Why should I contine playing?

Ok I first saw WCS in PC Gamer and thought "cool a space shooter game like TIE Fighter". I was pretty excited. Until the first mission of the Darkest Dawn campaign.

Unless there's something really wrong with my install; the approximate distance traveled in the first mission is 2 300 000. 200K to Nav 1, 300k to Nav 2, 500k to Nav 4, 600k to Nav 5 and 700k to Nav 6. All in all I spent an hour and a half getting to Nav 6 and what happened? I'm supposed to land on a ship that doesn't appear on my radar and can not be targeted. aka I can't find the Hermes. aka game over. All that time wasted.

I know not finding the ship is some sort of bug but if the rest of the mission is WAD then I'm never playing this again. I've never seen a game with such a boring mission before.

you should keep playing because when the game says "proceed to next waypoint" your supposed to engage the autopilot(press alt-a) like in the old wingcommander games the auto pilot will then just cut to when you arrive at the waypoint. also its not a bug exactly ship spawning is tied to the autopilot sequences so if you autopilot to the Hermes it will appear. its a simple mistake the game was made by wc fans for wc fans so they thought it was a given. you will now find the game much more fun. also you may want to start with the prologue campaign because it walks you through some basic controls. you can switch campaigns in the campaign room.

When you hear "proceed to next waypoint", press alt+A to engage autopilot.

OK, that's the second or third time we've got a message like that. Now I know that the prologue is supposed to act as some sort of tutorial, but the problem is that most people don't know about the prologue and just hit the start button without looking at the campaign room (I know I did before remembering that there was supposed to be a prologue campaign). I also seem to remember some discusions about giving the player some sort of recap of important buttons and stuff at the beginning of the campaign.

I'm thinking about doing that myself, or at least adding a press-button to the first few "go to nav X" directives when I get home (or I'll download saga from work at lunch break and text-edit it into the mission).

Viper I also started with Xwing, Tie Fighter and and Xwing vs Tie fighter. you will enjoy this game if you put your mind into it. I just finished my second time around on this campaign. I have programmed my Joystick for most of the important buttons and one of these was "Autopilot". I did the same thing as you the first time, running to the waypoint. Just find the ship you need to get close to and establish autopilot connection. I wasted all my afterburners and thought what the heck was going on. I've played in very easy and now easy. I upped it to medium and will get my butt kicked but it should be fun.

I don't know if I should groan in disbelief or bang my head against the desk. Thanks for the replies. Will try again.

i was about to say something "trollish" untill i realized that on the first mission i sat in the hnger bay for a long long time trying to figure out how the hell to land and end the mission before i (by chance) realized that all i had to do was fly a bit further into the hanger bay lolz dont bang your head to hard my fiend.it happens

Damn... had none of you ever played a WC game before now?? lol!

i had played the first one on PC like 1000000 years ago.dont remember ever having run into that problem however