I have showed many of the graphical changes of the new Crossfire mod. But not much about the gameplay.
Everything remains the same... but different.
Crossfire still follows the Freelancer style... there are no uber guns, no uber ships, no uber equipment. Everything remains balanced as it was meant to be.
But still I have done some important changes.
NPCs
Unlike CF1.7 which partly was pretty empty due to the fact that based on the story line many systems were just explored the situation changes in CF1.8.
As you already know I have invested much time to turn the small stations into huge station complexes to show that Crossfire is an evolving mod where stations are build and get extended.
Furthermore you will find MUCH more NPCs flying around. The encounters got completly rebuild. Transports, Trains, Armored Transports and their escorts use every existing tradelane. Bounty hunters and many other factions can be found flying around the stations. The tradelanes and stations are the main traffic areas in the new systems. NPCs interact with Solar objects... docking with stations... jumping through gates, launching from stations... using tradelanes... even transports and trains moor at stations. CF got much more lively... at least in Sirius.
Altair is a different matter... the DK systems in Altair will remain pretty monotone... full of DKs so no human colonization can happen. But there are going to be new coalition systems in Altair which will bring more action into that sector.
Note: I intentionally ignored faction relations when I created the Sirius encounters (except in x-3043).
Why?
Well those systems are newly explored systems... they dont belong to liberty, kusari, rheinland or bretonia... they are free systems and I wanted all factions to be present there. Result is a very interesting mix of encounters in all of these systems which might suddenly start a huge fight just because they dont like each other. There are more fights than you have ever seen before.
Story/quests
Like in CF1.7 the story is build on quests (or at least will be build on quests). That means... exploration... solving riddles and flying through hostile areas.
The story is going to be much deeper (we will even introduce a new story element). You can get detailed information about every System, every station, every planet. You can get hundreds of new rumours. Thats for the story and RP fans of you.
Combat
Since NPCs are more aggressive and represented in a better mix you will be forced to fight more. Some are less strong (low lvl NPCs) others can be a serious problem -> ASF/CSF ships.
If you think you really have to mess with one of the new NPC Battleships you better come with a large escort or you better put some money away for your funeral.
Those ships have big guns and the new flag cannons. You already have seen a movie where I presented how they look like. Not long ago I tested them... or better to say I started to fight these ships (2 of them with escorts) and they ripped me appart. The flag cannons took out my missiles and additionally did much damage to my ship while the fighters did the rest.
As usual the alien races will also be very strong opponents but here i dont want to spoil too much.
It was requested that I stop the missile spamming... First idea was to reduce the number of missiles that a ship can carry. I completly dropped this idea coz you might need those missiles in the new systems.
Several months ago I did changes to the mod to double the refire delay of the missiles. Well ok... today I dropped that idea aswell.
The refire delay (the time you have to wait before you can fire the next missile) is now much higher.
Mines = 3 sec
Missiles = 4-8sec
Torpedoes = 12 seconds
Cruise disruptors remained original (with 0.5 - 1 sec).
What 8 seconds for a missile and 12 for a torpedo? That sounds much.... and yes it is much. Doing that would turn missiles into a piece of junk.
I still did it... because i did more changes. I raised the max speed of missiles by 2x and I raised the accelleration time of the missiles by 4x while I reduced the life time of the missile by 50%. Additionally the angular speed of the missiles got doubled.
Ok that sounds a bit like chinese.
To sum up... missiles explode in half of the time (if a missile exploded 10 seconds in CF1.7 it will explode now in 5 seconds after the launch)... bue due to its new speed and the new accelleration the missile can reach a higher distance (while the movement looks much more realistic). The server has to calculate this missle for a shorter time and this will reduce lag while the missle actually does the same like before (just a bit faster).
The fact that the speed is higher and the lifetime is shorter while the missile tracking time remains the same and the angular speed doubled means that the missle can track and hit the target much better.
So in the end the missiles turned from spamming weapons into high precisious weapons that require a good timing.
I have been fighting NPCs with them and also observed NPCs using them. The result is just fantastic. Fast fights with many kills but no spamming at all.
And the best thing is that everything is still very balanced.
Point being I cant show it off if people don't feel the pvp side of it for themselves and I think a 700 man lan is at least a good place to get about 100 people to play CF and possibly join online play afterwards cause they liked it 
