Ok, I had mistaken "NPC" for something else
I meant opening the multiplayer-closed gates, but now I know that singleplayer gates are listed somewhere else, probably because the gates are opened and closed with triggers in the story missions.
But now you say, why give the NPC's the ability to also travel through those gates? (well, not really, but just give the idea) I think I have a good reason for it:
I don't know how patrols work exactly qua how they are coded, but I believe that all NPC gates have traffic, and that patrols are automatically adjusted, so if those ships using it are hostile to you, they can make it harder for you to approach and leave those jump holes. And this would give more balance in the advantage you have of those new jump holes, because these jump holes often give profitable shortcuts. Like the Sigma-13 - New Berlin jump hole, this makes travelling from New Berlin to New Tokyo much faster (you skip Frankfurt, and the jump holes are close to the normal route) and this route is a profitable trade route (that is why I keep referring to this trade route, because I used it so often for shipping diamonds
)
But the real hazard was, while I used it in SP, is the attacks of the Red Hessians and the Outcasts, just when you came close to these holes, which are a real pain when having a Freighter.
So what I wanted to say is, is that shortcut jump holes must be harder to reach.
Secondly is that you can discover jump holes if you are looking at the patrols in the Nav Map.
I succesfully edited the initialwordl.ini, and I made a new player on my server, and went to the New York - Magellan jump gate (default locked) and it worked! And it still worked when I reloaded the character.
But it would be pity if this couldn't work for existing characters (however, that it works for new ones is still good news) but I'll try testing some things with it.
Another thing is some closed gates also lost their "label" (or however you can name it) and they don't popup on the Nav Map anymore, like the New Berlin - Sigma-13 jump hole.
But I say some, because some closed holes to appear, like the Dublin - Leeds jump hole, this one is closed but it still appears.
And some holes have missing labels while they still work in SP. Take for example the Leeds -> Cambridge jump hole, this one works, but it doesn't appear on the Nav Map, while fromt he other direction (Cambridge -> Leeds) the hole does have a label)
EDIT:
right now I tested a character which already existed on my server, first I tried it with only the edited initialworld.ini. And obviously I couldn't acces the New York - Magellan jump gate. But then I closed the game and server, and used the savegame editor, to extract the savegame to a textfile, and I manually removed the gate numbers corresponding with those I moved in initialworld.ini.
I ran the server and Freelancer, and tested the gate again, and I jumped.
But the nice thing was, when I closed both Freelancer and the server, and the opened it all after that again, I tested the jump gate and it still worked, right after that I tested it also for the Magelland - Leeds jump hole, and the Leeds - Cambridge jump hole, and both worked.
So it seems possible
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Edited by - Timenn on 2/21/2004 7:48:33 AM