Since getting into Freespace mods a year or so ago, I've been progressively working on playing through all of the completed campaigns currently available, major and otherwise. I'd like to eventually be able to put together a list/video/etc summarizing where each mod excels to make it easier for newcomers to Freespace to find the one that fits their fancy.

Blue Planet, Chanticleer, Inferno, and Derelict are the obvious four I started with, and most recently I've finished The Sixth Seal (a mod that really scratched my "it fits canon AND explains canon plotholes!!!" fancy a la Silent Threat: Reborn, much like Inferno recently gave me a "sweet liberty, finally a conclusion to the story!" moment) and now Exile: Into the Dark Waters.

I'm curious what the community opinion on Exile is? I see it mentioned less than some of the others, but it definitely had a very "off the afterburned path" vibe a la Blue Planet. The story was pretty engaging and retained a lot of the "Lovecraftian mystery" aspect of Freespace. I was particularly a fan of how the game itself never seemed to DIRECTLY confirm its location in the Freespace timeline, and instead told the story through references to Capella/old GTA through sidebar dialogues and the presence of a few surviving tech pieces like the Defender-Ulysseus, Prometheous Cannon and the lone surviving Orion.

I felt gameplay balance was definitely weird. The whole "shields strong, hull weak" mechanic was a nifty idea, but it made almost every primary in the game feel like a water gun on the high difficulty (especially against the massive waves of bombers; could blast them with primaries for 30 seconds and some wouldn't go down). Secondary balance was weirder...pretty much every non-swarm missile was useless and every swarm missile was a never-missing instant kill machine.

What did y'all think? I enjoyed it, figured it deserved some attention on here.

Up next I'm starting Reunion, with Between the Ashes being next in my queue after that.

I love AoA, and strongly dislike WiH part 1 but forced myself to play through it. But after seeing first mission of part 2 i stopped playing. I just can't, too many things than don't sit right right with me, (i just prefer more classic approach to missions among other things) but anyway can someoneone gimme a plot summary of it? how did it end? (yes, I know there is act 4(?) coming).

I can't find it anywhere.

In the mean time I played chanticleer and I must say I like it much more than WiH so props to the author.

Though I also absolutely loved capship mission in WiH

I’m planning on replying Great War /silent threat and 2. What versions would you recommend I install on Knossos? Just curious.

I’m shocked nobody has been able to make a mod that modernizes the mission briefing screens. If there is one let me know.

I bought this a few years ago and had been only partially successful getting this to work.

I love the game, shit I bought most of them 20 years ago on disc and again on Steam. I started playing again but would also love to get this to work but Windows 11 is killing me.

I have Nexus and have been looking for mods. Any help with result in a very crisp high 5.

Is there a mod to add in 6-DOF movement for you and the AI? Wanting to do a replay of FS but would love some updated movement mechanics

Why was the iOS game cancelled?

Uh, so i already asked on HLP forum but anyway,

I wanted to continue playing the sixth seal from when i left off yesterday, but I mistakenly clicked on retail fs2 desktop shortcut on desktop instead of knossos icon. It started to launch and it said something along the lines of: please configure your launcher beforehand and after clicking ok it said "freespace2/fred2 cannot be run from a drive root directory!" I clicked OK and it closed. When I opened the knossos after that and chose to play the sixth seal, the game told me to create a new profile. My old one was nowhere to be found.

I tried FSPort, STR, and a couple of other campaigns/mods and they all can't find any profile and prompt me to create a new one... I was using one profile across multiple mods and it worked but now they can't find it... I don't know if it's the fault of trying to (mistakenly) run retail fs2, or there was some update in Knossos i missed.

Does anyone know what's the location folder containing the profiles? Maybe I'll try restoring it to the earlier version

EDIT: I just saw that my profile (along with others): username.json, username.derelict.csg, username.freespace.csg, username.tss.csg and a bunch of others are present in C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\HardLightProductions\FreeSpaceOpen\data\players folder, but why is suddenly invisible/unreadable for all knossos mods that i don't know...

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So noob question, but since you can play certain mods with Knossos that don't require the base game I wondered if you can use Knossos's FRED2 function to use their assets in the editor.

Not that I want to do anything with it but just messing around a bit for fun, but when I tried to open FRED2 it just said "This mod does not specify an engine build to use, you should select one in the mod settings."

But in the mod menu I already went into the FSO Settings and choose 24.2.0 for the FSO Build (DEV).

Is there something else going on?

Or do standalone mods just don't work with FRED2?

EDIT: I now got past the engine build thing, but then I got those messages:

Any idea?

EDIT2: I actually managed to get FRED running.

I've run into a couple of issues I'm hoping y'all could help me out with with the biggest one here, as it's preventing me from actually playing the game.

Basically: I can't get the game to recognize my joystick. At all. It's a Thrustmaster T-Flight HOTAS, and it works find with other games (like MSFS and TFTC). I've gone into the Knossos settings, and there are options to assign detected-controllers to four different joystick slots, so I tried assigning all four to the T-Flight. No change.

Weirdly, when I try to customize the controls in-game, I've noticed that the game(s) seem to be detecting my mouse as Joy-0. No idea why. Anyone have any advice for me here? I know from messing with PCSX2 that controllers will automatically be assigned an SDL-# when connected to PC, but as far as I can tell, that's not an issue here because my gamepad hasn't been connected. But I've no idea how to check or alter those SDL-assignments from Windows (11).

(Also, unrelated question -- but-while-I'm-here -- it looks like Knossos has either changed a lot since the last time I played with it, or I never noticed before, or I forgot, but it looks like there's some advanced ways to tweak mods via custom dependencies? Is there anything there I should look into, or is it one of those advanced settings that's best ignored? I'm a bit curious because I know there was some old way to add mods onto the existing mods -- like setting up MediaVPS to work with an auto-aim mod -- and I'd like to try and set that up again, eventually.)

FreeSpace taught me that a capital ship should feel like weather. Something that changes the fight just by arriving. I have been building a top-down shooter in that spirit and cut this minute of footage after the page cleared its first 200 wishlists. Big hulls die in stages, bombers matter, and every pilot flies on the top AI tier. Do the beams read right to FreeSpace eyes? That is the one thing I keep second-guessing. Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4718360/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=freespace&utm_campaign=prelaunch

Running standard assets. https://youtu.be/X-v_CPIcChg Running "newerest" high-quality MediaVPs https://youtu.be/pjPdr_7lmvY More HQ Assets https://youtu.be/Cd6S_ff3s9M

Thanks to u/shivansps for the awesome work on Android build!

We're in the final stretch of TVWP! 🚀 Only one mission left needs some work, while the rest are already in the testing/polishing phase 😎

It might seem slow, and it is, but thats petty much is 2K resolution.

hHey, I'm looking for some new campaings for fs2, I've played fs, fs2 and st:r many times. I've also played sync, homesick, derelict, and the first blue planet (sorry but i did not like the second one, too idk "gung-ho"(?) and i did not like the narrative - i very much liked the mystical tropes of AoA) and i'm looking for something like these.

Just the right amount of mystery, plot twists, and mainly standard fs/fs2 ships with some visual changes. Forgive me but new ships (except maybe blue planet age of aquarius) are not for me, I also don't like those total conversion mods. It can be campaings that meybe expand the story or some sorts of spin-offs whatever

I'm looking at Knossos library rn and idk what would be of interest to me.

Hey everyone,
I’m the lead dev behind the new HLP website, and I’d love for you to check it out: https://hard-light.net

You can log in using your existing forum account, and once you’re in, you’ll be able to comment on and like posts from the HLP staff and mod developers.

The site is still evolving, so if you have any feedback, ideas, or suggestions for new features, drop them in the comments. I’m always looking for ways to improve things, and I’ll do my best to incorporate your ideas into future updates.

Let me know what you think: what works, what doesn’t, and what you’d like to see added. What’s the one feature you’d like to see the most?

Cheers!
— shiv

And just, like, *wow*. I have never been so singularly engaged in a story like that. Mission design was fantastic, the new ships/weapons were great (Ares4Life), and it was cool to play as an actual character

I don't reddit often, but i do want to say hi (It's Dekker/Dobbsy)

I'm trying to play freespace mod called "Diaspora shattered armistice" but no matter what I choose for resolution the game gets overscan

I'm about to replay fs2 and the rest and just noticed. Is it down for everyone? I think it was working last month