howdy!  you all probably already know this, but...
there's a pretty simple way to get an Excalibur for any mission you wish.  it's so much more
enjoyable going cat hunting with an Excalibur...

get a mission briefing, save the game, and exit.  
open a hexeditor and open the relevant savegame file.
they have .wsg extensions and are 2882 bytes big.

you need to change 3 bytes from their original value (0,1,2,3) to 4.
they are at offsets 1228, 1236, and 2778. save the changes and close the hexeditor.

restart wc3, load the correct savegame and you're ready to fly your Excalibur on that mission.
talking to Rachel lets you change away from her default Excalibur loadout, BUT if you change 
ships, the game won't give the Excalibur as an option -- you'll have to exit and change the 
3 bytes again.

if your ship preferences are different, then change the same three bytes to:

0: arrow
1: hellcat
2: thunderbolt
3: longbow
4: excalibur

also, if you want lots of torpedos, you can hexedit that too.  for the Excalibur, 
the savegame offsets are 2258, 2290, 2322, and 2354: change their value to 5 and you have 
torpedos in every hardpoint.

for the excalibur, the offsets represent the type of missile in the following hardpoints:

2258: far left type of missile  (2262 is # of missiles there)
2290: center left type of missile (2294 is # of missiles there)
2322: center right typre of missile (2326 is # of missiles there)
2354: far right type of missile (2358 is # of missiles there)

the byte-values for the type of missiles are:

2: image rec
3: friend or cat
4: leech
5: lance (torpedo)
6: mine

anyway, enjoy.  if you're looking for a good game hexeditor, try UGE, it's shareware and 
works great.

michael korcok
mk48@cornell.edu