Fortune Hunters - 2260
Fortune Hunters - 2260 is a campaign for The Babylon Project.
The actual campaign file is just named Fortune Hunters and includes both the Fortune Hunters - 2259 and Fortune Hunters - 2260 campaigns. Vidmaster has announced Fortune Hunters - 2261 will bring an end to the story arc, thus calling it a trilogy. He hope that it will be out in late spring of 09.
Summary
The player assumes the role of an human pilot in his or her 40ies, who, being to old for military service, is leading an unusual group of outlaws calling themselves the Fortune Hunters, a Raider Group operating in Earth Alliance space. Despite being a criminal, the main character dislikes what he or she is forced to do to make a living, becoming frustrated with his or her current lifestyle. Always trying to keep the death toll to a minimum, the player's initial tasks include planning and executing clever raids on cargo vessels, kill competetors, stealing various goods and escaping local military forces. Later, wars brake out between various powers and new leaders rise to power, which affect the whole political balance of the galaxy. The layer gets involved with a secret group calling themselves the Rangers in a struggle between the races of the galaxy to survive, facing extinction by an unknown alien menace known as the Shadows.
Campaign and Author
The 13 mission campaign was created by HLP-User Vidmaster and first released in February 08. Following the success of the first Hunters, there have been over 10000 downloads of Fortune Hunters so far. Since the campaign was also hosted on various websites where Vidmaster was not able to check the number of downloads, as well as FH being included in the TBP campaign pack and on the TBP DVD, both having an impressing number of downloads themselves, the real number is impossible to tell although it is certainly much higher.
User posts in the official release thread were very positive, although some criticized the difficulty. Vidmaster tweaked the balancing in multiple Re-Releases but the lack of any version counter or update tracker made this more confusing than it should be.
The Halo2 at the end
The original Fortune Hunters - 2260 featured a cliffhanger ending, which basically came down to ending the last mission in a completely hopeless situation. While some people actually liked the idea, Vidmaster felt the execution was weak and added the complete version of the final mission in the second Re-Release.
Voice acting promise
Vidmaster has stated that he wishes to add Voice-Acting for the full inflight dialogue of all Fortune Hunters campaigns, after he released Fortune Hunters - 2261. All other Vidmaster campaigns have been voice-acted already, with Vidmaster usually organising but not participating.
