Awesome.
one slight thing I noticed though:
it's quite possible to save the Scipio with the Diana and Stilettos, since you only need 2 shots to take out the carrier's railguns, but there's no mention of it in the debriefing
The whole thing is missing InstTex02, which is what's causing the Hyperion's lack of texture in that area, not Fen08. I'ma just play through it with a placeholder.
Edit: Not bad at all. If this gets developed more, it could be a major MOD. And do I see a completely new model in here? Yes i do! :D
However I do agree with Nelson in that mission 2 shouldn't have infinitely-respawning waves dependent on the freighters' health. If I hadn't known from reading the forum that that was the criterion for them going away, I would have been swamped.
The whole thing is missing InstTex02, which is what's causing the Hyperion's lack of texture in that area, not Fen08. I'ma just play through it with a placeholder.
Edit: Not bad at all. If this gets developed more, it could be a major MOD. And do I see a completely new model in here? Yes i do! :D
However I do agree with Nelson in that mission 2 shouldn't have infinitely-respawning waves dependent on the freighters' health. If I hadn't known from reading the forum that that was the criterion for them going away, I would have been swamped.
I'm going to make those wings two waves at most now. That mission has proven rather difficult to balance.
And what completely new model? I don't have a clue how to make models. You could be seeing a model that has never really been used before.
Mission 1 revealed a curious problem with the auto nav -- it does not dismiss any support ships that may have warped in. The result was that my wingman went merrily flying off to rendezvous with a support ship 40km or so distant, leaving me alone to fight. The autopilot sexp will need to include something to force support ships to depart.
I had this problem too.
Mission 2 is probably why you aren't seeing too much feedback. Two wings of infinitely respawning fighters make baby Jesus cry. I had to view the mission in FRED to see what I was really supposed to do -- there isn't any apparent connection between shooting down freighters and stopping fighters from warping in. I'd strongly suggest redoing this mission to make it more evident what you are intended to do and also to remove the infinite fighter wings.
Agreed as well. All of the missions seemed absurdly hard. I was playing on easy, but it took me at least five tries to get each one, with the exception of the third mission. I know I'm definitely not as good as most of the people here, but that's still quite a bit more than I'm used to; maybe even harder than BtRL.
1) Difficulty
Easy didn't feel like easy. It felt like hard. The removal of shields makes things more tricky, but when you have twenty ships flying around, and it's a matter of chance whether your wingmen actually survive or not, it doesn't work too well. A number of times I found myself sitting at 1%; a couple of times I only survived because of no-collision errors on one ship or another.
2) Finished quality
In the third mission, the cocky shielded test pilots put up quite a verbal diatribe. I was able to make a decisive retort when I realized that I could simply order them to depart and win the training exercise. Also interesting was that the Vasudans had apparently decided to participate in the training exercise, as their weapons did no damage at all. Strangely enough, collisions with their fighters also did no damage.
This might have been OK under different circumstances, but given that there were twenty fighters in the area and my screen was flashing red, it was rather obvious that ship-invulnerable had been left on Alpha 1.
Something else I noticed was that the reinforcements in that same mission had shield systems. This also seems rather unlikely and curious.
3) Models
Your home ship (don't remember the name) uses the Arcadia texture...not one of my favorites. I'd have preferred gunmetal grey, but overall, the ship just seems like a big lump. It needs to have more character, by delineating critical systems or by breaking up the texture.
Most of the models also seemed to be made with the original FS2 polycount in mind. It's understandable, but it still doesn't look very good.
As already pointed out, there was an obvious hole in the Hyperion model.
3) Names
"Poindexter" seems like a rather contrived name, as does "Passchendaele".
4) Plot
I wasn't too impressed here, either. Things happened way too fast without much significance, and way too differently from Freespace. It seemed like every plot advancement was a rebellion or a new ship or weapon, which has been done to death. I'll grudgingly accept the multitude of ship designs that didn't appear in Freespace 1 since it's explained that it's an alternate future. But given the similarities between the universes, it seems like ship designs would be virtually all the same at the start of the war, since R&D would have already been going on. Then ships that were influenced by shields or joint development would be seen, but in some heavily modified form, like an all-Terran Ulysses.
I also wasn't too fond of the beams that casually appeared, and how fast shields were introduced. It would have been better to see those as 'extra-special' measures that never really gained widespread use and required big/expensive equipment, or ships designed around them. Or the Terrans invent shields, so the Vasudans invent beams, but the two are never combined...and so on, and so forth.
5) Overall
It was playable, and the autopilot system was a nice touch. But overall, I found it lacking in creative individuality and it wasn't very satisfying to finish. I did find both endings.
Some campaigns tell a story; this campaign seemed like fighting with a story on the side to motivate more fighting. Fighting seemed along the same patrol, escort, defense, and dogfight survival types that are common and were common in the original FS2 campaign.
Hey, played through the one mission so far, and started mission 2 (as other people have said, it's a little hard . . . . and though I've figured out the solution without looking at the events I haven't quite done it yet).
Uh, few comments:
Some typos:
Briefing 1: stage 6 : "fllight deck"
Briefing 2: stage 7 : "bombwrs"
stage 9 : "poiint"
Mission 1 was kinda strange, I didn't mind the mission it was cool. But the thing I had issues with was that all of the bad guys were visible before I got to the waypoints. Dunno if this is just on my end or what. It would be better if they appeared as you got near the waypoint. I like the main gun on the Fenris, that was pretty cool. It's good to see some ship to ship weapons.
Mission 2, well I had major lag with the asteroids so I played without the assets VP giving me a largely invisible asteroid miner but I didn't really give a damn to be honest. Don't need to be able to see it to protect it. It was a little wierd compared to mission 1 . .. on mission 1 you've got freighters sitting around, not bothering to run or even move from enemy craft when there's no help available. Whereas in mission 2 you've got unlimited fighters moving in to protect a couple of freighters. Its sort of opposite extremes. Some possible ideas for Mission 1 might be to like, have the freighters run when their cover is down . . . then if they manage to get X distance from the cargo more fighters will move in to assist (maybe just another wave, just to punish the player). Or you could have them run towards the Aten . . .but that might be a little uh, unrealistic as they'd be giving away the position of a disabled cruiser. But maybe they're stupid freighter pilots. haha. Or maybe, the waypoint with the Aten isn't on the mission. But when the freighters start to run, and the player kills them . . then they're like "hey, let's look to see where it was going" and then they find the Cruisers. Then maybe after that you go to another, original mission waypoint and there's nothing there. I'll let you know when I finish it up anyway.