[Snail]

I'll download and play this on the weekend. Looks good (from the screenshots). I just love shooting our fishy friends.

[Marduk]

someone's gotta ask... so how's the full release coming along?

[Mad Bomber]

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!

Spoiler:

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.

[Woolie Wool]

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!

Spoiler:

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.

[Mad Bomber]

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.

I'm referring to the Diana. I'm pretty sure that's never shown up in any previous MOD.

[Woolie Wool]

Oh, that's a conversion from one of Aldo's modeldumps. I'll have to thank StratComm for converting the model, and then I altered the texture to add missile points and did POF data.

[WMCoolmon]

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.

Spoiler:

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.

[Woolie Wool]

The "beam" on the Hephaestus is a cutting laser, not a beam. Only science cruisers and mining vessels have them, and they do very little damage. Beams do not appear until late chapter 2, around the year 2340.

Also, all the new chapter 1 ships are supposed to be from the same era as the beginning of FS1, except I assume that you never encounter them yourself in FS1, only their replacements.

And the Ulysses is far too Vasudan-looking to be used by the GTA in this campaign, so they get a different fighter called the Eris instead.

As for the pacing, I felt a need to show a lot of stuff for the demo, because people have already had plenty of practice shooting down Anubises in an Apollo. I wanted to emphasize how TOF is different, and thus had to make a lot of things happen very early on. The story kind of settles down later. Missions 3 and 4 are supposed to be confusing, because Alpha 1 isn't aware of the rebellion until Command recalls him. Maybe I should've written mission 5 and stuck it in the demo, which would've answered most of the questions, but it felt wrong to end a demo AFTER a big revelation.

[WMCoolmon]

I'll look forward to mission 5, then.

[Akalabeth Angel]

     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:

Spoiler:

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.

[Woolie Wool]

Are you using 3.6.9? If time compression activates, your build is too old. You should see a cinematic instead.

[Akalabeth Angel]

Are you using 3.6.9? If time compression activates, your build is too old. You should see a cinematic instead.

       Yeah it's 3.6.9. I get the WC Saga style time compression going on, to like x64. . . as the wingman, I'm a little crazy (Lead ships go straight, wingmen jump all over the place). But no complaints since that's out of your hands.

[Solatar]

I'm having trouble with mission 2. When I exit autopilot near the navpoint, the convoy ships are a good 30 klicks away?

I'm using a very recent 3.6.10 build.

[ShadowGorrath]

Is this mod still going on? Cause I liked the demo a lot and really want to see the full.

[Snail]

I'm pretty sure Woolie Wool wouldn't give up.

Either that or he's working on that 41st century mod.

[ShadowGorrath]

41st Century mod? Any demo ?

[Snail]

Not that I know of. There's some fan fiction about it: http://forum.spacebattles.com/showthread.php?t=77949

But other than that I don't know anything about it.

[Rodo]

I'm having trouble with mission 2. When I exit autopilot near the navpoint, the convoy ships are a good 30 klicks away?

I'm using a very recent 3.6.10 build.

happened also to me, keep near the convoy and don't use the navpoint, if you wait 5 minutes (or maybe you can use the time controls) enemy ships arrive, not the best way to fix this but it works.

[Solatar]

Experimenting on my own I've found the navpoints get a little screwy (on my build) when the player is not the wing leader. Doesn't appear to be Woolie's fault.

Woolie, I really do like the MOD. I feel like I have some firepower, but the fighters are still able to avoid fire so I don't feel like a sitting duck. It's quite nice to have to avoid Anubis autocannon fire to destroy bombers, or go after the Anubis while the bombers rip apart your convoy (I've played with it in FRED). I have some criticisms, but please take them as friendly from somebody who likes the way it's going.

The GTVA didn't produce beams until 2355 (I believe). How would the Terrans, without the Vasudan's help and without any Shivan technology (and without the Shivan 'threat' of coming back to scare them) to study make them 15 years earlier? I think flak cannons could come around (not the same as GTVA flak...but any kind would mess you up) at around this time though.

Shields? The MX-50 tech entry mentions the famed Ross 128 Deflector Array, however I don't think shields would be nearly as strong as they were without Shivan tech. I'm sure they had been doing research, but the main Freespace campaign gives the impression the Shivan tech (and Vasudan help/scientists) was a real advance. Also, I love the balance of fighting without shields. It makes things harder, and missions have to be designed slightly differently to take this into account (players also have to fly differently. Stay away from warships). I'd hate for the player to gain access to shields within the first few missions and throw all that opportunity of something different out the window. Perhaps weak shields, or shields that don't recharge over a mission?

I like how it's based on the freespace port, it makes it more authentic. A lot of the reconstruction era ships I think you should leave out. At the time of Freespace 2 the Charybdis is new, if not brand new. You might consider replacing the Terran gas miner with the Bromios from the TVWP (it would at least add a bit of continuity to the two campaigns). And maybe even add in the Reliant, a destroyer that's been in service since the Unification War (I'm almost positive it was released with the demo...).

Now to stuff I liked:

Although not canon, I do like the railguns. They add a lot to capital ship battles.

The nav point and autopilot system is great. It really lets me feel like I'm "based" off the destroyer.

I like the Phalanx. I've tried to make weapons intended for this era, and it's hard. If you make them much more powerful than the ML-16 Laser they're overkill, if you make them weaker they'll never get used. I liked the autocannons (Terran and Vasudan). When you arm an Anubis with them, they can actually hurt you. Kudos for making them fairly balanced.

I liked the Cobra and Vasudan Autocannon trail. It just looks awesome...

If you need anybody to test or help out with stuff, let me know. I don't have 24/7 free time or anything, but I'm experienced enough to take on what I can chew (unlike 13 year old me 6 years ago trying to start and run the TVWP...glad Goober took over, it's actually gone somewhere lol).

[Rodo]

Although not canon, I do like the railguns. They add a lot to capital ship battles.

Railguns are those things that the terran cruisers used against the disabled vasudan cruiser on the first mission- nav-point-3?? (dont remember if it was an Aten one or something else).