Well Thundercleese, when I look at your web site, it seems like I can't keep up with you. My non-computer life takes too much time :-/. All I can do is encourage you. But I've modded the game now a little bit myself and I really think that there's lots of cool stuff still in the code kicked out during the design process.

I'll have an eye on this thread. If you really keep working, you might make it, you might come up with the kick-ass-mod for freelancer. It would be nice if you could post some files for beta-testing regularly. We could analyze it (with file difference highlighters) and try to keep up with you.

Do you have access to a server? *grin*

I just found out that my spare machine is way too slow to run a server. Even a for a crappy alpha/beta server. Wheatevo lagged out, and it's even slow for me! :/

sirphes: I believe that making the missions harder (e.g. including cap ships, making weapons platforms *actually have weapons*, etc), and making it more difficult to run freight (e.g. much stronger pirate attacks, and trade lane rings that go down for longer) will greatly encourage teamwork.

Colonel Chris: Hehe, yes, I have been busy! But there are a lot of seperate projects which can be done, and merged later. For example, my one-and-only team member Wheatevo is going to be rebalancing all the playable ships (and probably adding some new ones too). Since he'll be working with different files than me, merging will be easy.

We hope to have playable Fighters, playable Torpedo Bombers, and playable Gunboats all fairly well balanced so that teaming up in MP will be more fun and interesting. It will be impossible to take down a battleship with less than a huge swarm of fighters, but a single bomber will be able to do it in a couple passes. We're going for the rock-paper-scissors effect.

If you like the changes I've made so far, and know your way around INI files, I could sure use some help with some smaller-projects and side-projects! Please send me an email if you're interested. Colonel Chris, you have some great ideas and seem very competent - I'd love to work with you!

Why do I take an entire freaking paragraph just to say one simple thing?
*shakes head*


Well, far be it from me to demand that you change one of the precepts you're approaching this thing with; but, I'm telling you, though I don't know much about FL editing I do know my game design, and people won't just aggregate by searching for the "paper" guy- it'll work faster and more smoothly if people simply know right off that if they join group X, they will be welcomed because they're all getting the same amount of Y anyhow. I think people like me would just buy a strong guns ship and kill it all alone with hit-n-runs. I see how people work in this game; they don't want to carefully work out how their team should fit together, they hardly talk at all. They would see the group and they would join the group.

By the way- love the work done so far! Great ideas, great effort, great progress and webpage. Keep up the good work!

"I need a paper towel."
"Here, use this poetry."
-Death to the Extremist

> I think people like me would just buy a strong guns ship and kill it all alone with hit-n-runs.

You will not be able to destroy a battleship with only one ship when we're finished. It's unrealistic and downright silly that you can do that right now. All I need to do is pump up the battleships' hull health and weapon damage a whole lot. If you want to take out a battleship, you'll need a team. Trust me.

> I see how people work in this game; they don't want to carefully work out how their team should fit together, they hardly talk at all.

They don't talk because there's no incentive: the game is too easy and discourages team play. We intend to fix that!

Hmm, let me think about that for a while. I'm still not sure whether I have the time for all that.
What has Wheatevo done so far? Adding ships is nice, but not important, to my mind balancing (speeds etc.) should be our main task right now. This can be done without touching the game's code. It's all in the inis.
Balancing also means changing the markets. It's totally stupid that all planets of a faction have exactly the same ships for sale. There could be a standard line (eg the Patriot and the Rhino in Liberty), and every planet could have its own special ship. Why don't have shipyards any ships for sale? Why can't you buy a starter's ship in the edge worlds? Never wondered where the Hogosha get their CSVs from, or where the Blood Dragons get their Dragons from? If the starting location and faction can be changed, this should be changed too.
I've begun working with IGx89's FLMM. It is able to change existing files line by line, so modding becomes very safe and compatible, as you can turn it off without any problems if you wish. We should try to work this way, because then it should be easy to merge several projects.

We were going to change all of the ship's positions to make them harder to find. The highest number of ships on a planet might be two, but that will be rare.

-Wheatevo

Gr8 work so far... id love to join, sent an email a couple of minutes ago.
Great ideas and so on. hope to hear more from u later.

***IDEA*** what if thing wighd and toke up cargo space? cos right now u can carry an ininitive amount of weapons/thrusters/shields, that are not mounted on a ship, but what if they tock up 1 in cargo space or at best lv10 weapons made 2, so as carring loads of weapons from a battlefield is less profitable, since u can only load so many in your cargo hold, so the cargo hold really is a cargo hold and not only a commodity hold.

//xiziz

[email protected] if you want to contact me on msn.

Edited by - xiziz on 29-04-2003 14:44:32

I agree with all of those, sounds like a great Idea!

It could be a great mod

I really don't think that MP is challenging enough!

Can groups have names instead of numbers?? Is this possible?

Maybe your rep could be effected by the type of ship you own. I mean if you own a barracuda or hammerhead - wouldn't people assume your a bounty hunter in that type of craft? I think this should have an even greater effect than kills. Civilian craft obviously wouldn't effect rep.

Remove the targeting boxes around all ships then you will have to use the hud to see how is near and dog fighting will be harder ?