Slightly off topic....only thing i really want in an expansion is another storyline, perhaps a bit less linear with a bit more of an RPG twist....need to know certain things before certain dialogue boxes would pop up.

The off topic bit and what I would have liked to have seen/would like to see

The whole alien thing was somewhat shallow, it would have been nice to have been able to experience unique alien technologies such things like jump engines(no more jump gates required), Cloaking Devices and reflective shields perhaps even auto targetting devices or auto firing turrets maybe after the single player missions you may be randomly called upon to salvage some alien technology or ship which you can't buy anywhere but usefeful.
I'd like to have been able to capture ships instead of destroying them and it would be nice to be able to hire a co-pilot to fire the turretts.
I'd like to have the reputation mean something more than just whether you can dock or whether they would attack you Perhaps infamous/Famous levels giving you more access to cheaper items. I would like to be able to barter and buy/sell weapons and items to make a proffit instead of loss. The idea of a continuous bounty is somewhat appealling and maybe there could be an every factions most wanted list and you could claim a bounty after killing people on that list rather than having to accept a mission. By the same token it would be nice to be able to rescue people in trouble and have them reward you.....anyway i'm rambling so signing off.

ondul

OK I wont touch the subject of own base cuz it seems most of you like the idea. But making the missions give more money and lessening the trade profit is dumb - itd make trading useless and trading is fun. And real men are not defined by killing my young friend - everyone can kill that stupid AI ships . I think prices should be raised or the missions/trade payout should be lowered to balance the game. After all I never had lack of cash in the game or if i did 20mins work fixed that. And that fact actually ruins the whole balance idea - you could get 3-4 mils in 3-4 hours and equip a kick ass Eagle/Titan with the cash. Even with much less cash actually. There should be real TOUGH ships wich would require a whole fleet to kill and would drop very powerful weapons but not always. Fleet would consist of hired npcs in SP and of players in MP. Maybe the ships could be some alien battlestations etc.

My signature statement is in references to killing traders for cash. not npc's but rp's

If Your Trading Your Cheating. Cause Real Men Make Money Killing.

Edited by - cailin on 09-05-2003 10:18:52

Well... really ... being a freelancer doesn't really have anything to do with being 'free'. Ask any real life freelancer in any field of work. Personally the thing I prefer about being a Freelancer (also known as, self employed, sub-contractor etc...) is that you have no boss you have to answer to, and what ever money you make is yours. And the whole point of it all is to make money.

So being realistic... any one or all of the things mentioned in this thread so far would or could all logically be part of the 'freelancer' theme. Since the whole point of it boils down to money. Anything that helps you make money, or keeps your money safe 'is' part of the freelancing theme. About the only thing I personally wouldn't agree with is being able to actually join a faction.... because then you are no longer a freelancer, and since most factions have some sort of political agenda there would also be less focus on money.... wich is the whole point of freelancing.

forget the hull breach, what about the FIRE?[!?[!?

One thing that's bothered me since my starting Fl, is that freighters and transports are the easiest to take down. Logic should dictate that something which hauls precious cargo and is generally unmaneuverable should have the best defences. The fact that lvl10 freighter shields can be purchased, but not mountable on any ship is ridiculous. Why show something as being for sale if you can't do anything with it? The same can be said for large transports, like Trains...the things carry around what..a million or so cargo units, yet they have NO shield. Those things should be decked out with the most destructive weapons and the highest lvl shields in my opinion. Not something a Starflier can take down in 15 seconds with 2 lvl1 Justice guns.

"True friends stab you in the front"

I agree that you shouldn't be able to own or join a faction. However, it would be cool if you're really popular with a faction, you get to do 'insider missions' . You get to meet each faction leader, and they will give you special, extra profitable, faction specific missions. This may sound strange, but the same thing is already happening in the Single Player game. Remember the Order and Orillion? Same situation.

I'd actually like the option to take multiple missions simultaneously. Kinda like how in Privateer you could take the "Patrol point B" mission, the "Patrol point D" mission, and the "Patrol points A-E" missions and get 3 payments upon successful completion of a circuit around the system. Helped get the $$$ a bit faster without resorting to trade missions. As it is, If I want to keep my LF I have to go do a ton of single missons at about 20K a pop. I could instead buy a freighter and go back and forth from Leeds to Cambridge and make that in a single trip involving 2 jumps and 6 trade lanes, totalling about 5 minutes for the freight, but about 30 minutes to do all the "bar missions" one at a time, returning to base in between each one.

A variable economy would be nice also, so that you couldn't be guaranteed a profit of X by buying commodity Y at base Z in the amount of A and selling it at base B for amount C.

Hidden compartments would be nice too. Hide 50 units of Cardamine in there and have an innocuous water shipment to fool the police scans. . . .

Aight.. yea.. we ponder about these things WAAAAAAY too much.. however.. heres my 2 cents on this situation...
First of all.. Freelancers.. yes are free but have a home and pick up jobs go and do them whatever they come home.. im not too fond of the base idea.. but how about say u could by a nice mansion somewhere (hehe with its own personal landing strip for all dem ships :p) like u could buy a home on a planet and work mainly from there. ok. next issue i do have.. yes after level 5 manhatten .. honestly .. SUCKS.. i was frying liberty rogues in 2-3 hits.. pretty cheesy.. i think as ur level goes up.. so does the challenge everywhere.. not just in places like Omege.. keep the factions the same tho.. just say the liberty rogues fell into some cash and decided to go buy themselves all VHFs or somethin. and just a little theory I came up with.. independant merchants in the game.. i mean.. come on.. u buy EVERYTHING in this game at retail.. what happened to free enterprise? this game compares to car dealerships..all freelancer has is the new car dealership.. nothings 3rd party here.. what im sayin is u should be able to go to a merchant on say... Leeds for instance.. who's selling a Titan that say, "fell out the back of the frieghter" for a lil more or less than what u could get it for @ the base its sold(I would think more cuz of the trouble u would have had for faction relationships). Ok.. next issue then im done i have more but im takin up all ur forum space weapons and ships should be customizable.. say u pay $5000 to get a new paint job.. or increase a certain stat on the diamondback? I mean.. those paintjobs are jus ugly.. anyways thats it for now. l8r

I have really only one basic fault that I'd like to see resolved in an expansion, and that is simply that it's too easy to earn enough cash to buy any ship/weapon combination you like.

It's possible to make enough in two runs to cover the entire expenditure on a fully equiped Humpback - ok, so I can choose not to buy one, but that's deliberately making the game harder for myself, rather than the game being a challenge in it's own right.

I have very fond memories of the original Privateer, and the evenings spent trying to earn enough cash for that better scanner or better set of guns - it felt like you'd really earned the improvement. The potential profit on trading is just too great.

The stuff about hiring wingmen etc makes me think that people aren't making the most of the multiplayer aspect. A friend and I have often tried to group together as many players as possible for trade runs, often leading convoys of 5 or 6 ships on long, fairly hazardous routes - pirates dont last long with a dozen or more turrets tracking them! You don't really need AI wingmen if you can find people to cooperate with(and would you really trust them anyway - they aren't hard to shot down in large numbers when they're your opponents!!)

And the only benefit I can really see from a base is somewhere to store things - ships, weapons, cargo etc. And rather than confusing the mp maps by having a load of player owned rocks added as they join, a simpler method can be taken from a game called Hard War. It had loads of hangers scattered around its map, and you could buy them from real estate agents. Once you owned one, you could buy extra ships, which would be sent to the nearest hanger you owned with the space. You could land in your hanger, unload equipment and cargo, switch to a ship stored there, and head off again. One way to add this in would be to add an extra option once landed at a base that had hangers to sell - an additional vendor to the ship, commodity and equipment ones. To really complicate it, you might need to be really friendly with the faction owning the base, and run the risk of all your goods being confiscated if you annoy them - the cost of one badly placed shot taking down a weakened ship....

Oh, and one last thing - server portals of some sort - its frustrating to have to start character after character because the server you have invested hours of your life in is now so busy you can never get in. I know it's some sort of attempt to prevent cheating by storing the character data remotely, but can't that be centralised like the list of servers, rather than on the servers themselves. If jolt.co.uk, Multiplay.co.uk and 24/7 UK Server all shut down, I think my heart would stop!

Well, thats my wish list, but even without them, Im still playing most evenings, so it can't be all that bad!

i need in expansion pack is this:


cloak, piliotable gunships/cruisers, cloak, frigates, cloak, CLOAK!!!!!!!!!!!

It would be nice if you could skin your character (like the Sims) and set up the bar / commodity exchange / ship dealers like chat rooms. You pick the spot where you want your character to stand around, and he / she hangs out there, visible to the other freelancers that show up.

I understand that the economy is not dynamic (and after multiple runs between Neo Tokyo and New Berlin would tend to agree). That's too bad -- a supply and demand economy would make trading commodities much more difficult. Especially if you left a system with a load and landed at your destination to find that ten other traders had shown up to drive the price down.

I think its interesting that people want to be able to blow up stations, yet also build their own bases.

You are going to be really annoyed when you come back from a long mission and find your base, all your ships and weapons and goods are just so much scrap metal in an asteroid field.

I would like to see a production type model so that stations and planets don't have infinite amounts of each trade item. Obviously they would have large volumes of things like water and oxygen so the trains can stockl up their million units.

Also prices should increase the further you get from the point of production.

Also break some of the things up into seperate goods. So luxury foods might be split into coffee, chocolate, wine, caviar etc.

Shipyards that actually sell ships. Maybe you have to place a deposit and come back with the rest of the case when the ship is built.

Smaller cargo holds not larger as you go up in fighter class from LF to HV to VHF. The extra room was used for shielding and armour.

News events effect price of goods. If disease breaks out on Leeds then price of pharmaceuticals goes up.

How about additional systems you can buy for your ship. So improved scanners, cloaking devices (cant use whilst on cruise, or with weapons powered up), better tractors.

More items to smuggle. Maybe we could run guns to the outcasts for a big profit.

I like the idea of freighter missions ... running drugs through good guy infested territory for the bad guys, Taking much needed medical supplies to an earthquake site on a far away planet through hoards of baddies for big profit ... ect, ect ... i know it's already been said but i thught it was worth mentioning again ...

errr ... just a wider variety of mission types for everyone ...



Get in, sit down, shut up, and hang on.

I think the story line shouldbe more like Deus Ex.
Depending on your choises the story continues.
This would really cool!

Then I can finnaly choose what I want to do.
The SP aspect of FL was still a bit to linear (np with,though), but then I can finnaly make a real career and make choises my own whoI want to join.