Unique selling points

The big question:
What is different from other mods? What makes Futurewar an unique project?

The question requires different answers for two groups or people:
For players, and for developers interested in joining.

Differences in gameplay:

Futurewar isn't a great free-roaming rpg, it's not a hyperrealistic battle simulation, it doesn't have a huge single player campain. It's designed to be a rock solid multiplayer gaming experience that we can constantly improve on with support of our hopefully growing community.
We try to optimize an area often regarded as less important in the creation of FPS: User interface and feedback. Let's take aiming as example, a user interface issue that often causes frustration, expecially for new players.
Shockingly, some games out there claim the lack of crosshairs as their unique feature, for "enhancing realism". But it won't work. It can't work, because we are in a virtual environnement, having a screen in front of our eyes and a mouse and keyboard in our hand. Games, with the current technology, can never be an experience even only close to reality - they can only be frustratingly hard, or easy and entertaining, or something in between. But they will always stay games. So, you don't render a crosshair. A player gets frustrated. He takes a text marker and makes a dot on the center of his monitor. Bang, there goes your unique "feature", devastated by a simple pen, or a fragment of a sticky note.
It also cannot work gameplay-wise. In reality, you turn your head, feeling your body where you are looking and able to push your weapon towards the center of your attention. for games, your point of attention where your eyes rest isn't necessarily the center of the screen, and you don't "feel" where your rifle currently aims - you first have to search where the center of your screen is because thats where your weapon is aiming, and then move the center of your screen towards your point of attention, and that is a completely absurd action of aiming that can only be archieved by players who were born with mice as hands.
Take one of the greatest war simulations of all time: Operation Flashpoint. They didn't try to eliminate the user interface and claimed it as being realistic, no, the user interface was greatly enhanced over the standard FPS. your crosshair didn't only show you the rough direction where your weapon was spraying, it showed you the precise effect of recoil on your weapon, which you would in reality feel forcefully in your arm. Also, the crosshair didn't have to be at the center of the screen, in a limited way you could move it to your point of attention without changing your sight so that you could avoid causing optical distraction and readaption to your target! It's simply an information essential for the player to get used to the current weapon fast - so why not start thinking about new crosshair systems that reflect the behaviour of each weapon, removing the completely unnecessary random spraying in today's games? Don't you wish to win because of pure l33t skills instead of because you had a random number generator on your side?
Yes, the weapon damage/health balance of our mod is more team-fortress-arcade-like than realistic, and we're not aiming for realism, but we're aiming for control, any why shouldn't you be able to aim your weapon properly just because you don't get instagibbed? That's why I'm making references to simulations. We can learn from them how to control our players properly and make the games easier to learn, so that the gap between new players and veterans can be closed faster, and is only dependant on your actions in the game, not lack of knowledge how the game elements behave.
Futurewar tries to improve the parts of gameplay that are neglected by most mods today, but are essential for a rich, easy to learn gameplay experience: proper crosshairs, clear objectives, and a rich environnement that offers you well-placed tactical items and alternate options instead of random physics object spammage just for the sake of having physics in the game.
In the end, these efforts will help creating an easy to learn gameplay that offers a rich environnement for battles, maximum control over your player character, various ways to interact with your team and a gameplay tuned for fairness, balance and fun, while you are fighting in an athmospheric consistent world.
Hopefully. ;)

For developers:

How many AK47's have you modelled in your life? How many colts have been modelled for the mods out there? Does World War 2 really need "concept art" if there are 10.000 real world reference images out there? Why does every soldier look the same?
If you are wondering about these questions too, Futurewar might be the right mod for you!
Really, almost all mods out there advertise with "realistic weapons", but we are ARTISTS, and we are GAME makers, we don't only exist to copy reality, we are here to use our imagination, our creativity, to create worlds never seen before! But even worse, even many fantasy themed mods start using only 08/15 weaponry, or start copying movies. You are right on this team if you want to create something new and unique, futuristic energy weapons that aren't fantasy items, but that could actually be used by humans. If you want to model sympathic character with detailed faces and hair, teams of mixed gender and individual looks, and imagine a dark decaying modern city including all the detail like roadsign (something surprisingly seldom found in "city" themed maps, even though our cities are full of signs of various size, form and color)
You are right here if you want to create a solid game based on solid, tested priciples, with not too much content or features cluttering up our tasklist and our gamplay, in a very well organized and communicative, but not too strict (we're still all doing this for free!) and not too deadline-focused environnement.
Futurewar is an intermediate-level project, we don't try to rewrite the whole engine, we don't need content that needs 5 years and 100 memebers to create. There are jobs for all levels of skill in this project, be it simple propmaking to the more complex level design requireing prior experience, to the coding that mostly only involves features that were possible and done for HL1, and only very few that might give us a headache or would require stressy nights of work.
If you want to create a credible sci-fi universe with every detail necessary to create a unique athmosphere with a dark, decaying world and sympathic human characters struggling to save their world, you are our man/woman.