[lostllama]

I noticed that too. It's more akin to the effect used in Inferno: Alliance.

Also, great work with this 1st act, overall I'm very impressed.

[Molybdenum]

Excellent campaign! Superb atmosphere and immersion thanks to the music. Personally for me it takes a place among the great ones like BP and ST:R.

I really like the portrayal of the ancients hubris that we know will be their downfall.

The only thing I would question is the strength of the shivans. They aren't really that much of an increased threat compared to the Aeshdarians. Maybe this was intended. I hope that changes as they start using Beam Cannons and the Lucifer and Sathanas shows up.

Anyway a interesting question popped up after finishing the campaign. It was said in the intel for the Aeshdarians that the have already fought a war in space. They also possess beam weapons and shields. This made me conculde that maybe:

Spoiler:

They encountered the Shivans earlier and reverse-engineered their technology?

Its already ironic that the Ancients encountered the very weaponry the need to stop the "indestructible" Lucifer in the hands of an inferior species.

[Jeff Vader]

Code: [Select]

Searching root pack 'F:\Freespace2\stu_fs2.vp' ... 1777 files

stu_fs2.vp should generally contain 2355 files. Either yours is broken or it's a feature of the German version.

[The E]

I believe it to be broken. Different file numbers are probably to be expected, but nearly 600 missing files look more like corruption to me.

[Commander Zane]

I didn't lose a single Wingman (Warrior brother or sister ) to the Aeshdarians, the Shivans wiped the floor with them.

And yes the music is freaking awesome.

[TopAce]

stu_fs2.vp should generally contain 2355 files.

You know this number by heart?

[Jeff Vader]

stu_fs2.vp should generally contain 2355 files.

You know this number by heart?

Yes, actually. I also have logs with the correct numbers on my computer. And then there's this.

[-Norbert-]

No it is not broken. The german version doesn't have any voice for briefing and de-briefing (only command briefing and ingame) thus there are fewer files in it.

Norbert, that sounds like an oversized piece of debris crashed into the Koumasa and killed it. Is that possible? One more issue to look into...

Three times in a row? That would indeed be some incredibly bad luck.
The first two times I was just blasting away at the next best bombers, so I though that perhaps the destroyer got hit by too many kamikaze ships, but the third time I payed very close attention to it and there was no enemy near it and I doubt any debris could hit it for 89% hull!
The hull didn't go down gradually or in steps... one moment it was 89%, the next *booom* "Oh my god! We wiped out the enemy fleet, but since we lost one of our three ships, we are now utterly defeated by an enemy who's not even alive anymore".....

But as I mentioned before, despite being executed, I can still advance to the next mission. I guess I'm a ghost now or something.

Edit:
Okay.... I guess whatever that error is, it is non-critical. Out of habit I simply clicked cancle all the time before. This time I clicked ok and the ingame-cutscene started and I'm now looking at the command briefing of the next mission (allthough I got another error in the middle of the cutscene - also non-critical).

[Spoon]

I didn't lose a single Wingman (Warrior brother or sister ) to the Aeshdarians, the Shivans wiped the floor with them.

And yes the music is freaking awesome.

For me it was completely the other way around.
Then on the other hand, I started doing C-3-1 a lot with the shivans to break through their shields.

Thing is, the shivans are fat slow moving targets in comparison to those incredibly thin profiles of the darts.


Also, for those using german versions. Why not download the english version by torrent or something? You already bought the game after all.

[TopAce]

That'd mean the distribution of retail VP files. That's all you need to play FreeSpace with FSO.

[Commander Zane]

Gameplay: The weapos aren't very well balanced - One is insanely powerful once you tear through the shields, but there are no weapons that do significant shield damage.

I think the only truly unbalaced weapon is the Shivan Uber Laser, just two shots put a Fang from full shields and hull to a vaporized quadrant and 12% hull integrity.

[Enioch]

DL'd it yesterday. Haven't finished yet. In fact, I'm still fighting Aeshdarians. Inferior bastards!

Some comments, things I think should be said. Some (contructive?) criticism there, too.

The Good: very nice storytelling. EXCELLENT writing, especially concerning the Ancient language/ mannerisms/ ethos/ hybris/ civilization. I'm an archaeologist, and I must say I loved the idea of using the phoenician alphabet as wing callsigns. BEAUTIFUL intro. Pretty nice mission balancing. Interesting ships (although the target profile of those Darts is a nightmare. The only way of killing them in under five minutes is to get the ultra-fast ROF cannon and spray the spiders into oblivion. )

The Bad: Mainly the interface. I know, it probably took you ages to fix right, and it shows ( ), but there are a few things that grate on my nerves. Namely, in the ships/weapons selection screen, it's VERY hard to see the blue-green ancient ships (in the 'available' list, in the lower left corner of the screen), over the blue-greenish background art.   Is there any way you could put a darker 'bar' behind the ship list, to make them easier to see?

Also, the water-ripple effect for the weapons kinda annoyed me. I'm not asking for FS2-like weapons schematics, but at least make the weapon data easy to read...

One more thing:

Spoiler:

in the second mission, where you destroy the Damocles, I chose to kill the destroyer before taking on the cruisers. However, the message chaining seems to take for granted that the destroyer will be downed after the cruisers. As such, I got a message that confirmed my kill of the Damocles only AFTER  all three cruisers were down. Nitpick, I know, but it definitely killed the atmpsphere. It was kind of like:

"Aleph one, very good job! You killed all three cruisers! Now go after the Damocles!"

and then, after two seconds:

"Well done, the Damocles is destroyed!" (and I had taken out the Damocles like fifteen minutes ago...)

Fix that, please.  

All in all: one of the best campaigns I've played. Excellent work! Keep it up, and may the Shivans be with you! because you don't want them to be against you...

[FreeSpaceFreak]

Well, I have no clue why the "Shivans" entry in Species.tbl seems to give troubles on German versions... Meh. Are there any other mods that had new Tech Room intel entries, and made those visible during the campaign, that didn't give problems for Germans?

Indeed the warp effect has been "spun up" a bit, credits to Starwolf1991 for that. As well as for the rippling weapon ANIs (they stop rippling after a couple seconds, shouldn't be that hard to read?), and a whole ****load of other things. He also found most of the music, together with ShadowGorrath - no idea where they found it, I think they scoured other games.

Indeed, your orders are to destroy the cruisers first. Enioch, you're apparently the first one to disobey. You will be tortured for that Seriously though, thanks for pointing that out.

The Ancients have already exterminated many species, so they're not as easily impressed as Terrans/Zods were at their first encounter with the Shivans. That's starting to change, though, from the last mission onwards...

As for the Aesdherians' previous war: this is related...

[-Norbert-]

Well, I have no clue why the "Shivans" entry in Species.tbl seems to give troubles on German versions... Meh. Are there any other mods that had new Tech Room intel entries, and made those visible during the campaign, that didn't give problems for Germans?

If there were any other campaigns that had a similar problem that I played, then it didn't produce an error, but simply didn't work at all. This is the first time I got thrown to the desktop about it (allthough the game continued to run fine after hitting the ok button).
But from time to time I was a bit upset about mods not putting all ships into the techroom, even after playing the campaign through. Maybe that has the same cause?

[Madcat]

I went after the cruisers first both times but it took me too long and the capships killed the Damocles before I could down all cruisers. Maybe because my wingmen don't all make it past the first wave of Fangs and Darts. So even if trying to obey, it doesn't always work out that way.

And thanks Norbert, it never occured to me that pressing "OK" on the error message doesn't actually start a debugger.  
Now I can continue playing.

I have played about 12 mods so far with my install and cannot remember any crashes to desktop except obviously the typical German crash for which a patch exists (mv_strings-lcl.tbm).

However I sometimes noticed in the techroom (including for ASW) that on some entries there are German texts showing instead of the supposed ones.
For example the entry on the AD Achladia showed the German text for the Orion. And now, after I made it past the error, it shows the text for the Hatshepsut instead.
For some weapons like the Fury MK 2 even the names are wrong, in the techroom as well as in the loadout screen (shown as Tempest). Only when playing the correct name is shown in the HUD.

I blame ze Germanz!  

[rubixcube]

nice campaign, really captured the character of the ancients well, story was great too. Though I didn't like the ending much, it was kinda like; we beat the crap out the Shivans, then we lose one destroyer, and we completely fail. But otherwise, 9/10

[Commander Zane]

I was wondering, what's the HomePlanet battle music tracks from?

[Droid803]

HomePlanet, of course.

[Commander Zane]

As cynical as I was reading that post I managed to find a video on YouTube with it.

[Enioch]

Indeed, your orders are to destroy the cruisers first. Enioch, you're apparently the first one to disobey.

Well, forgive me for focusing on the big, fighter-spewing leviathan, instead of the small, far-away inferior weaklings that only take the occasional, horribly off-target potshots at me...  

You will be tortured for that

Not if the Shivans get to you first, you big bully!  

And you're welcome