[BlueFlames]

Artifice

In 2367, the shivans returned to terran-vasudan space, launching a multipronged offensive against the GTVA through Capella and Altair.  Though most could only see the scars left behind by the shivans, one man saw a gift that they had lost in the destroyers' wake.  Now, in late 2369, you stand on the cusp of seeing this individual deliver the shivans' gift to the Alliance, but will it bring joy or misery?

Artifice is an eleven-mission sequel to Second Front.  Artifice follows Second Front similarly to how FreeSpace 2 follows FreeSpace 1, in that you do not necessarily need to have played Second Front to enjoy Artifice, but knowledge from the earlier campaign will enhance your experience in the second.  Additional information, screenshots, and download links can be found at the Artifice website.

Oh, and cryptic teaser images....

 

 

Second Front -- Artifice
Artifice screenshots -- Artifice downloads

Update
March 3, 2008
Walkthrough now available in the download section.

Special thanks to Mustang19 and Trashman for rounding up a number of bugs that I missed during the open beta period!

[Koth]

I'll surely play this on Very Easy. Trying to get through Second Front on Medium was.........painful.

EDIT:It seems you forgot to include the campaign file.

[BlueFlames]

EDIT:It seems you forgot to include the campaign file.

DOH!

Fixed and re-uploaded.  Sorry for the inconvenience.

[Koth]

I'm willing to wait for a good campaign.

[Mustang19]

Downloaded it just now. I'll take a look. 

[Mustang19]

I played up to Mission 3 this morning before heading to class. Good, challenging, balanced missions.   Just waiting for the plot to thicken.

Spoiler:

One bug report though. In mission 2, if you fail secondary objective (let the sneaky pirate freighters get away with the cargo), the briefing sounds like you should be allowed to continue but you aren't allowed to proceed in the campaign.

Oh, and thanks for using the designers notes and mission description, not many other FREDers do that.

[NGTM-1R]

Aside from the already reported bug, and the fact that in the same mission the bombers are no actual threat to anything because they're packing default loadouts and so have no bombs, my initial impressions are somewhat unfavorable. There are a lot of problems with the "fit and finish"; the containers scattered about the station in the first mission lack cargos, the sequencing of messages in the second mission can result in Command saying silly things, like ordering you to scan a ship when it arrives that's already arrived. (The kind of thing Karajorma beat into my head with my FRED Academy mission, pretty much...) The station is often right there, yet you have the player warp out rather than return to its fighterbay.

The widely spaced containers/freighters, the order in which the objectives appear on your escort list causing you to go in the wrong direction for the most efficent scanning, and their need to be scanned in rapid order is a blantant and rather petty attempt to trigger an early failure (when any rational procedure would forbid the freighters docking with unscanned cargo!). The unnoticed arrival of pirate freighters is silly; we've seen people stay on top of worse situations then this with less, there's a whole damn installation's worth of sensor techs right there. These are the kind of things that come across as the mission designer intentionally ****ing with you, breaking suspension of disbelief instantly. And this is only the second mission!

As if it weren't enough already, I'm left with an awful impression it wants to be Derelict from the first few missions, and it's failing badly. The writing is...stale. Writing is for me an intuitative and not a reasoned process, so this subject is one I have difficulty explaining, but it's reaching for a sardonicism that it's just not achieving.

And there's this dreadful silence in the mainhall and the missions, too.

Challenging? Certainly. Balanced? Perhaps, but then again challenging sort of implies they aren't, and attempting this campaign on Medium isn't something I would try lightly. Good? No. From a technical standpoint it has noteable issues. As a storytelling mechanism it just falls flat on its face.

[Mustang19]

****! Spoiler tags broken too.

[NGTM-1R]

It just keeps getting worse. The recommendations and debriefings for failure are a bit...ludicrous in some cases. They get things wrong. In the second mission, the timing is wrong. In the third, the debrief fails to take into account that what dies is not the objective cruiser, but the transport. It simply assumes since the cruiser was not recovered you lost the cruiser, though there is inmission accounting for the possiblity of the transport dying...sort of. You're given a mission abort by Command which doesn't really make sense for the events that occur, or even internally.

[Mustang19]

This is what you wanted for a beta test. Unfortunately I'm not critical "enough". Not only that, but the beta consisted of just two people playing the campaign through once. Let me give you a comparison of that with most campaigns. According to CP5670, very mission in PI was played through, in a "finalized" state, at least 40 times.

It's very difficult to get a thorough playtest job unless you have an actual "campaign team". Guess what? I did the same thing as you with the Merkar campaign. By the standards of the early FreeSpace community, your campaign would rock. But things have so vastly improved since then that every mission has to be made to a high standard. Even Derelict, IMO, sucks compared to a typical campaign "today".

If your goal here is to just have fun FREDing, go ahead. But if you instead want glory, project badges, and fame, your only real option is to find 3 or so dedicated playtesters. Pretty much the only way to do this is to join one of the existing projects. Sucks, I know. So much for individual creativity.

[Koth]

Well, I finally found time to play through it and I must say I found it to be quite entertaining apart from: some bugs with the debriefings in mission 2 and 3, a high difficulty level (too high for my tastes) and an unsatisfying end. There is quite some room for improvement. You could have expanded a lot more on Bast's motives for example. Yes I know you prefer FS2 Retail but switching to FS Open would offer you a lot of benefits without even needing a powerful computer.

[Mobius]

The first link doesn't work.

I DLed the campaign from the other link, however

[Obscured]

I like this campaign though it's rather difficult sometimes. But the "Burning the Village..." mission is very unbalanced (too many hostile fighters and bombers, too little friendly support (only two fighter wings and no capships)) and RBCs Mjolnirs are completly useless - they do not fire at Firestorm and Mirage. I can't finish this mission on medium difficulty level - bombers always destroy RBCs and Mirage always slips to subspace.

[BlueFlames]

I've started work on a strategy guide to help those having trouble with the missions.  I don't have a full walkthrough of mission nine yet, but there's some tips in the spoiler block below.

Spoiler:

Note that these tips are for the version of "Burning the Village..." that you play after saving at least two Mjolnirs in "Anticipation".  The whole thing plays out differently, if you do not meet that prior objective.

• Once the cruisers start arriving, don't worry about the Mjolnirs.  In fact, the Mjolnirs are meant to be destroyed, one way or another, and defending them is just something to occupy your time until the warships begin to arrive.

• Focus on disabling, rather than destroying, the two cruisers.  Friendly warships will be along later to finish them off.

• Save your Trebuchets for disabling the cruisers.  There's no sense wasting them on bombers, since the first torpedo to slip through will destroy a beam platform.

• When the Mirage arrives, position yourself underneath and behind the jump node.  (That is to say, get beneath the jump node and fly roughly in the direction the retreating freighter did in the beginning of the mission.)  This will put you in a decent firing position to take out the Firestorm's engines.

• You only need to knock the Mirage's engines down to 50%.  After that, they fail entirely on their own.

• You can advance to the next mission, even if all of the ships in the Altair fleet escape, but the next mission will get markedly more difficult with one or both cruisers there.  If the Firestorm escapes, you will need to disable it very quickly after starting the next mission, and you'll only have Stilettos and primary weapons available for that task.  If the Mirage escapes, it will provide AA coverage for the port side of the Galen.  In either case, they will split your attention, when it really needs to be focused on the Galen and its bombers.  If you wind up having to let one go, though, I'd recommend the Firestorm.  You'll have to disable it quickly (like a minute-and-a-half quickly), but once you have disabled it, it will become less of a threat than the Mirage.

[Obscured]

Thanks, BlueFlames. I've managed to complete mission "Burning the Village..." (with both cruisers destroyed, all Mjolonirs destroyed, freighter escaped  ) But i've succeeded using another tactics. 

Mjolonirs are doomed at any rate. So i just order all fighters to engage all hostiles (after GTFR Esso depart) until the Firestorm jumps in. Then i order all fighters to attack the Firestorm in spite of hostiles swarming around. With luck the Firestorm will be destroyed by a joint endeavour of all fighters. Then i order them to defend me during my quick attack on Mirage's engines (using Akheton SDG and Stilettos). BTW, there are two very dangerous turrets near engines subsystem of the Mirage: one flak and one ani-fighter turret. The best way to destroy them first or they'll tear you apart. The rest is easy...

But the next mission isn't easy too 'cause one of the Galen's main beams repairs itself. Is this a plan or just a bug? 

P.S. Sorry, but how to format spoilers here? 

[mr.WHO]

Sorry for what I'll say, but I'm short after third failure at destroyig Galen+Firestorm combo.
Everything is fine, but tell me one thing...how THE ****ING GOD disable that beam cannon that keep repair itself EVEN AFTER I DESTROY IT COMPLETELY...THREE ****ING TIMES.

[Obscured]

mr.WHO, you do not really need to destroy the forward beam cannon of the Galen. Just destroy two others that can fire at Phohenicia. Thereafter, you need only to supress fighter and bomber wings. And don't forget to fire TAG missles at the Galen every 15 seconds to ensure a vasudan destroyer in the distance don't rest. Unfortunetly, i can't say anything about Firestorm 'cause i've destroyed it in Beta Aqualae system...

[BlueFlames]

Code: [Select]

[spoiler]Place spoiler text here.[/spoiler]
At this point, as spoiler tags go, though, I'm inclined to say, "To hell with it," given the detailed discussion of the final missions already thrown out there in this thread.

The regenerating beam (and a couple other subsystems) are to prevent the Galen from ever being totally neutered.  In the final mission, you'll need to destroy the non-regenerating beam cannons, but after that, as long as you can efficiently divide your time between shooting down bombers and keeping the Galen tagged, friendly damage output should outpace that of the hostile force.

Everything is fine, but tell me one thing:  How am I supposed to disable that beam cannon that keeps repairing itself, even after I destroy it repeatedly?

I would have hoped that the continuous regeneration would have served as a hint that your efforts would be best directed elsewhere, such as swatting the fighters skirmishing around the Phoenicia or destroying the two starboard beams, capable of destroying the Hedetet (if you're coming in after a favorable conclusion to the sixth mission).

Spoiler:

The Galen is meant to get away in that mission anyway, so there's no sense replaying the mission because of its escape.  The Firestorm can be a fly in the ointment in the final mission, but it can be dealt with with an Akheton and some Stilettos, if you choose to advance.

Almost ready to say, "To hell with spoiler tags."

[BlueFlames]

Just posted the complete walkthrough in the download section.  Hope that helps those who are having difficulties making it through some of the missions.