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[BF2142] First Strike Mod Funday 2013-09-28

Posted: Mon Sep 23, 2013 4:20 am
by Gwynzer
This Saturday at SBT I'll be getting a BF2142 server up running the First Strike Mod, a Star Wars total conversion. It is/was awesome, and it includes some awesome ground AND space combat. I'll be posting a big spiel I once made for when I as doing public relations for the mod a few days ago, once I find it and fix the image links that I imagine are dead. If anyone ever played Galactic Conquest for BF1942, this is the spiritual successor, and there were even a few Galactic Conquest devs that carried on to work on FS. They are quite different games though.

For now though, I'll throw all the download links you'll need for the mod itself and for BF2142 patches. I recommend trying to get this setup and tested ASAP, it's far from stable and a lot of people get problems getting the game running. It's much easier for me to help deal with problems early as opposed to doing it all last minute.

This link contains downloads to ALL the files you should need. (Don't bother with the torrent, no seeders) I recommend using it just as I know these files work. The BF2142 1.51 patch has had 4 or 5 separate releases due to really bad naming conventions (3 beta patches, 1 fraked proper patch, then the proper patch all being named the same thing). The webpage explains what order to patch your BF2142 copy, once BF2142 is installed, run it, try to join a server, then do the same with First Strike. Origin users should have their game up to date.

Trailers - Start from the bottom



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Some details on the classes, they are the same for both faction. Some weapons are shared across the factions, and some are faction specific. When it comes to faction specific, Rebel weapons tend to be a bit more accurate, and Imperial weapons are a bit more powerful. Regardless, you always want to fire while crouched and still. Also knives are NOT always one hit kill, you have to aim high with it! Some items are not refillable, or only refillable at certain assets, and some are only able to be used when you are part of a squad. The items marked with * are not refillable, but can be returned to your inventory by holding a button, I THINK it's G, it's been so long! All kits have a form of knife and pistol, as well as a main weapon except officer, which I'll get to later. Guns are in general quite inaccurate until you figure out just how it works, part of the reason for that is just so there's more lasers flying around, I'll cover this a little bit later on in the gameplay mechanics bit.


Trooper
Weapon Choice of
- Rifle
- Shotgun (booo)
- Sniper Rifle (booo)
Frag Nade x2 (Non refillable)
Smoke Nade x 2
Sensor Beacon x 2 (Non refillable) (may need to be in a squad of 2+ to use)
Sensor Droid (need to be in a squad of 3+)
Macronoculors

Frag nades are excellent, the sensor beacon lasts a few minutes and gives you radar coverage of a certain area. The droid does the same but sends out pulses over a smaller area, however it does follow you around.

Heavy Weapons
Weapon Choice of
- LMG esqe laser weapon
- Rocket Launcher (Guided when aiming at aircraft)
- Grenade Launcher-eque thing called a Portable Mortar (Doesn't explode at close range, good for hitting behind cover)
Portable Shield (non refillable*)
EMP Nade x 2
AV mine x 3(I think)
IMPERIAL ONLY: Patrol Droid (need to be in a squad of 3+)
REBEL ONLY: Marksman Droid (need to be in a squad of 3+)

The shield is really useful to hide behind under cover, and can be leapfrogged to get past heavy fire, however you can not shoot out of it. It works extremely well with the stationary guns placed by officers, if it's placed in a way so that barrel is sticking out of the shield. EMP nades destroy droids basically. The Patrol droid stays in place and damages anything that comes near it, so it's good for defending a doorway. The Marksman droid is like a very weak floating blaster pistol following you around shooting (and mostly missing :P) enemies. Sometimes it stays afloat for a little bit after you die and it can kill your attacker if they don't evade it.


Support
Weapon Choice of
- Light Blaster
- DEMP
Generator (ammo pack) (non refilable*)
Repair Tool
Proxy Mines x 2 (non refillable)
Timed Mines x2
R-Series Droid (need to be in a squad of 3+)

The generator can rearm when it's held in your hands, you don't have to throw it. When thrown it can rearm vehicles and mounted guns. The R Series droid acts like a generator and is rearmable, if you throw down the generator make sure to pick it up and throw it down again, it can time out and does have a limited amount of charges per deployment. Due to a bug even if your placed generator is deployed/destroyed you can have one being carried in your hands that rearms slower.The DEMP is basically an EMP gun.


Medic
Weapon Choice of
- Carbine
- Slow firing longer range more accurate gun type
Bacta x 2 (heals, auto rearms)
Defib
AOE Grenade x 2 (non refillable)
Med Droid (need to be in a squad of 3+)

The AOE Grenade penetrates through structures and shields, it damages over time so there is the chance to escape it. It's a great way to clear out shield emplacements, however sometimes the bounce physics can be a bit weird. Bacta auto rearms over time, and it heals faster when you throw it on the ground than have it in your hands. The med droid follows you and heals you any anyone near, but slowly.


The officer class it a bit different. He doesn't have a proper weapon, just a pistol (but it is a stronger and more accurate pistol), the officer class is limited to the Squad Leader only and he has a lot of team based assets.
Officer
Knife
Heavy Pistol
Mounted Gun (Non refillable) (Need to be in a squad of 2+)
Sensor Ping (Non refillable) (need to be in a squad of 3+)
Bacta Canister (auto rearms slowly)
Light Ammo Box (Auto rearms slowly)
Binoculars
Spawn Beacon (Need to be in a squad of 4+)

The light ammo box has to be placed on the ground to work, and it resupplies slower than the generator, and it doesn't rearm vehicle or the mounted turret. The officer can have less bacta deployed than a medic. The spawn beacon is a small base station like this with a tall antenna sticking out of it. It makes a periodic noise, and once it is deployed the squad can no longer spawn on the SL, just on the beacon. Due to a bug in BF2142 if the beacon is destroyed the SL is not able to be spawned on until he respawns, or places and another beacon and picks it up. I love this class.



FS Concepts:

Withering Fire
In early development, the FS Devs worked to a concept called "Withering Fire". Basically this meant that everything was able to damage everything else, just to different extents. Even the lightest of lasers will to damage to a vehicle, however just very very little damage compared to a rocket launcher, however if a vehicle happens to wade into the middle of a squad with no support, that squad can keep shooting the vehicle with light arms and they will eventually be able to take it out. The idea behind this concept is so that so that a player never feels TOTALLY useless in a fight, and it encourages players to shoot at the same target as they'll be able to take it down faster. Unfortunately later in development as more vehicles were added in such as tanks, the idea wasn't really continued, so some assets may require specialist kits to take out. The main vehicle we'll see while playing will be the iconic AT-ST, which does apply to withering fire. The AT-ST has some week spots on the rear vents and also on the neck joint that can be seen from the front sometimes. I've taken out a lot of walkers with just my pistol and some time, given the walkers way of movement, once you get underneath it becomes very hard for the occupants to take you out.


Push Mode

The designers of the mod didn't particularly like standard conquest as in standard Battlefield. The Devs really disliked the idea of being able to get behind enemy lines and capture the enemy home base, as in theory that's where the other armies reinforcements are coming from, so it shouldn't be possible for a tiny team to be able to take it. The devs also wanted to focus the combat in tighter areas, so we see larger and more interesting gunfights, and as people are closer together it much improves their desire to work as a team. The developers created a game mode they called Push, which forces the flags to be taken in a certain order, with arrows on the minimap directing what flag(s) can be taken next. Some maps allow both teams to push against each other, while other maps have a designated defender who must defend their flags and any that are lost can not be retaken. The one way push usually has infinite tickets for the defenders, and the defenders don't lose until they are wiped from the map. The loading screen for each map shows what gamemode is used for that map, and also outlines victory conditions if there are any in partciular for that map.





Vehicles
One thing to be wary of in this game is that often getting of of vehicles when moving can harm the player. Some vehicles also can NOT be used by the other army.

Light Vehicles:

AT-ST - The Imperials have access to an AT-ST walker on some maps which is a two seater. The driver has a heavy laser on left click and some turret mounted grenades on right click. The gunner uses the double chin lasers. It has weak spots in the rear vents and also on the next join which can be shot from all sides. On some maps the Grenade launcher is replaced with an Anti Air Missile. This vehicle can be stolen by the enemy.

AT-PT - A one man light walker used on some maps, spawns at Imperial bases. has access to a single mid powered laser and a grenade launcher like the AT-ST but with only one grenade per click. Has the ability to do a local radar ping and also stand high on it's legs. This vehicle can be stolen.

MLC-3 - A miniature tank inspired by a lego design, I always hated it was included in the mod, it looks ridiculous. It's open seated and prone to tipping. Has dual cannons which are absurdly powerful for the size of the thing, and they can be overcharged with right click which fires the two strongest projectiles in the game.


Speeders: Both armies may have access to various speeders which can be used by the enemy..

Speederbikes - Very fast two man transport. Holding boost on the ground will give you a massive speed increase, and it will also allow you to gain altitude to get high. Very weak armour and will explode if you hit anything at speed.

Land Speeder - 2 man transport speeder. Nothing interesting about it.

Combat Speeder - 4 man speeder with a driver, gunner and 2 passengers. The Gun is the same strength as the officer deployed gun, but it's mobile. Usually spawns at rebel bases.


Heavy Armour:
Imperial Firehawke - Hovertank with a rotating primary turret similar to the tanks we know today. Main turret makes things go boom, also has a turret mounted gunner. This tank works well at long range.

Rebel T1B - Hovertank with missiles that guide when fired towards Air targets, or dumbfire on the ground. Has a top mounted heavy gun that will do most of the heavy lifting. This vehicle really has to be used by two people for decent effectiveness. It is designed to be used up close.

Rebel Freerunner - Two designs exist, one is an APC that provides radar in a large area and acts as a spawn point. It has a Driver, a rear gunner and passenger seats. The other version is a mortar, which works for long range combat and has a Driver, Mortar Gunner and Rear Gunner slot. Most people use this solo.

Jawa Sandcrawler - A vanity vehicle used on one map. Slow as hell, but acts as a spawn point for whatever team was last to enter it. Invulnerable, the 2nd seat can raise and lower the front ramp. During testing there were commands to spawn vehicles, and I used to make it rain with jawa sandcrawlers.


Aircraft
Be careful with the aircraft. Take off by pressing space, and land by pressing space near the ground. Some vehicles have map specific variants. Missiles typically do not rearm, or maybe have a only a few "clips" except in certain maps. Some maps have certain ships you can fly near which will rearm you.

Lambda Shuttle - A mobile spawn point (usually). Has a pilot, 2 forward gunners and one rear gunner and some passenger seats. Don't fly close to the ground, as when you take off the wings fold out, and they only fold in when you hit land.

Sentinel Shuttle - A Heavier shuttle used in the Jundland Wastes map. Has a TV missile and some heavy lasers, but nothing rear facing I don't think. Acts as a spawn and has much heavier armour than the lambda. It has the same wing mechanics.

IMP Fighters -
TIE Fighter - Standard fighter, medium armour, no missiles. 2 Lasers.
TIE Interceptor - Lighter fighter, has 4 lasers and is much more manoeuvrable, but takes less damage. (my favourite ship)
TIE Defender - Heavy fighter with some auto tracking concussion missiles (Cheat missiles :<). More armour and lasers (6 I think, but they do about the same damage as an XWing), less manuverable but not by much!
TIE Bomber - Bomber, you can hit a button (can't remember what it is) to make the bombs come out of the bottom, which is useful for the land maps which feature them. Sometimes has access to an Ion bomb which disables capital ships.

REB Fighters
X-Wing - Standard fighter, medium armour and 4 lasers. It has a limited set of proton torpedos. On the Yavin map the XWing does have limited torpedoes, but it's a quite large number, however it takes ages to reload the next batch.
A-Wing - Light fighter, light armour and 2 lasers. Armed with the cheaty-concussion missiles. Extremely manuverable, especially when boost is applied.
B-Wing - Heavy Fighter/Bomber. 3 Lasers, access to an ion cannon and torpedos. Unmanuverable but has quite heavy armour. The cockpit for this is off to the side of the ship and you can rotate the ship around the cockpit with B. Because the cockpit is off center, your aim is also off center, it may take time to adjust!
Y-Wing - Bomber, 1/2 lasers and lots of Torpedos. on Yavin the torpedos work like the Xwing, it has a lot but they take ages to rearm. On every other map the torpedos are more limited, and there is also a gunner seat which has 360 degree vision around the top of the ship. The gunner has access to ion blasts.
Airspeeder - The speeders used in EPV on Hoth. Fairly manuverable, has decent cannons on the front and a slow laser cannon on the back. No harpoon cable.


Capital Ships: Multi Crew Vessels. Pilot may have access to a heavy gun which points down the ships front while other players with have access to heavy or light lasers for taking out other cap ships or fighters. Engines are the weak spot, as is sometimes the bridge, though the bridge is very small, so just air for the back. You can't fly too close to the engines or you take damage. In general, they handle like ass.

IMP:
Carrack Cruiser - Heavy ship. Has 2 forward firing very heavy torpedoes for anti capship duty. It has 2 Heavy and 2 light lasers mannable by crew.

Lancer Frigate - Medium ship, has a pilot controlled turbolaser which has a limited firing arc. There is another turbolaser just underneath that is controlled by another gunner, so it's important to aim the ship in a way that both lasers can fire on a target. Has two light lasers on the sides.

Bulk Freighter - Support ship. Pilot has access to two sheilds which stop/reduce damage. Left click is top sheilds, right click is bottom. There is no visual effect. It rearms + repairs friendly ships in range, it's good to use it to support friendly cap ships during battles, but use your allies as cover while doing so! 2 light lasers on front and back.

REB:
Nebulon B - Heavy Ship with big laser cannon on the front with a tiny firing arc for anti capship stuff. Has 2 heavy and 2 light lasers.

Corelian Corvette (CRV) - Pretty much the same as the Lancer but a different design.

Galofree Transport - Same as bulk freighter but different design.

Re: [BF2142] First Strike Mod Funday 2013-09-28

Posted: Mon Sep 23, 2013 10:54 am
by Wi1D_K4rD
I tried installing this mod awhile back but couldn't get it to run but I'll try again this week and hopefully can join you guys for this. I love me some Star Wars, in case one hasn't figured out from a certain previous thread.

Re: [BF2142] First Strike Mod Funday 2013-09-28

Posted: Mon Sep 23, 2013 11:48 am
by Gwynzer
I'm not surprised it didn't run, it's always had compatibility issues of some kind. I was lead tester for a while, and have probably reinstalled that mod more than anyone else, so I've encountered and worked around almost every problem. I've not dealt with the mod at all in over a year though, so it'll take a bit of brain digging for me to remember the fixes for everything.

Re: [BF2142] First Strike Mod Funday 2013-09-28

Posted: Mon Sep 23, 2013 12:22 pm
by Wi1D_K4rD
Well. I'm gonna install it tonight after I finish my classes. If I run into any problems I know who to ask :).

Re: [BF2142] First Strike Mod Funday 2013-09-28

Posted: Mon Sep 23, 2013 12:38 pm
by Ghoul
I'm game. Hope my DVD copy will install no problems with windows 7 64. I'll try tonight

Re: [BF2142] First Strike Mod Funday 2013-09-28

Posted: Mon Sep 23, 2013 12:49 pm
by BRUMMIE
Its only $7.50 on origin, so yes I'll give it a go for old times sake. I enjoyed the original so why not.

Re: [BF2142] First Strike Mod Funday 2013-09-28

Posted: Mon Sep 23, 2013 1:33 pm
by Gwynzer
Ghoul wrote:I'm game. Hope my DVD copy will install no problems with windows 7 64. I'll try tonight
Never had any problems with this, just remember admin mode if UAC is enabled.

Re: [BF2142] First Strike Mod Funday 2013-09-28

Posted: Mon Sep 23, 2013 9:35 pm
by Fields
Nope. :(

Re: [BF2142] First Strike Mod Funday 2013-09-28

Posted: Mon Sep 23, 2013 10:48 pm
by BRUMMIE
For what its worth: I dl'd the game through Origin but had to install the dl in Admin otherwise it wouldn't see the cd key. The dl didn't need any of the patches - I found out the long way. Been having fun. I have a win7.

Re: [BF2142] First Strike Mod Funday 2013-09-28

Posted: Tue Sep 24, 2013 11:46 am
by Wi1D_K4rD
Got it installed and working. Now if only there were actual servers I could join instead of playing SP :p. Can't wait till Saturday :).

Re: [BF2142] First Strike Mod Funday 2013-09-28

Posted: Tue Sep 24, 2013 11:47 am
by BRUMMIE
I'll post here as the fix may help others: I dl'd the mod (only use the torrent version if you have a few days) and installed. Said the install was successful. Now it is hanging at the launcher update window (ran as admin).

It states:
Download: publauncher0.0.8.4.zip
Extract: FirstStrikeLauncher.exe'.

Then it hangs.

The log states:
Z:\Program Files (x86)\First Strike\FirstStrikeLauncher.exe:1283: DeprecationWarning: raising a string exception is deprecated
Z:\Program Files (x86)\First Strike\FirstStrikeLauncher.exe:1283: DeprecationWarning: raising a string exception is deprecated.

And then - I'm stuck :(

Re: [BF2142] First Strike Mod Funday 2013-09-28

Posted: Tue Sep 24, 2013 12:15 pm
by Jokerle
I will go to a friends marriage this weekend and cant play :cry:

Re: [BF2142] First Strike Mod Funday 2013-09-28

Posted: Tue Sep 24, 2013 12:36 pm
by Gwynzer
Confirm avoiding the torrent. I used to have a dedicated serverbox in a fancy datacenter in Amsterdam seeding the torrent and it was a really fast download, but we stopped seeding when we dropped support for the mod.
Wi1D_K4rD wrote:Got it installed and working. Now if only there were actual servers I could join instead of playing SP :p. Can't wait till Saturday :).

There should be at least one called rebel Defiance still running. Check your filters

BRUMMIE wrote:I'll post here as the fix may help others: I dl'd the mod (only use the torrent version if you have a few days) and installed. Said the install was successful. Now it is hanging at the launcher update window (ran as admin).

It states:
Download: publauncher0.0.8.4.zip
Extract: FirstStrikeLauncher.exe'.

Then it hangs.

The log states:
Z:\Program Files (x86)\First Strike\FirstStrikeLauncher.exe:1283: DeprecationWarning: raising a string exception is deprecated
Z:\Program Files (x86)\First Strike\FirstStrikeLauncher.exe:1283: DeprecationWarning: raising a string exception is deprecated.

And then - I'm stuck :(

I'll get back to you on this one. It's familiar and I am sure I used to have a fix file for it somewhere. Tbh I think the fix was usually "Run the FS Installer again", the FSLauncher is actually a separate thing to the mod itself. In theory you could still play however it won't download all the mini updates so you can't join servers. Try reinstall once or twice, if that doesn't work I'll try have a fix up later this week.

Re: [BF2142] First Strike Mod Funday 2013-09-28

Posted: Tue Sep 24, 2013 6:28 pm
by matsif
got the mod installed using origin because my disc is screwed up. Tried to boot up the game, fails at splash screen saying it needs the disc. :cry:

going to try a few things.

EDIT: I got it working!

Re: [BF2142] First Strike Mod Funday 2013-09-28

Posted: Wed Sep 25, 2013 12:26 pm
by BRUMMIE
Managed to get it working; had to manually replace the launcher .exe with the updated one. Then had to rename a copy of the BF2142 .exe to FirstStrike.exe. Found most of the workarounds at fsmod.com. Enjoying it so far - fliers will love this mod. :thumbup: