I thought for sure this thread was already in here, but I couldn't find it, so here it is.
The official website: http://www.i-war2.com/
The Torn Stars/Unstable Space mod site: http://www.torn-stars.com/
The gog.com page: http://www.gog.com/game/independence_war_2 It's a measly six dollars, although I'd pay thirty. (It's six on Steam as well, but gog is DRM-free. )

Interest in the game appears to be on the rise, as the website was saved from near-death by Schmatzler, who now maintains it. Quite a few people have since been getting the game on gog and Steam.
Discuss away about this holy grail of space sims.

--IronDuke

I-war.com is a wonderful resource for the game. It has a crapload of mods and replacement ships as well as documentation that may or may not be missing from digital versions. It even has some files for the original I-War as well. I particularly liked the concept art collections.

I have this.
Unexpectedly addictive. More so if you have a joystick. Even more if you have HOTAS and a decent profile.
But it is hard.
After surviving the impossible, obtaining the top-notch techs, even scoring half a dozen kills between cruisers and carriers, I got stuck at the next to last mission months ago.
Got frustrated at the many unsuccessful retrys and left it. Now that I think of it, it is still installed. If this game was remade today with up to date graphics people would quickly foget about ED, SC, and everything else.

fox wrote:*Got stuck on very hard mission*

The sheer pain of living in that game is one of its selling points for me. But if you are SERIOUSLY having issues, there's this mod on the website called "massacre" that kills all red ships within 50 kilometers. You should try it.

fox wrote: If this game was remade today with up to date graphics people would quickly foget about ED, SC, and everything else.

QFT. Maybe it will be, if I get wild enough with space sim drunkenness. I could simply recycle some stuff from my space game to make it much easier. There's still the question of whether Atari, who owns the rights to the game, would send scores of skilled assassins with meson cannons to take me out. I'm betting not, but I live dangerously.

--IronDuke

IronDuke wrote:But if you are SERIOUSLY having issues

The issue I have is with the numbers. Tasked to defend the equivalent of a soon-to-detonate egg loaded with antimatter while swarmed by multiple waves of 18 aggressors at once spawned at less than 100 km. Who could forget that? Or the many 15-minutes timespans I would waste with every retry? Not my cup of tea. That mission falls square in the category of bad tricks pulled to extend the life of a game.

The mod I would like to see if one that makes that mission more approachable. How strange that it was never made. Then again, all the walkthroughs I have read about that particular mission talked specifically of waves of 3 groups of 3 aggressors. Instead I was getting waves of 3 groups of 6. Never understood why.

fox wrote:Instead I was getting waves of 3 groups of 6

That's wrong. It's supposed to be 3-5.
I don't like that mission either, and have only managed to finish it ONCE without cheating despite playing the story over thirty times.
Mission mods are practically impossible. They have this complex interlinking with the act state, certain progression values, and other junk. The only safe way to mod that mission would be if we had the source code. (And we don't. ) While one could conceivably guess at what's needed based on the three missions that we do have the source for, it'd be an absolute pain. --IronDuke

I confirm: groups of 6 since the 1st wave.
I mounted the scariest weaponry but I could only point my guns at so many targets. Not enough time to kill them all, before they score the few shots required to blow the freighter.

I would raid LaGrange points where Maas MegaFreighters -and their escorts- would pass through.
I would survive epic missile fests short of the Itano Circus.
I would get up close and personal with cruisers and carriers to rip their engines apart with the mining beam.
I was the 'Flying Death Sentence of the Badlands Cluster(c)(r)(tm)(pwn)'.

But I could not protect a lone freighter... v_v"

lol that's what happens. I hate defending missions; much rather wreak havoc on the enemies' place without having to babysit dumb AI ships.
Seriously, just use the massacre mod. No one will think the less of you for it, and you'll get to the next missions which are actually complete-able.

--IronDuke

Look who I found: I hadn't though anyone at FD had heard of him.

--IronDuke

I bought IW2 on a GOG.com sale in late 2014 - good job it was little more than the price of a beer. I was hugely disappointed with it.

- No sandbox modes whatsoever
- No editors
- Very few mods, and what few there was were as buggy as the vanilla game
- No planetary surface landings / bases / action
- Most planets all looked the same due to being a mishmash of the same few basic textures..... most of which used "Earth" based textures, ie most of the planets you could see the outlines of Afirca, Asia and Australia very clearly, just dumb IMO
- Only three types of star, a blue, a yellow and a red one..... obviously another bunch of yahoos who have never heard of stellar spectral classes.
- You could only fly about three ships, and not many NPC ship types neither, and even the full set of those was never used, eg the "Destroyer" class NEVER EVER EVER showed up ONCE in over a month of playtime, yet "Corvette" classes..... Jesus, they never ended..... I racked up 1500 Corvette kills and ZERO Destroyer kills by the time I threw this game in the trash!
- Missiles and the pathetic chaff, flare and ECM countermeasures were a joke
- The whole crazy idea behind the shield mechanics was also a joke, a joke imported from IW1!
- Difficulty level was utterly STUPID, also just like IW1..... I had to edit the .ini files for my ships to have 10x hitpoints to even stand a chance! I would NOT use the standard cheats as they just made the game even more pointless than ever!
- Jefferson Clay was a dick 8====D-_____ , just like in IW1
- Then came the game killer. The "Dagda" star system, enter that and it was KEEE-RUNCH, a crash everytime, goodbye any further progress in the game's rather shitty campaign (and ONLY) mode, goodbye game, you're dumpster juice!

The final act was enjoying writing a scathing review on GOG's forums, and then getting a snot-nosed t\/\/@t of a fanboi squealing every obscenity under the sun at me over it!!!!!

SICKofRegistering wrote: - No sandbox modes whatsoever

The whole game was a sandbox

SICKofRegistering wrote: - No editors

How many out of the tens of thousands of games that have been released over time have editors bundled?

SICKofRegistering wrote: - No planetary surface landings / bases / action

-didnt read the description before buying.

SICKofRegistering wrote: - You could only fly about three ships, and not many NPC ship types neither, and even the full set of those was never used, eg the "Destroyer" class NEVER EVER EVER showed up ONCE in over a month of playtime, yet "Corvette" classes..... Jesus, they never ended..... I racked up 1500 Corvette kills and ZERO Destroyer kills by the time I threw this game in the trash!

0/10 can confirm.
I ran regularily into those when playing.
And i never got out of the starting system due to a story bug.

SICKofRegistering wrote: - The whole crazy idea behind the shield mechanics was also a joke, a joke imported from IW1!
- Difficulty level was utterly STUPID, also just like IW1.....

-plays the first part, expects the second one to be different, especially in details that were different from other games

SICKofRegistering wrote: - Jefferson Clay was a dick 8====D-_____ , just like in IW1

Never had a problem with him.
Also, same as above.

SICKofRegistering wrote: The final act was enjoying writing a scathing review on GOG's forums, and then getting a snot-nosed t\/\/@t of a fanboi squealing every obscenity under the sun at me over it!!!!!

Its the internet, what did you expect?
This forum here is the only place known to me thats alive and not filled with idiots.

SICKofRegistering wrote: - Very few mods, and what few there was were as buggy as the vanilla game

I'll just leave this here. http://www.i-war2.com/downloads/category/6-mods

SICKofRegistering wrote: - Missiles and the pathetic chaff, flare and ECM countermeasures were a joke

See above site, mods fix that.

I made a mod! \o/
Post 5. With Mr. Green:

--IronDuke

You'll have to make the acronym of your second mod be ZWEI, of your third one DREI and so forth

Cornflakes_91 wrote:You'll have to make the acronym of your second mod be ZWEI, of your third one DREI and so forth

It's my first mod that I've actually completed, so...

--IronDuke