So here's a list of features added and the general response I received for each feature. Some of the features are intricately related to other features so it may get a bit confusing to explain so I'll appologize ahead of time for that.

Let's start with one of the big features, litteraly This, of course, would be the flyable capital ships such as Transports, Battleships, you name it. In my mod I made virtually every ship from the original game available to the players, in fact the list of ships you couldn't buy and fly is substantial shorter so I'll include that instead; The Cargo Train, Rheinland Battleship, Gass Miner, Prison Liner and Luxury Liner are not available for purchase by the players, those were excluded due to bugs of one sort or another.

Adding support for all of those ships was a lot of work and in the end it wasn't really worth it. The first problem, and the source of many headaches for the players, is that Freelancer really isn't setup for players to be using the large ships. Naturally though everyone wants what they couldn't have in the original game so there was a lot of general community interest in them. In practice however they seem to be little more than a novelty item, the players work hard to accumlate the cash need to buy a nice big ship which they then fly around for a day or two before getting back into a fighter or small freighter. Most of the players I spoke with said they thought it was cool to be able to fly them but flying them just wasn't as much fun as flying a fighter. The second most given reason for not liking the capital ships was the "bugs" or "flaws" which were really just limitations of the Freelancer game that couldn't be overcome with simple ini file editing. There is also a tremendous game balance nightmare that is created by giving the players access to these ships, but since game balance is a matter of personal opinion the complaints there ranged from making the game way too easy to making the game way too hard once you had your choice of the big ships in your possession.

The next big change I made was starting all players neutral with every faction except the Nomads. This was a dangerous change as it made the game insanely easy when incorporated alone without any other features. All in all this was a very popular feature, in fact I did not receive a single complaint about it. Part of the reason, I'm certain, is the next feature...

The importance of reputation when dealing with merchants was drastically increased. I made it difficult to buy the higher level weapons, shields and ammunition without being on very friendly terms with the base's controlling faction. In fact, there was very little that you could buy if neutral with a faction and even less to buy if you were under the "zero" line bordering on hostile. Also, I added the reputation requirments to buying commodities so that trading had a new challenge as you needed to be friendly with a faction to buy the most lucrative cargos. I received a lot of concerns from new players to the mod that they were unable to buy equipment and commodities but in every case once they were used to the new requirements they liked the overall effect. This change also totally eliminated any balance issues created by starting out neutral with everyone.

Capital ship encounters were added accross most of the systems. Unlike many other capital ship encounters I spent some extra time to make sure that the encounters met two goals; First, their placement made sense rather than being radomly spread out they wer focused in areas where one would expect to see them. Second, they were not allways the same ships, I added variety to the encounters to keep them from all being the same, sometimes you would get a battleship and a cruiser, other times you may get three cruisers, you just never knew for sure. To increase the variety even more I added in one I had never seen before, I added in Orbital Spa convoys with the Luxury Liner and it's compliment of Armored Transports and escort fighters. These were immensly popular with the players. The "evil" players enjoyed the challeng of trying to attack or evade the fleets while the "good" players enjoyed the safety offered by their presence. And all of the players seemed to enjoy seeing them flying around if for no reason other that to watch them for a bit before moving on (especially if you were lucky enough to catch a Dreadnought smacking down a pack of Rogues).

The difficulty curve of the game was heavily modified away from the linear design that was more suited to single player games than multiplayer games. In other words I tried to make it so Liberty was not exactly "easy" while the border/edge worlds were "harder." Instead, I adjusted the encounters so that "civilized" areas were easier for the good guys and harder for pirates while the opposite was true outside the safety of heavily patrolled trade lanes. This change was for the most part very popular allthough I did receive a number of complaints from "traders" since systems such as Cortez, Gallileo, Sigma-13, etc were substantially more difficult to fly through without an escort. A lot of the "hardcore" players really liked the change as it was one of the biggest contributing factors to making Freelancer feel like a new game and they enjoyed that fact that if they were an Outcast they could relax around Malta but really had to watch their step if they decided to raid Kusari space.

And finally, I removed all of the "secret" weapons (aka Classified guns) from the wrecks and replaced them with more common class 7-9 weapons. Also, all of the classified guns were added to AI loadouts of most factions including all Police, Military and Pirate factions. I honestly think a lot of people didn't even really notice this change until the got hit by a Diamondback-wielding opponent, but the players that did notice it liked the fact that it was no longer simply a race to see who could get all of the guns from the wrecks and having the guns seemed to mean more since they had to earn them.

So that's it, those are the big ones. I'm not sure if it will help anyone but there they are just in case. If you're curious I'm happy to discuss any of these in more detail with you, just email me.

Hmm - much the same as i mod i have made / making - but of course its a little bit (well, a hell of alot) different.....mainly as i have more time, and like you said this was an old mod. The capship part interests me. I too have made all ships flyable (well, except the miner, the liner (i got it working, it was funny to fly but dull) AT and prison ship). Truth be told, i haven't varied handling, though the engines are custom with a little more 'power', plus they also have upgrades for everything to help em along. Now it takes time to test, mod, retest, create waepons and equip etc for each one. The truth is that some won't fly them - especially the battleships - they are too slow, too big and bloody horrible, however, my tester took a destroyer to the Omicron gamma system and enjoyed fighting the corsairs and nomad capships out there!! So i hope that it fairs a little better

The rep - interesting, i have based mine around a different slant. the NPC's have better guns, and regens etc to make it more of a challenge.....you get capship encounters at jumpgates ot other systems (siruis is on edge in mine - lol) and at the cap planets (where nomads will attack) Nomads roam the border worlds, as do outcasts and corsairs. However, my twist is that doing missions for one navy will make the others 'edgy' or to put it more pointedly, dolots of missions for liberty navy, and the other navies will shoot you on sight...however the cops are united in the fight against crime..........lol

new commodities, total change of commoditiy location and costs/ rep has been done (can buy basics easily and cheaply, but to get gold you need to be on good rep and it costs alot etc).......i did this so that its more challenging. You basically start the game again........you don't know what sells where, or for how much...also - you can't start by trading decent stuff as you a) don't know where it is, and b) can't afford it. Also - major traderoutes have changed. Common ones have gone entireely. and drugs (cardamine runs) will make from Alpha to Manhat about 8k profit each.

New ships, old ships, fighters carry 10 cargo for light, 15 for heavy / very heavy to promote traders, there are new commodities which can only be mined - sell for a fortune, theNPC's drop new stuff, everything is more challenging, new bases...etc

However, am wondering if this is all worth it now.........lol
I am fortunate....i am in the Elite (TE) as TE-MAJ-Chips.......and so i have my own little server for testing, and my own beta testers, who send me bugs reports etc etc. The only thing that keeps me going (nearly 200 hours in this so far) is that their reviews have been on the side of

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best god damned mod i have ever played

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or

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this is amazing, its fantastic, i love it

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etc etc.....

However, not sure if the general publics response will eb as favourable. There are of course new weapons and equipment, and only the systems are left...this is all possible as i had about 80 people dedicating time to thinking ideas and also posting them!! Which means that they see what they want to see in the mod!.

I do think that you are correct - public feedback needs to be in development. the ideas i recieved were fantastic as they took a real interest in this project!
However, it never ceases to amaze that people critise what they don't like about your mod when they never gave any feedback..........also alot of people seem to want an 'easy ride', and expect to make a stack fo cash in no time to do everything in..........well - this mod should leave Freelancer as freelancer! I just hope that my efforts have been worth it in the end!!

But your points are interesting about reactions to ideas.......what are they really expecting? Hell - i had one person saying he wouldn't play it cos i made nomad guns use energy......well sorry!! I created 15 class 10 weapons, and i didn't do that for people to use the nomad guns instead!!!!! LOL

You know - i have now forgotten what i was typing about......its 6am and my brain is fried!! I will edit this later when i realise i posted a load of dribble by accident..........suppose i also just announced my mod as well - oh well, its still weeks and weeks off!!
Chips
p.s - yes, it will have lots of anti cheat methods, including server side MP anti cheat stuff, which will get you booted for bringing stuff in (that means lasers, cloaks, ubers etc)

Actually I received a lot of feedback, both good and bad, I think the fact that my mod was never on the most popular list also means the people I dealt with for the most part were seriously looking for a good mod and not simply attracted by some eye candy or hype. In fact I still have a few people I email back and forth with that don't use my mod simply because the exchanges with them have been pleasant and very informative for both of us.

Don't get me wrong about the capital ships though, I put them in there because I was making the mod that I wanted, not to be popular. In fact even with my difficulty enhancements I flew one of the slug transports from Manhattan to Crete and back once just to say I did it. Honestly, I was suprised to hear that they were so unpopular with the players, and their lack of popularity had nothing to do with how I had them setup, just that they were neat but they got old quick.

For money I took the exact opposite approach you did, I reduced the costs of everything in the game by 50%, all of the commodities, guns, ammuntions, "small" ships, equipment, you name it. Essentially it didn't change anything in the game except for the fact that repairs and bribes were basically twice as expensive since they were unchanged. The main reason for this is that Freelancer wasn't accepting any prices over 10,000,000 for a single object, and It just felt wrong to have a Battleship that only cost 10x the price of some of the fighters, granted my change only made it cost 20x but at least they sure felt more expensive Oh yeah, feedback on this... well there were some initial complaints about the prices being so low until they realized it really did effect everything, then it just took some getting used to and all of the players were fine with it, but I think that would be that case with any substantial changes made to the prices players are used too.

There were a lot of other features too, but I don't want to type too much at once Anyway I guess the whole point here is just to share some of the feedback I got on certain features in case anyone out there is wondering how "impoertant" a particular feature would be to the success of their mod. In short I guess I could just say if you holding up the release of your mod because you haven't made all of the capital ships flyable don't worry about it, but really there is so much more to it and it's interesting (for me anyway) to see what other authors have encountered, which ideas proved to be successfull and popular and which utterly flopped

Its being held up by the rather reluctant modder to get stuck into the 15 or so extra systems someone has made the outlines for!! (he used FLExplorer, i basically get a system file with a sun, planet and......thats about it actually!) I then build the systems up etc, its all the info cards i have to do and everything else. Any time i start i find something else to tweak instead.............lol

Am sure i got one ship over the 10mil mark - somethign about added value of the equipment that it comes with, but sure it weighed in over 10 mil......or is my mind playing tricks.

Victor - i shall check yours out though, as i never heard of it........lol! Mainly due to the fact that i rarely spend any time reading stuff in any forum cept this one..........and even then all my time is spent in accushots thread!
This is a good idea for a thread though

Yeah, you can get the total ship price well over 10 Mil but since the player can elect to strip out most of the equipment it's still possible to buy the hull alone for 10 mil, and I didn't think that was expensive enough compared to a 1 mil fighter. I also tried to maintain some balance in the weapon prices so I didn't just jack up the prices of all the capship weapons.

And your new systems should proove to be very popular, I know that even when I did something fairly small to one of the systems, such as adding a wreck, the regular players loved it, they allways seem to enjoy finding new stuff. I also spent some time change some useless asthetics, such as the lights on the tradelanes and ships, and a lot of people enjoyed the fact that there was a change even if it was small.

As for new ships, I only added two and they were both added to fill in "gaps" in the capabilities of existing ships. One was a small freighter that was now needed since I balanced out the rest of the freighters as you could no longer buy a cheap freighter anywhere. The other was a larger freighter, roughly the equivalent of the Armored Transport but with lighter armor and fewer weapons (and a lower price tag). Anyway, with only two new ships and those filling a void in the existing ships I can't really offer a lot in the way of feedback on new ships, those two were popular but I can't say for certain that they were popular because they were new ships

Edited by - Victor on 20-09-2003 19:22:45

Thats some really great info. Interesting that people notice the small details of things, and now that you mention it, I do as well. I do have another suggestion for modders. Being a mod user and a beginner modder myself, I have noticed that it is quite an inconvenience when a modder posts the mod without much of a description as to what the mod changes. The more descriptive a modder is in the description of his mod, the more likely a person is to download it and try it.