Mods/Second Great War Part II

12 years after the Second Great War, we discover some more Shivans in an uninhabited system. This campaign is the sequel to The Second Great War. Though this campaign is not by the Freespace people, it's almost like a Great War. This campaign has many unique things, such as civil wars, a juggernaut on our side, a Colossus on enemy side, bombing runs, recon missions, and a collapsed node with you unfortunately trapped on the wrong side of it. You are on the shivan side. How will you survive? [hr] [b]"Extremely Important" Information from the Readme[/b] I am just going to give you some important information and tips about this campaign that I suggest you carefully look over before you play. This campaign was not made by the Freespace2 people. I just decided to call it The Second Great War Part II to get people to play and also because it is very much like a Great War in which there is some serious action. I made this mission in a hurry and only played it once. I didn't have anybody play the whole campaign yet. There was one person that played the first 10 missions and they said it was really good. The campaign doesn't have mistakes except maybe a type error or something minor here and there. I have done some programming before on the computer and the FRED program was really easy. Here are some suggestions in playing the game: 1. The campaign is hard. If you are a beginner, then play it in very easy. If you are good, then play it in easy. If you are an expert, medium is what I suggest. If you can't beat a mission at a certain dificulty, then go down a difficulty. 2. I have a lot of messaging in this campaign. I made sure that people can read the message completely before the next message comes. However if you are a slow reader, then use F4 and go the messages section where you can read the previous messages that you missed. To make it easier, before every message, there will be a sound. 3. In this campagin you are required to travel long distances. So to compress time (speed up time) press CTRL+. In another words, press the control key in the bottom left and the period key at the same time. The first time you press it, it will increase the speed by two. If you press it again, it will increase it by 4. This is as high as it goes. The amount is shown on the bottom right corner. It will say x1, x2, or x4. To bring the time compression back to x1, which is regular speed, press CTRL+, In another words, press the control key in the bottom left and the comma key at the same time. If you happened to miss a message because you speeded the time and couldn't catch a message, press F4 and go to messages to read the previous messages. 4. This campaign is very well planned out. Take my word for it. In this campaign, you will do things that you have never done before. For this reason, it is very imporant that you read all the briefing, command briefing, debriefing, and the messages completely. Directives are also important. If you follow directives and messaging during the mission, you will be fine. Following all the briefings, command briefings, and debriefings will help you understand the story. Note: some of the systems are made up: Cyprus, Omicron Cygni, 82 Phi Ceti, LTK-9479, Cambridge 19, the nebula at Cambridge 19, and the nebula from Gienah Cygni. Also some of the things such as subspace shields in Mission 3, and inter/intra system jumpdrives in Missions 13, 14, 15, and 18 are made up. [hr] [b]Comments[/b] The campaign is widely derided in the FreeSpace community as one of the worst third-party campaigns ever to be released. However, for some people, the campaign is so bad that it has come full circle and crossed the "so bad it's good" line. Whether to regard it as a terrible campaign or a MST3K-style funny/stupid campaign is a matter of individual preference. -- Goober5000 Actually, in terms of mindless 'let's blow a whole ton of **** up,' it's rather enjoyable. For instance, I fondly remember one mission where you single-handedly have to take out about 18 or so assorted Shivan cruisers and corvettes. (Turns out a double Helios more than smashes a Cain to smithereens.) However, if you're looking for a coherent story and sensible ship use, it's probably not your cup of tea. -- Mongoose The readme file warns you that you should use time compression often. That's right. You usually have to reach jump nodes 20k meters away from you or wait for hostiles who must cover the same amount of distance. In terms of mission design, it's as simple as you can imagine. There are a few inspect-this-and-that missions, but most of the times you're only fighting seemingly endless waves of fighters and bombers who are hopelessly trying to do some harm to something you have to defend. Worse, there are missions where everyone in your squad flies bomber and you have to take down a lot of corvettes, destroyers, and even juggernauts(!) in one mission. Often they don't bother to launch fighters. You will collect a lot of kills and medals in this campaign, and you'll be promoted a few ranks also (one of the missions has awarded me 100,000 points for no apparent reason). There is some sort of story deep within the Command and mission briefings, but they're badly written, and it quickly turns out you don't need to understand the intended storyline to keep playing. -- TopAce As someone who made the mistake to do a Let's Play of the campaign, I can safely say that, even though I had no expectations whatsoever, was disappointed. I was expecting something stupid, not something THIS bad. I have started playing with a considerable enthusiasm, hoping for dozens of stupidly funny things in the campaign. That did not happen. Instead, I've got a really boring, really bad, confusing experience that I grew to dislike, then to hate. All in all, after finishing it, all I can say is that it has not worth it overall. As a gaming experience, it was horrible. I can't recommend it to anyone. It is horrible and not worth playing. It frustrates you to no end. While that is obviously subjective, I'd like to hereby ask you all to forget even about the sheer EXISTENCE of this campaign. A note on the - supposed - technical stability: I can safely say that I have experienced the opposite. It could be said that some of the issues were my fault, but there were so much of them that I cannot say that it is bugless. To say even one word about the instant-warpout mission completions would be useless. I have experienced flying a bomber without primary or secondary weapons, freezing game, the mission not reacting for me pressing the given button, badly added messages, really haphazardly arranged FREDding, et cetera. All in all, please forget about its existence. Go and play Blue Planet: Age of Aquarius again instead. -- Lucika The one other thing worth noting about The Second Great War Part II (apart from its ridiculous mission design, obviously) that it can definitely claim is stability. This is arguably one of the most bug-free campaigns ever released for FreeSpace 2, surpassing fabled mods like Warzone, Derelict, The Procyon Insurgency and even Blue Planet: Age of Aquarius in this regard. The only known issue with this campaign, and a minor issue at that since it does not affect gameplay, is the Exit Loop button that remains at the top-right corner of every mission briefing after a certain point in the campaign due to an SOC branch not being closed off properly (clicking it causes the game to crash, from what I've heard). This aside, however, SGWP2 runs flawlessly on nearly every FS2_Open build ever released to the community, including the prototype Nightly Builds and Release Candidate builds. -- Androgeos Exeunt