So, when does FreeSpace 2 start getting good guys? So far all I do is escort smaller or bigger fleets with or without lots of wingmen from point A to point B and oh so very unexpectedly get ambushed by waves of enemy fleets with smaller or bigger or giant ships which are damage sponges... It's not very fun... Tachyon at least lets me buy weapons and upgrades and choose from a few different missions, and go through gates to other sectors etc. It's purely mission based too but it feels more involved...

I guess it at least looks okay (with FSO)... Still, I'm very disappointed in it so far since it was supposed to be a classic of epic status...

By the way, the Thrust left/right/up/down keys don't function at all yet, do only later ships have any strafing or am I missing omething?

The Slide key doesn't do anything either, I thought it would allow me to maintain velocity while aiming in any direction like in Tachyon?

The side thruster controls + glide are not in the main Freespace 2 campaign, they were added to the engine by the Freespace Open community after the game was released and are only present in some of the mods. The Shivan fighters I believe have side thrusters in vanilla, but not Terran or Vasudan craft.

You are allowed to choose your weapons loadout and you and your wingmen's fighter craft, but your loadout/fighter choice is constrained by your ship's supplies and your loadout is further constrained by what your fighter can handle. Since you are a member of the military, you don't buy your own supplies in Freespace.

The mission structure is purely linear (actually that is not quite true there are a couple of special forces side campaigns you have a choice whether or not to partake in). I'm sorry you aren't enjoying the missions. May I ask what part of the campaign you are in?

The next mission is called The Sicilian Defense. Thanks for clarifying the controls. Kind of lame the mods didn't add them to the original ships also but oh well. I guess I'll add some other functions on the right stick instead of strafe until I get to the mods.

Seems you are about half-way through. Did you play the first SOC loop yet (the special forces missions)? (Rebels & Renegades, Love the Treason ..., ... But Hate the Traitor)

In a couple of missions you are about to be transferred to the Vasudans, maybe you'll enjoy those missions more. If you don't, then all I can say is to each his own and you may enjoy some of the mods more. :)

Also I think there are mods to add the controls to the main campaign - it's just not standard as part of the FSO downloads. I know there are AI mods - I think there are glide and strafe mods too (with of course AI mods to go with them). The hard-light forums should have more info on that.

EDIT: Actually I'd forgotten I had found it earlier for someone else:

http://www.gog.com/en/forum/freespace_series/control_option_glide

Thanks. This is a little confusing. If I choose another mod to load from the FSO launcher will I lose all the features the currently selected mod (MediaVPs 3.6.12) has? And, the list of included mods when I click "select mod" already has blueplanet and blueplanet2. Those are different to "Blue Planet: Age of Aquarius 3.6.12 Feature Pack" (which the page you linked to in the other thread redirects to)?

Edit: well, it seems to redirect to yet another mod on the last page of the already redirected thread?
http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=68214.20
Yeah, I'm confused...

No, it will simply load a different mod, however most if not all take advantage of the mediavps. I believe FSport has the option of loading one version fsport with old graphics and one, fsport-mediavps, which has the new graphics engine. The mod's dependencies should appear below the name of the selected mod in your launcher (at least it does in Soulstorm's launcher for OS X). For instance fsport has only itself listed as a dependency whereas fsport-mediavps has fsport-mediavps,fsport, and media-vps all listed as mod dependencies.

I've not used the feature pack myself, so I don't really how that changes things or what it does and does not download or what you need to launch from for the main campaign. The people on the hard-light forums will probably know better than I.

One thing, when playing a new campaign (i.e. playing the original Freespace in Fsport or the user-made Blue Planet - an excellent mod btw, Blue Planet 1: Age of Aquarius is solid, but Blue PLanet 2: War in Heaven is really quite good - after finishing Freespace 2), it is usually recommended to copy your pilot and use the newly copied pilot for the new campaign. People used to report corruption of their profiles when using the same pilot across different campaigns. I think most of those problems have been fixed (I didn't have a problem with it), but it is still listed as a recommended practice. Yeah apparently the OP deleted the original links to the mod he made and then created a new pack containing all the changes into one mod link which is the last post of the thread - HunterKiller made the same observation in the control_option_glide thread on GOG's forums. However, that's all I really know about it.

P.S. If you get glide+thrusters to work, let me know - I'll be interested in hearing about it and how you think they play in the main campaign. I'm sure there are others in the forum who might be interested too. Cheers.

Using the same pilot file across multiple campaigns is still kinda inadvisable. However it is a lot more stable than it used to be, so long as you completely finish a campaign before moving on to the next one (if you do multiple campaign swaps with same pilot file before ending a campaign it'll probably die on you).

Glide/Strafe is kinda meh as a mechanic, and you've probably missed a trick playing FS2 before FS1.
Realistically, FS is great from the start, and all the way through, with a few weaker missions, while FS2 is only great after you get out of the stupid nebula the final time.

You should consider multiplayer before you give up the game completely as well, although not extremely busy when you can get games with people (normally via hard-lights IRC channels), then you will find it massively increases the enjoyment and longevity of the game.

I didn't get a glide/strafe patch in the end, I will try it with the campaigns that use it I guess, if I get any.

Do you mean it's not implemented well or that you don't like it in general?

I think it works well in Tachyon: The Fringe (slide at least, I've yet to get the engine upgrades for strafing).

I tried to go on multiplayer but it didn't seem to find any matches? Do I need something more than FSO for that?

Am I out of the nebula? The next mission is Argonautica. I guess it was kinda nice disabling the giant ships in the last few missions but...

I am not sure if QuantumDelta meant he just didn't like the nebula missions or if he really meant what he wrote since the last nebula mission occurs only about 5 missions from the end of the campaign - if the latter I guess he didn't like the FS2 campaign either. :) I can't remember if Argonautica takes place in the nebula or out of it, if in it, then it is the last nebula mission in the main campaign. The second SOC loop takes place afterwards I think and has one mission in the nebula - a particularly bad section of it - and one mission which is ... somewhere else :P.

By the way, the game seems to stutter in the nebula missions for me.

The frame rate actually remains at 60 fps (vsync on) according to fraps but there's clear stuttering that results in feeling loss of control.

What would be a graphical setting that affects nebulas to see if it fixes by turning it down/off?

I think one thing FS2 does really well is to make you feel very small and vulnerable, while the world is influenced quite little by any individual pilot. The world does not revolve around alpha 1 in this game, no matter how heroic you are. The sense of scale of the story, then, feels huge.

I much preferred FS1 to FS2, I thought the nebula was a fairly cheap dynamic in general, and was initially jaded by how even enthusiast pcs of the time died while playing nebula missions, Argonautica is the last main mission in the nebula, after that the SoC arc takes you back in but the SoC arcs are awesome and exempt, the rest of the pre-nebula campaign apart from nebula related missions that didn't take place in the nebula blew, and anything at all to do with the collie except their finest hour blew (and even that could have been a lot better). the 40th blue lions and SoC missions are pretty much the only missions I genuinely enjoy in FS2, and bearbaiting...
FS1 however, apart from escort missions in asteroid fields ¬.¬ is by far the better game :P

And yea, sliding miffs me, the AI doesn't deal with it very well, and it leads to far more predictable PvP / vs AI combat, particularly dull for the experienced dogfighter.
Strafing isn't tooooooooo bad............I guess......

As for multi itself, check out the hard light productions multi forum there are several stickies on the topic, also there is a lot of information to be found amongst the people and bots set up to help multi newbies on hard lights irc channels.

To each his own I guess. I preferred to FS2 to FS1 though I enjoyed both. I may not have had the same negative reaction to the nebula partly since I didn't play FS2 until recently, running FSO, and so the game ran fine for me during those parts. On average I thought the mission construction was better in FS2, but there are indeed some great, and very intense, missions in FS1 - I remember sweating with my heart in my mouth by the end of the mission "Last Hope". I think I was so tense by the end I simply opened fire the second something came out of subspace ... which caused me to fire on my Vasudan relief when they arrived. Thankfully I stopped before doing any real damage. :) That was probably the most intense mission in either campaign, but on average I preferred FS2's missions and campaign more.