Well if you were still going for size you could make it so everything gets harder as you get farther away from the system primary (sun or planet). Can't really do that too much with a small system.

If you just let there be a moderate range of NPC difficulties in random missions and then let base missions cover the higher level stuff you can give somewhat of a more balanced experience. Of course to protect the low level players you have police/security patrols along trade routes or you can use that 'follow' feature and have police escort you to where you want to go.

I think one of the things that people have been really missing out on is that a System can be, all by itself, a really... really... REALLY huge place. After all, we're talking 250K on a side... or 15625000 cubic units (I dunno what a FL unit of measure really is- it's not a meter, but it's something like). There's plenty of room for whatever you want, if you design with intensity in mind. For example, you can have Zones practically on top of one another, and they can be quite small if needed. Things like Nebulas are admittedly a problem, because they can be seen at ridiculous draw distances and I don't know how to turn their LOD information down to the point where they don't eat framerate like a pregnant woman eats pickles, but that's OK- one can work around such issues. One thing that's occured to me on more than one occasion is the way that Nebulas cull the drawing of objects outside the Nebula, regardless of what the fog distance is set at, and how that might be used to various ends.

But even one smallish-sized asteroid field- say, 25K on a side, and 10K thick... is still a GIGANTIC area to bury things in. Most people have been into the junkyards around Leeds, or the ones near the Outcast homeworld.... and they're not even close to being packed with content. There's a lot you can do with a little

Had a new idea and its relevant to this thread so here goes.
Its a bit wild, i don't think its been done similar before.

There are 12 arenas each linked together by jump holes. The arenas themselve are a system each and are essentially a large field of very high density with lane and room exclusions cut into the field. So you spawn from what looks like a cave with either the arena to go through or a training room.
The player starts in an escape pod with a pile of cash and a max rep with the zoners in control of the base. At the base is every class 5-10 weapon and there is enough cash to buy either a hard hitting ship or a resilient one, but not both.
I think you should begin with hawk type ships available for sale.

Throughout the arena is around 10 rooms, each filled with a single spawn of enemies. The aim is to load up and reach the other side. You can`'t re-arm while you are going through the arena. You get to the end and you earn access to the next tier.
At arenas 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11 the bases can buy new ships each more advanced than the previous. In arenas 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 you can re-supply but there are no ships.
Multiplayer wise there are rooms on arenas 2-12 for player vs player duelling in dedicated rooms linked to the main base. It is allowed to duel on the server with people on the same tier as you but not lower than that.

Its aimed at being just a minigame for instant combat. The bases are places to meet and arrange duelling or whatever. The highest tiers are very hard, aimed to be too hard for all but the best players.
I 'm even considering the arena to be a test and when you have reached arena 10 you can jump to a separate system (a copy of one I already have elsewhere in the mod) and join a war. There are two factions each with capships and several bases throughout the system. You launch and then choose your side. Other players joining the server would need to go through the arena in order to earn access to the war.
It is quite like Total War in some ways. But as a bolt on to a mod it would be worth playing.

great idea MACE, finally something really innovative!

I like that idea of instant-combat action, but that sort of flservers (pvp or action only) need a good promotion as the gameplay differs a lot from normal freelancer and its adventure-quests elements...
I think something like this is needed thesetimes, there are a lot of fl veterans and the only thing they want most is huge battles with other freelancers, or not?
So this would be the way to a Freelancer DeathMatch Server...
(Ioncross Total War is a bit different though as you are fighting against npcs almost all the time!)

With an asteroid field that dense, you'd get tons of lag, wouldnt you?

What i`ve done so far is a bit laggy and its not even on multiplayer. I`ll need to playaround with the fields cube size and choose the best objects for the field.

I had something similar in mind for an arcade project where each 'level' requires that your reputation be good with the gate 'guardian' of sorts. Ultimately it was supposed to be two teams that try to progress as fast as possible to the enemy base to destroy a special object. Once that object was destroyed the game would be over.

So for our test idea we have what?

System: 100 x 100k
Zones: increasing difficulty with distance from primary
Patrols: higher level NPC's make rare excursions against bases

Missions: wide range of missions depending on player level

Follow: security forces will escort transports/freighters and military forces will escort capital ships

Ship Models:
= Fighters - shrunk to half the size with camera settings to match
= Freighters - no change
= Transports - double the size
= Capital - three times the size

Ship Speeds:
= Fighters - 80kps
= Freighters - 60kps
= Transports - 40kps
= Capital - 20kps

= (Cruise Speed) - 150kps
= (Lane Speed) - 500kps

Solar Models:
= Planets - double the size
= Suns - four times the size
= Asteroids - three to six times the size
= Stations - four times the size

Drawing some blanks now..

If you just want to play with difficulty levels, there are easier methods:

1. There have already been proof-of-concept works done showing that you can arrange "jumps" per Hostility level (i.e., making hostile Gates non-hostile via Bribes, and making the Gate armament uber-deadly, so that getting through the Gate without doing so is pretty much impossible).

2. If you arrange things by System, you can design a series of "levels" that increase with difficulty as users progress downwards.

3. In MP, players can share money with one another, so arranging for a "party" to progress to the next level of the "dungeon" is not a problem.

Therefore... I might want to look at "Diablo in Space"- getting back to the classic Rogue concept of literal levels. Heck, with all of the weird things one can do with weapons and shields, etc., it might even be possible to build "character classes" that can do various things. I don't suppose anybody's tried to build a gun that does negative damage before?

Ooh, ooh!

In MP, players could have a "healer" ship. If negative damage weapons don't work, at the very least, they can carry far more nanobots than usual, or something, so that they can serve in that capacity within a "party". The "wizard" could have guided weapons with big blasts (and ammo problems), the "warrior" could have the best all-around armor and good short-range weaponry, and the "thief" could have good long-range weapons, best sensor range, but poor armor and reload rates

Heh... this almost sounds like a plan...

Hmm. And then each "level" could have static and non-static ... ooh!

Here's a very innovative idea: random Wrecks! It's soooo easy... just build a "Random Treasure" Faction, that's neutral with everybody... and have a percentage of a given "Random Treasure" Encounters in certain Zones (populated by appropriate nasties, of course, that appear far more often). The Random Treasure Faction would have either a special, iconic vessel (floating treasure chest or whatnot) or they'd have ships that looked normal but were actually crippled (unable to turn, unable to move). And they'd have weapons, but no Energy to fire them... or just have weapons/equipment/money/whatever in their Cargo...

Ah, now that's a sweet idea... I dunno why nobody's done that before, since it'd be useful for even "regular" mods. I'll have to add some of those to the next version of the Toolkit, just for funsies...

Oooh... even more fun... random "trapped" Wrecks. To make the Thief an even more useful "character class", we could have some of the "Random Treasure" Faction's Wrecks look and be named exactly the same (using XML/FLMM so that they aren't sharing a DLL entry, of course, but the string would be the same and players wouldn't know) as others... but they'd have an uber-large, fairly powerful Explosion on death The Thief, of course, would have weapon ranges that put his/her ship out've reach

Ok, "Diablo in Space" it is. Linear level-driven gameplay with all of the encouragement of MP teamwork ever needed... I'd have have a legit excuse to actually give players uber-weapons to fight uber-baddies in the "deepest" levels of the game... without it all becoming lame.

Ahah!!!!!!!! And we could make the Gates one-way by rep!!! So uber-players couldn't go back and snuff newbies!!!!!! Muahahaha...

Drat. I think I just talked myself into making another FL mod...

Edited by - Argh on 7/10/2005 1:05:40 AM

And here I thought it was just the kids jumping the gun around here

Not really, I just don't feel like typing out 10 pages for something that's so bloody obviously a good idea- something really different, that takes on issues of scale, gives MP players more to do than just buy bigger guns to have the same ol' fights they always do, and gives SP fans something a lot more intriguing than "wander around in these new systems hoping that something interesting happens"

The best part's that the coding end can be as huge or as small (both in scale and complexity) as it needs to be. I mean, we're talking Angaband without the ability to go back up the levels once you're past a certain point- maybe Level One, maybe Level Ten... who knows.

The rest is "merely" detailing out the game-balance premises, and then building the details of the locations and art elements to suit. If nothing else, it'll give me a good excuse to see what the current version of the System Editor can do

I'm sorry if my process looks strange to you, but having built a lot've complete game designs... I always start with first principles and build down towards details. I'd never think about starting with system specifications and then hope the game design worked out- you always end up doing it the other way around when you're playtesting it anyhow, so it's kind've pointless to get into details when you don't know what you're aiming for. What I'm aiming for here is simple and obvious- a series of "levels" can give players a much more distinct feeling of accomplishment as they gain more money/toys, and PK becomes a lot more relevant when one player might possess a Random Treasure that only shows up once in 10,000 Encounters or whatever... instead of just another boring mod where everybody has the Ultra Nub Stomper 3000 which you find by shooting the Wreck that Everybody Knows About... or finds with DataStorm because they're too lazy to even try to find it, or ask players about it. Plus, with the addition of shops that will let players change "classes" whenever they want, players could have a very distinct change in their playing experience without becoming irrelevant in combat...

"Ok, "Diablo in Space" it is. Linear level-driven gameplay with all of the encouragement of MP teamwork ever needed... I'd have have a legit excuse to actually give players uber-weapons to fight uber-baddies in the "deepest" levels of the game... without it all becoming lame."

that sums up your idea i guess and i think its really nice!
now thats what I ment: we have a lot of mods out there that, when it comes right down to it, all do the same: adding ships, systems, weapons and stuff...
sooner or later it's as if your playing normal freelancer, so there have to be mods that come up with a new gameplay rather than just adding more "stuff" to the already huge freelancer universe..
there are technical limits though (as for example its a bit difficult to let the server restart once a player destroyed a critical mission-related target)

Argh, I just find it amusing that you are going with my original idea. I suggested this before and you didn't like it at that time

I'm sure someone can find their way around it, but negative guns have never worked before. They just do 0 damage.

"They just do 0 damage."

No, they do infinite damage