Hard Light Productions Forums
General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: Burdokva on August 13, 2010, 12:23:28 pm
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Hey folks,
glad to see the space-sim community so strong! Now, i haven't been playing FSII in quite a while, and I'm simply overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of campaigns and TCs. I would be sure to check them all out, in time, but what's the best place to start?
Not difficulty wise (I consider myself an old dog when it comes to space-sims) but continuity wise, with the default FreeSpace setting and universe in mind? I've set my sight on "Blue Planet" and the Neo-Terra campaigns for now, but are they suitable? Anything other to recommend set in the FSII universe?
Note: Apologies for any misspelling and errors, English isn't my native language!
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Silent Threat: Reborn is recommended playing. As is Derelict.
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Well BP is a good sequel, but it's still unfinished and you need tons and tons of downloads.
Maybe you'd do better to try first some of the old goodies like Derelict.
Have you played the FSport yet? it's FS1 missions ported to FS2 engine, maybe you could start there as well.
Check here (http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Campaign) if you want a full list of campaigns and their status.
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I'd say you should hit up:
Silent Threat: Reborn, Derelict (old but good), Transcend (superb atmospheric horror), Vassago's Dirge (artsy FS2-era minicampaign), and Blue Planet 1 (voice acted FS2 sequel) and Blue Planet 2 (intense war campaign thing.)
Also, Windmills.
Well BP is a good sequel, but it's still unfinished and you need tons and tons of downloads.
Everything released by Blue Planet is quite finished, and you only need two downloads.
I'd actually advise playing Derelict later in the list as it's a little buggy these days and may frustrate the heck out of you.
I dunno what the Neo-Terra campaigns are.
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Well, two sets of downloads.
Once you find what campaigns you want to play, you can get just about all of them from the links here (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=70582.0). /shameless plug.
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Well, two sets of downloads.
No. Just two downloads. Use the ModDB mirrors.
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Well BP is a good sequel, but it's still unfinished and you need tons and tons of downloads.
Everything released by Blue Planet is quite finished, and you only need two downloads.
I didn't meant unfinished as having issues or anything else, I meant the story is not yet closed.
And about the downloads, well you need to download at least 1GB of data (FSU 3.6.12 + BP AoA + BP WiH).. I know I suffered because of my frikking ISP poor download speeds :mad:
Still, 1GB or not to download, it's definitely worth it.
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Well BP is a good sequel, but it's still unfinished and you need tons and tons of downloads.
Everything released by Blue Planet is quite finished, and you only need two downloads.
I didn't meant unfinished as having issues or anything else, I meant the story is not yet closed.
Not a reason not to play FreeSpace, and not a reason not to play Blue Planet either. :cool:
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You forgot about Shrouding the Light (STL) and STL:Origins, as well as Blaise Russel's other campaigns "Fall of Epsilon Pegasi" and his Shivans mini-campaign. I'd also say Inferno R1 but it hasn't been updated to more recent SCP standards. There's also Inferno:Alliance.
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You forgot about Shrouding the Light (STL) and STL:Origins, as well as Blaise Russel's other campaigns "Fall of Epsilon Pegasi" and his Shivans mini-campaign. I'd also say Inferno R1 but it hasn't been updated to more recent SCP standards. There's also Inferno:Alliance.
I wouldn't say I forgot about them, but they're not part of my usual bundle of intro campaigns.
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Some of the other campaigns that I can think of are Procyon Insurgency and the Ancient Shivan War. Both are very well done, although PI can be rather challenging, and ASW only has the first of three chapters released.
Yes, there is a LOT to download, and if you are one of those poor souls stuck with dial-up (like me up until a few months ago, when I finally got DSL), it is virtually impossible to get all of downloads for FSO and the mediavps, much less any of the mods. I found Hard Light about a year ago, but never joined because I couldn't hope to actually download everything, but finally got DSL and basically went on a Freespace playing spree, and the amount of work this community has put into the various mods is truly amazing.
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Procyon Insurgency should have been on my list. It's challenging as hell but an incredible piece of work from a gameplay standpoint.
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ST:R and BP:AoA.
Fully voice-acted and fairly straightforward, and also very awesome.
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Homesick, Derelict, Shrouding the Light.
Maybe I've got the nostalagia goggles on tight since Homesick was the second campaign I played, but...
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Homesick, Derelict, Shrouding the Light.
Maybe I've got the nostalagia goggles on tight since Homesick was the second campaign I played, but...
Homesick was a pretty seminal moment in FreeSpace modding, since it introduced the fighter-wing-and-a-corvette paradigm that went so far for so long.
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Blue Planet AoA and WiH are incredible, I recomend them easily.
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Blue Planet AoA and WiH are incredible, I recomend them easily.
Second that. Just finished Part 1 of WiH and I'm still stunned :yes:
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Windmills, maybe? But it ain't a space sim.
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Thanks a lot for the replies, guys! I went with the first campaign I saw at ModDB a few weeks back (Age of Aquarius), and I just finished it... amazing! No offense, but I wouldn't have believed it fan-made mods for an old sim like FSII can achieve such quality. Until now. I'll be sure to download everything I can, I have decent speed. I bigger problem is I have only a few gig's free on my HDD and if I keep downloading FSII stuff I may break it... :D
Just another question, how hard is Blue Planet in respect to other user made campaigns/TCs? I beat it on hard, but it took a lot of effort - I guess I've gotten rusty at space sim... :nervous:
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Well, beating it on hard is already better than most people around here. Although BP : AoA and WiH don't suffer from this, the problem with most user-made campaigns is that they are often balanced only for easy and medium, and so playing in higher difficulties may be either frustrating or even break the missions. Play at your own risks !
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Believe it or not, but the current version of AoA is actually towned town in difficulty compared to the first release. Back in the day you'd got insta-killed when a shivan megabomb blew up within 100 meter of your fighter. And "Forced Entry" might very well have been the hardest to win mission out there, untill it's revision (at least from what I read in the forum. I just switched down difficulty - twice).
War in Heaven is a bit harder than the current AoA version. Or at least it's harder if you're hung up on fulfilling secondary and bonus objectives like me :lol:
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Flames of War.
Since no one else wants to mention it.
Also, Into the Night
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another also:
what if.
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Sync/Transcend
Pandora's Box
Into the Halls of Valhalla
Incursion/Return to Sol
i recommend also :)
Also the FreeSpace Port with Silent Threat Reborn, Rain on Ribos 4 Trilogy, Destiny of Peace and Awakenings :)
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I enjoyed the Procyon Insurgency. Well balanced, long, with mods that made sense but didn't draw away from the gameplay.
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Well, beating it on hard is already better than most people around here. Although BP : AoA and WiH don't suffer from this, the problem with most user-made campaigns is that they are often balanced only for easy and medium, and so playing in higher difficulties may be either frustrating or even break the missions. Play at your own risks !
Uh, I'm pretty sure most player campaigns are actually balanced for Medium-Hard considering how much I've found to break in many of them on easy-very easy. :P
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will somebody answer this question? I know that "the great war" in freespace 1 is the campaign to start with, if you want to go in "chronological order. I have started the "great war" loading the mod "fsport" which I know is Freespace 1 campaign with all of the graphical upgrades. I used the launcher and loaded the 'fsport' mod (great war) and played the first mission and the graphics did not impress. But when I load "silent threat reborn" mod and go to the campaign room, it shows "the great war" campaign, and 2 other campaigns (templar and something i forget), and Silent threat. When I start the "great war" while I am in the silent threat reborn mod,the missions are same, but the graphics are SO MUCH BETTER! I looked in all "mod.ini)'s and fsport has no secondary mod installed, but silent threat reborn's "mod.ini" has both 'fsport" and "mediavp_3612" as secondary mods that load. So the question is, "Is playing the campaign "the great war" within the "silent threat reborn (STR) mod" the BEST way and utilizes the best graphical updates? or should I go into the "fsport's" "mod.ini" and add secondary mods into the mod.ini? Answers would be GREATLY appreciated. Thanks also to all the geniuses who makes these mods and through their hardwork give me many hours of pleasure!
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If you want to play FSPort with the graphical enhancements, you need to select the FSPort_mediavps as the active mod.
Also, the FSPort forum is this way (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?board=39.0).
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Thanks, sorry for putting in the wrong area as i am a noob here :wtf:
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I recommend the following:
- FreeSpace Port
- Silent Threat: Reborn
- Derelict
- Warzone
- The Procyon Insurgency
- Blue Planet: Age of Aquarius
- Blue Planet: War in Heaven
Since this is a serious list, I'm not listing the you-know-what. :p
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Chronological order :
Ancient Shivan War features some dream-like fighters
Terran-Vasudan War Project is fun
Cardinal Spear is nice too
Freespace Port + Silent Threat : Reborn (you might want to play the mission where you recover the pods in medium difficulty)
Homesick is a bit old, but I just find the ending hilarious
Freespace 2, with enhanced graphics, it's really great
Vassago's Dirge is just beautiful
Blue Planet of course
Derelict and Warzone are classics, these were the first user-made campaign I played
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Nobody mentions the campaign with the anime females and the tentacle ships? :P
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Nobody mentions the campaign with the anime females and the tentacle ships? :P
I'm not sure you should recommend that to someone looking for an FS experience. :P
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Indeed not. WoD is quite a different experience from stock FS2.
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WoD may not be in the FreeSpace universe, but it is still an awesome campaign.
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Anything other to recommend set in the FSII universe?
The OP asked for campaigns in the FS2 universe.
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I recommend you play Freespace 2, as well as these other campaigns.
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Into Halls od Valhalla
Renegade Resurgence
The Journey to Epsilon Pegasi
Shrouding the Light
Fall of Epsilon Pegasi
Rain on Ribos 4
Hellgate Ikeya
The Light of Antares
Sol : A History
Pandora`s Box
I just start with that set year ago.
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Nobody mentions the campaign with the anime females and the tentacle ships? :P
Because you can't handle the awesomeness of said anime females...
Like Noriko and Takaya!
"Busta BEAM!" - Noriko, "Ok it's not working till Tuesday."
Takaya, "But today is Tuesday."
Noriko, "I meant next Tuesday!"... :)
(http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b321/Star-Dragon/gunbuster.jpg)
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GETTER!
WE DEMAND YOUR THOUGHTS ON SPOON'S CAMPAIGN.
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GETTER!
WE DEMAND YOUR THOUGHTS ON SPOON'S CAMPAIGN.
Well, I'm not really into anime and... ugh.. haven't tried it yet. Should I expect a backlash now?
More seriously, I tried to play the mentioned campaigns in chronological order, but Ancient-Shivan War just crashes with FSOpen and MediaVPs 3_12. Which is just sad, screenshots look fantastic!
Right now I'm playing the FreeSpace I Port, a game I never got to play, and I can understand why the Shivans were such a huge threat - FS I era Terran and Vasudan craft are way below the average Shivan...
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Well, I'm not really into anime and... ugh.. haven't tried it yet. Should I expect a backlash now?
Nah, I meant Getter, not you. :P
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More seriously, I tried to play the mentioned campaigns in chronological order, but Ancient-Shivan War just crashes with FSOpen and MediaVPs 3_12. Which is just sad, screenshots look fantastic!
If you get the chance, try running a debug build and posting your fs2_open.log file; this post (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=56279.msg1180359#msg1180359) will tell you how to do that. Certain previously-released mods may have incompatibilities with the 3.6.12 MediaVPs, which is why they were designed by default to be installed alongside the previous 3.6.10 MediaVP set. I just played through the Ancient-Shivan War using FSOpen 3.6.12 and the 3.6.10 VPs, and it worked just fine.
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More seriously, I tried to play the mentioned campaigns in chronological order, but Ancient-Shivan War just crashes with FSOpen and MediaVPs 3_12. Which is just sad, screenshots look fantastic!
In case you didn't know, very few of these campaigns actually reference each other and there are a lot of conflicts in the timeline, so playing things chronologically won't make any more sense than playing it in the order they were released.
Also, don't play Ancient-Shivan War just yet. I'm told the ASW team is working on a patch of somekind to ensure compatibility with the latest builds and stuff.
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That being said, there are a number of mods that don't really conflict with each other timeline-wise, and even a few that throw in nods to other unrelated campaigns. The first act of Ancient-Shivan War doesn't step on anything else's toes, mostly because no other mod (that I'm aware of) has tackled that part of the timeline.
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OK, i encountered a nasty problem... everything worked great but as I changed SCP builds (used regular, switched to Inferno for mods), switched campaigns and pilots, something happened to the AI and it become idiotic, at best.
Quite imply, every few second my wingmen (my and other wings) would just stop, stand and get slaughtered. Some enemies do to. More weird, I decided to reinstall, star clear and... again?! :confused: Tried different pilots, Inferno and regular build, but now the AI is acting weird on every mission.
Suggestions? New reinstall?
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with what campaigns?
Did you actually deleted the pilot files and created those again from scratch?
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Yes, although once I reinstalled I created the new pilots with the same name. This time I've even cleaned the registry...
This is generally how it went - I started FSII default campaign -> then started Blue Planet (new pilot) -> had to switch builds (accidentally used regular, switched to Inferno) -> finished BP, played FSPort (new pilot) and noticed AI started behaving differently-> finished FSPort, went to default FSII and... AI doesn't work right.
Tried with new pilots, mentioned reinstall - deault campaign still feels bugged. Ships randomly stop moving and attacking or completely ignore being attacked. Certainly wasn't so when I started 3_6_12 for the first time, neither in BP... so something must have gone wrong between me switching mods and pilots.
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Clueless.
I'm assuming you changed the selected mod when switching through different campaigns.
Do you still have installed 3.6.10 MVP's? they might be required by some mods so you should have them in a separate mod folder, away from the 3.6.12 MVP's.
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BlackDove reported this as well. We may have a major issue on our hands since I don't know how much of 3.6.12 testing was actually done using retail AI.
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Reinstalling again. I'll try the default FSII campaign with 3_6_12, only this time with the regular build, as I started it originally. Fingers crossed!
EDIT: I can confirm that on a clean install with regular SSE2 build works fine with default FSII campaign, while Inferno SSE2 build caused AI problems.