um ok well if there were a problem with pirates on the highway shooting at me i would most deffently be driving a tank and open space is like the sea you don't go out with out being armed even this day most people that have yats do have places to mout .50 cal to the bow and stern as well as granades and some even have missles. it would be stupid to go out with out anything since there are pirates still day.

Yes, but fishing vessels and pleasure Yachts, not to mention speed and ski boats, plus ferries and large cargo ships, do not mount offensive weaponry.
But, seeing as you all have stuck with the "opens seas" theory, here's another question. Why isn't there a 'Civilian' faction in freelancer? Or maybe a "Freelancer" faction? It's kind of weird when you and the nom*cough* blue people are the only non-factional ships flying around.

The reason the Sirius Sector is so back to front is because the difficulty was programmed to increase the futher you explored, meaning the areas/factions furtherest away from your starting location, Manhattan, would posses the big guns and fighters. This is good in the sense that you dont have uber VHF harrasing you while you start off in a Starflier. Its sucks however because it creates so much variation in the strength of the houses and criminal factions, and the varying strengths seem mismatched and odd, i.e. Liberty, greatest house in Sirius, has a fighter that would get whooped by anything, and Rheinland, house that now has only one operation battleship which is falling apart, has a fighter that can whoop almost anything but criminal ships from further out.
As to the civilian ships being so powerful, I do believe this is wrong, when your personally owned civilian vessel over powers the local Navy about 15 to 1 something is really screwed. An example would be the Australian Gun Laws, you can get single fire weapons, the Armed forces has 50 cal machine guns mounted on jeeps, along with a couple of tanks and the odd Navy destroyer here and there, thats how the Sirius Sector should be. Being a civilian you can get a craft capale of general defense and easy escort mission, but going head to head with a fully armed rival Navy should be suicide in anything open to the general public.

Attack, Engage, Destroy, Survive

@Kheiron @ Papa_M

Civilians having more powerful fighters/weapons than the Houses is not totally odd IF you accept the little history on what happened in Sigma 13. The 80 Years War then pitted a civilian faction against a House and the faction won (had to be with help though, probably from its home House... but it isn't indicated).

Also, the details behind what started the 80 Years War is related to have been a matter of yet another faction trying to get its House Government to do its dirty work and getting its rival faction even more deeply tied up in it with the military contracting.

So I guess I am saying that the politics is in FL to make the "artificial" conditions
partially explained by the games own political logic.

Civilian Factions:

I don't see how a purely "civilian" faction would work. A collection of J Q Publics wouldn't have the scratch to put together to send up a fleet.

As for freelancers other than Trent, I always wondered about that myself. But if you were to create a "mercenaries" faction, how different would it be, functionally, from what the Bounty Hunters fulfill for the game?

@Indy11,

the kusari geovernment did the halt off the sigma-13 war...
the blooddragons helped GMG with recruiting pilots...
so kusari doesn't care in the beginning about the war...

rheinland lent money from liberty for let the war continue... synt food buyed the money back to liberty, in order that synt food is also a food-producer in rheinland...

y synt food is also in kusari is unknown for me... they hadn't liberty money...i think that this is just something else...expension off synt food territory... (but this is off-topic, i know)

If u c some1 in a dagger make fireballs from hunters it can be me

The GMG, the IMG, ALG Waste Disposal, and Orbital Spa and Cruise Lines are all Civilian factions. But it'd be nice in MP Freelancer if there was someway to create a base for the "Freelancer Guild", or even have their own systems, like the Outcasts and Corsairs! (Is that a spoiler? If so spank me (or just delete this post))

*EDIT*
> The GMG was funded by the Kusari government during the 80-Years war. (You read the story on the Crow Nebula infocard?)
> The Rheinland Navy pumped all their funds into a fleet that was ambushed by the GMG in the battle of the Yanagi Cloud. The Rheinland Navy was disgraced, and hence the lack of funding for Rheinland at the end of the SP game.
> New laws were then passed that any armed Rheinland vessel may not pass through Sigma-13, hence when you're flying through Sigma-13, there's always some Rheinland convoy under attack by Helgoland Station (I think its that) and the trade lanes through there.

-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-

Juni: "From such humble beginnings your head grew to its present size?"

http://www.cardamine.net/

Edited by - cardamine.net on 11-11-2003 12:37:13

Papa_MegaMan said,

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Why isn't there a 'Civilian' faction in freelancer? Or maybe a "Freelancer" faction?

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I could go for a Civ faction, but a freelancer faction, thats just silly

ClampG said,

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in the days of pirats,the pirats were basicly mercenarys acting on behalf of a goverment, IE england , spain , France,and the dutch if im not mstaken, anyways there ships were armed to the teeth and so is my eagle,a civ ship.

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Pitates were not basicaly mercenairies. There were two diffrent kinds of pirates, Pirates and Buccanears (English Term). The Formor were the self serving kind, and the latter were the ones you described, they worked for the crown, attacking enemie ships and spliting to loot.

Life: No one gets out alive.

@ClampG

"Buccaneers" or "Privateers." The more famous 17th Century "pirates" of English heritage started out with royal warrants from the Queen to prey upon the Spanish treasure ships carrying gold, silver and whatnot from the New World back to Spain.

These privateers, quickly over time, sort of worked both sides of the pirating business. Sometimes, they did it for the Queen and took the booty back to England. Other times, they did it for themselves and hid the treasure away usually somewhere in the Caribbean but not always.

Back around then there also were pirates in the Western Mediterranean and Eastern Alantic who were the first ones, I think, to be called Corsairs. They mainly sailed from what is now known as Tunisia (Tripoli) and usually were acting in behalf of or under the protection of the Sheikh/Emir/Sultan (?) in Tripoli and to him a share of the spoils was paid.

Today, frequent piracy exists along the West African Coast, the Northern coastline of South America, the high seas throughout Southeast Asia and other more isolated and sporadic parts. Much of it also still involves illegal trade (drugs and slavery).

These 21st Century pirates are all in it for the money but they have to go back to a home port somewhere and people have wondered how much of this is being conducted with either a blind eye or a knowing eye of the home port's local government.

papa_megaman yea pleasure yats do have gun mounts on them well some do the comercal vessials don't, i know of a few people that have gun mounts on their yats they just don't display them.