I guess its a nostalgia thing...

I can see your new. Well to answer your online question, think Age of Empires, numerous servers and games, but only a handful are decent ping and # of characters.
The lag is VERY different than most games. To answer your mod question, check the downloads section, you will find hundreds of small mods and mabe 50 or so major mods (I'm estimating).

As one of the moderators would say, Welcome to TLR!

I'm A Forum Bowser!

First off, welcome to the forums, Eltanin! I'm sure you'll love it here.

Well, the online community is thriving still, although most servers use mods. Some of the most popular ones I have played are:

Evolutions- My favorite large mod out there. Evo adds tons of new ships, weapons, and features, yet still remains true to the Freelancer story. It can be played in SP, OpenSP, and many servers run it for MP. The latest version is 1.30. There is also Evolutions: Nomad Revenge, which is similar to Evolutions, yet has some new elements. The latest Nomad Revenge version is 2.29.

Freeworlds- If you like Star Wars, this is a major Star Wars Total Conversion. It has all the best Star Wars ships, and is played on a variety of servers. Other SW mods include Tides of War and TIE Universe, which are also top-notch, although not quite as big as Freeworlds. Freeworlds is on version 1.65, but version 1.66 should be coming out soon.

The Next Generation (TNG)- I haven't played this mod much, but it is highly popular. It is a total conversion mod that totally redoes Freelancer with all-new factions and ships and weapons. The latest version is 2.76, I think.

Warriors of the Sky (WOS)- This is an interesting mod made by the genius Argh that converts Freelancer into an old-skool prop plane and ship fragfest, with totally redone systems to make it so you're flying over land and water with cities instead of stations and everything redone completally. It's still in beta, beta 2 or 3 I think.

Asgard- This is a roleplaying mod that adds and changes a few interesting things to Freelancer. It adds new weapons, and replaces every Freelancer ship with a custom one. It has a server specifically for the mod, "Asgard RPG Server", and they have a pretty good community with a large variety of clans and a lot of dedicated members. The lastest version is 3.11

Anyways, those are the 5 biggest mods I've played. I'd recommend trying out the mods on OpenSP Lite first to try them out and see which fits your tastes before going online with one.

Enjoy the game and mods!

Hi Eltanin,

I was in the same position as you a few weeks ago. I came back from a long break and found that the community had exploded with a lot of new mods etc.

This is good but can be confusing until you get used to it.

From my experience, I have found these mods fun to play.

Evolutions, nice mod, new features etc. PLays in SP and has a lot of MP servers.

Tie Universe, I cannot say anything about this except it is my favourite SP mod, its fantastic. The only problem is that there seems to be very few (if any) MP servers for the mod. I have seen 2 listed but one the 1 occasion i could see one of them my ping was to big to connect. Try it though, well worth the look.

Asgard, another great MP mod. Fun to play but there are only about 5 servers that i can see and the ping to the main server for me is over 280 so I cant really use it to well.

TNG, I played TNG when it was at the 1.65 stage and enjoyed it a lot. FRom what I hear it has changed a lot since then so I think this will be the next mod i will try.

My advice for songle player is to play around a little and have fun. Think of the little zip files as little suprise presents, you just dont know what they will be like

My advice for MP is to connect to the global server around the time you are going to play the game online. Sort the list by ping speed. Set the filter to cut out any server with a ping over 200 (more experiences online players may be able to give you a better number) and then check the version numbers of whats left.

No matter how good a mod is, if you have a large ping it will not be fun to play online and you may have to stick to trading. I played on 2 Asgard servers the other night. On one i managed a few missions in the basic ship (which makes the starflyer look like a F1 car), however on the server with the 250+ ping I couyldnt manage a basic mission in a better ship.

Thanks for the heads up folks...I think I'll give evolutions and asgard a try (i like the roleplaying idea...sounds like it could be fun)

Thanks again. Eltanin