[Admiral Nelson]

In the tenth year of our war against the Vasudans, humanity had attempted one last desperate strike to end the war outright - a spear in the dark.  The Cardinal Fleet had been laid ruin, and the crew of the GTD Agamemnon was being hunted by a Vasudan general.  It was too late for victory, but not too late for vengeance...

This re-release of Cardinal Spear is intended to bring Cardinal Spear, originally created by Ace some 18 years ago, more up to date graphically as well as to remove some text to speech voice acting that was present in the original release. Note that this version of the campaign is not retail compatible, which is why I haven't put this in the official FS port release section.

Requires the Freespace Port and FS Port media VPs.

NEW in this release
Voice acting from Blaise Russel and Mad Bomber
Replaced a retextured terran model with fightermedic's Nefertum
Added new graphics for the Terran Plasma cannon

Additional credits:
Mission/table edits   Admiral Nelson
Voice Acting: Blaise Russel, Mad Bomber
Nefertum model: fightermedic, Aldo
Plasma effect: Star Trek mod author (Omniscaper?)

Original Release thread

Click for Download

Extract the folder to your main Freespace directory and activate "Cardinal Spear for SCP".

[HLD_Prophecy]

Awesome, thanks a ton contributors! I always wanted to see this redone.

[Nyctaeus]

I've seen this title numerous times. Now I'm wondering why I never managed to play that.

Perfect opportunity to change that ^^

[deathspeed]

Thanks!  I downloaded it, but I'm not sure where to put the VP file.  In my existing fsport cardinal spear folder?

[T-Man]

Oooooooh. Was a big fan of the old Cardinal Spear so definitely DLing this. Nice one guys and huge thanks!

[Admiral Nelson]

Thanks!  I downloaded it, but I'm not sure where to put the VP file.  In my existing fsport cardinal spear folder?

Hi deathspeed, I goofed in packing the file.  Please just download again and I added the instructions as the last line of my post.

[deathspeed]

Perfect; thank you!  I hope to give this a spin tonight!

[Solatar]

Ooh, it's been years since I played this. Downloading now. I always enjoyed the mission designs.

If you've never played Cardinal Spear, try this! It's a Freespace Classic.

[Ace]

It's a bit weird nearly 20 years after the fact seeing a remaster of the campaign done by other people

[Goober5000]

Hey, cool.

[Grizzly]

When I first played Cardinal Spear, when it was released as part of the FSPort, I was impressed. The high variety in weaponry and the shieldless fighters meant combat that was still quite freespace, yet refreshingly different, and I recall I found it a lot more fun then FS1 or FS2 vanilla. I highly recommend that people play it on that basis: There's a lot of interesting ideas here that are not explored anywhere else.

I also just remember it being really good so play it! I'll definitely will when I get home. I was 14 years old last time I played this! 

[Crashdown117]

Downloaded the file via download link, extracted it into Freespace directory, set up the mod in the launcher using 2014 MediaVPs and FSO 3.7.4 and got the following error:

CardinalSpear-shp.tbm(line 936):
Error: Required token = [#End], [$Subsystem:], or [$Name], found []

ntdll.dll! ZwWaitForSingleObject + 12 bytes
KERNELBASE.dll! WaitForSingleObject + 18 bytes
fs2_open_3_7_4_SSE2.exe! SCP_DumpStack + 213 bytes
fs2_open_3_7_4_SSE2.exe! Error + 230 bytes
fs2_open_3_7_4_SSE2.exe! error_display + 202 bytes
fs2_open_3_7_4_SSE2.exe! required_string_one_of + 429 bytes
fs2_open_3_7_4_SSE2.exe! parse_ship_values + 20183 bytes
fs2_open_3_7_4_SSE2.exe! parse_ship + 728 bytes
fs2_open_3_7_4_SSE2.exe! parse_shiptbl + 442 bytes
fs2_open_3_7_4_SSE2.exe! parse_modular_table + 157 bytes
fs2_open_3_7_4_SSE2.exe! ship_init + 969 bytes
fs2_open_3_7_4_SSE2.exe! game_init + 1423 bytes
fs2_open_3_7_4_SSE2.exe! game_main + 330 bytes
fs2_open_3_7_4_SSE2.exe! WinMain + 222 bytes
fs2_open_3_7_4_SSE2.exe! __scrt_common_main_seh + 253 bytes
KERNEL32.DLL! BaseThreadInitThunk + 36 bytes
ntdll.dll! RtlSubscribeWnfStateChangeNotification + 1081 bytes
ntdll.dll! RtlSubscribeWnfStateChangeNotification + 1028 bytes

Is it anything I could have done wrong or am I that one unpopular guy reporting the first bug?

[Admiral Nelson]

Nothing you did wrong -- somehow the ships.tbm included in the pack was truncated in the VP itself (but not in the source file).  I repacked the vp and reuploaded the file.  Please download and try again.

[Crashdown117]

Works perfectly fine now.

[CT27]

Could someone give some advice on the very first mission (defeating the PVD Alexandria)?  In this version my bombers launch torpedoes early before they're even in range (the torpedoes explode before they're hit by lasers or hit the PVD Alexandria).  All my escorting fighters and bombers seem to get wiped out before the enemy destroyer suffers much damage.  I've tried different strategies (attacking enemy fighters, attacking bombers, trying to disarm some enemy turrets but the result is basically the same).

I hope it's not a bug and I'm somehow playing the mission wrong.  I was only able to complete the mission by going to x64 and eventually my escort cruiser destroyed the enemy destroyer.  I honestly don't remember this mission being that hard in the previous version of Cardinal Spear (i.e. I didn't have much of a problem in the one that is listed as "fsport-cardinalspear va" in the mod list in wxlauncher).

[Admiral Nelson]

I tried the earlier one again and saw the same thing -- the bombers launch and detonate their missiles well short of target.  Did you play the earlier one recently?  I wonder if something has changed recently in how the AI handles remote detonate weapons.  I didn't change anything in this particular mission from the previous version other than the debriefing music and voice files.

[CT27]

It's been a while since I played the earlier version.  All I remember is that this first mission wasn't as challenging as it is on the current version.  For instance, in the earlier version I remember allied bombers doing a ton of damage to the Typhon and at the end of the mission actually having some allied fighters and bombers surviving. 

I can't say for sure but I was probably using 3.7.4 (final) on the earlier version too.


Any suggestions?

[Admiral Nelson]

So I went thru the tables -- it seems that the combination of speed and lifetime put the range of the torpedoes in the mod out to around 6km.  The result was that the bombers would sort of muck about far outside of range of their other weapons and not engage.  I reduced the range of the torpedo weapon to around 3KM, and so the bombers seem to actually fight closer now.  Please try this version and let me know if it is better now, or if you have any other feedback.

[CT27]

It seems to work better now.  Allied bombers got a number of hits on the Typhon.  However, all allied fighters and bombers were dead by the end of the mission.  I still had to use the x64 method to finish off the Typhon but not nearly as much compared to the version right before this.

It's not a technical problem anymore, I'm just wondering what's the best method for playing this mission?  I might be remembering things wrong but I remember in the version before this recent revival that I did much better and didn't have to use time compression to have the allied cruiser finish off the Typhon.  Should I try to take out some of the Typhon's turrets?

[Admiral Nelson]

That is always a good thing -- one thing I noticed is that on low difficulty settings the AI aims so poorly that the bombers can't even hit the Typhon with their super damaging primary weapon.  I wonder if you played it on a higher difficulty before?