[Unknown Target]

Does anyone know of any good missions that show off the absolute coolness factor of FS2? I.e. huge ships duking it out, big battles, objective based gameplay, etc etc? I'd like to show the game off to some people here, but most missions are too slow or not very exciting to do it.

[General Battuta]

How about the FS2 demo? That really hooked me, particularly the second mission.

[jr2]

Yes... and that is available from Turey's, too. 

[Polpolion]

I forget what it's called, but it's the first encounter with the Shivans and the Knossos in FS2.

[Koth]

Its called  ''A Lion at the Door''. I like that my mission a lot mostly for the briefing. That music track is just killer for that mission.

[jr2]

The mission needs to have a stab of fear..   A sense of awe and terror of the Shivans and horror at your (human & vasudan aka "good guys' ") predicament.    Make them wet their pants.    Well, settle for raising the hair on the back of their neck, then. 

[ShadowGorrath]

In that mission , the Cain gives some fun to the destroyer . Yea , it's a good preview for someone new . But totally spoils the begining where , out of nowhere , those red fellas show up and humiliate's GTVA .

[Retsof]

You could try the dream mission from Derelict, I was too busy looking at the silhouetted pirate ship to realise that that big pretty light meant something big just jumped in.

[Vidmaster]

Its called  ''A Lion at the Door''. I like that my mission a lot mostly for the briefing. That music track is just killer for that mission.

awesome mission, choose it.  A second proposal would be "Rebels & Renegades".

But there is even a better option:
LET THEM WATCH THE FS2 INTRO ! (until the name is shown, not the whole one). It's freaking cool

[Mobius]

No, not the Intro! If you want to bring here people, show them the power of FS Open! The Intro has graphics that are...uhm..."far from average" even for 1999 standards(Colony Wars had wonderful CG cutscenes, and two of the three chapters of that saga came out before FS2...).

I suggest:

"A Lion at the Door"

"The Great Hunt"

"Feint! Parry! Riposte!"

In fact, they're all in the Demo

[Jeff Vader]

How 'bout The Sixth Wonder? That has always been quite thrilling, at least in my opinion. Though there is a small spoiler with the, um... *cough*Colossus. But nonetheless, a good piece of 'defend a station from warships and bombers'.

[Snail]

Sixth Wonder isn't a very good mission, especially to show off FreeSpace.

a) The Calypso is attacked by the Cato by mistake.
b) Epsilon has only 1 fighter which departs early in the mission (a bit strange).
c) There are a number of bugs (including the Manheim can depart with station bug).
d) The Colossus, when it jumps in, sometimes fails to fry the Hawkwood (this happened to me, it fired too early and its beams missed the Hawkwood, it took another minute or so to power back up again)
e) There are bugs in the briefingn (one of the wings is called "Bandit")

[Jeff Vader]

...true. But if

-the Colossus remembers/manages to shoot the Hawkwood down
-the player knows beforehand to go and disarm the Cato a bit
-you ignore the remaining bugs

it works.

[Snail]

1) More often than not, the right thing will happen, so no probs there.
2) The Cato fires around 2 seconds into the mission, sometimes hitting the Calypso by mistake when it tries to hit the station.
3) Yeah, yeah.

[Jeff Vader]

Well... "Feint! Parry! Riposte!"? That was already suggested. I like that too. In fact, I like all Suicide Kings missions. Partially due to Cordova. Now there's an authority with some personality.

[Mobius]

You shouldn't mind if a "show mission" spoils the plot or not. The best thing of FreeSpace is the community and all user-made campaigns/MODs. So goes for GTVA Vs. Shivans, close to Endgame and nebula missions.

[Snail]

If not for the big spoilers, I would recommend a 'fixed' version of "Their Finest Hour."

[Mobius]

And I wouldn't recommend it. That mission may be great for us, but is surely is a "meh" for any sci-fi fan apparently interested on FS.

[Snail]

Hmm... It's got big ships killing each other... But not a good display of FS2. True.

[Jeff Vader]

I think I'll agree with the spoiler part. After all, back when FS1 hit the stores, a Finnish gaming magazine spoiled at least half of the plot and events in the review. As with several other games. And that is probably necessary. Who'd buy a game if they have absolutely no idea of what's going on.