i was just reading ethers post and i thought his idea bout creating new ship models is good and the hyper drive would also be good but u should make that only available at criminal bases or at least no in liberty because i think they have the patent on the stargate thingy (i forgot the name but u get the idea) also it might be a good idea to look into adding onto the story like having there old enemies from 800 years back come and try to take over another idea is to incorperate another mod that another person is creating its in the mod announcment forum its called freelancer: new universe mod the guy created a story line for the thing to he hasn't started yet cause of school but it sounds pretty good heres the web site address http://www.lancersreactor.com/t/forum/t ... ng&M=False

if your not wasted the day is

wow ur quick ether but theres a crazy thing that is kinda revolutionary its called "Change!" its a preety amazing thing u no sometimes things come out better but sometimes it doesn't human evolution is based on change but i guess it kinda messed up with u

if your not wasted the day is

oh i no this would be kinda cheap but what about a cloakin and creatin a thing to detect it maybe it might be useful if u want to add what i mentioned b4


if your not wasted the day is

"wow ur quick ether but theres a crazy thing that is kinda revolutionary its called "Change!" its a preety amazing thing u no sometimes things come out better but sometimes it doesn't human evolution is based on change but i guess it kinda messed up with u"

My point about the number of weapons on ships is not based on a desire to keep the status quo. It's simply a perception for a need to keep things balanced. The maximum number of weapons any ship can have seems to be set at twelve. I believe that the most weapons any of the original ships had was eight. Unlocking the hardpoints on the existing ships and maxing out the number of weapons on all new ships has done nothing but cause "power inflation."

I've seen light fighters with class 10 weapons and shields. The massive gunboats have a hard time competing against some of the heavy fighters and VHF's, who are more maneuverable and just as (if not more) powerful. With so many maxed out ships, there's a lack of diversity and challenge.

I've noted that MD has begun incorporating more ships that fill the light and heavy fighter range. He's balancing out the pricing of ships and their equipment. I wouldn't mind if he nerfed some of the previously added ships and brought them back down to reality as well; much to the chagrin of their current owners.

I think the main challenge in this game, both single player and multi, is the AI. With the availability of such powerful ships as we currently see, there isn't much challenge to be had. Sure, we can add more and more opponents, but as some have mentioned, this is starting to cause server performance issues.

Simply stated, rather than continue to add increase after increase I think the mod would be better served by resisting the urge to supersize everything.

I agree with u on some points but the gunboats are ment to go up against a heavy fighter alone. There supposed to be there to support fighters and other ships not to dogfight really and when i was playin the game i always thought gunships were easy to kill.
On the previous post i think i should of said that the heavy fighters should have the same number all around in there class and same with the very heavy fighters and have the amounts of hardpoints to be closer together than 6 (heavy) and 9 (very heavy). Maybe it should be like 6 and 8 or 7 and 9
I do agree with u on saying light fighters having class 10 shields and weapons that is just not right.
The thing i can see both ways on is the old days when the VHF's had 6 guns and 1 turrent that would be nice but now with the modders making the ships have more guns it doesn't make a difference as long as the enemies (depending on who u are in the game) can have the same ships/weapons/shields or things as powerful as u it wouldn't make a difference on how many guns or how powerful everything is.
Oh, ether what do u think of the idea of creating new universe or having outside (as in no in the sirus system) forces attacking. I think it would be a nice addition. Another thing we could do is try to take earth back. That would be fun.

if your not wasted the day is

I certainly wouldn't complain if MD wanted to expand the size of the universe. I see a couple other mods in the works that seem to have this goal already, however.

I think I've thrown enough ideas at MD to last awhile. It's his mod, and I'll let him do what he does (and thinks) best. I've started tossing out any new ideas, especially ones that don't sit well with the direction the mod is currently going, into the general discussions forum.

MD, after I didn't hear any feedback from my post stating my concerns for starting players being able to afford the new pricing, I finally went and created a new character today. I was shocked to find out he still had the default starting cash of 2000 credits! His Starflier was only worth something like 4600 credits (and that might've been including his starting money.)

With your current pricing, a guy would need ten times that just to afford a Hornet. A Rhino is right out of the picture. There was a time, not too many versions ago, when a player could do a random mission or two and hop into a Rhino. Given that their cost is over 100 times what the player starts with, I'd say they're pretty screwed. The average mission that a player in a Starflier can take on is about 2500 credits (assuming I'm average.) Supposing that the player breaks even between salvage and his bats/bots useage, he'll have to take about twenty missions to afford that "starter" Hornet.

I hope you have some kind of fix for this in store. I know I've said it in one form or another about a dozen times now, but I don't understand why the cost keeps having to go up. I suppose now that you've invested so much into it, there's no turning back, but I still think that adjusting the cargo size for a few ships would've nipped this whole thing in the bud.

If that is the case then there should be a way to upgrade the weapon level slots and shield level slots. This way you could still keep the ships balanced in leveled constraints but also give power to people who would want to heavily mod their loved ship. Since now we already have upgrades to engines, powerplants, all we need is something that is able to upgrade the weapon level slots and shield slots. But then that is something that is needed to be modded.

BUG REPORT: In SP, I have reached the mission where you join the Blood Dragons to commandeer(sp?) the transport that supposedly has the artifacts and Governor Takagi. I have tried twice this mission and somehow it hangs FL on various occasions. All within this mission. I need someone to confirm this in SP. In the meantime I will try again to see if this is repeatable.

"To know the light, you must see the dark."

Or perhaps just have one or two high level slots on the ships... I don't mind seeing more guns on ships, as long as it's balanced....

On the point of Gunboats and stuff being 0wned by fighters:

We all learned in Homeworld that your mighty uber-cruiser armada would ber shredded by the smaller, more maneuverable fighters, UNLESS you sent a wing of fighters as an escort.

Therefore, I think that the larger ships should be relegated to clan groups and 1337-d00ds.. since they are a major purcase to begin with. And keep in mind, larger ships are for eating larger things... like sya... other large ships... and stations... sure they have anti fighter weapons, but since there's only one player flying the ship, there's a lot less ability to multi target enmies.

AS for the cloaking:

It's impossible.... so far... many have tried before... but it just won't work.

P/-/3@R D@ D@\/\/G F00lZ

Check out what I'm doing for Reynen's Mod @ my website!

Ether Dragon:
I agree in principal with you, all this talk about bigger and more powerful ships is rather missing the point of the game in my opinion - originally a player had to "qualify" to get the better ships. It serves to "sharpen the skills" to have difficult missions in light fighters etc., and the “tough” ships weren’t available till level (x). Making better ships available earlier in the game allows a player access to these ships earlier. However, they should not be the “killer” class, simply mid level. The Banshee is a case in point, making it available earlier (Mission 6), is better balance. The activation of the hidden hardpoint’s have made it a much more competitive ship. It will only take level 7 shields\ level 8 weapons but can use some of the best weapons in the game.
For example: - I was on the good side of the Red Hessians (the bad side of the Corsairs), and using jumpholes, went to Frietal Base in Omega-11 in my Banshee and bought some diamonds, as I was setting course a Red Hessian decided to “deprive” me of my cargo…and I don’t like that - by the time we finished I was on the bad side of the Red Hessians. Dog fighting among Asteroids is interesting to say the least. Or fighting a fleet of Red Hessian gunboats, battleships etc., in Omicron Theta around Freeport 10 - try that in a Banshee (admittedly equipped with Nomad Blasters\Lasers and Salamanca Mk1’s) and you’ll see what I mean. Access to these Border world systems occurs when the story takes you to Kusari.
With the inclusion of more of the heavy and very heavy ships a player can go get the big bad killer whatever and take on all comers without any problems. For example: the Firespray - equip that with level 10 shields\guns etc., and who can't you beat - the thing is awesome, no skill required. Takes some of the fun out of it. I hope you see my point
However, I don’t think that the inclusion of ships from other games\movies is a bad thing, in fact, there should be more of it – It serves to “rebalance” the game. It seems to me that there are not enough “middle” class ships like the Cylon (could do with an upgrade (Cylon Mk II - Level 8 shields\guns) (hint, hint Michael). Something along the lines of the Starviper - great work! The Vindicator is an excellent new ship neat and tidy, small target, looks good - very well done. Though I have a query; it has two thrusters but I can’t seem to get it to “trade lane” speed, take the afterburner to the red zone then hit the Z key - it simply goes to 300, or am I doing something wrong? Does it need two engines? Also I “earned” a couple of Stealthblade turrets and even though they are rated at L6, could not add them - yet Flashpoint turrets were O.K.

The inclusion of other star systems “extends” the game in my opinion and is a good thing, everybody wants this (myself included), and has favourite ships. I would like to see the three ships from Descent added. If someone will tell me how to do it I will have a go and if successful will make these available to all.

RaDiAtIoN:

I play SP and I have had the same problem as you. Yoshi says: “We Have to take out the weapons platforms first”, and as I move to do it the game spits me back out to the desktop. I tried deactivation of the mod, deleting the Auto save etc., to no avail. I did however rename Ver. 14b Zip file to Zip.flmod and used it this way as I wasn’t sure how to copy the contents to the freelancer directory. There is a lack of readme instructions – could this be the problem? Can anyone help? I use Windows XP.
Another bug – in the Border worlds I leave a base and there is so much going on – Red Hessian’s (battleships and Sabre’s) GMG (Eagle’s) plus Outcast’s or Corsairs all fighting. My system seems to have trouble coping and bogs down until I clear the area. My system is a newish Celeron 1.8 Ghz, 640 Meg Ram, and MX440 Video card with 64 Meg DDR Ram, I haven’t had the problem before with Ver. 11 and don’t understand it

Harrier.


Retreat[![! ---- I'm too badly messed up now[![!

Bobthedog, I recognize that large ships would be at a disadvantage against a group of fighters, but against one, I would hope that the large ship would blow it out of the sky. Otherwise, what's the point of having a large ship? It's only when fighters can attack in numbers, and overwhelm a large ship's defenses that they become viable.

I see gunboats as a hybrid. They're part fighter, part capital ship. Perhaps the best example would be today's coast guard cutters. They're meant to be self sufficient and able to maintain an extended presence in an area (unlike a fighter which must dock.) In one role, they carry heavy weapons capable of harrassing larger ships until reinforcements can arrive. In their other role, they act as a police force, and are an effective deterrent against pirates. By their nature, they're not actually meant to be escorts for battleships, despite them being assigned that role in this mod. They're meant to act independently. Battleships have destroyer escorts to protect them from fighters.

What I was making an issue of was the fact that not only are the fighters smaller and more nimble than the gunboats, their weaponry is currently on par with them. Part of the problem will apparently be addressed by MD with the next version, when he takes the ability to mount gunboat weapons away from the smaller craft. That will give gunboats the benefit of pwerful, extremely long ranged weapons. Hopefully he'll also be able to figure out why those weapons are so lousy for actually shooting anything. Don't know what I mean? Try using the large guns on a Bretonia Gunboat and watch it go cross-eyed.

I'm not generally one to ask for nerfs, and for me to be preaching balance must mean that the devil is throwing extra blankets on his bed at night. It seems to me that when the first batch of new ships was added to the mod, they must not have been overly concerned with the power of the ships. I didn't start using this mod until it a few weeks ago, myself. My guess is that they were enjoying the addition of the ships, and reveling in the discovery of how to unlock or add hardpoints. The ships seem to have been added with little regard for their origins. What made any of them require class 10 weaponry? Certainly the movies never gave the impression that these ships were so overwhelmingly powerful. Would it have made any difference if the Tie fighters had a max of class 5 weapons? The default weapons they come with now are class 3's and have a cool sound effect to boot. Why then, were their mounts jacked up to allow class 8's?

Edited by - Ether Dragon on 07-06-2003 07:03:46

For anyone interested, I broke down and installed the server patch. I haven't played Freelancer much since the install, but what little I did ran with the mod just fine.

OK its great to get confirmation. So, we are on the same boat then Harrier. There is definitely something wrong with that mission which somehow would crash FL. On how I installed the mod, I simply unzipped it and stashed it in a rebalance folder under the FLMM directory. Currently testing the mod in SP, going through the storyline. Oh yeah, one more thing, the lancer ships rock.

"To know the light, you must see the dark."

RaDiAtIoN:

I have tried several things since I posted the last. I originally backed up Freelancer to a special backup file and thinking the problem may simply be the mission folder itself, I restored the original to a temp directory, renamed m08 directory to m08.old and pasted the original to :\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Freelancer\DATA\MISSIONS folder being careful to get it into the same place as the original. I then de-activated the Ver. 14b mod and activated Ver. 11b (which I had no problems with), deleted auto save and restarted, loaded all o.k. 'til Ozu says "take out the weapons platforms" - crash again. Same result. So I guess until the answer is posted I’ll go back to my Banshee and go hunting Red Hessians or Molly's, (though while they have the same attitude) are not the same contest. Or take my Vindicator to Rhineland or Liberty.

Harrier


Retreat[![! ---- I'm too badly messed up now[![!