Essay on Monkeys, Robots, The Order,Dom Kavash,Post Lvl. 17
by John Bown
Perhaps an introduction is in order. After playing through much of Freelancer, getting a Titan, lvl 10 weapons, etc. I was feeling a bit empty. I have explored all of the systems/jumpholes and docked at nearly every station. A few questions remained, however.
For the most part I had been tooling around the Sirius system, always coming back to Planet Gammu and Primus. Playing through numerous RPG's I have a tendency to talk to every character that one could talk to. I will start with Planet Gammu.
In the bar on Gammu, almost all the Robots have met one somewhere before, hence the "I've seen you before, haven't I?". This comes generally after you talk to NPC only once, but they will 'know' ones name after having spoken to them more then twice. One robot referred to itself as 'Scum' or some equivalent, probably inferring a criminal affiliation. All the robots except one have, who is sitting in a middle table closest to Trent in the bar (when I met him(male voice)). This robot never met Trent before, and announced he works for 'The Order' and they 'run this place'. Hence planet Gammu being an Order world (probably home world because its the only one we have access to). Also the Intro scene is nearly identical to that of the one experienced when landing on the order planet during the single player campaign. Another noteworthy feature of this planet is the landing pads. There are four landing pads arranged in a Baseball Diamond fashion, Trent's ship being 'parked' in the 'Home plate' pad. On the 'Third Base' pad are the rings indicating another ships presence, yet there is no ship. Although I have seen these rings before with no ship, in my noted experience it has only been just before a ship lands there. As no ship is landing there, and it being and Order world, there is a slim possibility that there is a cloaked ship there, but this is just a wildcard guess which can be overlooked. My general impression of the both 'Unknown Systems' is that neither was finished but both left in to give players something to explore. Another related detail worth mentioning is the planet description of Gammu is that of a Kusari system planet, meaning some default template was inserted (Possibly Microsoft pushing for release.) from the previous planet created. Also the 'nav' buttons in the top of the screen are slightly flawed on this planet. When at the landing pad there is an option of repairing ones ship but when chosen no menu pops up to repair as well as other similar 'on-planet' navigation buttons of the like, further indicating this planet was not finished.
Moving on to the "star that doesn't hurt you" in the top right corner of the unknown system. There have been numerous Black-Hole threads in this forum regarding this as well as other space anomaly. People have been to quick to declare something a 'black-hole' simply because it is an anomaly yet not a jump hole. However it is my belief that this is the only true black hole in the game ‘witnessable’ excluding moding and the .ini's. One can approach the star without receiving damage from the corona or radiation (further indicating the system as being unfinished) as well as the star being placed somewhat off the map (approx. 200k away from other entities) or by the black hole device described below or a combination. For practical purposes the black-hole is the grossly dense singularity sucking matter and light towards it. The background of the system certainly reflects the presence of the black hole as seen by the small dark circle at the center of the 'tunnel', this circle being the event horizon. The tunnel being the cone like object formed by pull of the black hole.
(sorry but no place to host my own screen shot images diagramming event horizon etc.)