Well, that turned out to be a pretty short break! After successfully repulsing the Kilrathi from the Vega Sector (we assume), the T.C.S. Tiger’s Claw gets called away to an urgent assignment in the Denab sector (which is where we are fleeing to in the Bad Ending of Wing Commander). It seems that the colony in the Goddard system has sent out a distress call, then suddenly gone silent. For whatever reason the Confederation doesn’t have any strike assets already in the Denab sector, so off goes the Claw!
This mission tells players right off the bat that the level of difficulty for this expansion pack is going to be significantly greater than in the base game. Granted there are no heavy fighters involved, but you’ve got a bunch of Krants, plus enough Salthi to cause problems. For comparison, Enyo 1, only features a handful of Salthi and Dralthi fighters on a basic patrol.
The mission also introduces three new capital ship classes for the campaign: the Kilrathi Lumbari-class transport, and the Confederation Diligent-class transport and Venture-class corvette. The Lumbari and Diligent aren’t anything particularly exciting – they function pretty much the same as the Dorkir and Drayman class transports from the base game.The Venture-class, however, is something totally new. Ventures aren’t especially durable, but they pack a pretty good punch. We’ll be seeing a lot more of them in both this campaign and Secret Missions 2.
Overall strategy is pretty much the usual: shoot everything that’s hostile. The Lumbari at Nav 1 requires a bit of extra work to bag. It’ll jump out of system pretty quickly, so killing it requires making a beeline for it and ignoring the Salthi escorts for a bit. It’s not a big risk because Hunter can usually keep the fighters busy for a bit, but it’s still not how I personally prefer doing things.
In the video, I run into some kind of weird zoning bug while fighting the last wave of Salthi. For some reason, they’d just explode when I got close to the Claw. I’m guessing this had something to do with the game loading a new zone and needing to destroy any leftover AI objects. It’s odd, but not gamebreaking.