well, put it this way. in x wing vs tie fighter, could you customize your weapons?

in halo, could you ever get a longsword as a vehicle?

also in Halo, could you ever doa slipspace jump?

i guess not. thus the point of modding.

There is alot of general rebalancing going on. All the big mods play about with balance issues, otherwise they would just be ship packs

By the time most people start using mods they will have played vanilla FL alot and have seen all the ships etc. So when it comes down to picking a mod people will probably pick the one with new content aswell as the balancing. Personally i have played FL all the way through (till i was sure i had all the best gear, not just till end of SP) at least 4 times since getting fed up with vanilla. There is no way i would have done that if all that was being changed was numbers.

I say the more ships/systems/weapons out there the better. You can always mix 'n match the bit you like from mods for your own use anyway.

And plus, some of us dont want to go buy a game to fly in an x-wing.
And even if we did some of us probably like the style of Fl more.


_____________________________
Dont mistake Santa for Santa Claus
()xxxxxxx{}:::::::::::::::::::::>

I have a request for all modders out there.
Leaving aside the specific mods designed to add external ships, the thing I am looking for in a mod is something that increases the longevity of the game (more ships, weapons, secrets and especially systems) WITHOUT destroying the game balance.

I'm not really interested in something that allows you to make obscene amounts of cash really quickly, that makes ships and weapons available anywhere or that gives super-powerful or super-fast ships. So, my request is for people doing this sort of thing to make it (a) available to the public and (b) focused on extending the EXISTING game only.

Thanks.

- And before you all jump on me and say "why don't you make it yourself", I am looking into that, but not having done any game modding before it is likely to be a slow and painful process.

So Quercus, let me get this straight. You want

---

something that increases the longevity of the game (more ships, weapons, secrets and especially systems)

---

but people have to remember to

---

make it ..... focused on extending the EXISTING game only

---

What do you mean? How can you add new stuff while only working with existing materials? Basically you seem to have the idea that the only mods out there give you invincible light speed ships. This is very far from the truth. Since you dont name the mod/mods that you have played i cant say much more.

I assume tho, in your quest for game balance, that you have played FLRebalance ? It has more ships, weapons, secrets and systems and as the name suggests does not destroy the game balance.

I assure you if you try out the popular mods you will find they do not destory balance. No-one would play them if they did. Probably best to wai for the new 'uber' mod at the moment tho as it will no doubt add the most replayability of any mod to date.

I don't know how Reynen's new mod (not yet released) is going to be, but right now the best out there is Micheal Dan's reBalance 1.9

I played the story line game 3 times and then went on to level 38. By the third time through, the only thing in the story line missions that kept me in the game was Juni. The rest was booring as hell.

That's when I turned to the mods. I play "openSP" starting with the amount of credits I had when I retired from the sigle player game 3.

I found some of the mods too hard, being balanced to the point that I couldn't play them. Some of the mods have turned out just booring as going through single player 3 times, and yes, some of them should never been released in the first place.

All this changed when Dan brought out reBalance 1.4, got better with 1.6, and has hit the mark with 1.9. This mod has me playing with renewed vigor.


The Fangman

Sorry, perhaps I should clarify - I am talking about multiplayer mods here. I know there are mods out there that do not unbalance the game, (such as level 2), but these seem restricted to single servers.

As to the rebalance mod, I haven't tried it so I can't comment from a position of knowledge, but I am not sure what it is rebalancing. Looking at some of the details from the different versions, it seems to have introduced larger and heavier ships than in the basic game, ships with large arrays of weapons (10 and 11 hard points for weapons are listed), vastly increased freighter capacities, larger capacity freighters available in New York, etc.

As I said, I haven't tried this yet (having not finished the SP game and being primarily looking for an MP mod), but the fact it is making balance changes has put me off trying it.

As I said, I am not looking for something that creates more powerful weapons or ships than in the basic game, nor am I looking for something that makes things really cheap or allows more rapid profits than are possible within the normal game - I'm just looking for something that will expand the current game but within the existing limitations.

Yeah, that's pretty much what I was looking for... not that I don't like Starwars ships or any of the other models, I just don't like them in my Freelancer game. But, I've come to one conclusion after all my searching, the only person who can make the perfect mod for me is... um, me

One of these days I hope I can actually release this thing, but a lot of the work is very tedious, such as going through every system and adjusting the encounters. It's a lot of fun though, and I enjoy being able to buy and fly things like the transports, gunboats and other assorted ships from the orginal game. And, so far, I've been enjoying the added challenge and variety I've been able to incorporate into the game.

Anyway, if you're as picky as me you'll probably have to do it yourself, otherwise you can just sit back and wait patiently, it's a lot of work and I'm sure there are plenty of mods in the works without any real hype behind them, they'll just show up one day.

Exactly! Thanks Victor.
I too like Star Wars and Babylon 5, but they are very different from the feel of Freelancer and I would rather not have the cross-pollination.

I have looked at some of the modding tutorials and it does look like a big piece of work. I certainly don't want to blunder into the ini files and start causing problems for myself out of ignorance.

What would be really nice of for people to produce "modlets". Small mods that make minor changes and can be easily uninstalled.
i.e. - a modlet that opens the systems only available in SP, or another that adds another group of systems.
A modlet that makes bases and battleships destructable.
A modlet that adds an extra family of ships.
A modlet that allows slower ships like armoured transports and gunboats to be pilotable.
A modlet that introduces tougher nomad ships (HFs and VHFs for example).

Idea being that you can then install the ones you want to get the game you want.
*Sigh*. Dream on.

Yeah, mod's broken into small pieces would be cool but its tough. Even a simple mod that makes an existing ship like the Armored Transport flyable has to edit at least 3 files, 5 if you want a proper engine and powerplant in it. A simple solution to the problem would be a mod manager that allows multiple scripts to edit a single file and if all of the authors used unique "tags" it would help. We did this with Operation Flashpint editing and for me that habit has carried over to Freelancer, I make a new ship and it's nickname goes from "ge_transport" to "vic_transport"

The biggest problem though are files like market_ships.ini since any mod that added a ship would also need to add the ships to a ship dealer and it would be hard to keep people from adding ships to the same ship dealers.

Also, similar mods, such as ship packs that included capital ships, would need to incorporate identical changes to some of the files, such as a docking fix and something like the "ghost docking ring" mod. Sure, you could have a few small "essential" mods, but then the list of required mods to run any particular mod may defeat the original goal and you'd be stuck running mods you didn't want just so the ones you did want would work.

It still may be possible, but I wouldn't want to be the one trying to organize it

Edited by - Victor on 25-06-2003 04:32:37

I still dont get the problem with extra content. I'm not a huge starwars fan, and i dont recognize any of the bab5/wing commander etc. ships but it doesnt bother me at all. I can barely tell which ones are original and which ones aren't. After all in 40 odd star systems with seemingly common space travel all sorts of craft are gonna turn up. However i guess we will have to agree to disagree as it is obviously a matter of personal preference

I too had fears of the awesome weapons loadouts etc in some of the mods. However alot of time has gone into making sure they dont unbalance the game. For most of the mods people are complaining it is too hard. NPCs have better loadouts too - if your titan has 10 guns, so does theirs. This, combined with things like NPC shield regen and faster ships, makes the game more fun. The other day i shot the hell out of a train, just 'cause i was 1 tradelane from my destination and had space in the hold. Normally this would have been fine but as i was playing a mod (rebalance) things turned out really badly. A huge posse of zippy police light fighters started shooting me, along with a station and the tradelane rings. The police had sweet shields and were really pounding me, i could have run but a few of my flatmates were watching and it was matter of pride I made it out eventually with half a hull and no nanos/shield batts. I certainly wasn't complaining it was too easy

The problem with MP mods is stability. Running mods on single player can be troublesome but transfer that to MP things just get worse. However the big mods usually have a dedicated server or too with the latest updates. Many mods also add things that are of little value in singleplayer but are sweet in MP - its pretty dull to fly a battleship against NPC's, but a posse with a battleship and a few heavy fighter is a force so be reckoned with against Pkers. If you wait for 'The Next Generation' there will be a bunch of servers, also because there are a variety of people working on it i'm sure the balance will be sweet.

The modlet idea is a good one, but it is not easy to put into practice. Mods that do separate things can be compatible but where they can the same inis etc things start needing manually tweaked. Say someone makes a mod that adds gunboats as player ships. You they have to make gunboat weapons buyable. This introduces the problem of tiny ships with guboat turrets. Most mods get round this by making gunboat weapons c10 and taking the max turret lvl on ships c9. Then someone else adds a bunch of ships which have c10 turrets. Or some small craft get introduced with a slightly higher speed - say 90 - to compensate for lack of offensive power. Then another modlet gets released which set LFs to 110 speed, HFs to 90 and VHFs to 70. Suddenly the small, nippy ships are crap. Another problem is ids_ numbers - you need to know what number your .dll is when refering it - with multiple modlets and mutliple .dlls this becomes a problem. I know these arent very good examples but you get the idea. Although they are small problems they need to be addressed and thats why one big mod is always gonna be less hassle than a bunch of wee ones.

***Rant mode cancel***

I know you said not say 'do it yourself' but a small amount of study will allow you to alter or remove bits of a mod you dont like. It is much easier to tweak soemone else work than to do it yourself from scratch

EDIT - In the time it took me to write that rubbish victor has explained things much better Anyway despite my rant i have just uploaded a 'modlet' of sorts and am stealing your word for it

Edited by - redeye on 25-06-2003 05:13:10

I wouldn't say it was a better explanation, just shorter, your's had a lot more color to it