far as the plot is concerned, It follows up greatly the storyline, Yet it ties up with the WC1 events: the played character will be bossman (known as ripper at the time: check the WC1 manual). The plot will then unfold from him serving in patrols in the mcauliffe sector from the alexandria station, up to joining the grey wolf concordia supercruiser after the destruction of alexandria (At this stage, the kilrathi will have hacked into the TKB (terran knowledge bank) and will have learned the earth's position as well as all our system's. This is why I insisted on having the trackrha spy ship design in the plot.

During his stay on the grey wolf, he will fly missions to retake mcauliffe and later enyo (including this raptor minelaying mission, and others rarely encountered in previous WC games such as officer shuttle destruction, spy ship detection and destruction (the spy ship possesses a cloak rendering it invisible to radar (although NOT to human eyes like the later stakhra stealth fighter) and will be hard to spot in an asteroid belt for instance. The grey wolf will then in 2944 assist the tiger's claw in repelling the invading kilrathi fleet and will be crippled and scuttled: the pilots will be transfered to the claw. And finally, the claw will be despatched to create a diversion near the kraz'na colony to allow terran forces to withdraw, and will then, once repaired be assign to the vega sector, where it will undertake a few missions in order to hinder the pursuing kilrathi fleet and help form a line of defense in the middle of vega sector (The situation in WC1).

This way, bossman will progressively meet the other WC1 caracters: paladin (one of the first), iceman. Later on near enyo: hunter, knight (and la doña, saved by knight), spirit's dad. Until they all become assigned to the tiger's claw and the newbies: maniac, spirit and angel.

The plot will end with a vid sequence in witch the pilots discuss the near arrival of a new recruit: a certain christopher blair...

Forum post: Tue Mar 20, 2007 12:11 pm

Let me just say one thing though, that's neither a plot nor a story. It's a "campaign". Which is perfectly okay, I know someone who is quite knowledgeable of WC and has written fan fiction before, and who is hot to trot to contribute to the WC0 project.

As I was just saying to him, my vision would be multiple stories. For example:

A story about confederation politics. Another story, a personal one, about a character the player meets repeatedly. Another story about companies, competition, industrial alliances. Another story about two pilots, one from Border Worlds, one from Landreich. The story of a bartender aboard the carrier who grew up in Avalon but later went to study at Oxford. A plot/story about the Grovsner Colonies. A story about pilgrims and pilgrim descendents, but told through the day to day dialogues, rather than explained. A romance or two?

You know what I mean? That's one of the formulas for successful fiction: Have many independent stories that sort of intertwine, and have them interspersed with the action and campaign.

And a plot.

A plot is like a story, but more connected to the campaign.

One of the recurrent formulas for plots in military fiction is of a subaltern who knows better than his superiors and decides to disobey orders and do what is right, but he'd better succeed and be a hero, or else he will face a court martial.

Or, say, the captain of the ship decides to disobey orders, and the player has to disobey orders in turn to produce the right outcome.

But the best kind of plot is the type that is hard to figure out, with many contradictory leads, that requires a lot of thinking to piece together.

EDIT: I never saw the movie, but someone was just telling me that the movie has Bossman die... Is this true? If so, are you sure you want to take anything in the movie seriously? Maybe we could just use the movie as a side-reference for occasional artistic inspiration, but ignore any factual elements in it. Or at least incorporate any element as long as it's not one of those that contradict prior canon.

EDIT2: If I'm understanding anything, the player never flies missions off a pre-war carrier? I think it would be a bit of a waste of work to model a special carrier and then not use it. Any chance we could put in a set of missions for it? More generally, between McAuliffe and Custer's Carnival, we've got a span of 15 years. As a way of comparison, WC3 spans from 2669.225 to 2669:267, approximately, which is 42 days. We could make WC0 as big as all other WC games put together, if we wanted to. Not that we'd want to, but you know what I mean? We're not pressed for time at all, the way I see it; we can add and expand wherever we want.