The Tomorrow War: Factor K is a stand-alone expansion to The Tomorrow War game. The game continues the story of its predecessor, so ones again you will take control of Andrey Rumyantsev, who adrift became one of the main figures in the war during the "Factor K" scenario. The game's scenario has been written by the well known Russian author Alexander Zorich.
The game features 13 new missions, a new spaceships available for players to control and various graphics and gameplay improvements such as new clouds in the planet atmosphere and more realistic towns on planets surface. The game now allows player to also control his wingmen. In all other aspects the game is similar to the original and still features 3 modes of game physics, a real time generated planet surface and missions which require player to fight in both planet atmosphere and open space.
Factor K Features :
- Updated graphics and special effects
- New planets with unique features
- Newer types of fluggers, starships, and ground equipment
- A continuation of the famous space saga written personally by Alexander Zorich
- Flights of fluggers and starships under your immediate command
- A multitude of refinements introduced at the request of players
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Updated graphics and special effects
- Cloudiness. A selection of screenshots have already been published on the 1C site which show the new cloud technology. The clouds are indeed a great wonder. On the majority of planets the clouds are found at a “typical” altitude of 5-15 km, but different situations can be encountered. In some places the clouds literally cling to the ground, while in other places the mighty mountain peaks penetrate the cloud layer and look straight at the stars...
- Landings on water. In spite of the fact that the flight model of the fluggers has not changed substantially, the appearance of the “Senmurv” hydro-flugger in the game demanded the addition of the corresponding visual effect of sliding on the water. This effect has been realized in the appearance of classic “whiskers” of the hydro-flugger's floats.
- Cracks on protective screens of cabin. Now with damage of the nose-section of the flugger, the wide-spread cracking of the protective screen of the pilot's cabin is taken into consideration.
- Damage Model. The damage model of fluggers and starships has been re-worked for the better.
- Anti-aliasing. Full-fledged anti-aliasing of scenes is now present. (Attention: By default, this is turned off in the Options since, as is the case in all modern games, qualitative anti-aliasing is very demanding on the computer's resources.)
New planets with unique features
A series of new planets and moons have been introduced into the game.
- The most unusual planet is the famous Glagol (with the gigantic Cauldron and the canyons of the rivers Styx-Sine and Styx-Cosine), but others are nice as well:
- The planetary giant Urmia, belted with a ring of cosmic garbage and covered with a frozen methane ocean over which towers gigantic volcanic peaks;
- The double planetoid Frascius;
- The fertile Terta, a huge industrial center of Condordia; Terta has four moons to which you can fly without special problems (if you wish).
- New ground infrastructure objects deserve special mention: cities, factories, shipyard facilities.
Newer types of fluggers, starships, and ground equipment
In all, more than 15 new space and ground fighting units have been added to the game which belong to the Great Race, the Chorugs, the Jagnu, and the Gyps.
Of special mention are the “Sea Eagle”, the “Senmurv” , the “Griffin”, the battleship-carrier “Suvorov”, the squadron tug “Snow Leopard”, the heavy tank “Shamshir”, the walking Chorugian tank, the Chorugian carrier, discopter, battle-planet ships, Jagnu corvettes and Gyps guardians (in the novel Moscow Time the teacher Vokhur called them the “Demon Midwives”).
We stress: These are indeed the new units. Almost all of the starships and fluggers you met in The Tomorrow War have their own place in Factor K. The same applies to the Jagnu Paladins and Astrofaks etc.
A continuation of the space saga written personally by Alexander Zorich
This is a fact. What can you add?...
Rumyantsev, Pushkin, Byelokon', Berdnik, Comrade Ivanov and a series of other characters from The Tomorrow War actively participate in Factor K. But of course, new characters also appear. Some of them were episodic heroes of the trilogy or were at the least mentioned on its pages, but a series of other characters were created specially for Factor K.
Also, after long meditation over the game The Tomorrow War it was decided:
- to increase the volume of radio chatter on the air;
- to insert scripted scenes directly into the combat sorties.
This means the following: now long pauses seldom reign on the air, of course, this is true only if the player does not fly off for half an hour into the depths of space (in such cases the medicine, so to speak, has no effect). The long drawn-out periods unavoidably associated with certain prolonged flights is now better than in the first game, covered by diverse contact between pilots and the high command. Time acceleration is an additional means of battle against the long drawn-out periods (this is described in greater detail below).
Starships and Flights of fluggers under your immediate command
By the end of the war with Concordia, Andrej Rumyantsev was promoted to First Lieutenant and was busy with the duties of the commander of Squadron I-03 2nd Gv. OAKR. Correspondingly, on those combat sorties in which he is accompanied by fluggers of his own squadron or some attached ships, the possibility arises to give orders to subordinate forces. A special menu for giving orders has been created, and an additional information window has been added for the representation of subordinate fluggers.
The menu for managing the squadron is activated with the key “”, this is a backslash (on most keyboards the “” is located near the “Enter” key).
The activated menu appears from the right, over the armaments panel. A second press of “” will remove the menu.
The menu appears as follows:
- Attack my target
- Attack the group target or system
- Form up
- Follow me
- Defend the indicated target
- Defend the indicated group of targets
- Defend me
- Act independently
When you see this menu, the keys from “1” to “8” give the corresponding commands (that is, the default values of the keys “1”...”4” connected with the control of the autopilot cease to function in this menu on the basis of the context).
With the help of these eight keys it is possible to very effectively and flexibly command the fluggers of one's squadron. We won't look into the nuances of this process here, we will say only that the whole complex system of tactical management realized by Crioland is quite proper and deserves high marks.
Concerning the control of starships.
The process of piloting a starship is not distinguished in any real way from the control of a flugger, but for X-transport a special menu exists, the contents of which changes from one sortie to the next in connection with the reprogramming of the navigational system (astroparser), but in each case it remains completely obvious.
Concerning flights on a starship, I wanted to point out only a couple of the more important aspects:
- The tug “Snow Leopard”, as with other orbital tugs of the “Vajgach” type, is not adapted for movement in the atmosphere. Don't tempt fate – you will blow up!
- The threshold speed which must be assumed for completion of X-transport is 5 km/s (which is in a somewhat simplified form, but in general accurately reflects the objects of the material world of The Tomorrow War). At lower speeds X-transport is not possible.
- For starships only the consumption of luxogen is considered. Reserves of other types of fuels are taken to be sufficiently significant that their consumption makes no sense for counting in the passage of those flights in ordinary space which the player is obliged to complete.
A multitude of refinements introduced at the request of players
They are indeed a multitude. We will name only the most essential.
6.1keep in mind that the acceleration of time excludes any radio communications from the beginning. Also, time acceleration is not always available in flights over the surface of a planet and in a number of special cases.
Different modes for supplementary firing points in defense of the tail and/or the upper hemisphere have been introduced:
- Completely automatic (by default)
- Semi-automatic
- Manual control
- Off
Switching of modes is realized by the combination CTRL+L
The “Completely automatic” mode corresponds to that in The Tomorrow War: aiming of the gun ring is produced on the nearest target, after which continuous fire is maintained until exhaustion of energy reserves or the supply flow of ammunition (for solid state cannons).
The “Off” mode corresponds to the complete absence of the gun ring, that is, the gun ring does not fire in any circumstances.
In the “Semi-automatic” mode, the gun ring fires only at the currently locked-on target (if a target is absent in its field of fire, the gun ring will not fire).
Finally, in the “Manual control” mode, the gun ring is locked in its own base position (for example, for the “Fulminator,” the barrels are retracted backwards, for the “Sea Eagle” the barrels are straight forward), after which it fires from its base position and only when the “Fire” button is depressed (by default – Left Mouse Click). This regime is especially comfortable on the “Sea Eagles”, the gun rings of which are armed with two 85mm cannon. Together with the remaining forward barrels of the flugger in firing in Salvo mode, which by default is realized by the combination of Left+Ctrl+Left Mouse Click, this allows the “Sea Eagle” to bring down on the enemy a veritable squall of fire.
Among the various combat camera modes there has now been added “HUD without the player's flugger.” As before, the combat camera mode is switched by means of Keyboard “V”. And now external camera views are carried out using Keyboard “F7”. After you get used to the changes, you will understand that it is indeed more comfortable than it was earlier.
The addition of an autopilot Cruise control function (Keyboard U).
The addition of an autopilot “Match speed” function (Keyboard combination Ctrl+N).
Now it is possible with a single press of the CapsLock key to clear all elements of the interface, including target markers, the mouse cursor and the like. On this keystroke the “Infrastructure” menu disappears from the radar.
(If you have turned on the view from the cabin, the cabin itself does not disappear, but the HUD view and all virtual markers will disappear.) Of course, this possibility was added in order to facilitate the most attractive and high-quality screenshots. (However, be careful! During loading of the radar, which demands rubbing shoulders with someone, one can, by lack of familiarity, forget what it means to press CapsLock and to begin to become confused as to where the mouse cursor and “Infrastructure” menu are shared.)
With the aid of special indicators on target markers, the level of damage which has been inflicted on the selected target or the subsystem of the target will be displayed. For example, one can see approximately how long an enemy fighter or a motor group of an enemy starship will remain alive.