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Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

*Pilots' Federation ALERT*
Factions aligned to the Empire and Federation have declared war in Pichch, which lies in the path of Thargoid expansion.
Relations between the two superpowers have been strained in recent weeks, following the corporate skirmish in Tavgi. This has exacerbated hostilities between two long-standing rivals in the Pichch system, causing diplomatic negotiations to collapse.
The ruling council of Gauluujja Exchange claimed: "Imperial saboteurs have been undermining our operations for years, and a military solution is now the only option." A similar statement was made by the Gliese 44 Citizens' Forum's leadership: "The typical Federal response to their problems is to blame the Empire, so we are forced to resolve this on the battlefield."
The situation has also impacted the ongoing war against the Thargoids, as outlined in a report by freelance correspondent Karleen Troy:

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

LOAF realized that today is Tim Curry's birthday, which is not a milestone that I've ever registered before. Mr. Curry masterfully voiced Melek in Wing Commander 3 in one of his most underappreciated roles, so it's nice to get a chance to call this out. Happy Birthday Tim Curry!

Tim Curry has been trending all day (birthday, not dead!) and it’s great that everyone has a completely different favorite role they’re remembering. Happy birthday Melek in Wing Commander III but not IV!

But ever the humble Wing Commander servant, LOAF did not point out that he also shares this special day with his distant twin. Today is also LOAF's birthday! We're so lucky to have his insight to add add to our foundation of Wing Commander knowledge every day. Here he is in a recent visit to Gaea to do some Retro research. Happy Birthday!

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Privateer mattes the screens showing the Steltek artifact... but I’ve discovered there are open versions in the game's files with a little more picture!

An Alien Artifact or Ancient Artifact is a Steltek relic discovered on Mars in 2668.

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

Allied and independent leaders have called upon the Empire and the Federation to discourage faction hostilities following conflict in Tavgi.
Political journalist Conrad Sterling summarised the latest developments for Vox Galactica:
"Minor skirmishes between superpower-aligned factions are not uncommon. But the Caine-Massey and Torval Mining Ltd corporations have significant political ties, so their clash has led to bullish rhetoric from members of both Congress and the Senate."
"Many systems where Federal and Imperial populations coexist are experiencing civil tension and spates of public disturbance. There is a sense that the historic rivalry between two militaristic superpowers is being rekindled, and that similar sparks elsewhere may fan the flames at the worst possible time."
In the Alliance Assembly, Councillor Nakato Kaine highlighted the potential repercussions:
"Military distractions

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

John Nelson is back to building out the Confed fleet with his latest WC3 Lego creation, the Thunderbolt heavy fighter. It has some particularly distinctive angles that were hard to duplicate, but he's done a great job given the limitation of parts to work with. And check out that heck of a turret gun on the aft!

Finally got it done. After a few months of gathering pieces and accounting for slopes, angles and colors and proportions, Confed's "lead sled" is done. I didn’t use purple for its TCS Victory or Hurricane Squadron markings since purple parts are more rare, and I like the yellow and blue of its post war design more. I also changed the front where the gun batteries are to give the look a bit more pizazz.

Pliers (would) say, "The Thunderbolt is Confed's big ugly battering ram to knock down whatever is in its way, and with that blaster load out and a torpedo it can."

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

A scientific delegation from Aegis has visited Utopia to compare its Sim-Archive with Salvation's Nemesis Failsafe designs.
A summary from Dr Maximo Fonseca was shared with newsfeeds:
"Simguru Antal agreed to meet with us as a sign of good faith, and to refute claims of collaboration with Salvation. He personally introduced us to the neurosmiths of Utopia, who can digitally encode electrochemical activity within the brain. I took part in a demonstration, uploading some of my own long-term memories into the Sim-Archive. Afterwards, my colleague Dr Cooper enjoyed a remarkably accurate simulation of my university graduation thirty years ago, who claimed she found it hard to believe the memory was not her own."
"Analysis of the Nemesis Failsafe designs that we provided was swift, but the differences were stark. From what we understood of the summary by Utopian researchers, the Nemesis process

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Matthew Lillard has announced a fun event taking place on Monday afternoon. He'll be playing the board game Operation with Star Trek Picard's fantastic Todd Stashwick in order to promote the Tabletop News channel. He'll also have some giveaways related to his own gaming company, Beadle and Grimm's. Find it here live between 4 and 6 pm Pacific time on the 17th. Sounds like it'll be a blast!

I will be cutting into a patient with the hopes of victory! Watch us do it from 4-6PST. Giving away some @BeadleAndGrimms stuff on @watchtabletop!

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

The Wing Loader project to add full speech to the original (Kilrathi Saga) version of Wing Commander 1 has been out for a couple weeks now. In that time, Destro and a number of fans have been able to put the mod through its paces and play through the Vega Campaign. The time has been put to good use to fix a handful of minor bugs and also add some new features. The user interface now supports the pilot transfer program, has menu elements for launching WC3 now includes in-flight speech comms for The Secret Missions. You can grab the update here (345 meg zip)!

I've just completed a run of Wing Commander using Wing Loader and fixed any issues I encountered.

New in Version 0.82
- Fix multiple issues with lines not triggering, including the final winning cutscene.
- Added Wing Commander 3 to the list of games.
- Added in-flight coms to all the Secret Missions. (Testing Phase)
- Added Wing Commanders Pilot

Quote from Crossfire Image-Bot

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Here are the flick backgrounds for the Righteous Fire intro. The Origin FX system works just like an old cartoon with transparent cells animated over plates like these.

Did you ever wonder why the RF intro feels a little out of place? It’s so BIG compared to the rest of the campaign. It’s because it was originally a scene cut from Privateer that was given totally new dialog! It was made as a losing endgame on the case where you go bankrupt.

They solved the need for it by simply having the game not charge you a landing fee if there’s a chance it will take you below 0 credits. Space welfare! (Of course bankruptcy was already a rare case... compared to, like, just exploding.)

It’s a little crazy that Privateer, part of the interactive movie craze, has only three cutscenes: the intro, the ending and this.

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

I'm not sure if it's the hectic week or staying up late to watch the new episode of Picard, but I've got a headache and need something to relax to. Fortunately, Scribbler has dropped a double dose of his Wing Commander 2 ambiance/ASMR videos. The new clips are a nice contrast with each other: the dark red comm room and the light breezy Concordia lounge. I especially like that the lounge has piano music inspired by Jazz. Check them out below!

Today we return to the lounge of the carrier ship TCS Concordia. A little more luxurious than a strap like the Tigers Claw. Enjoy the peace from the war among comrades, with a drink. Entertained by the piano sounds of "Jazz". Rest and chill. Who knows what else is to come at this time.

In this file we return to the Caernarvon space station. A remote outpost of the Confederacy. Ideal for making money without the dangers of war. Except for a few minor skirmishes

Quote from No Man

Hello everyone,

Thank you to everyone playing the Interceptor Update, especially those taking the time to report any issues they encounter via Zendesk or console crash reporting.

We are listening closely to your feedback, and have identified and resolved a number of issues. These fixes are included in patch 4.22, which is now live on Steam and will be coming to other platforms as soon as possible.

Bug fixes

• Fixed an issue that prevented the Minotaur from correctly targeted corrupted Sentinels while under AI control.
• Fixed an issues that caused certain wall-mounted base decorations to rotate without engaging the rotate part option.
• Fixed an issue that prevented some technologies from being installed in freighter inventories.
• Fixed an issue that prevented the Teleport Receiver from being installed inside a Sentinel interceptor.
• Fixed an issue that could prevent the Sentinel Multi-Tool from being cleared out of its case

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

I've been looking at the movie cockpit instruments lately because it seems they filmed the insert shots of things like stick handling at least twice. They did an initial shoot on set, then filmed a bunch of Rapier stuff in August 1998 and then more pickups as late as October which is getting awfully close to their delivery date. Things like the Broadsword instrument panels were reshot at that late date. I was wondering how much you could tell in the final movie if you knew what you were looking for.

Even in the final version, maybe to differentiate Knight's Broadsword from Paladin's, you can see they have different control yokes, but the earlier versions of the Broadsword just looks like maybe original Canberra instruments.

So those might have been intended to be replaced anyway. There's Knight's:

...and Paladin's:

This got me thinking about the Rapier a bit more. The fighter dashboard got a complete

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

*Pilots' Federation ALERT*
Fierce combat in the Tavgi system has resulted in Torval Mining Ltd overcoming Caine-Massey's partner Tavgi Blue Life Inc.
The conflict was triggered by the murder of Caine-Massey's former CEO Johann Fleischer. The assassin was tracked from Mars to the Torval Mining megaship Orchestral Falcon. Circumstantial evidence suggested he was an undercover Imperial agent.
Senator Zemina Torval, whose family owns the company, declared:
"Loyal defenders of the Empire have helped to bring hostilities to an end and can now collect their rewards from the Orchestral Falcon. This accusation from Caine-Massey is baseless – I am not in the habit of assassinating my business rivals. Our security teams have detained the interloper from Federal space who was using false ID as an Imperial mining prospector, and handed him over to the authorities."
Shortly after, a statement was released

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

*Pilots' Federation ALERT*
Fierce combat in the Tavgi system has resulted in Caine-Massey's partner Tavgi Blue Life Inc overcoming Torval Mining Ltd resistance.
The conflict was triggered by the murder of Caine-Massey's former CEO Johann Fleischer. The assassin was tracked from Mars to the Torval Mining megaship Orchestral Falcon. Circumstantial evidence suggested he was an undercover Imperial agent.
Philippa Barlow-Lyons, acting CEO of the Caine-Massey corporation, declared:
"Largely thanks to tremendous support from Federal auxiliaries, the path was cleared for us to take control of the Orchestral Falcon megaship. Only then did Torval Mining Ltd agree to hand over Johann's killer, rather than risk the loss of its precious vessel. A security team has now delivered him to Federal authorities, where I am sure we will see justice finally served."
The Federal Intelligence Agency provided an

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

John Nelson has caught the Kilrathi bug (thankfully not the Locanda variant!) and has crafted another Kat ship out of Lego bricks. His little Darket was lovely, and now he's slightly upsized into the sneakier Strakha. He's got a greater mix of colors here, which matches up quite well with the orange and yellow ace variant flown by Stalker in WC3!

Dug through more parts and put together the Wing Commander 3 version of the Strahka. It’s a little more aesthetically pleasing over my Darket even though similar colors were used. Maybe it’s the larger amount of gray pieces. When I get around to some more brown pieces I will replace them.

Pliers (would) say, "This new generation of Strahka is no scarier then the old ones short of some extra guns. These models don’t carry torpedos at least so that’s a load off your mind right kid?"

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

Similarities between the Nemesis Failsafe and Utopia's Sim-Archive have led to questions being asked about a possible connection.
Independent journalist Flint 'Firemaker' Lafosse reported on Seo Jin-ae's recent discoveries:
"We all knew that Salvation had a messiah complex, so it's no surprise that he planned to keep his colossal ego alive after his ancient body died. We also know that Pranav Antal has been digitising his followers' brains for years."
"My question is: did Salvation modify Antal's system for his own private use, rather than reverse-engineer Guardian technology? Or maybe Azimuth and Utopia were secretly working together all this time, and the Sim-Archive has always been Guardian-based? It would explain how Utopia is able to maintain funding for its little tech-bohemian commune."
This theory was critiqued by The Federal Times's technology correspondent Harlow Nassry:
"It is a

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

There's a handful of scenes that don't show up in any of the workprints I've seen from the movie, so I've recreated these from the raw takes. These are work in progress edits with no real sound enhancement and minimal attempts to at least make the color consistent (though sometimes the footage is too dark to truly rescue). I understand why they would cut this particular scene for pacing reasons, but at the same time I think it's a decent moment that sets up Blair and Angel's relationship a bit more. Plot-wise, it's not essential, but if I had a choice I'd keep small character moments like this in the movie. It's not really a long scene either.

This scene also has one of the few outtakes I've found... more of a prank really (not included in this video) where in one take the elevator doors open and Blair and Angel are pretending to make out on the ground.

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Happy Easter out there to those who celebrate! We hope you're having a restful time and staying safe! Thanks to Scribbler for the animated gif below!

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Today we have a nice assortment of Spanish magazine scans from Maxi de Sokar. I frequently just post these as they are since they are often visually engaging and interesting on their own, but in this case I provided rough English translations so you can read the articles as well. The first few pages come from Micromania and are a profile of Origin, Richard Garriott and the development of Wing Commander 3. There's also an Armada review from Issue 78 of the magazine, plus a pretty striking WC3 ad. Finally, there's an Armada add from PCMania. Enjoy!