Maniac? Maniac! | Let’s Play Wing Commander: The Secret Missions 2 – Crusade, Charon System, Mission #1

One way or another, all paths in Wing Commander: The Secret Missions 2 – Crusade end up here, flying two retreating missions in the Charon system. The only question is whether or not you’ve done enough to get a good ending for the Firekkans. Losing one of the previous systems will land you here, making a premature retreat and getting a bad ending. Successfully completing all the prior systems still lands you here, but with a good ending. Either way, we’ve got two more missions to fly.

In the bar – hey, Maniac’s back on active duty! Colonel Halycon must be getting desperate. Even “better”, he’ll be our wingman! That’s just… great.

I went through a bunch of attempts on this mission to keep Maniac alive. It’s darn near impossible. He’s a suicidal idiot. He doesn’t obey orders (never has, really), charges into battle, and is perfectly happy to shoot through you to get to a target. Whether you keep playing until you somehow get him to survive, or just give up like me is your choice. Either way, canonically speaking, Maniac officially survives this mission series, and will show up again, eventually.

The mission itself is a relatively simple patrol and destroy. Hit the nav points, and kill everything you find. The one semi-difficult thing is the Snakeir-class at Nav 3, which will jump out if given the opportunity. In and of itself, that’s not enough to fail the mission, but if you want to kill absolutely everything, you’ll have to pop a couple of the Krants and then engage the Snake. Which I didn’t do. Sufficient kills at the end of the mission still get rewarded with another medal.