Crossfire 1.8: Inner Core news

Crossfire is a revolutionary mod based on Freelancer. Our task was to improve an almost 6 years old game and push it to it's limits.

Story:

It's been several years since Edison Trent and Juni returned from the dyson sphere. The threat was gone... really?

Chapter 1

A few months ago a Rheinland explorer found a new Jumpgate to a hidden system in Omicron Alpha. When they entered this system the first time they were shocked. It was the main reason for the rising Nomad activities in the whole Sirius sector. Containing one planet and over 20 Jumpgates to Nomad systems, Liberty systems, Borderworld systems and many unknown systems it's a major threat for all houses. Rheinland, Liberty, Kusari and Bretonia decided to send their fleets to get this system under their control. But the nomads were already waiting for them... hundreds of ships got destroyed and the whole Kusari fleet is still missing after they were chasing a Nomad battleship. But finally it was a victory and the Nomads had to leave. Because of this massive fight above the planet it is now called Crossfire. A few weeks after this important victory the houses decided to colonize the unknown systems. But because of the Outcast in the neighbourhood these stations and planets are under permanent attack.

Chapter 2

Incoming transmission from the Kusari Fleet: "We are under attack by nomad forces... we need help our position is 12.*)"§12*33... who ever can hear this please help us"
The Kusari Fleet is still out there and under attack by nomad battleships and gunboats. The Fleets spread out to find a hidden system called Death Valley and to rescue the Kusari. Meanwhile in the Nephele System a new Sleepership was found which looks the same way the old alliance sleeperships looked like. Scientists entered the wreck to explore it and to have a look at the ship database. "Russian language?!?!... it's a coalition ship"

Chapter 3

The nomad battle: Even with reinforcements coming to Death valley the Kusari are not able to destroy the Nomad armada... the fights already last several weeks now. Only a single Kusari fighter has found a way through the blockade in Death Valley and managed to deliver a disk which was found in an unknown wreck to the security forces on Planet Crossfire. Local scientist analize the datafiles now.
The Sleepership: This ship has a coalition origin.. but what is it doing here? It is allready a few hundred years old and it seems like it got attacked. Maybe the database is showing more information and maybe some guys in the new systems have heard some rumours.

Chapter 4

A way to our old home, the earth, has been found again but there is no life anymore. The colonies are destroyed, earth is empty and everything looks like the nomads have something to do with it. The houses try to recolonize the sol system now and find out what has been going on. Maybe the databases of the old science centers on earth can tell us more about the history of sol and where the missing coalition fleet is.

Chapter 5

The Coalition, we never thought that we would see them again but we were wrong. Before Earth got destroyed they managed to launch their three sleeperships. Two of them have found their way to the Altair sector and now we are at war with them again. Will this never end?

Chapter 6

The return of the Dom'Kavash was a heavy strike back for the Coalition and the houses of Sirius. The Dom'Kavash territory is growing with the support of the Nomads and Coalition is close to a destruction. Nobody knows where those ships come from or how to survive their attacks. We have only one chance... forget the rivalities of the past and unite with the Coalition and fight together. This is the only way to survive the biggest threat that the mankind has seen.

Chapter 7

Not long ago a giant fleet of Coalition ships broke through a heavy Dom'Kavash blockade and discovered a hidden hypergate. A large group of fighters entered this hypergate but never returned. What is on the other side? This is a question that hardly can be answered. All tries to through failed and Dom'Kavash motherships constantly jump through this gate to Altair. Only the united forces of the houses and the coalition might be able to find out what is going on there.

Chapter 8

Eventhough the Dom'Kavash technology is much more effective than everything we can think of and every try to attack them did fail, it is very surprising that Sirius and even Altair were not overrun by hordes of bio-mechanical ships yet. Of course the people which lost their families and friends in New London, Sol, New Berlin, Omicron Alpha and X-3043 will think different but those Dom'Kavash invasors were nothing more than scouts. Maybe they are searching for something.
Prof. Dr. Itao Hamasaki from the University of New Tokyo brought up a theory that the Nomads have sent out a final call before the wormhole of the Dyson Sphere collapsed and that the Dom'Kavash are back to investigate on this matter.
In the end this does still not explain why those giant fleets in Altair do not attack us. Even the Nomads seem to wait for something.
Maybe the answer to this is originally a question. Why did the Dom'Kavash leave our region of the galaxy thousands of years ago?
Professor Hamasaki believes that the answer to this question is hidden in the ruins of an ancient civilization that recently have been discovered.

The Crossfire Story is told by a background story which is linked with many quests and other story telling elements of the game while the Crossfire Universe meanwhile is very dynamic and does even react on the players and their activities. Thousands of new infocards create a very detailed and real looking world.

With Crossfire 1.8 we have concentrated all efforts to improve Freelancer in every possible way without loosing the original Freelancer feeling. Almost every object got retextured showing extreme details. The entire game got rebalanced to create a more dynamic, more realistic and more "living" feeling. The Freelancer engine got tweaked to get rid of limits and to improve the quality of the entire game. Hundreds of new effects got created and together with new shaders which even allow bloom, reflections, motion blur and even bump mapping Crossfire has upto now the most advanced graphics that have been developed for Freelancer.

Due to the amount of features Crossfire also is the most complex Freelancer mod available and with a size of more than 2Gb it also is the biggest existing Freelancer mod.

The release of Crossfire 1.8 is sheduled to February 2009 while Crossfire 1.7 even after 2 years existence is still extremly successful.

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