A week ago I bought WC1+2 and felt thrilled in playing it after reading the boring instructions and stuff.
I had an early issue in how to land in the Tigers Claw at the end of mission which I posted about around that time
and has been solved. Thank you to the guy who told me how to do it.

The mouse sensitivity was way too high for me but I managed to adapt to it and was on a roll
in the first few missions until I got promoted and was flying a scimitar...

From that point on, it went downhill for me.
The scimitars blasters run out of way too easily for me (Not that I think its a bug, I'm aware its one of the drawbacks
made up for with better armor or whatever benefits it has over my first ship which I like better. I wish you could choose which to commandeer at the start of a mission).

On that mission where you had to escort a Draynan from all those Kilrathi ships, my game begun to lag with all the ships on it and I was using a high-end PC! Unfortunately, the Draynan was destroyed and I decided to carry on the game with that failure. I'm sure I would've lost even if the game ran normally.

Is it me or is WC1 unforgivingly hard?
Thank God we have changeable difficulty levels nowadays.

Hi BlackNoise,

-The mouse sensitivity can be adjusted by running the graphical setup .exe in the game folder (I think it's called "setup.exe" or something similar). One of the tabs has a "mouse sensitivity" setting - by default it's set to 100, but you can set it to a lower number.

-The game lag is due to a problem with the way dosbox emulates the CPU. You can bump up the emulated CPU speed by pressing CTRL+F12, and lower it again with CTRL+F11 once there are a few less enemies on-screen.

-The scimitars just straight-up suck, there's no way around it. Fortunately you don't have to fly with them for too long.

-Which mission did you lose the Drayman on? There is at least one mission in WC1 that you are supposed to lose, though it's technically possible to win. Also note that losing a mission in WC1 isn't game-over, it just puts you on a slightly different story branch. There are many opportunities to fight your way back onto the "winning path", so if there are one or two missions you just can't beat, don't worry about it.

-Finally, you'll be pleased to know that Wing Commander 2 does not seem to have the same slowdown issues.

Thanks a lots.
Which mission I lose the Draynan? I think it's number 5?
It's the one where the commander says there's this Bhurak character involved.

I don't think that's the "impossible" one... I think it's later, in the Kurasawa system. But any mission with a scimitar is a definite exercise in frustration.

At least in WC2, the scimitar-equivalent has rear-firing turrets, which makes it not entirely useless.

Is there a way to configure DOSBox so that it automatically adjusts the CPU speed
To accommodate a set frame rate rather than fumble for the keys by hand while I'm up to my neck with either
Loads of starships or one super fast one (blessed by the power too high CPU speed)?

Unfortunately this is just how the game was programmed. It is either too slow or too fast.

A cycle setting of around 4000 to 5000 works well for me. When the game slows down it is actually a little bit easier.

Some missions are very hard to beat and you just continue on. There is mission tree of wins and failures, you can google it and see how it works :)

There was a Windows version (Kilrathy Saga) that addressed the speed issues, but introduced others to do with music and other bugs...

The beauty of Wing Commander 1 is that there is in fact an art to skillful dog fighting in this game. Sadly, I do not know yet if its possible to reach that level of artistry on the GOG version. I owned the Kilrathi Saga version until I lost one of the cd's a few years ago. I replayed every mission until I beat it. The KS version had no slow down at all. The Kurusawa mission is indeed very hard, but the Secret Missions up the ante on the difficulty tenfold. All I can tell you about escort missions is that if its a mission where you are waiting for the ship to jump in and you have the cats waiting for it too, you need to kill as many of them as you can as quickly as possible. A lot of the best shots you can land are when you play chicken with a kilrathi, they will charge you head on with guns blaring and you can charge them also gus blaring, hitting them as much as you can, and peel off at the last second before your shields are gone. Also, when they attack Cap ships, the cats fly slowly and in a straight line and if you can line up your shots properly, you can do some major damage or destroy them outright. Either way they are going to stop attacking. Also, use the taunt communication. The Kilrathi get pissed when you taunt them, and some of them will stop whatever it is they are doing to come after you. Learning to lead your shots ahead the direction the cat is going as you and him dogfight is key. I hope that helps.

Thanks.
I thought the taunting was just there for decoration but I'll keep it in mind.

the scimitar is not liked by many of Tiger's Claw crew.. It takes time to get use to it or even like it like i do :)

It's not a good fighter for heavier dogfights (like Thor's Hammer) too..

I've got another problem with my game thats been bugging me for a while.
More often than not, the game seems to be selecting anything my mouse cursor incidentally hovers over
without me even clicking the button.

Sometimes that happens when it just automatically "clicks" on Continue Game, because thats when the
cursor is when I skip the intro cutscene. Then when I highlight the game I want to save, the game
immediately prompts me if I want to load it. Whether I press Y or N, the game just brings up the
prompt message once again and again and again - and I don't even have a nano-second to tear
the mouse cursor away!

Any help with that please?

I occasionally run into that, particularly with saving/loading games. My solution is to switch momentarily to using the keyboard.

Skip the opening credits/cutscene with the enter key. For some reason if you use your mouse or esc, you have a chance of getting the auto-click. Weird.

I don't mind Scimitars so much. I just don't like being bumped back down into one during the crucible that is Secret Missions.

When fighting Bhurak Starkiller: Take out his wingmen as fast as you can then concentrate on him. You might have to get his attention (insults, a few pot shots) to keep him off the 'sport, but then knock out his wingmen. After he takes some damage, he tries to run. This makes him an easy target. Afterburn onto his tail and unload your cannons.

I have a problem on the same mission. Even if I successfully defend the Drayman, every time it gets near the Tigers Claw (about 8000km) it just turns around and flies away, forever. I have no idea what I am doing wrong, and it's getting really annoying since I can't progress past this unless I deliberately fail the mission.

It's a pity, I was quite enjoying the game until this :(