The First Strike BETA has been over for a while, and we here at First Strike would like to give you a brief look at the progress that has occurred since then as well as a thank you to all who participated over the course of the weekend-long test. We highly appreciate those who turned out to assist us in our effort to make First Strike as good as possible, and the weekend was very productive, and a big success in general. We learned many things during in-game sessions, and from post-testing feedback, that has helped us improve the mod. Some of the fixes you may have even seen during the course of the Beta via our all new First Strike Launcher system, created by yours truly.
So to begin, I'll explain when you can expect to see these maps. Currently, after a lot of internal discussion, it has been decided that patch 1.35 (Coming Soon™) will consist of 2 to 3 new maps. The maps that are being considered for this release are Null Sensor Station (Formerly Strike at Bimmiel), Refinery, and Lok Wastelands. These maps have all been developed either by First Strike community members or, in the case of Lok, team members on leave. This provides us the unique ability to be able to test and refine these maps while our primary development time still goes towards the Battle of Hoth. Hopefully, if all goes well, not long after the 1.35 release we'll be able to get you 1.4 with Hoth and more.
Null Sensor Station (Strike at Bimmiel)
"Rebel Alliance spies have gathered disturbing intel regarding a new Imperial sensor outpost on the planet Null, located in the Mid Rim region of the galaxy. This is a matter of some concern as the world is not far from their base hidden on the gas giant Yavin's fourth moon. If this new sensor station goes on line the Empire will certainly be alerted to the Alliance's presence in this sector. A strike force has been deployed to assault the mountaintop outpost, neutralize the sensor equipment and get out before the Empire even knows they were there."
Null is a highly unique map in this array of potential release candidates. Krenyo, who has been designing the level, has been putting in great effort to model new assets, some of which can be seen in the screenshots, to give it a truly unique feel that community maps don't generally see. He has even developed an entire Imperial sensor station outpost which I think you'll quite enjoy. Expect to hear more about this one in the near future.
Refinery
"The Alliance-favoring [TBA] system, under Imperial control, is an important source of war supplies, particularly tibanna gas. To divert Imperial attention from the major worlds, the Rebels plan a feint raid on the planet [TBA] - breaking into orbit with a cruiser-led task force, the Rebels will land troops near a tibanna refinery, taking the refinery itself and the nearby Imperial fort. The troops will then demolish the refinery with engineers and withdraw. If successful, the attack might just cause significant forces to be diverted from the Imperials' true objectives, easing the planned invasion..."
Refinery is a serious contender for this release. As of the beta, it was by far the most complete of the maps ready for testing and showed some truly unique uses of statics. A planet for the map to take place on has not yet been decided upon (though some names are being thrown around), but regardless community member Zyth has done an outstanding job at capturing that Star Wars feel.
Lok Wastelands
"Increased pirate attacks targetting their shipping along the Corellian Run trade route have forced the Empire to set up a base of operations on the ravaged world of Lok to combat such activity. The pirate clan, the Lok Revenants, are now faced with the task of ridding their world of the Imperial presence and have called upon the Alliance for assistance, in return for their support. Alliance commanders have deemed the action worth the risk and have deployed forces to Lok. Unfortunately the first of their landing craft has been shot down by Imperial forces as it dropped to the planet to deploy its troops. Stunned, they rally their forces and prepare to assault the Imperial stronghold."
Lok was developed by the teams own TY2D2 while on a brief vacation from the internet. While it was not an officially sanctioned map, response has been so positive that it is in high contention for this release. As is TY's style, the map makes very creative use of many existing statics (see bestine) and will likely have some new by the time it makes it to your computers.
The rest of the maps you saw throughout the beta wont be showing up in the next release, but here are some images showing where they stand today:
Well, that about wraps it up for this news post. For those of you who participated in the Beta, you can go ahead and continue to use the First Strike Launcher for starting the game, all updates have been disabled and your game will not be updated until the next official release (or perhaps Beta). In the meantime, the Launcher will be updated with news bulletins and extra info AND if you continue to utilize the Launcher, as a thanks for your testing, you will receive the next version of First Strike before it's released to the public (and still be able to utilize the upcoming XFIRE support).
Once again, a big thank you to all of our Beta participants, and we hope to continue seeing you all regularly playing FS, being active on the forums, and hanging out in our IRC channel (#first-strike).
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