Interesting Issues part 2:

Fliying in Cockpit mode does not affect framerate, but lags mouse control when firing. There is no way to look around in the cockpit.

The game is lacking roll control for player ships. (Anyone Actually use strafe?)

Reverse is instantatious reguardless of speed (Ships have no mass? No inertia?)

Reverse too slow to be of any use and not realistic. Haveing reverse at 1/3rd of top speed (About -27) would provide a more usefull reverse and make it more realistic.

The (level 5?) molecular shields purchased from a certain base in the New Tokyo system seem to be virtually impervious to all but the level 10 and nomad weapons, but this rule only applies when attacked by another player. When attacked by AI the sheilds behave normally. (Don't ask which base, I won't tell and I haven't tested this with every single weapon, only those obtained East and South of new Tokyo to New Berlin and Dresden. I'm only mentioning this because there have been accusations of cheating over this)

I've heard complaints that lag is created when weapon energy drops below 3 blocks left.

The server console generates an error when 2 players of different factions group up. The same error is then generated each time the players fly in formation.

Often, the game will not allow players to group claiming that one is on a mission, even though neither players are running missions. This most often happens when a player who has leveled up once or twice tries to invite a fresh player into the group.

Once in a long while, the trade screen will not transfer a trade even though the proper steps were taken. (It's rare, but annoying when tranfering during a pitched battle)

In at least 3 cases that I have seen, Giving a player more than 1 million credits crashes the reciever and the credits are lost all around. In all 3 cases a level 30+ player was giving a fresh player the money. (shouldn't be doing that anyways, Right? )

It's kind of funny watching the Red Hessians firing cruise disrupters at ships in the trade lanes. Anyone know why they exibit this behavior from time to time?
Sometimes a lane hacker will do the same thing with normal missiles.

There is at least one gun in the game that is lacking animation (One of the sheild killer guns)

Cargo Robbers do not show as hostile untill they attack, they should show as hostile as soon as they make their intentions known.

Running from a robber without firing has the same effect on your rep as if you had dropped the cargo he wanted. (None what-so-ever it seems) It should reduce your rep sligtly amongts all the nearby factions. (For being a chicken)
Dropping the cargo should make you friendlier with the robbers(But only slightly).
Giving money to a player has no noticable effect on reputation. You would think enemy factions would hate you more. (A LOT more)


There is a counter for battleships destroyed in the MP game. Has anyone actually found a destroyable battleship in the MP game? If so, Where?

Senator John Mc.Cain has this huge grapefruit sized goiter on his left cheek. (Just a joke, he's not in the game)

A lot of this list depends on your point of view on wheather they are bugs are not. They are just observations that I listed. Has anyone else noticed these?

One piece of good news. There is a server called Sandy that runs most nights.
We have kept it up almost constantly and have not had a single server crash in 4 weeks despite it being a 1.5gig athelon w/ 256 megs on a cable modem. And its running a radeon 7200 and SBlive sound card. (Both problematic in freelancer and I know the server doesn't access these) By all rights this server should be one of the most unstable and yet it hasn't crashed in nearly 2 months. If you see it up join in a don't be afraid to hail me or Red Dragon. Who know's, we may just have a spare gun or to two toss your way. We are also running only 10 players Despite having enough bandwidth for at least 16. Could this be a factor in our server stability where others are constantly Crashing?

I use strafe a lot to stay on a fighters back. It takes you in a wider turning arch so even if the enemy tries to cut tight it's a lot harder for him to get away from you. Just a note - if you're banking right use left strafe and vice versa.

Chris

Thanks, I'll give it a try. I just want a real roll control. Too much flight simming I guess. Next I'll be wanting rudder controls.

Linkdeath & realdeath? -- Hmm, I've lost connection many times in the middle of a battle, only to log back in right where I left off, still alive, and with all cargo.

Lag & Player Prediction -- This is one hell of an issue to code in, with all the dynamics of realtime 3D flight dynamics and such, there's so many things to take into account ... especially if you're lagging hard for 5 seconds and then return to normal latency -- you get a "server pop" or a "client pop" depending on how it's coded, ie: which side has the authority to control movement - and all of a sudden either the world moves for everybody else or it moves for the player. Among other issues here, this is one of the big ones.

Framerate cap -- I sincerely doubt they capped it at 30 FPS. I'll have to look into it though.

Why is there no console -- Why should there be? This isn't Quake 3 and it is most definitely not a commercial game "engine" (designed to be used by 3rd parties).

Police patrol scanning -- I have yet to see a solo officer in a patrol, so I don't see why each one wouldn't be scanning each of you...

Docking/Jumping contrabanned scan -- Haven't experienced that yet so it's all you.

Linkdeath while jumping -- It takes a while, but eventually you get a message that says "The Requested Operation is taking Longer than Anticipated -- Press Escape to cancel now" (and if you press escape it'll lock for a while then disconnect from the server, but it does take like 3 or 4 minutes for all of this process).

Static Mines -- yep. Plus you can't blow them up with guns or missiles to clean a path.

Roll control -- is it possible with a joystick maybe? And most all ships have the same pitch/yaw ratios, so roll isn't as important (as per Allegiance, per say).

Reverse Thrust -- So our ships don't have retrothrusters, so what. Just turn and face the direction you want to be moving in, hit the afterburners, then unlock the stabilizer thrusters (Z-key), turn around, and you're instantly doing -200m/sec and bleeding off maybe 1m/sec. A nice side effect is you can fire while doing this, and still move well greater than the max 80m/sec forward thrust. A second side effect - when you turn to face pursuing AI, they magically seems to fall off rather quickly and drop out of range - REALLY useful when you can't get away because of Cruise Disruptors.

And faction regarding players -- Most players will have friendly faction with, say (example) Corsairs AND Police... so when you deal with that person, which faction are you actually affecting?

There, there's some plausable explainations of some of the things you ask. Whether they're correct or not, who knows. But anyway...

Great Reply!

Linkdeath: Wish it would happen to me that way. I've several cargo loads as a result of lost connection in a battle, but I've have yet to lose a connection while empty and in battle. The readme does explain that this would happen (I believe), but still not right if you're not running a mission.

Lag and Player prediction: Only 250 miliseconds of player prediction is needed to vastly smooth out gameplay and it is not that hard to do. In open space it should even be easier than in a game that takes place in an indoor playing field. The Fact that it's the client that determines a hit/miss with weapons and collisions in Freelancer makes such prediction that much easier and the game does not have to wait for the server to determine outcomes before it can execute the next move.

Framerate cap: It's there. in no case could I top 30 FPS even with my entire system overclocked and everything set for performance. In this case merely locked at 30. However, with my system running at normal speed and all the graphics amped up I recieved a 5 FPS hit in the Jumplanes and in Dublin at graves station. (the only 2 cases of framerate hits I've found). This tells me that my system can sustain a much Higher FPS but it capped at 30.

Athelon 1800xp with 640 megs of ram running on the MSI "Fuzzy Logic" Motherboard. The Video card is only a Prophet2 MX 32 Meg card but I also have 128 megs more allocated exclusively to it.

Consoles: They are not for modding but for fine tweeking. The console is needed in Freelancer because the packet size and rates are fixed in the game.

The fact that Lag tends to happen when two broadband player are in close proximity tells me that the packet size/rate of the game is 576/5000. This means that the broadband players network card must reassemble the incoming packets. While packet A is being assembled for prossessing, Packet B,C, and ,D may get dropped, thus creating lag. (1024/30,000 is optimal for cable modems) On top of it each different type of connection has it's own optimal packet rate. this doesn't affect the server, but the wrong rate can cause havoc on the client end of things. The console made it's way into games partially because of this.
The plus is that everyone plays smooth as silk so long as the server bandwidth is not maxed out. The Caviat is that, at a 30,000 packet rate, a reletively few broadband players can easily max out a servers bandwidth, even if it's on a T1.

Consoles also give the advantage of automatically logging every event in a game and allows one to have a detailed log of things from everyones perspective. As it is now, the only detailed log is the server, and it is not nearly detailed enough.
It would be much easier for Digital Anvil to fix the cerver crash problem if they had a detailed log of what the clients were doing during a crash.

Quite simply: If this were Roller Coaster Tycoon or Sim City I would agree with you 100 percent. But Freelancer is an extremely sophisticated graphics and physics engine that needs much more control than a few sliders and editable ini files to ensure it's working at it's best. In fact, ATM it is the most sophisticated graphics engine I can find in release stage. All the more reason to want a console in the game.

Police Scanning: How big are your groups? A flight of 4 cops should not be able to scan a flight of 12 players all at the same time. Go to sandy's server when the discription announces LAn Party and you will see flights of 12 or more players in game. (usually on weekends starting at midnight EST.) But your right, the Police are always flying in pairs or better. you ain't heard loud untill you hear the words "Mind if I scan your cargo?" over 12 sets of speakers at the same time.

Docking contraband scan: Probably works the same as jumping and losing the connection. In either case I have not had the patience to wait more than a minute. But the break does register a death so you lose the contraband. In this case it is good as a player can find himself in serious trouble when he logs back on. Meaning death anyways in most cases.

Roll control: No Joystick support in game, but there is a way to fool the game into thinking the joystick is a mouse.

Reverse thrust. Excellent trick. Although I am known for crazy stuff like chasing after Nomads in the Starflier and taking on level 10 ships in it (and losing miserably in most cases ) mastering that one is a definate advantage.

Oh yes, a Starflier CAN defeat even the Titan But the Starflier must have a perfect match of guns to defeat the Titans shield and the pilot must be very good. (Learned that last night the hard way, by getting slaughtered by a pilot in a starflier) Don't remember the pilot's name but he deserves a congrats for some excellent flying.

Factions: As Far as I can determine factions work like this. Everything you do affects your rep with all factions with these exceptions.

1: Robbing freighters only affects that faction, it's relations, and neighboring factions. EG: Robbing a freighter based in Liberty in it's base system will not Affect your rep in, Say, New Berlin, unless the ship is destined there.

2: Replace robbing with the words saving from an attack.

That being said it seems that when grouping the person who does the inviting is the one who effects the factions the most and who is the actuall group leader determins how factions deal with the entire flight wing. This is how things should be. If you are friends to the Corsairs but group under a friend who is a member with the Britonian Navy, the Corsairs will turn on you. It's logical.
The problem arises when an afilliated player (does not matter with whome) Tries to invite a fresh player (brand new character) into a wing. Under the previous logic, that player should gain and lose standing according to the affiliation of the player he joined under, but in reality, Freelancer says that the new player is on a mission even though he is not, but will allow the affiliated player to join under the fresh player's wing. As a result, the The old Player loses most of his rep across the board and the new player gains nothing as a result of the grouping. (Another lesson learned the hard way).

Unless I hear from the Dev Team otherwise, I would say that this is a bug, Right?

Have a good one! Great counterpoints!!!

Here's an interesting one for you...I remember coming across a class 7 or 8 (I think it was in same base as best very heavy fighters) shield for freighters...LOL!! Good luck finding a freighter to put it on!!!

Also, in reading the threads here, noticed that vertical sync needs to be off for higher fps...haven't tried it yet, but seemed a sound idea...