[soilder198]

https://fsnebula.org/mod/Big_Bad_Shivans



Good evening. This a small 5 mission campaign I worked on over the past couple years. You play as a member of the 405th Snails, a space superiority squadron stationed aboard the GTD Aeneas, flagship of the Terran Tenth Fleet.

The campaign is set during the events of Freespace 2. The chronology starts immediately after the FS2 mission The Fog Of War. The final mission in this campaign ends between Straight, No Chaser/Argnonautica. I initially intended for this to be a 10 mission campaign that concludes with the main FS2 campaign but was unable to complete it. I hope you enjoy what I managed to complete.

The campaign was finished using Mediavps 4.7.3 and FSO 24.2.0. It does not use any custom assets. The mod should work using any version of Mediavps, or even on vanilla FS2 graphics, though some backgrounds and UI elements will be missing. I would recommend using the latest version of FSO because there are some sexps used that are not available in prior versions.

The missions were designed and balanced using the Medium difficulty setting. Higher difficulty settings can be used for a more challenging experience.

One thing I want to mention is that when the fifth mission is completed there are no ending credits. It just takes you back to the mainhall and when you try to enter another mission it'll say that the campaign is over.

There is one easter egg in Mission 3 and two in Mission 5. One of the easter eggs in Mission 5 is difficult to find so here is a hint: destroy all but 18. Please post if you find the easter eggs, but please do so in a way that will not spoil them for other players.

I send a special, massive thanks to Goober5000 for the testing of missions 1-4. Mr. Goober also periodically checked in with me throughout the years, seeing if I had made any progress and always with words of encouragement.

Screenshots from the campaign below.






Patch Notes

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Version 1.0.3

- Adjusted placement of some icons in the briefing stage of An Eye For An Eye (mission 3).
- Corrected an icon in the briefing stage of Unwelcome Discovery (mission 5).

Version 1.0.2

-Fixed an issue in War Games (mission 2) that could prevent the mission from progressing.
-Fixed an issue that prevented the Trebuchet from being available in the weapons loadout for Calm Before the Storm (mission 4).

[Shivan Hunter]

Congrats on making a campaign! But uh, we can't play it. You've given us the .fc2 file which is just the glue that ties the missions together - we also need the missions themselves and any TBLs/TBMs or other custom assets you've made.

[Dan1]

If this could be put on Knossos I'd try it this ASAP.

[soilder198]

Sorry about that. I reuploaded the .fc2 file with all the mission files in a .rar document. The new link is on the OP.

[Shivan Hunter]

Fun little campaign! It was well-written and I liked the idea of showing some missing moments in the FS2 campaign while Alpha 1 was away doing Alpha 1 ****. The tone matches Freespace 2 really well too (GTVA hubris... sooooooo much hubris)

Only a couple minor criticisms: The missions are a bit on the easy side, with capship battles mostly resolving themselves without anti-beam input from the player (I even noticed a very pitiable Lilith with its LRed replaced with an SRed... lol). At first I was excited to try and tackle these things with Stiletto IIs instead of Trebs, but it turned out all I ever had to do was shoot down fighters/bombers with ample time to do so. (Also you say in Mission 4 that you're giving me Trebs and then you don't give me Trebs!!! (You have to use the allow-weapon SEXP sometime in mission 3 so we can use them in mission 4))

Overall a very nice little campaign

[Goober5000]

Delighted to see this released!  Highlighted.

[soilder198]

If this could be put on Knossos I'd try it this ASAP.

It's on Knossos now courtesy of Mr. Goober

[Fusion]

Interesting campaign. Very old-school in feel, and very complementary to the retail campaign. Also very robust - only had one issue with a mission breaking and it worked the second time I ran through it. It's good to get back to simple, classic fun after how overly complicated other campaigns can be. Definitely enjoyed it.

[Mobius]

Congratulations on this release! I've just added it to my "to play" list.

[soilder198]

I appreciate the feedback given so far. I've gone ahead and released a patch that fixes the progression issue in mission 2 as well as the trebuchet not appearing in the loadout for mission 4. I haven't found out how to patch on FSFiles yet so for now I've removed the FSFile link and only the Knossos launcher will have the current version.

[Colonol Dekker]

Awesome work.   I'm looking forward to playing through.