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Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

The Red Family cartel has suffered enormous losses following a series of strikes carried out by the Federal Intelligence Agency.

Crime correspondent Ethan Takahashi summarised his report in The Federal Times:

"In a coordinated operation spanning multiple systems, FIA troops raided hidden Red Family bases and manufacturing plants. Dozens of cartel members were killed in combat and thousands more arrested, while vast amounts of illegal substances were seized."

The narcotics kingpin Oberon Church spent decades establishing his empire, but with such catastrophic losses it has been virtually dismantled. Members of Federal Congress have congratulated the FIA for 'removing this blight on Federal society'.

Executive Agent Viola Trask suggested that "this success was only possible due to the detailed information volunteered by Jan Sandoval, one of the Red Family's founders." It is widely assumed that

Quote from Star Trek Online News-Bot

The efforts of the Alliance have made a difference in the galaxy. The constant incursions by the Borg and others have been beaten back, thanks to a herculean effort of thousands of Starfleet, KDF, Romulan Republic and Jem’Hadar Captains working in concert. We can’t guarantee that these forces will never return, but all four quadrants are a little safer today. Excellent work, Captains. Starting this weekend, Red Alerts are moving from being always available to being special weekend events, with improved rewards! When these Red Alerts are live, you’ll be able to earn 35 Marks of your choice every time you play, with no cooldowns to prevent you from getting back into the action. These Task Force Operations will return to the galaxy regularly, as the groups of invaders do their best to take control of the four quadrants of the galaxy. This weekend, we’ll start with a social triple Red Alert

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

Following a skirmish with a group of mercenaries, security forces in the Meene system have launched an operation to capture enemy agents in order to investigate the attack.

Security Chief Harper Vargas of the Meene Defence Force gave the following statement:

"The mercenaries were targeting Ram Tah's Phoenix Base, but it's clear they were just hired hands. We need to recover as many surviving mercenaries as we can and interrogate them, so we can find the real culprits."

The Independent HIP 29241 Green Party, which is overseeing the initiative, has asked pilots to recover both occupied and damaged escape pods, and to deliver them to Felice Dock in the Meene system. The organisation has also placed a kill order on all ships on its wanted list, to ensure that those contributing to the recovery can do so safely.

The campaign begins on the 8th of November 3304 and will run for one week. If the final

Quote from Star Trek Online News-Bot

Starting this Thursday, August 23rd, new Destroyer-class vessels are being made available on the C-Store for Federation and Klingon characters, and their respected allied members among the Romulan and Dominion factions. These new vessels will be available in both Non-Fleet and Fleet variants. Special Introductory Pricing Discount! From now until Monday, August 27th you can get these ships for 20% off. Thereafter, they will return to their normal pricing at 3000 ZEN when purchased individually, or 4000 ZEN for the 2-ship Bundle. Fleet versions of each of these Destroyers will unlock upon completing your Fleet Starbase’s Tier 4 Shipyard. The standard Fleet Module discounts apply if you have purchased the ships from the C-Store. Lafayette-class Recon Destroyer (T6) In these trying times, constant conflict and ever-present hostility have made exploration and reconnaissance at the edges of the

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

A further seven Federal factions have severed ties with the superpower in protest against government monitoring of communications.
These latest secessions have been undertaken by minor factions that do not control any systems, including Unktock Free, United Posenoi League and Progressive Party of Inggale.
Political journalist Sofia Trevino reported for The Federal Times:
"Eight factions had previously declared independence from the Federation, and now an even greater number forms the third wave of rebellion. It's clear that their populations feel empowered to take a stand against losing their constitutional rights of privacy."
"Vice President Archer shrugged off this latest development, maintaining that 'the Proactive Detection Bureau performs a vital security role in these troubled times'. Since none of these latest factions currently govern a system, he may also believe that resistance to

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

New Kuwembaa Labour, which controls five systems, has triggered a second wave of secession by severing ties with the Federation.
Following the victory of the Azaladshu Free, a minority of Federal factions are breaking away from the superpower in protest against its civil surveillance laws.
Governor Sonal Mishra of New Kuwembaa Labour made this statement:
"The Federal government has granted itself draconian powers to spy on its own citizens. Regrettably, the only way to avoid this is to withdraw from the Federal Accord. I urge the president to respect our wishes and accept our sovereign status."
In response, President Zachary Hudson ordered Governor Mishra to abide by constitutional law or face the consequences. He has also redirected the Fortress Liberty megaship to the Kuwembaa system.
Political commentators believe that three other democratic Federal factions are ready to follow the example

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Double Damage games has announced that

Rebel Galaxy Outlaw

will be released on August 13! It will debut exclusively on the

Epic Games

store for $29.99. Check out our

previous coverage

for some exciting videos and screenshots of what to expect. The developers are huge Wing Commander fans, and the game's shaping up to be one of the most promising tributes to Privateer in many years!

August 13th, 2019 - That's what you wanted to know, right? You want to know MORE?

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

The highly anticipated launch of

Rebel Galaxy Outlaw

is

here

! Our previous

coverage

has highlighted many of the things that made it a great tribute to Wing Commander and a fun game on its own. LOAF and Dundradal also got a chance to fly around in a preview copy in the last episode of

All Wings Considered

(returning this Thursday!), and they had a blast. You can check out their playthrough below (jump to 30:15 if it doesn't autostart in the right place). Chief developer and Wingnut Travis Baldree also put together a nifty 'getting started' video to acquaint players to RGO. You can grab for PC it on the

Epic Game Store now

for $29.99. Playstation 4 and Nintendo Switch ports have been announced for future release.

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Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Double Damage games has finally announced a release date for the various ports of Rebel Galaxy Outlaw, September 22! The game came out last year on PC to strong reviews. The development team includes Wing Commander superfans such as Travis Baldree and Howard Day, so our past previews have noted that the game is infused with tons Privateer-inspired spirit (and Easter eggs). This month's multiplatform launch includes Xbox, PS4, Nintendo Switch and Steam. Target price is about $30. We know quite few folks who were holding out for one of these versions, so this is great news. Here's an overview of the game's first hour as well as a cinematic trailer for folks who haven't seen what the game's like.

Hello to our amazingly patient pilots! Once again, we want to give a big huge THANK YOU to all those who’ve been waiting for this news. We know it hasn’t been fun waiting — it hasn’t been fun for

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

The team over at Double Damage Games has announced that the highly acclaimed space sim Rebel Galaxy Outlaw will be coming to the Xbox platform! Most of the CIC Staff plays a good chunk of our modern games on the Xbox, so some of us who don't have a high end gaming PC were looking forward to this. Meanwhile, progress on the previously announced Playstation 4 and Switch ports continues, although the games won't make it out this year as expected. A new development roadmap will be published next month with more details on the timeline. A preview video of the Nintendo version is below, and it looks pretty sweet! The PS4 and Xbox versions will more or less be identical to the game on PC. You can currently buy the game on the Epic Game Store where there is a $10 coupon that can be stacked on top of a 25% holiday discount, which makes the game a whopping $12.49! Quite a steal!

We have something exciting

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

When Maniac and Blair first arrive on the Tiger Claw they're wearing CSS Concordia patches on their peacoats. It's not really clear why unless the only other option was a Tiger Claw one.

He changes sweaters between acts, too! Or I guess maybe he just hot glues a different patch onto the same sweater.

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Cybot has returned with a variety of exotic renders. This set is based on familiar WC2 and Privateer-centric scenes with a little bit of creative flair. Cybot's also made a handful of model files available to download, including the Drayman cockpit and some of the guns. You can grab those at the CIC Forums!

A Drayman cockpit. I think it works.

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Something from Privateer I never noticed before: the Blockade Point Alpha system is totally redone for Righteous Fire! So I got to wondering what else might be different...

...so I extracted the game's SECTOR files, diff'd them and learned how Privateer handles its random encounters (thanks greatly to the Playtester's Guide!). Here's a Google Doc with all the changes. Most of these are tiny changes to encounter tables in systems you play missions in, all of which are intended to make your life harder: more chances of Retros and Kilrathi, fewer Confed and Militia forces.

I also found that there's a "Test Bed" system still in the game but not connected to the rest of the map (no jump points). Crazy! It has an encounter table that can spawn any of the regular ships. I added it as the appendix to the doc linked above.

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

I decided to try and take apart Wing Commander Armada to learn about how it generates maps. The 'Campaign' mode has 11 pre-set sectors that are always the same but the 'Armada' mode creates random ones. Where do the names come from and how many are there?

Long story short, I found the table of all 704 system names with a hex editor and cross referenced them with the published campaign maps. 704 systems is 11 blocks of 64 each. The first systems in the start of each block all appear in their respective campaign sector while the Armada mode can pull from anywhere in the table for a random map. So here's a spreadsheet of them all... the immediate takeaway is that I've discovered 118 new star systems previously uncataloged in Wing Commander lore! Also the list is super fun, lots and lots of 1994 gags and obvious Origin in-jokes.

Next I wanted to learn more about the planet graphics. I've found they're

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

We're one week into Origin composer George Oldziey's mission to make a new live reorchestration of Wing Commander music, and the numbers are very impressive so far. The campaign is nearly to $15,000, which is very close to the $16,000 minimum threshold when combined with additional support from superfan Matt Hiltner. This gives us great optimism that an additional $6000 to add a live choir to the mix will be possible. Next up, however, is another anecdote about his experience creating the music at Origin in the beginning. It sounds stressful, but the results were well worth it! For additional context, George posted side-by-side photos of him then and now. You can also listen to that final WC3 patrol track below:

Your browser cannot play this file. Click here to download the track.

Hi everyone. First of all, BRAVO for getting us so close to the target so quickly! I'm already hearing that

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

You’ve probably heard whispers that Ginger Lynn is famous for something other than Wing Commander, so here’s a wonderful interview about her paintings!

The initial interview linked to from that one has a great Wing Commander reminiscence, though!

Johnny: Speaking of sci-fi, you played Rachel Coriolis in several of the mid-90s "Wing Commander" games. What was yourfavorite part of those games?

Ginger: I loved playing Rachel Coriolis in the "Wing Commander" series. I got to be the weapons load-out officer, so when you're playing the game, any time that you go into battle, you have to come to me. We shot a lot of it, not everything, but most of it was on green screen. My favorite memory was my grandmother came down to the set one day, and we were shooting something with green screen. My grandmother walked in front of the camera not knowing, and the entire cast and crew was laughing at my grandmother because

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

I picked up this magazine for its promise of Wing Commander Armada strategies... and 80% of the article ended up being about how you connect to the other player! The

GOG release

makes multiplayer easy on a modern machine, I’ve played more Armada in the last two months than I did in the previous decade combined. Stay tuned for more Armada news in the near future!

Okay, so you've bought Wing Commander Armada and you're ready to take on the head-to-head challengers. If you read last month's review, you know that this game's best feature is its two-player support. But if you've followed any of the message traffic on the on-line networks you've probably seen many messages titled "Armada Modem Play: HELP!!"

Why all the confusion? Despite advancing technology in virtually every other sphere of computing, telecommunications is still an arcane art requiring a mastery of fragile components, obscure modem

Quote from Wing Commander News

Avid Wing Commander collector

Christian Klein

has found another rare artifact. He managed to locate a British copy of the game on 5.25" low density disks that may be an earlier release than the mass produced copy most of us are familiar with. In it, Hunter is named "Dart," which we know was an original placeholder name for the character. The first screenshot below shows this, and the second is from the British 3.5" high density disk release. LOAF points out that the name change came late in development, and both Hunter and Maniac actually have "Dart" and "Joker" nameplates on their helmets in all versions of the final game!

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

We have an interesting artifact to share today! Former Origin designer Billy Joe Cain sent along pictures of an awesome little collectible that was apparently made in small numbers for Chris Roberts' Strike Commander. It's a 4.5 inch long F-16 replica with custom Strike Commander decals on the wings. The fighter's currently listed on eBay for a pretty spendy starting price north of $2000, but the proceeds go to benefit the REEF program that combats human trafficking. If there's a wealthy benefactor out there who's also a big Strike Commander fan, now's your chance to do some good! Find the auction page here.

Have you ever seen one of these?

It's being listed on eBay to raise money to end human trafficking through REEF

I think there were only a few of these custom made for the team, but I don't have confirmation yet.

The price is insane, but it's to raise funds for our anti-human trafficking

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Wing Commander Prophecy lead designer Billy Joe Cain has an exciting new auction up and running. He's been steadily releasing items from his personal stash to support REEF, the anti-human tracking charity that he founded. A handful of fellow Origin teammates sold their posters back in the early 2000s, but Billy has held on to his for almost twenty-five years. But now's the time for it to go - with proceeds going towards a noble cause! You can find the auction here. It's currently listed at about $210.

Wing Commander Prophecy movie-style poster brought out of the Time Capsule for its 25th anniversary!!

Are YOU ready for the Ultimate Sci Fi Combat Simulation COLLECTIBLE?!?!

Help end #humantrafficking with your purchase!

#BreakAndAttack

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