Just browsed all of the suggestions. Some are good, some are bad and some are just plain unintelligible (it seems to me computer games really do rot peoples' brains after all).

Some ideas that I don't like:
1. Flyable capital ships - It just doesn't make any sense. Show me just one privately owned and operated aircraft carrier or submarine and I might change my mind...but don't hold your breath.
2. More alien species - People, this isn't Star Wars or Star Trek. Besides there's more than enough human potential for drama.
3. More factions - What the hell do you people want? The "Sinister Evil Icy Black Hand of Death" Pirates? There are some 50 odd factions as it is.
4. Joinable factions - It's called FREELANCER for a reason. You're supposed to be a FREELANCE pilot.
6. Owning space stations - FL is a space-sim lite, not a tycoon game.

Some ideas that I like and that require little or no explanation:
1. Battleship encounters
2. Less spacebound eye candy
3. Greater upgradeability for ships
4. More pronounced pros/cons for different ship classes
5. Minigames - This would work particularly well with point 3. Someone could potentially build a wicked awesome racing ship and leave it at that.
6. Secret stashes - While I'm firmly opposed to player ownable stations I've no problem with someone being able to hollow out an asteroid and use it as a hidey-hole in times of crisis. The same applies to doing something similar on an uncharted or sparsely populated border world.
7. A more dynamic universe
8. More dynamic economic model influenced by events in said dynamic universe
9. Branching storyline with numerous sub-plots
10. A full 3-D universe - Though it may be somewhat more difficult to pull off, especially when it comes to nav maps and the like.
11. Owning multiple ships - If you become a successful trader you could perhaps buy your own escort ships and hire pilots on a temporary basis. If someone is hunting you based on ship model, switch to something different. The possibilities are endless.

The rest of this post is considerably more long-winded. If you have the attention span of a gerbil on speed you might as well stop reading now.

I definitely support a greater variety of missions. It would certainly be interesting to hook up with a convoy that takes you all the way from, say, Planet Pittsburgh to Junyo. Alternately you could be given a bounty on a specific target and proceed to hunt him down over three or four systems. I also think that the "Kill Ships" missions should be scrapped altogether, they simply don't make sense. Why the hell would ships just loiter in the middle of hostile territory? Instead replace those missions with patrol missions (from the Houses and Corporations) and patrol disruption missions (from pirates and other criminal groups).

I'm pretty sure I saw mention of favors somewhere along the line. Not only do I wholeheartedly support this idea, I think it would be fantastic if it played a large role in the game dynamics. This actually ties in with points 7 and 9 in the ideas that I like. Keep reading and you'll see that I'm a proponent of another conspiracy story. However I'd also like to see the player character have a greater impact on how the story unfolds. This would likely involve a few hours of relatively plotless gaming (ie. the core plot won't have begun yet) at the beginning which one would use to make contacts and become firmly established in the FL universe. If you begin as a pirate/criminal you'd have a lot of underworld connections you'd be able to call upon once the story begins is earnest. If you play as a merchant you'd have contacts primarily within the business world (I know it may not sound so impressive but don't underestimate the power of being able to get an unconditional loan at that critical plot juncture). If you play as a bounty hunter then you'd have both police and underworld connections. These sorts of individual dynamics would really help the gamer slip more effortlessly into the role of the main character.

Words cannot describe how relieved I was to see that I'm not the only one who wants to be able to do thing other than just fly around all the time. I want to be able to walk around on the surfaces of planets and through the corridors of space stations. I believe that most people who have this same desire were thinking of adding an FPS component to the game. I think that a stealth-action style game á la Splinter Cell would work better. After all, a third person perspective is more versatile, movement-wise, and also stealth and patience would be more likely to get results in an infiltration than the heaviest possible firepower. Some of you may be thinking that all this is a bit hypocritical coming from the guy who dismissed owning stations by saying "FL is a space-sim lite, not a tycoon game." You're right, since FL also isn't an stealth action game or anything like that either. However, in my defense I must say that Freelancer is an action game, and more opportunities for action should be universally welcomed. Tycoon games, on the other hand, are running out of steam (most weren't even that much fun to begin with) and the last thing an action game needs is the potential to become bogged down in the micromanagement of 20 different space-stations.

One idea I didn't see was the inclusion of licenses, permits and the like. For example, if you want to buy weapons in general you need a special permit, issued or sold by governments and some government accredited organizations (read Corporations and BHG). This would mean lots of unarmed ships flying around. These would be perfect piracy targets and they would also probably pay well to be guarded. Of course you will be able to steal or buy weapons off of the black market but if you're caught with "hot" weapons and no permit...suffice it to say the consequences will be dire. A smart criminal would therefore ensure that he always had a well-forged false permit close at hand (ergo black market permits as well). Also in order to fly higher-level (military grade) ships you would need a special license issued by the military. You could also get a "free-fire" license that would allow you to engage in/initiate combat within House territory (see next paragraph). Without it only self-defense combat would be allowed. Of course, any sort of combat-based mission would come with a limited license but, for those who just like to prowl for a fight, an unlimited (or much less limited) version should also be made available.

I also didn't notice anything about you not being the only freelancer out there. As far as I can remember there were all of two non-affiliated minor characters: the guy you mistake for Sean Ashcroft and the survivor of Freeport-7 who gets offed by the Liberty Navy. Where were Freelancers Beta 9-4, Delta 2-7 and Epsilon 6-1? Having other freelancers buzzing around would really be a great addition to the game and would be especially good for Merchants and Pirates. If one decides to play the game as a merchant then eventually he/she will want to hire some escorts, especially if the cargo is valuable; the most likely pool of candidates would be other freelancers, there would also have to be agencies you can hire through, if only to offer choice and the need to do a cost/benefit analysis. Hiring other freelancers would have risks, of course; they may turn on you and there is no guarantee when it comes to quality. By contrast, escorts hired via a company would be less likely to betray you and would be quality assured but for a much greater price. A pirate's view of freelancers can be summed up in two words: easy prey. Since they are unaffiliated, a pirate could attack any freelancer at any time without any loss of rep and there would be little risk of reprisals. I suppose that there would have to be some sort of balance, so say that any non-approved combat within house systems is not allowed, so if you fight you lose standing with "respectable" groups and may even be labeled "shoot-on-sight". Of course the border worlds would not be regulated the same way...happy hunting!

Finally, I was more than a little surprised to see that no one wanted co-op single player. That would also allow for some interesting dynamics. One person could play as an honest, law-enforcing citizen, while another could play as a pirate. The two sets of contacts would certainly help if both needed to disappear for a while. Also co-op, if blended with a fairly significant out of spaceship component, could lend itself to a limited RPG element where the players each fulfill a specific squad role (assault, sniper, medic/engineer etc.) I know this may be getting a bit too complicated but hey, I'm just madly spewing forth ideas here (in case you hadn't noticed). Even if the RPG element didn't exist co-op would still have great potential. After all, if ship classes become more differentiated there would be many opportunities to investigate different tactics; one person could pilot a big-ass VHF with more guns than sense and use it to hold enemies in position while a wingman or two in LF/interceptor type ships would dance merrily around taking all sorts of potshots. On an even simpler note, it would allow for tougher missions to be tackled and, if freight hauling is your idea of a good time, there is potential to have a built in escort.

As far as storyline is concerned I think that we should forget about Starlancer and leave the Nomads out for now. After all, the Coalition won the war and the Nomads have been dealt with...besides, we need plot fodder for Freelancer 3 . I found that Freelancer's conspiracy plot was most compelling and that DA succeeded in creating a certain atmosphere. Since a conspiracy worked in the first, I don't see why anyone would want to deviate from that formula. Also, as the game being discussed is Freelancer 2 I think we need to consider what would work plotwise. War? Sorry, but no. If you want to play war in space then play TIE Fighter or X-Wing Alliance. After all, if you join one side or another you cease to be free. The only conceivable way that war could work would be if the war simply happened around you and that you maybe could play one side off against another for your own personal benefit. As I said earlier, I think we should stick with a conspiracy-based plot. That said I also believe that rehashing the old plot would be extremely stupid. This means we need a new protagonist and antagonist. I think a storyline revolving around some sort of evil corporate plot could work quite well. Also it would probably be smart to have the player's character encounter some of FL's original cast...especially Juni (damn, she's fine!). I actually have an idea for a story swirling around but it still needs some polish so I'll post it later.

In closing I would just like to congratulate anyone who actually read all of this. You should go treat yourself to a milkshake or something. And please, feel free to correct my spelling and/or grammar, I'm sure there are some mistakes I didn't catch. As a native English speaker I have no excuse for shoddy penmanship (and neither do any other native English speakers, for that matter...you should all be ashamed of yourselves).


....And so ends my first post.

CODENAME: ...uh, CODENAME?

Hello Everyone!

Sorry if this has been mentioned before ( i'm defintly sure it hasn't).
Didn't have time to read all eight pages. I read your post, Codename. But didn't treat myself to a milkshake . Oh well...

Anyway...

No one has seemed to notice this, but park your ship by one of those very small
outpost by a jumpgate and just watch.

Notice something? Well, I did, I notice that the base is extremly SMALL!!!

ALL the BASES it Freelancer are actually very small. Just look at all the A.I ships docking at a small outpost. How are you sopposed to cram so many ships into a base that small! Same goes for all the bases in freelancer. The bases in freelancer should be 5x as big. Not just for ships, but for the bar, and the trader.

And that planets dont look so, how should i say, "intimidating" should be 3 times as big! (the docking rings can stay the same size). And the battle ships should about 2x as big.

Just compare the ship size to the solar. And you'll see what i mean.

NOTE: I've notice that in the next posts people are saying that small ship would be dumb. This is not what I mean, the solars get bigger, not the ships get smaller.

And the solars should also get more docking ports, much more. Also the docking ports in FL are to big compared to your ship. It's not like you see battle ships docking/moring with solars.(Man, that would be cool, to bad there's no BS encounters after the story

Regards
Stephen

Edited by - CityBob on 8/14/2004 3:45:49 PM

One thing I like about Freelancer is that there are no aliens save for the Nomads. There are too many games that have aliens in them. That's why I was slightly disappointed about the Nomads, but at least they're not in it for long

--------------------------------
Leader of the Republic Mod Team.
"Criminal Organisations don't just spring up overnight. It's a conspiracy" - overheard on a a Liberty comm frequency

Hi new here,

I read most of the posts and have a few things to add.

I don't like:
1) FPS on planets, its a space game.
2) Pilotable battle ships, generally you need more than one person for that. Maybe call in support of freindly ships and pay for it.
3) More aliens, we haven't found any yet....
4) I think the way the way the faction system works is OK, joining a faction shouldn't be included, you are a freelancer. However extended mission "contracts" perhapps could be cool, like a supply contract or invasion contracts spaning several missions.

I like the following ideas, some have bene mentioned:

1) More dynamic market place, supply and demand, prices vary with availability. Also volume pricing structures, if you buy or sell over x amount of a comodity you get it cheaper and you also earn less from it etc.
2) Fuel for your ship, should be enough for extended flying but will eventually run out and when it does it heavily cripples your ship (limp home on solar power?)
3) An evolving world, the longer you play the more advanced ships, weapons etc become. The world expands, new bases get built slowly etc etc. Perhapps new random systems get discovered and slowly colonized. Could lead to exploring missions, transport missions to new colonies etc.
4) Story line involving perhapps an invasion from the old enemies of sol system.
5) Destroyable bases that do get rebuilt (slowly and you can see progress) and the supply demand system takes it into consideration, ie need more metal and hull pannels here! Destroying bases makes their owners very mad (as you would expect) and they hunt you down with avengance, makes it far more difficult to then be freindly with them in the future.
6) factions that slowly evolve and vary their aliances and enemies, eg corsairs might get freindly with outcasts for a while or a corporation might use a pirate faction to help with another competing corp etc.
7) Bigger ships should have turret gunners or AI control units, that you can upgrade with varing degrees of accuracy and target selection, you should be able to assign which guns you want on "auto fire" and which are the "main guns". Rear turrets should have auto fire as a default.
Random missions should make more sense, like disrupting trade for a corp, escorting transports, patroling for pirate ships, mining missions, explorations of newly opened jump holes etc rather than go and kill that loitering ship etc.
9) A harvesting type of vessel for doing some real mining would be cool. Perhaps a slow moving type of vessel you can program what area to mine and then you can leave it for a while and defend it or you can dock to it to deliver your booty etc also have the option of then being able to pay a transport company to deliver your goods, price depends on reliabilty and sucess rate etc. If complexity is kept to a minimum then you should be able to setup a mining op and leave it. You get a distress call if it is attaked etc.
10) As a trader you should be able to hire mercenaries to escort you.
11) Being able to rent hangar space at freindly bases for multiple ships would be cool.
12) Making the scale slightly more realistic with out making the game slower, ie increase distances by 2 or three and make the cruise engine a lot faster, and make it very dangerous to freely pilot in cruise mode, ie you hit something its bad news.
13) Freely modifiable everything eg weapon stats, sacrifice refire rate for range and damage etc, have good default setting for novice users.

Just some thoughts...





"the first point and click interface was a smith and wesson"

I think you should be able to walk around on planets and stations.
But on planets you can't leave the city.

Also there should be weapons when on foot, maybe a pistol, shotgun ,and assault
rifle for each group of people like the Liberty Police and the Outcasts.



HOPE YOU LIKED MY IDEA!

a different approach to the no-FPS-world dock would be to do this: When you dock with the planet, you are taken out of the system (as if you had docked) but you get a list of places to land.

(taking Manhattan as an example cause I am too lazy to think of anywhere else at the moment :p) You dock with the Manhattan ring, you get a list of bases ON Manhattan to land at (Junker(?), LPI, LSF, Liberty Navy, Bounty Hunters, all of the Liberty Corporations, some other house corporations, Bowex, Kishiro or Samura, etc.)

Different bases on the planets can sell different equipments and possibly different commodities. (taking the above as an example) the Manhattan Junker base (if you can land there) could sell you SOME Junker weapons (but you'd have to be friendly to them and it may be better to go to Rochester to get them too). The Liberty Navy could sell heavy fighters and some equipment, the LPI (Being their planet) would have the largest selection of ships, equipment, and commodities. Also you could get different contracts from these different bases. Hunting and patrolling for the Bounty Hunters, LSF, LPI, Navy, etc. Cargo shipment and escorts for the corporations and Mining for the Junnkers. The above would greatly help out in MP more than singleplayer, but still be usefull, as you would still have to travel across the systems for each houses and corp. best equipment, but you don't have to go as far for a bigger selection. (maybe a max class of 5 or 6 for non-owned bases like kishiro on manhattan.)

That's a brilliant idea Ryu, it's simple, versatile and still faithful to the Freelancer way of doing things. Why didn't I think of it? The only thing you didn't mention is some sort of "transit" feature so you can go from base to base while planetside. After all, it would be a real pain to have to take off and land again just beacuse you want to go from LPI HQ to the DSE base on the same planet. As for the idea of having a spiritual successor to Freelancer instead of FL 2...that may or may not be a good idea, either way it's not really what this thread is about though. This is more a place where we can all fantasize about our idea of a perfect sequel.

Edited by - CODENAME on 8/12/2004 1:01:29 PM

well....on that issue, when you leave the base you could have another menu with a list of places to go to, Like this


Planet Manhattan

Launch Pad
Equipment Dealer
Bar

LPI Base
LSF Base
Liberty Navy Base
Bounty Hunter Base
DSE Base
Algiera Base
Interspace Base
Synth Foods Base

All right, here are some plot ideas and questions.

Questions first: If you have played starlancer, you know that at the begining the Coalitition gains the upper hand and takes all the planets and moons up to Neptune or something like that, which seems to match with the oppening scene in Freelancer. by the end of Starlancer, it looks as though the Alliance is getting the upper hand again. Is it possible that the freelancer cutscene comes right at the start of Starlancer and that the Alliance won the war?

What is this edited video? I have heard some talk about it, but I have no idea about what the hell it is??????

Second, I really do like the idea of the Sirius people re-encountering the people on Earth. Freelancer to me is just asking for a sequel like that. Nomads probably shouldn't make a returnL: They weren't really that interesting, but maybe the other race, the Dom Kavosh or whatever they are callled should show up.

the 'edited' video is in regards to when Microsoft took over digital anvil (or so I read) the original opening to Freelancer was akin to the ending of Starlancer, The Coalition and the Alliance were fighting at Europa (a moon of Jupiter) 5 of the 8 sleeper ships (yes 8!) was launched from Europa. the other 3, France, Italy's and one other that was used later, was based at Pluto. At the beginning of Starlancer however, France and italy was destroyed by the coalition, so production of those two ships stopped. At the battle at Europa, a great nomad sleeper ship (bigger by many times over than a battleship) decloaked and destroyed the sun (our sun in the Sol system). the only planet left in the Sol system was Pluto (where the other 3 sleeper ships were) and the last survivor of Sol took it to Sirius to warn the Sirians(?) of the nomads.

What microsoft did apparently was delete the last parts (leaving only the battle)

Complete details of this and the 8 sleeper ships can be found here

Edited by - Ryu_KnT on 8/13/2004 11:52:24 AM

Hey everyone,

How about inter-system jumpholes or inter-system jumpgates?
These could be used for going from one side of the system to another super quick.

One was actually used in the story, remember? You used it for getting from getting from one side of newyork to where you destroyed a base or something. And then getting into alaska.

Anyways ,they would be great. Just think of the new trading possibilites.

Regards
Strephen

Edited by - CityBob on 8/22/2004 8:52:26 AM

THE BEST STORY LINE: the nomads send distress call to alotta other aliens. the sirius sector dosent know. meanwhile, the coalition, wich is now prospering due to lack of the alliance, has largly expanded there empire into "alliance"space.the first confrontatin is awful:10 coalition ultra heavy fighters find their way into reinland. the officals immidiatly recognize it as the "alliance" and vice versa. both sides send reienforcemnts. during the midst of the battle very strang ships appere and IMIDIATLY destroy 3 battle ships (faction unknown), 12 fighters, 5 gunboats. 5 munits into the tri-faction battle the alliance and coalition main capital ships formulate a cease fire and turn, now allies, onto the oncoming attack of alien ships. victory for the humans, and the first peace treaty for the coalition and alliance for 3000 years.several battals later intel is discoverd about aliens:


5 noticable factions

37fighters

3 battale ship types

origin: alpha centari

size: extermly large

considiring there chances of surlival the people form a grand alliance on a coalition crusier. INTERGALACK WAR INTERSPEICES WAR

oh ya: NAME OF GAME:warlancer

and you would also be YOU. not trent. but trent would still be in the game
youd be a freelancer too. but at first it would be that you singed in for a term in the navy.... remember the mission were you rescued jocobi? stuff like that would be played FPS, not cut scene. and you can also be able to eject.
and tractor ships (like in star wars). there would also be missons for traders, like GET FOOD TO PLANET MANHATTEN IN 10 MIN. and like others want to hire mercs, insted of them just fallowing you, you can order them around. and you can also buy a hanger to store stuff in like: weps,ammo,nano,bats,EXTRA SHIPS.
and the order would be made a section of the goverment.also, more ships. lots more. and ability to threaten enemy bases, like get em down to 1 hp and say "let me dock or else" and the npc's could give you missions, more often, and not just factions.and if you have enough money, you can hire a salvage team to salvage you the dead ships at hidden wreks, then you repair it and its yours!

I daresay that I do like the idea of being able to use your tractor beam in combat. But why stop there? FL 2 could include myriad different beam weapons. The tactical possibilities make me drool...though in reality, I'd probably just dump tractor power to weapons or shields like in TIE Fighter.