Sorry, but the fact is, they're all bloody liars (go sue them, if you like). There really is no way to "break off" from the story line and still be able to advance. Bear with it though; it does get pretty interesting, and once your done, you're free to do whatever you like.

The only thing I suggest you do, Is what I did, And that is when it said that I needed to take a mission to advance, I did'nt do the mission but just started trading really heavily, Basically the planet manhatten ---> Planet Pittsburgh route is the safest and quickest to make money, Boron from pittburgh and take food back, or pharmeceuticals from manhatten to fort bush, in a few hours (boring i know) you could make a lot of cash, I made enough in that when i did take the next mission and complete it, I immediately leveled up again having passed the amount of money needed to level up again.
Once you have a fairly decent ship or are friendly with the xeno's it just a case of going to colorado and mining silver then taking the lot to california, 700 credits per unit of silver and that pure 100% profit.
Hope I've helped some and not spoiled anything for you.

"Stop the world! I wanna get off !"

There are no such restrictions in free play - just start FLServer for yourself (there is a shortcut in the in the Windows Start menu) or connect to one of the servers on the Internet.

In the campaign you have to do story missions in order to level up but you need level only for ships, shields and high-level ammo (missiles, mines). Two of the best ships in the game require only level 10 - Dromedary, Drake - and these ships are good enough to go all the way to level 38. There are no level restrictions on what you can loot and so you can get much better guns than you could buy, by shooting the right enemies or looting the right wrecks.

The guns of the outlaws tend to be a lot better than the stuff that you can buy in ordinary shops and so you can get really powerful guns a lot earlier than the game wants you to have them. The Xeno guns are particularly good - I beat the game with their class 3 Adv. Scorpion (they fall off Startrackers in Colorado) on a Patriot, and a Drake equipped with Tarantulas easily owns all of Sirius except for the homeworlds of the Corsairs and Outcasts.

Thanks, I guess they meant Multiplayer whem they said, "Break off", or maybe they just meant to play a different game, sneaky fellows. . .
I guess I'll just have to beat the darn Missions, how many are left anyway? I'm after the "Home World" one (Dyson Sphere)

One Ring to Rule them all. . .
Okay, Okay, LotR isn't quite the same as Freelancer.

theres 13 missions

One more Question, when I tractor in weapons (For instance) It won't let me mount them. Unless I sell them to the E dealer and buy them back. Now, I know they have to make a living (The E dealers) but why can't I just mount the darn thing without paying 14,000 credits? (For instance)

One Ring to Rule them all. . .
Okay, Okay, LotR isn't quite the same as Freelancer.

You see the little puzzle piece looking thing next to the picture of the part? Click on it, and the puzzle pieces will come together, indicating that the weapong has been mounted. If you want to dis-mount a weapon, click the puzzle pieces again, and they will come apart, indicating that the part is not mounted. It's as easy as that.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Cool! I kept clicking on the Weapon itself, it got on my nerves. I'll try that.

One Ring to Rule them all. . .
Okay, Okay, LotR isn't quite the same as Freelancer.

nah, dont F*ck about with fl server, just download FLMM and open sp v 1.1