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Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

In yesterday's update about connections between Wing Commander and Star Wars, we mentioned that the Hellcat takeoff scene from the Wing Commander IV intro had been the last one created. It turns out that that story hasn't been widely told… and it answers a small mystery the fandom has wondered about for almost thirty years!

Here's the story: As Wing Commander IV was preparing for launch, Chris Roberts wasn't happy with the game's introduction. He felt that the game's cinematic introduction wasn't doing enough to capture the player. A long standing philosophy at Origin was that the most effort (and by implication money) should be spent on the opening of a given game because that more than anything was what could guarantee a title would capture the player's attention. And Wing Commander IV had a spectacular intro… although it was one already compromised by the film shoot running out of time for the

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

This month's analysis of the influence held by key figures in the core systems has arrived, courtesy of Conrad Sterling of Vox Galactica.
His latest survey of system populations suggests the following five powers enjoy the largest sphere of influence:
Rank 1: Edmund Mahon – 1,403 systems
Rank 2: Aisling Duval – 1,383 systems
Rank 3: Arissa Lavigny-Duval - 1,269 systems
Rank 4: Yuri Grom - 995 systems
Rank 5: Li Yong-Rui - 724 systems
Vox Galactica will provide another update on the state of the powers next month.

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Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

We've created a new timeline that shows you almost day-by-day (sometimes hour-by-hour!) what happened in Wing Commander IV! Since 2025 and 2673 have the same 'layout' of a year this means we can track Wing Commander IV 'as it happens' starting at the end of July. You can study the new timeline in Spreadsheet form here or read below for notes about how it was created and why it is different from previous attempts.

A New Approach

The issue determining a coherent day-by-day timeline for Wing Commander IV has always been the need to fit the events of the story into two weeks. This requirement derives from Paladin's line in the introduction: "...The Assembly looks forward to the results of your investigation. We shall decide a course of action within a fortnight…" The issue is that when the obvious time references in the novel are collected and the other references in the game are pinned together that

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

You know, everybody always complains about the hairless Kilrathi in the Wing Commander movie...

... but nobody ever talks about this guy from Walking Wounded, a Kilrathi that clearly has a receding hairline!

According to the episode's script he is the WEAPONS OFFICER of the Kamekh-class corvette Nir'Runinh. And here's something you might not have noticed in a regular watch: he's also the leading kil in the boarding party that tries to capture the Pleiku. He's the one that stops at the window and is then sucked out into space by the explosion!

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Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

This is a reminder that we have another fun #Wingnut movie night planned on Discord this evening! The ongoing theme will be movies that inspired Wing Commander in some way. Tonight's film is Star Wars (1977), a movie that needs no introduction. You can find details on that as well as how to watch along with us in the announcement post here. Note that we are watching the "de-specialized" version of the movie which is available for download online. The movie will start about 7 PM PST/10 PM EST but feel free to drop by and hang any time!

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Greetings WingNuts,Midway represents another decade forward in our exploration of war movies that influenced Wing Commander and while several of us remembered it fondly from our youths what we found was that it was very, very slow. The first hour plus is a lot of Dambusters-style maneuvering to get us to Midway and it just isn't something you'd see in a movie today. And then the battles themselves are nowhere near as spectacular, a mix of colorized stock footage and not-quite-believable airplane props. We haven't gotten to Tora! Tora! Tora! yet but I'm betting it's going to hold up better. I also want to especially thank Dundradal, who showed up for the night to offer his experience as a professional Pacific War historian despite being a new father! Get some sleep, pilot.

While several interviews and other production material notes that Midway was used as reference for the Wing Commander movie's VFX

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

It's almost new year - Lunar new year that is - so GOG is celebrating with a big new round of discounts on Wing Commander games! Each package is 59% off or $2.45 per package. Finish out your digital collection some time in the next ten days!

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Sheppard has overhauled his classic Wing Commander 1/2 difficulty tool and released it as Wing Hard 2.0. The program allows players to carefully tune shield/armor values as well as asteroid/mine radius and damage. This means that fans can customize the games' difficulty in a way that still preserves just the right amount of challenge. The new version also works natively in either DOS or DOSBox for maximum compatibility. You can read up on the details, installation instructions and grab the file at the CIC Forums here (file mirror here 96 k zip).

WINGHARD v2.0 README (1 January 2025)

WHAT IS IT? WINGHARD is a "difficulty" editor for the original Wing Commander series (WC1/WC2) and their addons (SM/SO).

WHY DO WE NEED IT? A lot of O.G. Wingnauts are in their forties (or fifties) now and we just don't have the time anymore to suffer through some of Chris Roberts' design decisions made to extend the

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

The Wing Commander movie club thoroughly enjoyed revisiting Star Wars, which we felt was just about a perfect movie. Next up: a movie that is not at all perfect that most of us probably have not ever seen. This time around, we held a vote for the theme for the next movie and the electorate chose 'something weird' instead of another war movie or sci-fi classic. And that something is An American Werewolf in Paris (1997)! You can join us this Friday via Discord to watch along.

An American Werewolf in Paris is a 1997 horror-comedy film which is ostensibly a sequel to the 1981 film An American Werewolf in London (though this is apparently more of a Privateer 2 style connection). It might best be described as a totally forgettable 1990s horror movie that briefly held the attention of the MTV-generation. If you've seen it, it was probably at a dollar theater or the result of a questionable Blockbuster rental!

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

We have another update on the road towards Origin composer George Oldziey's next great Wing Commander album. Unfortunately progress intersected with the devastating fires in California recently. Mr. Oldziey happened to be on the ground near LA as things were happening. He and his friends are safe, but some of the folks he was visiting sadly lost their homes, and the audio studio where they were set to work on the album mix was also without power for the trip.

Although this will slightly slow completion of the project, work still continues remotely as George continues to finalize the sound with expert audio engineer Bruce Botnick. He's also put together this impressive sample to give fans a taste of what's to come!

Greetings all. I wanted to offer a quick update as to the progress of the project. As I mentioned in a previous update I was planning to fly to LA to have the great Bruce Botnick mix all

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

The wreckage of Titan Cocijo far above Earth has attracted thousands of ships over the past several weeks.
As extensively reported in December, a huge effort from the Federal Navy, the Pilots' Federation and other independent pilots brought down the last remaining Thargoid Titan after it assaulted the Sol system. Titan Cocijo's destruction was confirmed on December 18th 3310.
An excerpt from an article by Jason Nygaard of the Federal Times offered the following:
"Thousands of ships have descended on the carcass of Titan Cocijo now that the caustic cloud left in the mothership's wake has dissipated to less hazardous levels. Some seek to claim a trophy of this military victory, while others seek to gain knowledge of Thargoid technology. Others still have been seen posing for selfies, using external camera modules to take the perfect snapshot for ICE channels."
"Federal authorities had sought to

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

The wreckage of Titan Cocijo far above Earth has attracted thousands of ships over the past several weeks.
As extensively reported in December, a huge effort from the Federal Navy, the Pilots' Federation and other independent pilots brought down the last remaining Thargoid Titan after it assaulted the Sol system. Titan Cocijo's destruction was confirmed on December 18th 3310.
An excerpt from an article by Jason Nygaard of the Federal Times offered the following:
"Thousands of ships have descended on the carcass of Titan Cocijo now that the caustic cloud left in the mothership's wake has dissipated to less hazardous levels. Some seek to claim a trophy of this military victory, while others seek to gain knowledge of Thargoid technology. Others still have been seen posing for selfies, using external camera modules to take the perfect snapshot for ICE channels."
"Federal authorities had sought to

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

A new planetary survey initiative has been announced by Brewer Corporation, calling for pilots to scan locations around the core systems.
Following the recent deployment of the megaship Trailblazer Echo, CEO Madelyn Teague made the following announcement from the megaship's bridge:
"Recent events have accelerated plans to explore a new age of system colonisation efforts. Brewer Corporation has proudly supported ambitious projects such as the Colonia Bridge, and worked with other corporations to improve and increase starports across the galaxy. Now we take another step forward in the continued march across the stars."
"Universal Cartographics has partnered with us to collect, analyse and process the very latest exploration data, to help calibrate our metrics for optimal colonisation targets."
Brewer Corporation, which constructs Coriolis and Orbis starports, has supported localised expansion

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

rap1983 took a break from 3D printing to share the latest progress on his current Tarsus model. Although he doesn't necessarily consider it complete, I really like how it's posed with trees in the background and a service/tow truck working underneath. That's a really nice touch!

My current mockup of my Tarsus.At the moment I'm having technical problems with my 3D printer, so I'm taking an involuntary break.

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

This is a reminder that we have another fun #Wingnut movie night planned on Discord this evening! The ongoing theme will be movies that inspired Wing Commander in some way. Tonight's film is An American Werewolf in Paris (1997) which was shot in the same factory as Wing Commander, used the same production company and took advantage of the same tax dodge! You can find details on that as well as how to watch along with us in the announcement post here. The movie will start about 7 PM PST/10 PM EST but feel free to drop by and hang any time!

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

After Action Report: Star Wars

Greetings WingNuts,

It shouldn't be a surprise that we had a blast with Star Wars! The movie holds up exactly as well as we hoped it would… the worst anyone could say was that the first act was a little slower than we remembered, and that's nothing now that we've seen The Dam Busters! Our overall review was that the original Star Wars deserves its reputation for both inspiring later movies and… video games.

It would be impossible to catalog every single thing in the Wing Commander canon that was influenced by Star Wars; the series itself is at its heart an attempt to create an interactive Star Wars experience! But we have collected some fun connections from the screening to list out here… be sure to share your favorites on the forums to add to the legend!

To start, here are some of the items we mentioned in the initial article. In the Dam Busters analysis we compared Wing

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

We reported last year that Narrarrol was building out a Wing Commander RPG in the M-Space ruleset. He had a Salthi ready to go at the time, and now its opposing Hornet is ready. He's published a whole article at his blog about the creation process. It's in Spanish, but you can easily translate the process into your language of choice. It sounds pretty involved!

I share a step-by-step guide on the construction of the #WingCommander Hornet light fighter following the spacecraft design rules of the M-Space role playing game by @77mundos.bsky.social. Source information, reflections, hypotheses, decisions, rules and references.

After building several stable #WingCommander space fighter sheets using the M-Space RPG ruleset, first steps in creating player characters. The origin templates and life events tables provide many nuances and are of great help.

Quote from Freelancer News-Bot

Release date and info about v0.5, everything is going as expected, happy with the results.

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Last year, we reported about the discovery of the original stock photo behind Blair's pinup in the Wing Commander movie. Today, we've discovered another one: meet... "The Champion!". He's the figure who appears on one of the pinup posters in the Tiger's Claw's lounge in the Wing Commander movie, most visible behind Maniac just after the pulsar jump.

To create the prop they placed him in front of a Confederation logo along with text that reads CHAMPION with an additional text bock at the bottom. It's obscured but it looks like his name ends in 'PACHO' and then there's text that partially reads MARTIAL ARTS and 2653 below him. Most interesting of all, the graphics department seems to have added a Kilrathi text tattoo to the stock photo model's bicep!

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

This is a reminder that the GOG's Lunar New Year sale is winding down. You have just a couple days left to save 59% on Wing Commander games across the board. I've also noticed that the company has been emphasizing its Dreamlist feature a ton lately. This allows people to vote for titles that are not currently available but that they'd like to have added. Back in the day, Wing Commander garnered thousands of votes from fans before the series was eventually added. Now Chris Roberts' Freelancer game is featured very prominently in new marketing materials. EA's Command & Conquer Ultimate Collection is also at the top of the list. There are also still a few outstanding WC entries you can vote for: Kilrathi Saga, Arena and Super Wing Commander. Significant practical/technical hurdles exist which are the reason they're not currently available, but it doesn't hurt to toss them a vote!