Inferno (fanfic)

Inferno is a fan-developed Game Mod for Free Space 2, one of the first produced and among the more well-known campaigns. It is notable for being one of the early attempts to almost completely replace canon ships with community-designed models, and featured a few designs from Volition's concept sketches that never made it into the final game.

Unfortunately, after the partial release of its first chapter, it fell into Development Hell, and became one of the fan community's biggest Vaporware examples. A few years ago, a full, well-designed prequel called Inferno: Alliance was released, but, again, its sequel also fell into Development Hell. However, recently it was announced that work on the Continuity Reboot "Inferno Release 2" is in production, and a big release can be expected sometime in the coming months/years.

The story follows that humanity has finally rebuilt the Sol jump node, and upon coming back to Earth, finds that Earth is not thrilled to find itself being forcibly drawn back into the GTVA. A civil war between humanity and the Earth Alliance soon results, into the midst of which the Shivans make a deadly return, boasting more powerful warships than ever.

This mod contains examples of:

 * All There Is to Know About "The Crying Game": The mod is most infamous for introducing some absolutely gigantic spaceships to the game, such as the SSJ Gigas, TSJ Icanus, and especially the SH Gargant, a 50-km monstrosity that was planned at one point, but dropped.
 * Badass: The admiral on board the Nemesis, the EA flagship, in Inferno R1. When the battle finally stops, he has this to say: "I have confirmed the cease-fire with my superiors. Consider yourselves... fortunate."
 * Beam Spam: Tying into the above, many people consider the mod infamous for this.
 * Best Level Ever: "Nemesis", the penultimate mission in the original story, has been praised as one of the finest Battle of Endor missions the community has ever produced.
 * It's also considered That One Level by many, because of its sheer length (playthroughs can run as high as 25 or 30 minutes) and existing long prior to a practical "checkpoint" system like in Blue Planet to allow restarting from mid-mission.
 * Continuity Reboot: Inferno R2 is both an Updated Rerelease of the original campaign and a sequel.
 * Demonic Spiders: The Vindhacyl bomber. Uniquely, it's only so because of how hard it makes any Escort Mission. Inferno-issue super-painful bombs, a not-shabby beam cannon in a forward turret, and ridiculous amounts of shield HP make it nightmarish to fight in an interceptor because you just can't hurt the thing.
 * Fan Nickname: A new alien species was/is/maybe planned, but the developers refuse to name them, putting a line of seven asterisks in place of their name whenever mentioning them. This has lead to the community referring to them as "the Asterisks".
 * Only the Author Can Save Them Now: What exactly humanity was supposed to do against something like the Gargant was never really answered. Whether the Gargant still exists is also up in the air.
 * Wave Motion Gun: The Aurora/Punisher Beam Cannon equipped on the Icanus. It's so gigantic that it takes up nearly a quarter of the already huge warship's bulk (the redesigned Icanus has a more reasonable construction).
 * Fighterbeams were planned, and in a couple cases implemented.