Upgrade/patch/exp pack sumission from community.

Sat Mar 22, 2003 9:08 pm by Darklight

hm so what would I like to see. well here we go, from top priority to the lowest

1. even out the houses/systems. the way the difficulty level raises in FL is ridiculous. from lvl 10 it is a waste of time to bother around liberty, from 15 in bretonia and from 20 in kusari. in later MP and the SP game you go around only in Rheinland. so the biggest deal it would be to even out the Houses and their ships/equipments. Make the differences in Speed, Manouverability, Hard Points and the Possible Equipment (like 3 add ons, or 5 etc), but not in the "level" of them (so that only rheinlander ships get the top lvl equipment). This way it is, you stick at low lvl only in one space, later in the other, not flying around the whole "Fl universe" and that bothers quite much. Increase the difficulty in the game like it were in the first Privateer games. Get better equipoment to your random encounters and increse the number of enemies. (like at lvl 1, all enemy ships have just shield generator Mk1 and laser blaster Mk1, at lvl 10 they got Mk 10 etc, at lvl 1 there come just one up to two foes, later 5 and so on).

For the missions, the missiosn that are shown are determined by the Rank Level, not the House you are in. You should als maybe be able to chosse from difficutlies, like easy (way beyond your level), normal (your level) and hard (way abover your level).

2. more equipment/balanced out weapons: FL is just all about "uberness" go get the next credit to buy your next uber ship for the uber equipment to actualy surivve in the space you "have to" fly around and vaporize all enemies in former space with one shots. I wonder that rheinland havent overrun Sirius yet and that the Rheinland Bounty Hunters and Police Fordces havent got rid of all the scum around the space... at lvl 1 you get a laser that do 1 damage and later on one that do 200+..... vaporizing level 1 shots instant

so next stop is: even out the weapons and balance them out.
there are 3 sorts of "canons" so stick with it, make the difference in RefireRate, EnergyCost, Shot speed and distance, but not THAT high in damage output.
Lasers: 1-10 damage, high refire rate, mediocre range, high speed
Particles/Tachyon: 10+ damage, medium refire rate, high range, medium speed
Plasma: about 20 damage, low refire rate, high energy use, medium range, very low speed....
Equipment that is needed for FL:
More "marks" of shields
Shield Regenerator: it lets your shields regenerate faster
PowerCores: (like Privateer) that let you actualy get enough power to support your better blasters and shields (when energy supply not high enough, the canon energy is used in very few shots and regens slower or not at all, the same for shields)
Engines: increases the maximum velocity of your fighter and the accerletaion
Afterburners: like in FL, but some more "Marks", that not just lowers the energy drain, but increases the maximum speed
Targeting System with Radar (like Privateer): first off no targeting, no color code for the rader, in later versions you get color codes, improved targeting for missile lock, later on "blind fire" that shows you a mark where you actualy have to shot to to hit the ship and at last stage an auto aim similar to StarLancer, where you just need to have the cross hair close to the eneym ship and the guns auto aim for the "blind fire" mark
Armor/Hull upgrades
Cargo Bay upgrade
Maouverability upgrade... I gues there is a ton of stuff that could be done

3. Improved MIssions, not just this dumb "fly to a and kill", but patrols, escorts, shipments of stuff etc

4. Bounty for kiling scum (like you need first to get a high faction standing with the BH guild, then you can purchase licenses)

5. Geting some cost for flying around: actualy, you fly around at NO cost at all. You can fly everywhere at your own.
a) there should be fuel usage like in Privateer for Jump Gates (or even trade landes?)
b) there should be the necessity to maintain your ship after flying, not just when its damaged by combat
c) bases should raise a "landing fee" when you want to dock, price dependant on world, station, your faction

6. Wing Men like in The Darkening, but ones with a skill system and upgradable ships by the player, or at their own for the payment they get

7. of course improved AI

right now, when you enter a system all enemies go for the player and forget their natural enemies (like police vs pirates etc).

8. a fix to the "jump gate" problem where you lose control over your ship after a jump. it happens way too often that there are 20 enemies imediately opening fire, but you start at zero speed and cant imediately start flying so you have to use 20 shield charges after a jump.... the same is for the single player story between the cutscenes

9. fix the problem with game continuing during a combat cutscene! it was already annoying in Starlancer. I fly around, fight, a cutscene hapens, but the fight continues and I have no control... stupid

well thats all for now *Hum* hope you guys could understand my english :-)

Sat Mar 22, 2003 10:47 pm by Artic

The neuralnet should be come a inteligent computer system, more then a bankacounting autopiloting database.

If you in a fighter they NN wouldt have much use but, I would pay a million credits for a neural net that could NOT fly in a staight line, so while my ship is doing evasive manouvers I can defend my freighter.

you could have it in whit multipel intligence classes,

lvl 1; the well know autopilot and bank acount.
lvl 2; autopilot that can not only fly to wait point but also dock whit them.
lvl 3; 1 self programabel evsive manouver (press record, fly evesive and store it)
lvl 4; 4 evasive programs, that activate when some thing happens, missels, beeing under heavy fire, ect.
lvl 5; auto targeting guns so you can fly.

Sat Mar 22, 2003 11:13 pm by Morpork

Personally speaking, actually joining up with various factions would seem to go against the name "Freelancer", however, what about this:

When you become Friendly to a faction, new kinds of missions (besides the missions that have already been discussed... escort,cargo runs, pirating, etc.) become available. The idea being that you are on Friendly terms with a group, they trust you enough to give you special missions that aren't available with the normal job board.

For instance...

Courier missions- Deliver "unique" cargo (lab results, prisoners in stasis, personal heirlooms) to distant or dangerous areas.

Sabatoge missions- Enter enemy territory and damage or destroy various targets (prototype ships, new kinds of weapon platforms, battleships that are nearly operational, bases that are "fronts" ).

Spy missions- Use a special piece of "spyware" (installed on a hardpoint in place of a weapon) on targets (like the type mentioned above). In this case, you would "fire" the spyware on the target, wait for it to finish its work (maybe a progression bar would appear), then get the heck out of there. The spyware would be considered contraband to any faction other the the one that gave you the mission, so you have to be sneaky. (This would work really well if cloaking devices could be enabled.)

The higher you Friendliness with the faction, the better (higher paying) jobs of this sort become avaiable.

Just some thoughts...

Edited by - Morpork on 22-03-2003 23:14:30

Sun Mar 23, 2003 7:57 am by jehuty

Here's what I'd like to see in no particualr order:

A better ingame browser for servers, like favourites, manual connection to an ip adress, better filtering, faster refreshing of the list.

Missiles that actually feel like missiles, instead of the ammo-using pistols they feel like now. I mean more damage, higher price, lower amount of missiles per missile launcher, locking, auto-tracking fire and forget missiles. In short, more like the Starlancer missiles.

Larger(not more cargo space, just bigger-looking) freighters with way more amount of nanobots and shield generators. I'd like to actually use my turrets for once instead of just fleeing from every encounter.

Greater diversity between the different ships. Different speeds, manuverability, acceleration, afterburn fuel(the freighters would have alot of this), and I mean fuel not a self-replenishing energy bar.

Customization of you ship. Colors, decals, spoilers maybe. And an easier way to set up your weapons, I'd like to see where each hardpoint is on the ship so I can balance my different weapon types better.

Better AI, I see I'm not the only one that's annoyed by enemies disengaging fighting with their real enemies to travel 2.2k+ distances to fight you.

Larger bases and planets, the ones right now look ridiculously small compared to your ship.

Being able to engage cruise engines with out haveing to slow down to the normal travel speed, I'd like to be able to go to cruise from afterburn speed, or even cruise -> engines off -> cruise without loosing to much speed.

Loose the small pause when you exit tradelanes and jumpgates.

Being able to abort flight in tradelanes to a desired direction(not just to the right all the time).

Better customization of the interface and controls, I want to be able to assign a button for virtually everything I can click on, and I'd like to do away with the manuever bar permanently.

A radar.

That's pretty much it I think, the first point is probably the thing I feel most strongly about right now, since I've recently lost two servers I had characters on that I invested alot of time on(Archmage if you read this post the ip to that server

)

I'm also wondering how the command line flag works to connect to a specific ip, I tried -s:ip-adress:port and /s:ip-adress:port but those didn't seem to work.

Edit:
Ah yes I forgot a few things:

More versatile auto-pilot, mainly it being able to do evasive manuevers itself, and maybe also travelling through multiple waypoints.

Being able to get all the info there is about a base without having to dock with it, mybe just scan it or something, docking is too time consuming, especially if you want to "touch" every base to plot good trade routes.

Better interaction with NPCs, like them calling for help, or you calling to them for help and having these action impact your alignment with them.Trading in space, exchanging information about jump holes and bases and possible enemies in the sector. Getting better rep for trading.

Edited by - jehuty on 23-03-2003 08:18:29

Edited by - jehuty on 23-03-2003 08:47:14

Mon Mar 24, 2003 3:46 am by damian_kesser

all very good ideas. another thing for the customizing look of ships maybe with the equipment load up be able to see the ships and which hard point the weapon is going to (was mad when I first got my jumpback and my only hull damaging turret was behind the hump.) a menu selection to turn on auto use of cruise disruptors on selected targets (thats the only way I could get a use from CDs.) for the aforementioned comment that joining factions would change it from being a freelancer, you could always quit a faction, most freelancers stick to one job after a while. another AI change could be that if you are very hated by the police or military they would take down the trade lane if you are using it and they spot you. also have bases ask you for your data like they do all other ships and give you the choice to send it.

Edited by - Damian_kesser on 24-03-2003 03:47:23

Mon Mar 24, 2003 4:18 am by Xaanix

@Jehuty

Very nice suggestions, and all make sense. Ill update the file.

Mon Mar 24, 2003 4:27 am by nayphen

I havent not read all of the posts, but there are some excellent ideas. I'd like to see you able to customise not only your ship, but also your character, and greater "movement" planet side, liek interacting with other players in bars and stuff, instead of sitting in space.

Voice-com.

Greater and more epic fleet action within Multiplayer.

Pick what planet you start from. (if the level house idea is adopted)

Your ship, when you have it, and gets scanned, tells from where you hail from, where your ship has come from, distance travelled, age, and if an actual ocupation and faction base is set up.

Owning and constraucting bases would be awesome, liek you have all said. Imagaine clans operating from their own battleships.

If the death penalty is introduced, the idea of escape pods, and say, and ally flies by, picks you up and takes you to where you to where they are going, and from there, you take a "taxi" to somewhere you can buy a new ship, or rebuy your old one, still decked out as it was.

Wingman is an excellant idea, and owners of stations are able to hire people to do work, actual players working for players.

Well, sorry if i have repeated anyone, and i forgot the rest of my ideas!

You Sank My Battleship

Mon Mar 24, 2003 4:52 am by Xaanix

Please

Do not post stuff about wanting more super weapons, planet killers, huge battleships, better torpedoes etc. Youre a freelancer/trader/bounty hunter, you dont OWN flagships. Flagships takes a crew to run..etc. Not part of the FL idea. DA will not take anything seriously if we ask for stupid overpowered ****, just because you like to blow things up over and over, with ZERO fun factor after 2 hours.

The purpose of an upgrade is not to make things even more out of balance than before. The point of this post was to make FL more challenging, more of a battle than it currently is. I have submitted some stuff to DA regarding commodities and trade. Still updating the file for the rest of stuff with things that players have suggested. I will only put there reasonable stuff.

Also, can someone tell me how to make the full document available for download so that everyone can read it? It will be too long to post here.

Mon Mar 24, 2003 9:25 pm by n4tune8

The following ideas might be more appropriate for Freelancer 2 than for an expansion or patch:
1. Make mass matter: the speed and maneuvrability of the ship should be determined by its mass, INCLUDING cargo, guns, accessories and all. This would give you a good reason to fly those light fighters.
2. Ability to buy one or more generators of different power. This energy would be used for all the power outputs of your ship: afterburner, weapons and thrusters.
3. Different powers for the thruster, would let you change the speed of your ship. Of course, bigger ships could have more than one thruster. Thrusters with more power would drain more energy, thereby requiring bigger generators, making the ship heavier... you get the picture.
4. Cargo: if my ship has a cargo space of "30", and I can take in either 30 water or 30 Berylium, then i must assume they both take the same amount of space. But they shouldn't weight the same! Then, you could have very heavy and very valuable cargo, or light, cheap, easy to carry stuff that would be easy to bring to other planets.

In general, I agree with the previous posts: make it more balanced in terms of weapons and shields. It should be a choice, not a race to get the uber stuff. We, gamers, are a bunch of "optimisers": we'd like to optimise our ships for our style of play, specific tactics, etc. Now the races would be really nice!

Mon Mar 24, 2003 9:36 pm by -Silver-

Mass doesn't matter that much in outer space folks...

Mon Mar 24, 2003 9:52 pm by f131

Custom ship import.

Alliance Fire & Rescue

Mon Mar 24, 2003 10:32 pm by Xaanix

@Silver

A short lesson in physics:

Size DOES matter. Mass DOES matter.
If mass doesnt matter then why doesnt every little bitty asteroid knock the earth out of orbit when it impacts? Reason is, MASS

Do not confuse Mass with Weight.

Mass is a constant. Weight is not, it is weight that does not matter in space, not Mass. On the Moon your WEIGHT is less than on earth because of the equation below, where the g of the moon is 1/16 of the earth's i think...

Weight = m x g
where g = gravitational acceleration (down) of body (sun/planet etc)...for earth it is 9.8 m/s squared. If you are moving at a speed greater than escape velocity or AT escape velocity, then your weight is 0.

In other words, you wont be able to push a 20,000 ton ship from earth orbit to the moon using your little astronaut backpack thrusters. It wont even budge.

Now, can someone tell me now i can make the whole document available for everyone to d/l and read?

Tue Mar 25, 2003 3:27 am by V1_Lev

I would like to see the cloaking device implemented as a purchasable item. After seeing it used by the enemys in SP it got me mad that i couldnt find it anywhere.

Although drawbacks of using it would be a must.

As i remember in Star Trek when a cloaking device is used on a ship it used immense power to keep the field up. Thus they couldnt fire or use weapons (Although in the sixth Star Trek movie there was a bird of prey that could.)

I thought about it for awile and came up with this.

If you were to activate a cloaking device on your ship, your shields would drop, and it would drain you gun energy bank to activate the field. Once active it would redirect the power for charging shields and gun banks to keep the field up. Thus your shields and gun banks couldnt recharge until after you've decloaked, preventing people from poping in and smashing you before you even detect them.

Comments, ideas?

Tue Mar 25, 2003 5:13 am by Mirax

xaanix, try applying for a free website and posting it there for ppl to download

Tue Mar 25, 2003 6:24 am by Xaanix

Yah im a complete programming newbie,

can someone tell me how i can link the thing using html, so people see "click here" link that downloads the file?

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