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The Blair character bio Universal included with the press kit it so strange. His dad is a space hippie? And his grandma is a senator? He idolizes a World War I fighter pilot? Most of this is never referenced anywhere.

"WING COMMANDER ACADEMY"

FLIGHT MEMBER DOSSIER

Name: Christopher Blair

Callsign: Maverick

Callsign Origination: Maverick received his callsign as a joke from Maniac. When after months as the "perfect" cadet at the Academy, Blair actually bent a rule, and Maniac sarcastically told him, "You're a real maverick, aren't you?"

Rank: 2nd Lieutenant

Pedigree: Since the time of the American Civil War, the Blair family has maintained a tradition of wealth and influence combined with public service. Maverick's grandmother is a member of the Confederation Council, while his father is the chairman of StarPeace, an organization dedicated to promoting understanding among the inhabited worlds of the galaxy.

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

CMDBob is back with a pair of eye-popping Wing Commander art pieces. The look is slightly inspired by the animation style of the Star Trek Animated Series, and we can most definitely see the connection! First up is the BWS Intrepid, complete with battle damage. You can see a little Banshee fighter launching from the deck, which is depicted zooming out of the bay in the second picture. You can also find his recent Confed destroyer image here. I love this series!

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

*Pilots' Federation ALERT*
The eleven megaships coordinating evacuation efforts from Thargoid-invaded systems are set to move over the next few weeks.
Military analysis of the current front line has highlighted that the distance between active conflict areas and the megaships can be decreased with an acceptably low degree of risk. Vice Admiral Skylar Anderson, part of the Imperial delegation to Aegis, offered this comment:
"Shortening the distance between systems which require humanitarian support and the megaships responsible for coordinating that support is important. Until now we have urged caution to maintain their current safe positions, since these vessels are obvious targets for Thargoid attack. But as our brave pilots continue to regain territory and push the alien forces back, we feel confident that this is the right decision."
From September 7th, the following megaships will

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

*Pilots' Federation ALERT*
Aegis aims to provide an update to the pulse wave xeno scanner that can locate captive humans on Thargoid Titans.
Dr Maximo Fonseca, the Alliance's scientific liaison to Aegis, informed the media about the project:
"Information provided by Seo Jin-ae suggests that people abducted by the Thargoids are being kept alive aboard the Titan motherships inside 'pods'. This theory makes sense - since Thargoid atmospheres are toxic to humans, any captives are surely sealed in an environment that meets their respiratory and nutritional needs."
"The pulse wave xeno scanner has been modified by Allied, Federal and Imperial technicians, working in concert using Aegis's communications protocols. The module's electromagnetic pulse technology aims to identify these pods by detecting several key markers generated by living humans."
"A broader effort to prepare for humanitarian rescue

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Awesome! We don’t stop to appreciate that Wing Commander Prophecy somehow managed to out-map Ultima.

Honor_KA: To all my Wing Commander fans and to those playing Star Citizen. Look what I just found doing some summer cleaning.

Here’s a born digital version of you want to pour over all the references and in-jokes. They even named some systems after especially handsome and well-liked fans!

The map was developed by John "Captain Johnny" Guentzel. He was a designer on Prophecy and Secret Ops who was also, as you can tell, a huge cool nerd. In 1997, Origin put a beta version on the WCP site for fans to comment on… and of course I saved it!

It was also the basis for the map used in the Wing Commander movie intro. Longtime Star Citizen fans may remember that this used to hang behind Chris Roberts in videos! This particular version was nicely relit by Klavs:

Shocking but true: this was NOT the first time a Wing

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

The Federal Times has hired the Wallglass Investigations Agency to prove that presidential candidate Zachary Rackham was once a pirate lord.
Financial journalist Bryanna Blanco has long claimed that the business magnate obtained his initial fortune via piracy. Wallglass, an independent firm that is much respected in the intelligence community, is seeking evidence to validate this accusation.
Harlan Turk, Rackham's running mate in the election, has lobbied for Congress to halt the investigation. He asserted: "The Federal Times is breaching the impartiality rules of journalism, and violating the security measures afforded to all presidential candidates."
Political ICE-caster Sura Oyekan also voiced her objections: "This is an outrageous attack on the reputation of a respected public figure, a great man who has contributed so much to Federal commerce and culture."
There was a more speculative

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Starfield isn't even fully out yet, but those who purchase one of the premium editions have been able to play for the last few days. We've already seen lots of interest from Wing Commander fans, including the first designs inspired by Wing Commander ships!

One of the very first is a vessel based on the Banshee from Wing Commander 4, built by Chris Kabigting. You might recall that he was also one of the initial modders to create WC ships in Rebel Galaxy Outlaw among other projects. While these might not be pixel-perfect recreations of the originals, keep in mind that they are not conventional 3D models. This is what fans have been able to accomplish in just a day or two using the in-game ship customizer tools, which is amazing!

Here's another that is a great first attempt at a Kamrani corvette from LordTyrranus!

If you haven't kept up with the game otherwise, here's a trailer with what it looks like!

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I found something recently that I’ve been looking for many, many years: the CD of production music that was the source of the diegetic clip in the Wing Commander movie where Paladin is listening to opera! I haven’t found anyone else who collects production music, but my CD is part of a lot of like twenty others from the same series and I’m happy to pass those on to interested parties should they exist. You can read up on the extensive discography of Wing Commander here!

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

If you caught last night's Voices of War stream, you saw how we discovered that the US and UK versions of Armada shipped with slightly different formats of the game's manual. The American edition has purple on the left and black on the right, and the British version is partially inverted with black and light purple on the left and darker purple on the right. The game's play guides are more similar to eachother with dimensions to match the slightly squatter European shape. I've added pictures of the exterior box as well (US, UK, CD-ROM Classics) for even more side-by-side goodness!

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TONIGHT! I’ll be streaming to talk all about Voices of War, one of the greatest game manuals ever written! 8 PM Eastern on YouTube. Here’s a PDF of the booklet if you want to study up!

Check back here closer to start time for the YouTube link!

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

*Pilots' Federation ALERT*
A campaign by a minor Imperial Family member to deliver precious materials to Laedla has concluded.
The shipments of gold, jadeite and platinum will be used to construct statues of Duval family members, to be erected in public spaces in planetary cities across the Empire.
The project is the brainchild of Archduke Otto Lombardo-Duval, who announced:
"I am deeply grateful to all the pilots who mined or transported the resources we required. Work has already begun to forge them into beautiful works of art, commemorating past Emperors and other noble holders of the Duval name."
"It is my honour to confirm the first two statues will be of Emperor Arissa Lavigny-Duval, located in the palace's central plaza on Capitol, and of Lady Florence Lavigny, placed within the main square of Topaz's capital city alongside the memorial sculpture of Emperor Hengist."
Laedla Empire

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

A private discussion among Aegis leadership regarding mass Thargoid abductions has been made public.
Recordings of Professor Alba Tesreau, Aden Tanner and Seo Jin-ae were sent to and published by all newsfeeds, including the Pilots' Federation. File data shows that their conversation took place shortly before Professor Tesreau's statement to the media on July 18th, in Alba Tesreau's office at Aegis headquarters in Duamta.
After a brief period of speculation, Seo Jin-ae herself confirmed that she released the logs. Seo indicated that rumours circulating on 'alternative ICE channels' of Aegis withholding information from the public were false, and that Tesreau intended to announce evidence of human abductions even before the Dedicant tragedy brought the news to prominence.
Ernesto Rios analysed the new information in an article for Vox Galactica:
"Leaks of classified information are nothing new,

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

A real surprise today: Dennis Mull sent me an envelope of Smudo autographs! Smudo is a German hip hop artist who loved Wing Commander and so got to have a cameo in Prophecy! You can learn more about that here.

These images were part of a photo series that we've also cataloged here.

Now we are learning about the music of Smudo.

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

I’m reading the investment column in Victory Streak and there’s two things I don’t understand. I can’t tell if they’re meaningless or if it’s because I have absolutely no familiarity with finance...

1. In the subhead “Platolum Alloys + Prussian Retailers = Practical Thinking?” what does ‘Prussian Retailers’ refer to?
2. The last line of the article: “remember oil and carpets, two industries that enjoyed temporary fortune, then plummeted.” This has the cadence of a joke or an idiom... but it’s inscrutable to me. Anyone know what it’s referencing?

In case you were wondering, Colonel Blair did invest in platolum and it went pretty well! From the Kilrathi Saga scrapbook:

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

The Thargoids have unexpectedly abandoned the region around Wregoe BU-Y b2-0, mere days after being discovered.
They were believed to be present due to an ancient site on the planet Wregoe BU-Y b2-0 1 c, which hosted a conflict between Guardian and Thargoid forces millions of years ago. Aegis has confirmed reports that all Thargoids have now disappeared from that area of space. Aden Tanner delivered a summary:
"Our pilots can no longer detect a single Thargoid ship anywhere in that region. In military terms, they have undertaken a full tactical withdrawal. It usually requires overwhelming firepower to drive out Thargoid forces, especially from multiple systems. In this case, there was no fleet action or anti-xeno operation sufficiently large to cause this response."
Dr Jeong-Hui Shin of the Holloway Bioscience Institute observed:
"This is atypical behaviour for the Thargoid species. Their

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

After learning about how Denis Loubet came up with Wing Commander's enduring radar display I've been looking into how the design developed over the series. I found a note in the WC2 manual I never picked up on: "In VGA graphics mode, the shade of the dot indicates its range."

I ran some tests and sure enough, it's true! Each dot has THREE shades reserved in the 256-color palette. Close is within 5,000 meters, medium is 5,000-25,000 and far is over 30,000! NEVER noticed in gameplay. So I made a chart:

Strange case I just remembered: Special Operations 1 has the Gettysburg escorted by Epees that show up as GREEN on your radar... for about a second and a half between cutscenes! What an odd addition that never shows up again.

I went on a little tangent experimenting with this. Trying to fly to the Gettysburg remotely to see them hits a bug, no ships spawn until you get to the exact nav point and suddenly

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

Vox Galactica's Jade Sanderlyn reviews developments in the ongoing war against the Thargoids.
"There have been some impressive territorial gains against the Thargoids in recent weeks. The number of systems controlled by the Titans' invasion fleets has tumbled, allowing many millions of people to return to their homes. This is largely thanks to coordinated action by independent pilots and anti-xeno squadrons."
"However, I take no pleasure in reporting that the 'unsubstantiated rumours' I discussed last month are true. The Thargoids' increased interest in capturing escape pods has been verified, with the appearance of a new vessel designed for this very task. Scythe-class hunters are now launching attacks en masse, using a combination of unique hull-breaching munitions and recovery drones to abduct living people."
"It's believed that the Scythes were responsible for the disappearance of

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

It may be the dog days of summer in the northern hemisphere and the throes of winter in the south, but GOG is ready to kick off fall today. The Autumn Sale runs from August 28 through September 11. We've noted a few quirks and omissions in the discount rate this year, and they've stepped it up a bit this time. Wing Commanders Prophecy and Privateer 2 are discounted by 70%, and Armada plus Academy are each 55% off. All other DOS/Windows Wing Commander games get the regular 75% markdown from the normal $5.99 price. Just for fun, I checked Strike Commander and it's on sale for 50% off!

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Is there a better aesthetic than ~1994 Origin CD-ROM design?

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

Presidential candidate Zachary Rackham has denied allegations that he was a notorious pirate lord prior to becoming an entrepreneur.
Financial journalist Bryanna Blanco has long maintained that the business magnate gained his initial fortune by means of piracy. She recently announced that she was renewing efforts to prove his criminality, thereby invalidating him from holding the presidency under Federal electoral laws.
In an exclusive interview with Sol Today, Mr Rackham addressed the situation:
"I've always been highly amused by these stories, which make out that I was some kind of swashbuckling corsair in my youth. No doubt they've helped boost sales of The Federal Times."
"But in the Federation, we have laws to protect innocent people – just like me! – from libellous accusations. It's time for Ms Blanco to discard her poisonous obsession with me, or I'll be forced to defend my good