[chief1983]

Yeah if you want radically different, try the Minbari Project...

[Androgeos Exeunt]

Uh, the Minbari.
I'm going to play it. NOW.

Oh, whee, no targeting system for the first few missions.

[Snail]

A little off-topic, but about those Jovian gas miners. Does anybody know whether or not there is a way to use the damage arcing electricity stuff as a normal effect? It would look really good in between those arms where currently there is a crappy missile trail texture. If not, could it be implemented into the SCP? Like a toggle-damage-arc SEXP or something?

[Woolie Wool]

Sorry, but I absolutely cannot tolerate the primitive sensors. I extracted all the missions and disabled primitive sensors in FRED after playing four times and being completely frustrated. With targeting, the game became a lot more reasonable. The fighter handling is interesting, the Shrike is surprisingly difficult to hit because its damping makes it move in multiple directions at once in hard maneuvers and it's not balanced by being a slow, wallowing pig like the Falcon.

The Atlases need to be slower. I know that they can barely turn, but if you're not in the prime place to intercept them, they are extremely difficult to catch. A bomber shouldn't outrun a Mustang Alpha on full AB. Just...no.

The capship weapons are useless. Completely useless. I don't even see why they build Damocles-class cruisers since they have only token weaponry and carry no fighters. Terran Turrets are actually quite scary in an unshielded fighter (if you get hit, that's 20% off your hull!). The Unification War turrets are so terrible that you can sit there and shoot at the Damocles' bridge in the gas miner mission and not notice it firing once.

The weapons are very nice and appropriately "primitive" feeling. Somehow the lead indicator works better for these guns than the FS1/2 energy guns. If I had any criticisms to make, I'd say the P-16 and P-22 don't carry enough rounds. Some missions are fairly difficult because of the threat of running out of ammo and there's no chance to get resupplied. Also, the P weapons should be classed as autocannons. Assault rifles are man-portable weapons using short cartridges that wouldn't make much of an impression on a fighter.

The Damocles tech description describes the Lunar Rebellion as being around 100 years ago. So what did they have for fighters then? Soyuz space capsules with a couple of missiles strapped to them?

This is a very interesting take on FreeSpace, although I couldn't stand the primitive sensors, Hopefully since the last couple of missions have full sensors, the rest of the campaign should have them too. I wonder how one of these fighters would stack up to the good old n00bis...

[Snail]

I liked primitive sensors.

[Mustang19]

Sorry, but I absolutely cannot tolerate the primitive sensors. I extracted all the missions and disabled primitive sensors in FRED after playing four times and being completely frustrated. With targeting, the game became a lot more reasonable. The fighter handling is interesting, the Shrike is surprisingly difficult to hit because its damping makes it move in multiple directions at once in hard maneuvers and it's not balanced by being a slow, wallowing pig like the Falcon.

Well, it's a matter of opinion. If you're willing to adapt then it can be a lot of fun.

The Atlases need to be slower. I know that they can barely turn, but if you're not in the prime place to intercept them, they are extremely difficult to catch. A bomber shouldn't outrun a Mustang Alpha on full AB. Just...no.

Matter of taste, I guess.

I don't have a problem with the bombers being fast- they have large engines and relatively small bomb loads compared to FS1/2 vessels. I didn't have a problem intercepting them either, just stay near the ship you're supposed to escort. This is especially important in UW where you have weak weapons versus bomber armor and shooting down bombs is critical.

The capship weapons are useless. Completely useless. I don't even see why they build Damocles-class cruisers since they have only token weaponry and carry no fighters. Terran Turrets are actually quite scary in an unshielded fighter (if you get hit, that's 20% off your hull!). The Unification War turrets are so terrible that you can sit there and shoot at the Damocles' bridge in the gas miner mission and not notice it firing once.

This has been brought up a few times before. The idea was that FS1 point defense is okay but FS2 point defense is quite powerful, so UW is "supposed" to be weaker than FS1 stuff. We also agreed to not use energy weapons, so no plasma turrets allowed.

Anyway, the Damocles is one of the weakest ships in the game, and it's meant to be- it's also the oldest design, according to the tech description. Later you'll be bombing frigates- those are somewhat tougher nuts to crack.

The weapons are very nice and appropriately "primitive" feeling. Somehow the lead indicator works better for these guns than the FS1/2 energy guns. If I had any criticisms to make, I'd say the P-16 and P-22 don't carry enough rounds. Some missions are fairly difficult because of the threat of running out of ammo and there's no chance to get resupplied. Also, the P weapons should be classed as autocannons. Assault rifles are man-portable weapons using short cartridges that wouldn't make much of an impression on a fighter.

Yeah, I don't agree with calling these guns "assault rifles", but oh well. There was a lot of crap that we meant to put in but was cut out due to time constraints. For example, we were going to have a LR science ship, like an austere Faustus.

The Damocles tech description describes the Lunar Rebellion as being around 100 years ago. So what did they have for fighters then? Soyuz space capsules with a couple of missiles strapped to them?

This is a very interesting take on FreeSpace, although I couldn't stand the primitive sensors, Hopefully since the last couple of missions have full sensors, the rest of the campaign should have them too. I wonder how one of these fighters would stack up to the good old n00bis...

The rest of the campaign will have complete sensors. 

The Unification War (UW) storyline appears to be loosely based on an obscure mid-90's book-made-video-game called "Rebel Moon Rising", depicting a lunar rebellion against the UN. The UW storyline looks rather UN-bashy, which wasn't my idea. Anyway, in Rebel Moon Rising there's no space combat, it's basically infantry combat on the moon.

[Goober5000]

The Unification War (UW) storyline appears to be loosely based on an obscure mid-90's book-made-video-game called "Rebel Moon Rising", depicting a lunar rebellion against the UN. The UW storyline looks rather UN-bashy, which wasn't my idea. Anyway, in Rebel Moon Rising there's no space combat, it's basically infantry combat on the moon.

I've never read Rebel Moon Rising -- in fact, I wrote the UW story before I had even heard of it -- but it's on my list of books to read.

[Androgeos Exeunt]

I liked primitive sensors.

Agreed. My accuracy's horrid, but it's a no-cheat feature too. I like it.

[Ole]

I really liked the "no sensors", "limited ammunition", "limited afterburner" feeling. It was a different gameplay, yet one where I almost never thought "Oh no, how does this work?" but almost always "Yeah, I know how to do thios ... well, at least I think so".

And I really liked the missions. Got shot down in the 3rd but solved that after a while.

What I didn't like was the really fast acquisition of the sensor technology. One moment you're flying almost blind, trying to figure out if the guy next to you is friend or foe, next moment you kill off individual subsystems.

Really nice thing by the way was that there were almost no bugs for me. I actually counted two or three, which is quite good in my opinion.

Spoiler:

I still have to figure out if the missing background in the "Capture the gas miners" mission is a bug or not. Other than that there was an error message concerning a Medal of Valor and some kind of texture glitch at the Mustang B - which actually only affected the model in the target box iirc[/qspoiler]

[Snaga]

Yeah, I also enjoyed the features of this mod a lot. It has it´s own sinature with them, and really gives the feal of using some really old ships. Of course, I was despairing at first for the lack of the targeting system, but got to manage that. If there´s something I always wondered was how is it that you can identify which ship you have to escort without the targeting box. Now I know! ....... Darn hard! But seriously, I can´t wait for the rest of this mod, in my opinion it´s excellent.

[Titan]

wait, so how do you install this? i can't wait to get home and try it, i love any pre-FS1 and FS1 era stuff

[chief1983]

It's just like any other mod, make a new folder for it in your FS directory, and extract all the VP files to that folder.  Then select that folder as a mod in the launcher and you're done.

[Jeff Vader]

wait, so how do you install this? i can't wait to get home and try it, i love any pre-FS1 and FS1 era stuff

It's just like any other mod, make a new folder for it in your FS directory, and extract all the VP files to that folder.  Then select that folder as a mod in the launcher and you're done.

That's right. But this time, do not make a mod.ini in the folder. TVWP has everything needed already and there's no need for anything from the mediavps or even the FSPort. Well, apart from purdier subspace effects maybe.

[chief1983]

Which is why I didn't say to do that.  But, it can't hurt to do it if you don't specify any other mods in it.  It might be nice to have one for completeness with the launcher.  Have a link to the forums, project title, etc.

[chief1983]

Maybe something a little like this would work.

http://swc.fs2downloads.com/files/TVWP_mod_ini.7z

As usual, if you don't have 7-zip, get it.  It's free as in freedom, not free as in beer.

Edit:  Fixed a missing ; in the mod.ini.

[Jeff Vader]

Damn, you beat me to it. Well, if anyone wants, here's another one. Comes with a lousier image and a different description.

[chief1983]

You also missed the Modname field     

[Jeff Vader]

Hmm. I didn't actually know there was such a thing. But ya-ha! You missed the semicolon after the Modname field 

[chief1983]

Haha.  touche.

edit:  file in the link I posted is updated.

[Jeff Vader]

Same here. I also 'borrowed' that picture you have.