Er... maybe I'll have a full version up this weekend.
In short, TAC-2 is a sampler of a whole series of False Dawn Rising **** I knocked up in my spare time or plan to knock up in the future. More of a showcase of ships and effects than anything, and the plot reflects the fact that I really didn't care about a plot so much as the backstory and universe.
Sometime about four centuries from now, you get the standard all-powerful-empire/rebellious-outer-worlds setup, with the empire being the Earth Imperium, naturally with its capitol on Earth. The Earth gets accidentially blown up in a rebel attack (long story), closely followed (less accidentially) by two insurgent planets- which happen to be two of the four really settled planets in the Galaxy not including Earth. So, in a matter of a few hours, about 2/3 of humanity is a lot of superheated hydrogen vapor, there's practically no infrastructure, damn few resources, and you've got hundreds of little factions that are the remnants of the two "sides" blowing hell out of each other and any collateral they can find to damage.
Hundred years later, a bit of an equilibrium has been established, with another set of warring factions, the planets have been partly rebuilt, and people are getting by if not thriving. All the front lines are so heavily entrenched that there's no way they could pose a real threat to each other, which is well and good because a few still have planetbusters left over from that first war. Then, the side that ended up getting most of the EI's technology designs an antiship weapon that could cut a big swath out of enemy lines, obviously with the intent to make room to cut a path in and take out a few annoying planets.
Naturally, everyone wants a piece, and in fact someone manages to hijack it (rather easy once you've got the controls, it just blows up the battlefleet guarding it and runs), and Alpha 1's job is to recover it/steal it from them, depending.
I actually semi-dropped TAC-2 a while ago for a more interesting plot, since it was getting nowhere (I really loathe Truespace and couldn't bear to be around it long enough to flip polys, texture, and set up a heirarchy- which means I never got to learn how to POF-edit, either) but since that one involves rather less flying around in a spaceship blowing up stuff, it stands as my on-hold Freespace campaign until I get a staffer or decide to completely lose it.
