Part 32: MP - Rebel Intercept!

No Fish, No Fire! Let's play Rebel Intercept!

A brief look at the most popular multiplayer level. I don't take it too seriously, and enjoy my unlimited respawns. Sorry for no story progress!

Been a while since I had a really nice screenshot. I love seeing this Fenris just go from 100 -> 0 in an instant.



(Spoilers: Helios won).

Briefing & Level
Viddler | Polsy | YouTube HD | Download .mp4

My most vivid memory of playing FS2 online is when a friend and I got obliterated by this really great player. We asked him how he was dodging everything, and he said, "Well, how old are you?" We told him - no memory exactly, but I was in the early/mid teens. He then replied that we should try steering the ships in spirals "like party streamers." To this day, I wonder what the hell analogy he was going to use that wasn't age appropriate. I'd call that a corkscrew, but it's not like a kid wouldn't know what that is.

Let's meet the Infyrno, Piranha, MP level list, Sekhmet, Templar campaign, and Squad War! (Good lord it's getting crowded here!)

First off, these two guys. Said enough in-level about them. I'm sure some people must be amazing with them, but I can't figure it.





Here's the level selector. There are some remakes of campaign levels for multiplayer, some gauntlets against each race's ships, and some free-for-all and team dogfight arenas. Only the levels with the Volition logo would count towards your stats.





The Sekhmet is easily the best bomber in the game. But it's so quick that it's usable as a fighter. Combine that with a bomber's armor and loadout, and its a really great ship. It's the fourth of the five ships anyone ever bothers to use (Myrm, Herc II, Erinyes, Sekhmet). There's one more yet to be seen.



I think I've mentioned this before, but I don't think officially. This is the description of the Templar campaign. It's only about 5 levels long. It was designed for multiplayer with respawns, but the GOTY edition has this singleplayer port that's way too hard on one life. Nothing terribly interesting happens in it. Oh, and no surprise, no one ever played it online. Why no love for co-op, Internet? (RI is itself an exception, and that's just 'cause of the scoring).

Lastly, Squad War. I have no pictures available for this section, so here's a brief rundown.

Back when people played FS2 online, you could join squads, just like clans, guilds, whatevers, that people make in every game. But Volition, or maybe PXO who ran the multiplayer, set up this very neat metagame to incorporate squads into gameplay.

Their website had up a color-coded FS2 star systems map, and squads would compete to take over systems. Using the site, you could challenge squads with systems connected via jump node to one you controlled. There were also a couple starting point systems anyone could challenge to get on the map.

Then you'd set a time, meet, and have a 4 on 4 match to decide who wins the system. It was really a neat idea that was ahead of its time for integrating a game with a web interface. My only problem with it was that I flat-out sucked at
fighting other people. (Remember how poorly I played on the keyboard back when I started LP FS1? Take that and subtract years of experience). Also, this was back in the dial-up days, which didn't do the game any favors.
None of this stopped me from having my own squad ('cause I sure as hell couldn't have gotten accepted into one). It was called Chaos Dragons, because that sounded totally awesome at whatever age I was back then. It consisted of me,
two real-life friends who pretty much never played the game, and one guy that somehow found us online. I don't think we ever had control of a single system.