Blackstar Fleet news - Crossfire 2.0 mod for Freelancer

The Mod of the Year Awards is a late wake-up call and a harsh reminder how little I actually managed to update the status of the Crossfire Mod here on Moddb over the past months.
The last info was published one year ago and due to the ongoing pandemic situation free time was sparse. The real life work situation and family just demanded more time which forced me to prioritize with what to spend my little remaining time. I focused on handing out the information on our official forums, our discord server and most importantly actually working on the mod. Moddb fell short on updates about Crossfire.
I apologize for that.

Better late than never, let's talk about Crossfire in 2021, the Blackstar Fleet update and take a look at what to expect in 2022.

Last time I announced that I can not set a fixed release date for "Blackstar Fleet" due the real life situation and also changes I wanted to introduce and test, prior pushing out a big update like that.
As a result I released the highly demanded capital ship rebalance early in 2021, which originally was indented to be part of the Blackstar Fleet update. With that also many known bugs were identified and eventually fixed. This early release gave us the opportunity to get player feedback and prepare further improvements going into that direction.

In October another big update was released, dealing with a set of bugs related to newer DirectX versions, improving parts of the render engine and introducing a new customizable shader system. The conflict between automatic launcher updates and custom settings no longer exists, which gives players thousands of new custom visual options.

In the meantime the scope of the original intended Blackstar Fleet update has changed again. I discussed this topic in detail on the official Crossfire Mod forums. If you are interested in participating in the ongoing discussions about the Crossfire development you can find a link to the forum at top of this Moddb profile.
Long story, short: We are no longer talking about a content update with the size of the "Lost Fleet" or the previous bonus missions. Blackstar Fleet has grown to a size similar to step from Crossfire 1.9 to Crossfire 2.0 and that is mildly said huge.
Next to the already announced story content, new systems, new factions, etc. I started to give older content a significant facelift.

Big parts of the Sirius sector will get a visual upgrade, the Altair sector will receive a big content update, the in "Lost Fleet" update introduced systems of the Sol Sector will get new details which will add new variety to the Renaissance faction.
Some of the already existing story missions will also receive an update in order to provide a more reliable experience.
I have collected much feedback from the players and we will take care of everything that is technically possible and which won't break something else in the game. Maybe not every wish can be granted but I will at least try.

Since the ambition behind Blackstar Fleet got significantly bigger, more time is needed to get all the work done. We currently make good progress, adding our newly created assets into the game, doing lots of fine tuning etc. but still can not tell exactly when the new Crossfire version will be ready.
Instead of letting you wait without anything new (besides the two already released updates this year) we have the intention to release some of the already done new content early.
And with early I mean in the next few weeks.
In order to avoid story spoilers I will have to carefully pick the content to be release but... hey...

Merry Christmas and a safe flight, Pilots.
Stay healthy. Keep at least a few meters distance to the other ships, cockpits closed... you know the drill.