[Mobius]

It is the first campaign I have seen that you actually always fly Shivan ships and they are always the good guys.

What do you mean? The Shivans are the good guys. Always.

[eliex]

It's always comes down to a matter of perspective. 

[Romanmolf]

Here is a screen:

[Belisarius]

Played the mission and I like it. But there are a few things which bother me.

Spoiler:

1. The fact that you have the opportunity to carry beam weapons in your ship in the last mission.

I don't think the player should be able to get them and even more so he shouldn't be able to use them in a fighter class ship. There the balance gets frakked up.



2. The mission outgoing of the last mission.

I expected something like a superdestroyer arrives and kills everything allied. The superdestroyer was there, but it got killed by two vessels which are only destroyer class ships. It doesn't look really reasonable to me.


3. Destruction of the Lucifer class vessel.

You remember in FS1 this ship was the great threat of two races. It wasted an entire planet within a few hours and its shields were that strong that nothing could break through it. In you campaign you can simply damage it with a simple beam cannon. All the mysticism has just gone.


4. The way how things get explained.

Things happen too fast and a consequential explanation is falling by the wayside. Where did this shivan knossos device come from? If it was deactivated a long time, then I can understand why the allied forces haven't recognised it, but that's missing in the explanation.


5. Weapon and ship loadout.

It doesn't matter which laser I click I always get the Mekhu HL-7 in right display. The new weapons should have their own icons and animations, but maybe that was a bit too much for you. Then the missile selection. You always get the original missile description, but not the one you have later in your cockpit. I never knew which missile I'm taking now. I just did try and error.

But there are also enough things I like and not just things I dislike.


The redesigned Orion class looks great. I really loved the original model, but that vessel is simply awesome.  But the Iceni could need a redesign. I'm not quite sure, but neither it looks terran nor shivan. Not even like a hybrid. Maybe a bit more glowy red, eh? The design of the new Negotiator (I hope I typed it right) reminds me to the shadows of the Babylon 5 series. I know the next thing I do now is to watch some episodes  I really really enjoyed the music in this campaign. You may tell me from whom it is?
The video sequences were also quite interesting. Didn't even know that FS2 supports such things.
The mission design was just great with only a few exceptions. I loved those dogfights where everywhere were jumping enemy forces in and you didn't know if this will ever come to an end. But the mission with that cruiser firing its main beam cannon at you was nasty. It took me about a minute to realise what happened. But doesn't change the fact that it took three attempts to survive the first five seconds...

I'm done

[Lucika]

Where can I download the new Shivas ships from? (If those will be invisible in-game which are invisible in the Tech Room, then the problem is greater, since even the Lucy doesn't display)

[Droid803]

You running with the 3.6.10 Mvps?
The ships use the textures without the a's and b's so they're absolutely required.

[Lucika]

You running with the 3.6.10 Mvps?
The ships use the textures without the a's and b's so they're absolutely required.

FSO is 3.6.9.
Thus thje vp-s are so, eh?

[Jeff Vader]

You running with the 3.6.10 Mvps?
The ships use the textures without the a's and b's so they're absolutely required.

FSO is 3.6.9.
Thus thje vp-s are so, eh?

No.

[Romanmolf]

Here are some more screens :









Opss... I forgot to turn off the HUD...

[Belisarius]

Played the mission and I like it. But there are a few things which bother me.

Spoiler:

1. The fact that you have the opportunity to carry beam weapons in your ship in the last mission.

I don't think the player should be able to get them and even more so he shouldn't be able to use them in a fighter class ship. There the balance gets frakked up.



2. The mission outgoing of the last mission.

I expected something like a superdestroyer arrives and kills everything allied. The superdestroyer was there, but it got killed by two vessels which are only destroyer class ships. It doesn't look really reasonable to me.


3. Destruction of the Lucifer class vessel.

You remember in FS1 this ship was the great threat of two races. It wasted an entire planet within a few hours and its shields were that strong that nothing could break through it. In you campaign you can simply damage it with a simple beam cannon. All the mysticism has just gone.

Spoiler:

1) It is balanced in some ways because you are slower and less manueverable. Also, You will play as fighters with beams in Inferno, I believe and in this mission, it was a good choice to avoid risking warship damage and there were too many beam turrets that needed disabling for a warship to simply jump in and destroy the Lucifer's turrets with their beams turrets. If a destoryer tried, it would be wiped out by the other beams on that Lucifer.

2) That was not a superdestroyer; it was a destroyer. Plus, the Nightmare species only have 1 destroyer class, one cruiser class, one fighter class, and one bomber class. I'm not sure if that changed. I know that sounds boring, but check the tables in vp viewer to know for sure. I will recheck too.

Also, it isn't very easy if you don't disarm the right beam turrets pronto, and just look at how powerful its flak is. I failed to protect the Orion several times, meaning I failed several times at first.

3) Think about the fact that AAA beams damage your hull while doing no damage to your shields. They completely bypass your shields. So it makes sense for anti-warship beams to be able to bypass warship shields too and hit their hulls. Also think about how both beams and shields use electro-magnetism, in which light is one form of that. Light can pass through other light since it isn't dense like matter (matter is a highly concentrated form of energy with much less space in between the particals, and in this case, you never sometimes go through it like a ghost because each atom generates electro-magnetism that also holds the electrons in orbit around the nucleus and is an opposing force to most things on the outside normally unless you have enough heat for chemical or nuclear reactions). I guess a shield works in a similar way, but it not being around the nucleus and electrons of the atom and instead it being around the whole ship instead of just each atom of the basic elements that the ship is made of. Like the ship is the nucleus, I suppose.

So beams can pass through shields since light can pass through other light most of the time. I'm guessing that is an accurate scientific reason why. Not sure if I'm 100% correct though but I know enough to use common sense to guess that is how it works. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, anyone.

Light waves if in certain frequencies can be small enough to pass through just about anything, like if the light is in the gamma ray spectrum, for example. Even in between subatomic particals, I think. So it makes sense.

I don't see that from the technically point of view, since I'm not even educated enough to understand what you wrote there. In a mission anywhere in the middle of the campaign a destroyer fired its beam cannons at the Lucifer and only a few percent of hull damage were made. Now I have a beam cannon and have the ability to kill the entire ship alone? Sorry, but there the balance is gone. Something like in FS1 where you had to follow the vessel into subspace, so its shields were off would've been much more reasonable.

[Commander Zane]

The only "technical" part you need to know of is that despite the Lucifer having it's WC2-style phase shieldingmabob, beams will damage it regardless. The purpose of sending in several wings of beam-equipped bombers was to conduct a surgical strike against the Lucifer in order to destroy the reactors so that it would become weakened for larger ships to damage it with their full potential.

[Droid803]

Spoiler:

Uh...you can't kill the Lucifer alone.
As Commander Zane has said - You can destroy its subsystems in a surgical strike role, just without following it into subspace. Destroying its reactors doesn't even cause it to go up, only weaken it. You're still entirely reliant on the SD Valarauko to do the majority of the damage to the Lucifer.

As for the mysticism, do recall that you're siding with the Shivans, against other Shivans. (Yes, I know that is slightly awkward, I understand). I would believe that you would know the weakness of your own weapons, and be able to design something to exploit it. What is so mystical about your own ships?

And regarding the final battle of the last mission - why the two destroyer-level ships were able to destroy the Requiem will be explained in the sequel. For now, just think that everything allied was very lucky.

[Androgeos Exeunt]

Spoiler:

As for the mysticism, do recall that you're siding with the Shivans, against other Shivans. (Yes, I know that is slightly awkward, I understand). I would believe that you would know the weakness of your own weapons, and be able to design something to exploit it. What is so mystical about your own ships?

I don't see anything awkward about that.

[MC_Kejml]

Just finished the campaign.

(Review)

Spoiler:

Storyline-wise, there were some shivan rebels, attempting to bring some higher power to the play and possibly siding with them, that reminded me a bit of the original Neo Terran rebels, which we found amongst the shivans, too. The final negator SD also left me very surprised and we can only speculate what were their intentions and what will our heroes find in the knossos.

However, there were several story elements missing. Was the knossos build by red hand in such a short time? Or was it there already, but, uhm, not noticed ( Gamma drac? ) Not wanting to be a huge fs geek or something, but some semblance of a shivan star map would definitely encourage the players to see more, as we know little about shivan systems at all. That would be some major plus points.

I liked flying shivan ships, but with some, like the nephilim or aeshma, I felt they were a bit nerfed, since they were very easily flown. That was good.
Also, the ship pool was big enough, so, ok.
You could have tried and bring some difference to the main lasers for your ships, since 3/3 superfast/ 4/4 fast / 5/5 normal and 6/6 slow was just :/
On the contrary, the beam weapon was cool to use and innovative, too.

I had no bugs except the one at the beginning (and that was because of me )whatsoever, so that was ok.
Missions were very entertaining and full of suspense, I personally liked the one where you destroy the Lucifer and the Requiem. The first one was very BP-ish, you really needed to train yourself with the beam to take down all the beams, as that was the only bomber-class weapon.
One annoying mission was the first one with the "DIVEDIVE" factor. The initial swarm of fighters and virtual incogruity of forces made me go one difficulty bit down.

The music impressed me a lot, especially Duress. Fine choice for epic battle music.[/review]

[Romanmolf]

I finished it. Very good.

Again, some screens:

[FreeSpaceFreak]

Hmm, you like things blowing up, don't you?

[tinfoil]

who doesn't?

[Romanmolf]

Hmm, you like things blowing up, don't you?

Yes.

[BTAvatar]

The original music in this is top notch. I plan on stuffing my mp3 player with them ASAP!

[eliex]

Hmm, you like things blowing up, don't you?

The beauty of death . . .