Depends. In the singleplayer game, the focus is more on combat, although between story missions you can opt to take a freighter ship for trading, if your rank allows it.

In multiplayer, you can trade full time as you wish. Take a few fighter escorts with you or go solo. The trading opportunities are more plentiful than the random missions you'd take in a fighter. Unfortunately you can't do escort missions for NPCs or hire a NPC escort. only other players.

Keep in mind, this game uses the mouse and keyboard. no control pad or joystick.

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There is no knowledge that is not power.

There is a story line, which you have to follow more or less. You can take your time about trading and ignore the story missions until you feel like doing them. No hurry about doing them. But if you don't finish the story, you don't advance in to the higher levels -- which means you are limited in the ships and weapons you can buy.

After you finish the story line, you still have a huge universe to explore and trade in, if you wish. There are many ways to play the game. You can be a trader, a mercenary, a pirate ... up to you. You can buy ships according to what you plan to do, freighters for trading or fighters for combat.









Jose Chavez: "Trent! It's good to see my kind of scum."

The beauty of Freelancer is that you can pretty much do whatever you want. If you want to do nothing but trade, you can do that. However, you have to keep in mind that there are NPCs in the game that ply their trade by hunting on freighter pilots.

So while you might do all you can to avoid combat, there will be situations where your trade lane gets interrupted and you get attacked by pirates demanding your death and/or cargo. You can choose to flee and hope you outrun the attackers, or switch to turret mode and blast away at them while you make good your escape.

The thing to keep in mind, especially in multiplayer, but also in single player, is that there are just as many other players out there (player and NPC alike) who are also doing their own thing. And that can often mean that some of those players make a living by trading, while others make a living by attacking traders.

Having an escort is helpful for sure, but this is really only possible in multiplayer (unless you manage to form up with an NPC group that happens to be going to the same place as you).

I highly recommend that game and I don't think you will be dissapointed. But you WILL have to fight at some point. Traders get attacked, that's just the nature of the galaxy sometimes. But YOU can focus primarily on being a trader. You can buy a freighter specifically designed for trading. It's unmaneuverable, bulky and an easy target, but it carries tons of cargo and has plenty of turrets for protection. There are plenty of different commodities to trade, and prices vary from base to base, and vary greatly from system to system. You can find some trade routes that span several systems and could easily net you a profit of over $250,000 per run. I started as a trader, and loved it.

Ok, that was a mouthful, but hopefully it paints a better picture for you, and ultimately convinces you to buy the game.

Wap

The first time I played the game through the storyline I concentrated on trading and ignored the story missions for a long time. Do play through the story line, then get the Mod Manager and the OpenSP mod. This lets you start a new game without the storyline, but also with no money. Get the IONCROSS Freelancer Character Editor and that will allow you get some money to start with.