So far I can see that

1. A New mission or missions for the storyline *Not my Area but if someone has one working and would like to enclude it please send it to me*

2. More Equipment such as Scanners Tractorbeams, Armor. *This I can handle*

3. More ships that fit freelancer Universe. *This I can handle*

That is all you want?

Edited by - FlyByU on 5/8/2007 3:34:08 AM

1001 before *possibly freeport 7* added a mission about going from bretonia to fp7 in a csv they did that by combining part one and two of mission 1 into 1 thing and also there was one that made the missions a little harder but not many major changes

rest assured, in my mod i'm making all new bases, rooms, and heads for the dom kavash.

there's a program for sound files called audacity which could be useful for making nomad hosts- you have a normal person (possibly glowing eye thingies) and then you echo their vouce in audacity and tada- a new nomad charector, quite realistic.

Didn't you ever look through the old screenshots on this site and see ones that were obviously from a cut part of the story? It would be neat to try and reasurrect some of those, even if they were incomplete. While playing through the first time, I got the impression that there was supposed to be much more content before you got ran out of liberty space. The story goes way too fast, but I don't think it's necessarily easy. Here's a few ideas:
1) Make the csv flyable.
2) Sparse battleship/gunboat encounters.
3) Open jumpholes, balanced by many pirates near them(makes it hard to get through before you are supposed to).
4) Who says pirates only use fighters? They should not use govt gunboats, but maybe captured large freighters, armored and refitted as commerce raiders. It would spice things up a bit, and they would act as loot carriers. Pirates attacking for loot would need large vessels to transport large dropped quantities, right?
5) players which reach high levels should not be restricted to fighters and freighters.
6) The dromedary has too little armor.
7) Allow personal log entries.
Allow at a certain level, fighters which take alot of time to blow, one in five chance that they not blow up at all, but drift incapacitated, allowing you to tractor them to a base.If they are friendly they reward you, if enemy, you get bonus money.
9) Random people in bars, can be paid to fly one sortie with you.
10) The "contact target" button has a drop menu: "need help?"
"identify yourself!"
"drop your cargo!" etc.
11) Allow, if in freighters, primary and secondary shields, the secondary shield being half the strength of the primary.
Final) Have you noticed how if you attack a lone ship in no contact with anyone, the next you see of their faction shoots you? Whatever happened to taking someone into a dark corner and disposing of them quietly? There is a lot of space in space, and everyone should not instantly know if you killed someone who did not manage to call for help. -long time sp player

Beware pirates bearing gifts!

Conzul,
I like that idea about taking someone into a dark corner of space...and opening a can of whoopazz on 'em. ROFLOL

Final) Have you noticed how if you attack a lone ship in no contact with anyone, the next you see of their faction shoots you? Whatever happened to taking someone into a dark corner and disposing of them quietly? There is a lot of space in space, and everyone should not instantly know if you killed someone who did not manage to call for help. -long time sp player

10) The "contact target" button has a drop menu: "need help?"
"identify yourself!"
"drop your cargo!" etc.

7) Allow personal log entries.

i don't think any of those are possible, but everything else is awesome.

Here's another tool that may help... It's for random missions but who knows what you may be able to get from it.

Vignetteparams.ini Nodemap
A Microsoft Visio diagram that lays out the contents of vignetteparams.ini in a visual manner. Vignetteparams.ini is the central file in random mission generation. This file is intended to boost efforts to create or alter random missions. Requires Microsoft Visio or Visio Viewer (available online for free) to use.

I´m currently working on a big mod (Ultimative-FL) and I´m Intending to replace both the main character and the complete Storyline.

Interesting discussion so far, but I'd like to take a moment to reflect on this topic from a writer's perspective. (And, yes, I read your post that this is a mod, NOT just a new storyline).

At the beginning of the original SPG, we have one major unresolved issue of what to do about the Coalition. Can the Alliance forces ever "return home" to Earth or not? If so, how will they be welcomed? If not, will the Coalition come looking for them?

At the end of the original SPG, we have a couple of new unresolved issues;
1) What happened to the Dom Kavosh?
2) What can be done about the Nomads? (And where did they go when they were sucked into the hypergate?)

There's also the whole "will the colonies ever get along and work for a common good" thing, but human nature being what it is, this is a bit like beauty contestants wishing for world peace.

The new SPG storyline should start with Trent down on his luck someplace in Liberty space. For example, his fortune could have been embezzled by a business partner who proceeded to get everything stolen and his ship blown up by some pirate faction. Trent has just enough left for a decent light fighter (Dagger?) after salvage. The first mission (part A) begins with Trent flying to meet someone (Kress would be my choice) at the Juneau Shipyard or Prison Station Mitchell in Alaska, and getting attacked by Nomads in route. Part B of the first mission will involve finding out how the Nomads are infiltrating the Alaska system to begin with.

Just to make things a little more interesting, part of the startup process should (if possible) involve selecting an old, unmodded, saved mission to use as a start point for Trent's initial nural net map of the Sirius sector. So, if a player continued to play after the end of the original SP game, they've got something to show for their efforts. Also, treat all of the wrecks from the original SPG as having already been salvaged, but add in some new wrecks (and rumors) for the players to find. Since we never got to "explore" either Tohoku or Alaska in the unmodded SPG, there could easily be Nomad bases or jumpholes/jumpgates somewhere on the far side of these two systems.

Though there will probably be a number of players who disagree, you should not add a large number of new ships, weapons, or systems to the new SPG (although you should certainly "open" all of the ones from the original SPG). A few new things, yes, but not very many. The reason for this is to both maintain the same "look & feel" of the original SPG, and to not show too much technological or exploratory progress in too short a time. (If it took 800 years to get to where they are at the end of the original SPG, how much is "realistically" going to change in the 2-4 years between the original SPG and the new one?) This one's just my writer's opinion though, as a gamer I want all the new bells and whistles you want to add.

One necessary change though, would be to add higher level ships and equipment to Liberty and Bretonian ports, and to have the NPC loadouts improve as the player's level increases (not sure that you can do that 2nd part).

Levels should be allowed go much higher so that by mission 11 or 12, Trent can have his choice of whatever ship and weapons he wants (and can afford) instead of being stuck with the Anubis at level 16. At some point in the game Tobias should reemerge from retirement to equip Trent with a new super weapon he has developed with help from Quintain.

I'm a Sci-fi writer, so I could easily work out a storyline for you (if you'd like the help) complete with dialogue for each of the main characters, and news articles and rumors for bases. Unfortunately, I don't have the time available right now to invest in building the missions (though I should be able to squeeze in some time for testing). Given that we've got 3 major unresolved issues to work with, and only 13 missions to do it in, you may want to consider making 2 or 3 new SPGs and not just one.

Star Fox, if you watch the "Freelancer extended intro" you will find out what happened to the Coalition. You can find it on youtube.com. Also you are right about the story ending abruptly on us, but to me that would seem to be to allow a sequel. Or it could be the fact that the Freelancer project was very rushed. You could spend hours looking through the unfinished files.

Beware pirates bearing gifts!

I always assumed that the extended intro was scrapped over artistic differences. However, even though it was built by the original development team, not all players view it as the "official" story of what happened to the coalition. In addition, several major mods (i.e. Crossfire, Discovery, New Sirius Order, etc.) appear to either ignore it or deliberately contradict it. Since I've thrown out several chapters of books I've written that don't help to tell the story the way I want it to be told in the final version, I am of the opinion that any new storyline should conform to the official storyline as "told" n the final release.

Mind you that shouldn't be viewed as an adament position on my part about somehow coming to the same conclusion as the extended intro did about what happened to the Coalition. I'm just saying that the story should be told differently.

@Star fox: About your first question:
After the Dom Ko´Vosh had ended their devestating internal wars they retreated to the galactic core hoping noone will find them there. But they still exist and are planned to be implemented in my mod.

Interesting. There's a lot you can do with that.

It's particularly interesting that you plan on replacing the main character (Trent) with a new one. This should allow you to advance the storyline quite a few years and overcome the "writer's" objection I have about adding too much in too short a time. Given a long enough lag between the end of FL1 and your mod (say, 50 to 100 years), you should be able to "plausably" throw in everything including the kitchen sink ... or shields for capital ships and cloaking technology for fighters.

Personally, I'd prefer that someone write a storyline to take up where FL1 left off (like flybyu seemed to be ready to do), and then have a second follow-on (like yours) about 50 to 100 years later. Obviously, it would help to have both efforts tied together by some sharing of major storyline elements. But since it's been a month since flybyu made his last post to his own discussion topic, it's hard to judge his level of interest.

From a writer's perspective, I would prefer a prequel to Freelancer, something in the 800 year interval since the flight from Sol.

You mean before Trent was turned and felt the power of the Dark Side?