What matters MOST to you when trying to max out a WC1 play-though?

  • Medals

    Votes: 2 15.4%
  • Kills

    Votes: 2 15.4%
  • Winning Missions/Sectors

    Votes: 6 46.2%
  • Flying better ships

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Keeping your Wingman alive

    Votes: 3 23.1%

  • Total voters
    13
I now wonder if the Salthi Ace Bhurak Starkiller would show up in this mission if you didn't kill him earlier, much like Khajja does in Venice 1 after sparing him twice before. This could provide the missing medal points.
This would probably cost the Silver Star in Gateway 3, but open up the Gold Star in Venice 2 if he does. 🤔

// Edit
After looking into the module.000 file, he doesn't seem to be assigned to this mission's Salthi fighters (pilot id 14?), so apparently not.
 
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@AllTinker
For fun I wanted to replace the 4 Salthis with 4 Dralthis in that mission to see if the medal could be obtained this way (with then 190 points), however the changes don't seem to be accepted in WCAT.
The launcher scans for changed files and then seems to compress the previously changed and decompressed MODULE.000 file into an exact copy of the original MODULE.000 file, so the changes never carry over.
 
There's a few reasons for it doing that; e.g. I have to know the exact state of the game data to perform updates (both version updates and on-the-fly byte-patch updates).

I'm looking at how I can do mod support; I need most of it for the upcoming language support anyway...
 
Well, I can at least confirm that in the GOG version of WC1 you would get the Gold Star if there were four Dralthi instead of four Salthi.
With my modded MODULE.000 file they were somehow invisible, apparently just changing the ship_type from 9 to 10 is not enough, but enabling the cheat mode allowed me to kill them nonetheless for a perfect 13 kill mission with exactly 190 points, which earned the Gold Star.

So I strongly assume that originally it was planned to not have Salthis in this mission, or they maybe changed the Salthi points from 10 to 7 later on, and forgot about this mission.

Also, if you decide to change this mission's required medal points, this is the list of the Wiki for the currently unachievable medals, but that still have a score value which seemed as if they were intended to be achievable:

Kurasawa 1Silver Star185 points
Kurasawa 3Gold Star161 points
Venice 2Gold Star190 points
Hell's Kitchen 1Bronze Star160 points
Hell's Kitchen 3Silver Star161 points
 
Great stuff!

Your prior post got me thinking again, and I'm going to get mod support in there ASAP - I'm pretty sure I have a nice way to do it which will mesh with the language support quite cleanly.
 
So I've been looking a bit at the medal path.
IF you decide to make the Kurasawa medals in mission 1 and 3 obtainable, the "max medal" path actually changes from going Brimstone >L> Port Hedland >L> Hubble's Star >W> Rostov to Brimstone >W> Dakota >W> Kurasawa >L> Rostov.

You'd get 19 medals both times (or 20 if the one in Venice 2 is also obtainable), but with the Kurasawa path you'd trade 2 Bronze medals for 1 Silver and 1 Gold, so a clear upgrade.
That is if it would actually be possible to lose Kurasawa to proceed to Rostov, while still being able to receive all the medals. Otherwise you'd lose out on the three medals from Rostov and the path stays as it is.

And when looking deeper, the currently unobtainable Gold Star for Kurasawa 3 might be too good for the current mission layout. The FAQ by Kasey Chang describes it as an "quite easy" mission with 5 (or possibly 6 according to the mission file) Dralthi and 4 Krants to encounter while protecting an Exeter.
That would be 90 (or 100) medal points from the kills, and I have no idea if and how much saving the Exeter would give. The medal requirement is currently set to 161, and reducing the requirements to 100 or whatever including the Exeter still seems to be too easy for a Gold Star IMO. It feels out of place.🤔

Increasing the number of ships / encounters could be an option, but then we're in the territory of rebalancing the game and not just fixing bugs.
Adjusting the requirements by the amount of points that are worth one or two ships is one thing (so e.g. not having to kill your wingman or possibly replacing 4 Salthis with 4 Dralthis), but adding ships to a mission that are worth 61 points or subtracting this amount from the requirements is another (assuming that saving the Exeter doesn't give any medal points).
 
I have now uploaded my playthrough with the WCAT mod:





Right now with version 1.0.1 you can get
7x Bronze Star
9x Silver Star
3x Gold Star
1x Golden Sun
1x Medal of Valor


In the future it might be possible to get even more, depending on if and how the currently impossible missions (Kurasawa 1, Kurasawa 3, Venice 2) are being changed.
 
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