Unfortunately, no. That question came up long ago when FL first came out. In the old game Privateer -- one of the forerunners of FL -- the news messages often did lead to missions. But in FL, they don't seem to do that.

Even in Elite, back in 1984 or so, you got a mission to chase somebody who had stolen an experimental ship. Too bad they didn't include that in FL. Maybe because of limitations of space on just one disk???

He was there for a while in the original builds. I was a beta tester for FL (not bragging, it was a true honor), and there was so much of this game left on the cutting room floor. If one caught Santiago, and got the million, their game is basically over. It was taken out because it was too easy a way to get that many credits, and the game would lose it's main purpose, which was to explore as much as possible and find ways to make your money. Much of the beta testing was about how much money you could make doing different things. One build let you go to Colorado and mine silver so easily that one load brought to California Minor would put you immediately to level 38. So, there are still remnants of the things we all tested, but they don't always lead to fortunes. Simple rule: If you're playing the original unmodded game, if it sounds too good to be true, it is. We found a cargo loop that's still in the game which will get you lots of money very quickly, but I'm not telling you about it here! Email me if you want it. (It's not a mod, just a way we found to make money quick).

Was there any story line left out in the final version?

Just E-mail it too me ..... [email protected]

boscoe, is it a certain AO route

But ive had 11 million[no kidding and ive still kept on playing!

Newark, do not interfere, we are here to protect the President!Shultsky's a traitor!

AFAIK, the storyline was set long before we started testing. I don't believe any changes were made there. The spent quite a bit of cash getting the voice talent, so I doubt they would have left that on the cutting room floor.

@ Dragonborn. No, it's a huge loop through the whole Sirius System.

Edited by - Boscoe on 3/30/2005 1:52:06 PM

But strangely I found him on Ruiz base in Omicron Beta. The commodity traders name is Santiago Llorens!!??

LOL! Maybe he retired.....

i KNEW his name sounded familiar!

Been a while since I played the game, but I think I remember seeing Santiago Llorens (Outcast, right ?) In the Outcast base in Tau-29, I think. Whichever system is between Tau 37 and is not directly accessible by Kyushu or Leeds.
In the bar, I believe. He just says random bs, like killing a thousand people.

I remember hearing something about him on the news, then I talked to this one guy about a rumor. He said he was Santiago Llorens, but when I checked his name after he told me the rumor it was completey different! I think he was high on cardimine and he thought he was Santiago Llorens somehow lol.

From what I remember about the early builds, there was a "secret" mission where if you caught Santiago you'd get a million. I'm not 100% clear on this, but I remember something about it, but we found it so quickly it was too easy. The prices and difficulties of mining, missions, sizes of cargo holds, was much of what we worked on during the later betas. It took a lot of changes and tweaking on DA's part to get the game balanced, they worked almost constantly on it for months, gave us tasks on how much money we'd make doing so and so, and they modified accordingly. It was a fun time. However, the name Santiago Llorens is still in there, since it really didn't matter about the name.