Bones to Pick with Crossfire 2.0

1. NEVER replace files with anything.
Now that you have done so, multiple features are not working anymore.
Replacing the launcher is an absolute no-go since you get locked out from all updates and fixes... you also loose access to ALL the launcher based features such as adv. shaders, effects, dynamic markets, etc.
Replacing any files renders your copy of the mod totally bugged.
And the mod btw. was re-released a few months ago after we made sure that it is 100% compatible with windows 10.
The crash you have experiences simply was due to in incompatibility of your hardware drivers with the default shader. The solution to this problem simply would have been to select a different shader option on the launcher, instead of messing with mod files.

2. You information is not correct. Players can leave the CF story at specific points. These points hardly can be missed as you clearly have the choice to take a break or continue with the story.
Next to that are you free to visit other stations on your way to the next mission objectives and buy whatever you want there.
Of course some gates are locked because you are not supposed to visit specific systems at this point of the storyline... thats a mechanic that was already in use during the vanilla storyline. You were not allowed to leave new york until time was right... and you also were not allowed to visit alaska and other systems before you were at the right point in the storyline. That is just about "normal".
Locking gates is a security measurement that prevent that players leave the path... which would be bad coz that would cause heavy problems for scripting the storyline triggers. If you dont follow the path and miss one of the mission triggers or if you activate triggers in systems that you are not supposed to be in yet then the whole storyline will stop working.
The CF 2.0 storyline was written by hand... line by line.
Every voice command, every marked waypoint... every message... every NPC ship, every path they fly, every effect, every kind of interaction... even every blink of an eye in the cut scenes.
A bit more than 100.000 lines of code just to get the storyline told.
IF we allow the players to go where they want (putting aside that this is not possible) then we certainly would need to write another 100.000 lines of code just to foresee every possible eventuality and prevent that the player interactions anywhere in the game damage the storyline.
I give you an example: A player finishes the vanilla storyline and heads straight to the dervon system and starts killing ancients. This changes as result reputations which then prevent the storyline to continue. This also will mess up the point where the player (later in the storyline) is told to visit dervon because then the mission objectives can not be done (the ancients which trigger an event at that point are already dead).
Fact is, allowing players to visit all systems at any time will cause hundreds of possible errors in the storyline.

Another thing you might try to tell me now is "but in vanilla FL you could set waypoints and fly around". Hmmm yes... between the missions. There were so called freetime phases. Fact however is that when the game was created a specific number of freetime phases were created for the original storyline. Adding more of such phases is not possible since that is hardcoded in FL. The only way to get more of such freetime phases would be when the source code of FL gets released by microsoft (which never will happen).
So... we are forced to do stuff exactly the way we did it already. If there were a different better possibility then we would have used it.
If it were easy to create a storyline then more people would have done it. I know not even a handful of modders that are able to get anything like that done. With Crossfire we pushed to the limits of what is actually possible.

3. Well, there is an OpenSP option. You would see it.... if you didn't overwrite our original files.

More ppl here play CF under win10, this is not issue.

OpenSP option is in mod launcher (it ends campaign, so its option only for these which don't want play campaign)

After one mission leading to Mars in Sol system (before player heads to Altair) can be campaign 'paused'. During this pause you can freely explore and equip your ship, you can look around for side storyline missions, you cannot do missions from bars ... its maximum what was possible to do.

fact is, that there are such options
fact is that the mod runs very well under win10
it does not matter if you think that you have a good pc... when your drivers are not compatible with specific shaders then it crashes (thats why we have many different options)
fact also is that replacing files renders the mod bugged

and normally i would not even reply to such a thread considering that there is a license agreement for the mod that disallows you to add, remove or modify files
it is not our job to give support for stuff that has been edited by you
all problems caused by this are actually not our problems

it is 100% open