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RELEASE: Luyten Civil War v1.1

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TopAce:
A FreeSpace 2 campaign
Here it is, folks. As announced, I managed to deliver this campaign on June 15, 2012.

Story
Capella happened. Not only did the GTVA lose an entire system, most of the 3rd Fleet, but there are innumerable Capellan refugees left homeless by the cataclysm. The GTVA General Assembly hurriedly passed an act to facilitate sheltering the refugees in far-away systems, including Luyten. At first, the Luytenian Government, presided by the controversial Chancellor McCleskey, saw great potential in the new arrivals. They hoped that the influx of able-bodied workforce would help fix the declining regional economy.

However, the demographic shift turned out to be unfavorable. Within months, Luyten suffered its deepest economic crisis in its history. The populace blamed the Capellans and the ever-unpopular McCleskey government for the recession. The GTVA General Assembly would be willing to interfere with the McCleskey government's internal affairs, but the Beta Aquilae Convention grants them with no such power. Before BETAC could have been accordingly amended, the ruling government suffered a devastating defeat in the elections. The new Chancellor is Edward Keyes, who is determined to "purify" Luyten of its unwelcome guests and to enact unorthodox economic policies to cure the recession. Emboldened by sweeping popular support, the Chancellor announced that Luyten no longer recognized the GTVA's jurisdiction.

When it appeared that the crisis could be solved through diplomacy, three high-ranking GTVA dignitaries were abducted and stoned to death in daylight by an angry mob of anti-Alliance protesters. Peter Lindres, Special Operations Command, submitted a report the next day, showing indisputable evidence that Chancellor Keyes knew about the abduction, but let it happen. To make matters worse, intelligence reports that news of the diplomats' deaths was welcomed by extremist underground movements in Laramis and Barnard's Star as well.

Fearing that prior events would trigger a domino effect, the GTVA Security Council assembled and voted in favor of a forceful military intervention to Luyten. Their goal: get rid of Keyes and his closest associates.

Be prepared, pilot. Your hull is failing, your weapons are depleting, and time is running out.

Read the full story: Part I and Part II


Installation
Installation is like normal. If you don't know what it entails, consult the accompanying readme file or this Wiki page.

Notes
[*]The missions have been most thoroughly tested on FSO 3.6.14. RC5. If there is a newer build, I recommend you use it unless that build is known to break mods. Actually, RC7 has a bug that makes mission 5 crash. For this reason, do use the RC5 build. If you're lazy to download RC5 just to play this campaign, here is a quick-and-dirty fix. Put the downloaded .fs2 file to LCW/data/missions.
[*]Missions have been thoroughly tested on Medium, and to some extent on Easy and Hard as well.
[*]Where available, the missions have been tested in the bomber role as well. Some missions play out differently in the bomber role.
[*]The Hecate's turrets are more durable than in retail. Also the anti-fighter beams don't pierce shields.
[*]Wingmen are autonomous, and the missions were tested (mostly) without player-issued orders. There are some scenarios where it is implied, or explicitly stated, through dialog that you had better find a good tactic and order your wingmen accordingly.
[*]The default hotkey assignments are:
[*]F5 - Friendly fighters
[*]F6 - Friendly bombers
[*]F7 - Hostile fighters
[*]F8 - Hostile bombers[/list]
[/list]


Known Issues
[*]The camera at the beginning of mission 5 ("Encounter") will sometimes jump one step back. Wait a few seconds before toggling options and it will not happen.
[*]Also in mission 5, it is possible that any of the bombers end up inside the station's hull. If it happens, use cheats to destroy that bombers (activate cheats by typing in www.freespace2.com, target the problematic bomber, and press ~K).
[*]ALSO: mission 5 does not work with RC7. A fix will be submitted once the official 3.6.14. build is out.
[*]In mission 12, when the player enters the battle as a fighter, his energy distribution will be zero on all three systems. The controls are no longer disabled here, so equalize them.
[*]There may be some missing textures when playing without the MediaVPs.
[*]I know of some instances where ~K-ing down every hostile will break the mission. If you want to cheat, use infinite ammo and make your wingmen invulnerable instead.
[/list]

Acknowledgments
I am deeply grateful to swashmebuckle, who has given invaluable advice on the story and helped polish the dialog/briefings in the campaign. Though his role was limited, General Battuta's input had a positive impact on the final release as well.

LCW uses some publically available assets. I am thankful to all of them. A list of these people is given in the accompanying readme file.


Files and Links
[*]Luyten Civil War v1.1 release
[*]Luyten Civil War ModDB entry
[*]Luyten Civil War FSWiki page
[*]7-Zip - to be used to extract the LCW-v11.7z archive
[/list]

Some Technical Data
File count:

--- Code: ---Searching root pack 'D:\Games\FreeSpace 2\LCW\LCW_v11.vp' ... 219 files
--- End code ---

Checksum:

--- Code: ---Found root pack 'D:\Games\FreeSpace 2\LCW Release\LCW_v11.vp' with a checksum of 0x025c4402
--- End code ---

MD5 checksum (of LCW_v11.vp):

--- Code: ---0063b37d613ba58956ceded0c2bd27ea
--- End code ---

(What are these numbers?)

Personal Remarks
Due to my other project commitments and general loss of FREDding drive, I decided not to undertake a new project of my own. It has been 9 years, 6 campaigns, with 137 released missions total, and that's enough. I wll not give up on my current projects, but I will not take up another one. Maybe I will find some extra motivation and upgrade one or two of my older campaigns, but not much else. Without further ado, I have only two (or, depending on criteria, four) words for you: Play LCW.

Droid803:
Gratz on the release, take a well-deserved break.

Probably gonna give it a whirl this weekend! (Work full time = no time to play campaigns during weekdays).

That said, from the screenshots, questioning the font choice for the panels, makes it look very...old fashioned and low tech, with the serifs and all :P

Black Wolf:
Congrats on keeping a release schedule! :D Looking forward to getting into this - will play and review once I'm back from work in a few days.

CommanderDJ:
Downloading this now, will hopefully play it soon! I've been looking forward to this for a long time!

The_Force:
Completed first few missions, really enjoying it so far. Good job :yes:

Edit: Someone make a Highlight

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