Important Message

You are browsing the archived Lancers Reactor forums. You cannot register or login.
The content may be outdated and links may not be functional.


To get the latest in Freelancer news, mods, modding and downloads, go to
The-Starport

NDA has been lifted!!

This is a free discussion forum on Freelancer. This is the place to discuss Freelancer issues NOT covered by the other boards!

Post Sat Feb 08, 2003 3:02 pm

Only 10 hours to get the best ship available?

Seems a bit too fast to me. I remember it took me by far longer to get the ship i wanted in Privateer before i decided to start the story missions.

Do you mean 10 hours to get just the ship without being able to afford suitable weapons and equipment, or 10 hours to get everything you want?

Let me try to quanitfy this explanation of MD "titan in 10 hours" a bit. Mad Dog had at the point of writing this article play upward of 125 hours of MP and knew what to buy when, where to go to sell and why, and when to fight or move on. This is gained by experience only. To say someone opens a box and has never played the game b4 and can actually get to fly a Titan in 10 hours is not reality based. Mad Dog might have to chime in with his take on this concept, but I just don't see that happening. No one is that good from the start. Now once you've nailed down the techniques, this certainly would be a valuable concept when you're building a new character on a brand new server. Get the idea?.

More General: How long do you think will it take for an average player to finish the story, assuming he wants to focus on the story but is not a super pilot - so hill will need to complete a few random missions and trade-runs, too, but only as a way to achieve the goal to complete the story.

Not played SP thru yet, but from what I've read, the fastest it's been done is 13 hours (by Tach). This need to be quantified too, Tach is a pro at this game by now and knows what to do, and more importantly what not to do.

Also, can you tell something about how tough the game is? Will you die often? If a mission fails, does it usually mean you have died, or that you failed to achieve an objective (other ship destroyed, time limit over)?

Hehe, darn good question! Will you die often....well, I'd say without any help from someone "in the know" you're looking at a pretty humbling experience in the beginning. Yup, yer gonna die early in the game, and often if you don't change your ways. I think there are three main types of pilots that emerge from FL. One the recruit that is green and is akin to cannon fodder. They die often but try to learn from mistakes and do eventually get better. Two is the cocky pilot that cruises along and think they're 10 ft tall and bullet proof because the game seems easy...until you venture into the Borderworlds where cockiness will get them nowhere fast. They die over and over and can not fathom why they are getting their tail handed to them. There is a certain rite of passage most of us go through in our own way in MP. It's all about survival and certain things work for everyone, but not all pilots are creatd equal either. We all find our our way. The third pilot is the clueless one. These are the ones that complain about this and that part of the game and say they get bored with it and stop playing. These are the ones that if they stick to it, become the best pilots of all in my book. They forge ahead through adversity, eventually take some advice from others that have been there before, and truly learn to survive within the world of FL like no other. They are generally a quiet lot, but very effective in their combat skills and exploring capabilities. If you run into one of these in MP, you'll know it. They are a wealth of information, but it's like pulling teeth to extract it. It's good to hook up with one of these guys and tag along and simply watch their work. A thing of beauty I'm here to tell you.

If i understood it right, there are just the story missions and random missions, no sub-quests. If that is the case, what is the players motivation to find hidden places?

I'll defer to SP testers on this one

What kind of equipment can you buy? Just weapons, missiles etc. or very basic stuff and fancy equipment, too? Will you have to buy things like maps, friend/foe detection fory your hud (like in priv), cargo enhancement to prevent contraband detection..... Don't spoil me if possible, just give hints

No maps to buy, just fill by exploring. Weapons are almost too numerous to mention here. We're working on a listing now, stay tuned. There are some very basic ones, and some very facny one. And LOTS in between.

Last question: I have an Athlon 1400, 256MB DDR, Geforce 2GTS
I would like to play Freelancer in 1024*768*16Bit with full detail (Does 16 Bit give you a big perfomance enhancement over 32Bit?)

Definitely

Do you think Freelancer will work on my system
a) perfect
b) good
c) ok
d) bad
c) not at all

Between an A and a B, leaning toward the A.

Pew, sorry, it get to be more questions than i wanted at the beginning, and it will propably get even more if i do not stop to write

Thanks in advance.

Maniac

Edited by - Stinger on 08-02-2003 16:06:35

Post Sat Feb 08, 2003 3:58 pm

How easy or hard is it smuggle goods. If your ship gets scanned the moment you land, wouldn't it be pointless to try and smuggle illegle goods. Or is there ways to slipp around scans and the like?

smuggling is an art form. There are certain things you can do to make it easier, but once you're scanned, you're busted.

The beast said "Be you angels?" and we said "Nae. We are but men!" - Tenacious Deed -

Edited by - Stinger on 08-02-2003 16:11:32

Post Sat Feb 08, 2003 3:58 pm

Are there beam weapons in the game & is it possible for a fighter to carry such a weapon ?{e.g.beam weapons of Freespace 2}

No beams, but there are nice guns that make really cool sounds when fired

What the heck are C-beams ?

Unknown

WHat is the most dangerous object or target that you've come up against during the game weather Multi or single-player ?

in MP, it's a toss up between a group of Corsair fighters (they are by far the toughest faction IMHO), or those "other guys." Their guns are lethal!

Edited by - Stinger on 08-02-2003 22:10:13

Post Sat Feb 08, 2003 4:14 pm

No beam weapons (at least that i have found), but every weapon has a different looking shot, great work there...

as for getting around scans: you're scanned for prohibited goods only by the police or the military, so you can try to avoid those ships...
also, there is some time (something like 30 seconds i think) before they open fire on you, so if you were just docking with a planet/station or a tradelane/jumpgate when they scanned you, you'll be in the clear too..

One of the features that, IMHO, is very usefull is the auto-path setting in the nav-map. if you want to go somewhere, you can select the planet/station/whatever in the map and have the neuronet plot the shortest course there. that also works if the target is in another system, though it won't use Jumpholes as far as i experienced...

Post Sat Feb 08, 2003 4:29 pm

do u get scanned by stations/plantes, when landed or landing. and if so, is it game over the minute you get caught.

Also, if the above doesn't apply and it is just police or military ships that scan you. can you take 'em out within that 30sec window they give you to jettison ur good. And then carry onto the spacestation with no harm to ur ranking or the attitude of the faction controlling that space toward you.

One more thing, if smuggling is as dangerous as it seems, is it at least worth the risk. would vast amounts of cash line the dangerous life of a smuggler?

The beast said "Be you angels?" and we said "Nae. We are but men!" - Tenacious Deed -

Post Sat Feb 08, 2003 4:47 pm

Rhineland 8)

C-Beams is a quote from "Blade Runner"

Check my sig


I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the darkness at Tan Hauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time like tears in rain. Time to die.

Post Sat Feb 08, 2003 6:19 pm

Got it,that's where I made the mistake.I thought your sig quote was apart of Gibby's message,my mistake.

Anyway on with the questions;

1.Were there any serious bugs in the early days of beta testing besides the "gold rush" effect ?

Oh my, there were bugs to be found all over the place. Some real showstoppers. MP was not really working much early on. They concentrated on the SP part from the get go entensively. It was tough going. There were a variety of bugs, but the Dev team really buckled down and stomped out the major bugs real well and fast. The first beta was light years behind the final release.

2.Currently Graphically & sound wise what standards do Freelancer support ? {e.g. graphically=Pixel/Vertex shaders,sound=Eax or Eax Advanced HD}

I defer to people who are more informed about the specks in this area. The graphics and sound in IMHO good to excellent. The sounds is amazing at times with a surround sound system. You hear things behind you that are really cool! Ship fly by and you can hear them behind you very distinctly .

3.Was it tough in keeping to yourself the experiences that you had in the beta program or was it easy ?

You have not idea how hard it was to keep it shut down. I constantly had to evaluate whether something had already been made public or not on just about every post here.

4.Now that you have finished the storyline do you get the feeling of Relief or just wanting to know more ?

Since I've played mostly MP, I still want to play after all the hours...that speaks volumes

forgot one:

5.Pertaining to the wings not being able to move anymore,by chance do you know if they left the code in so that the wings would be moveable again by modders enabling it again.

Unknown

Edited by - Rheinland Destroyer on 08-02-2003 18:24:57

Edited by - Stinger on 08-02-2003 20:27:57

Post Sat Feb 08, 2003 7:01 pm

@ Arumin
Only the police and Military ships scan you.

if you don't jetisson the cargo, the get hostile,
when you attack them, they'll become hostile too

If they are hostile to you, any station/ship that's friendly or neutral to them will become hostile to you too (that's the case with every faction, not just police or navy). If a base/planet is hostile to you, you can not land.

btw.: if a base is hostile to you, or the police ship you ran away from/attacked, that doesn't mean that the whole police is hostile. if you go into a tradelane, and every hostile ship is off your contact list, and on the other end of the tradelane is a police ship, this will be friendly/neutral/hostile to you depending on your overall relationship with that faction (the attacking/running away does have an impact on that, but not a too big one).

Is smuggling worth it.. hm an example: Cardamine is a drug, and thus regarded contraband. you can buy it for about 300 on Malta (where it's produced) and sell it on Manhatten for at least 1400, that's a 1000+ PER UNIT. the only legal stuff that could bring you that much are diamonds, gold or silver..

@ RD:
1)I for my part never had any serious bugs.. i hardly had any bugs at all, only issues with audio codecs

2) hm.. dunno

3) hell yeah.. that's why i or some other people (like MD) didn't post that much lately...

4) can't really say, haven't finished the storyline yet (saw no real sense in playing SP during the time when i had no Speech (due to the codec-problem)

5) dunno...

Post Sat Feb 08, 2003 8:52 pm

Whoa....I'm about to have a meltdown with all this new info. A couple questions though. I've tried to read the entire thread, hopefully I don't repeat a previous question but if I do, I apologize.

1. Is the Titan attainable in MP or just in the SP missions?

2. About how much hard drive space does the game take up?

3. Have the issues that have been brought up from the PR Beta previews been corrected in the latest version. Such as dialogue and what not.

4. What's your opinion on exploration. Is it 5 minutes of "Wow cool!" followed by 1 hour of tedium trying to find the next thing, or pretty balanced where you have to work to find the good stuff but it doesn't take forever?

Thanks

Post Sat Feb 08, 2003 9:02 pm

1) Titan is available in MP too

2) about 800 MB, dunno if they use some kind of pak-files like with sl, or if they keep it the way it is...

4) I really wasn't interested in exploring at first... but later i started to follow patrol paths, because i wanted to find shortcuts to other systems, or pirate-bases and stuff like that. it's an on-off thing for me... i'll explore for a few hours, and then on to missions/storyline again and no exploring for some while, and then it hits me again and i explore for hours, without attacking anyone

Post Sat Feb 08, 2003 9:06 pm

1. MP as well.

2. Unknown. Beta code is different from what the final will be. Anything we say could be inaccurate.

3. Random dialogue has improved greatly since the first build we received. That said, it's still not great. It's one of the weakest points of the game actually, because it sounds like they just pulled random people to record them. The actual conversations are good, but the voices... Eek You can skip them if you want to, and just proceed to the text (important) portion.

4. It's pretty balanced. You will find most everything by following patrol routes to spots where a bunch meet up, such as hidden bases and jump holes. Some less "popular" things will not have any patrol routes going to them, but the range at which they appear on your map has been greatly increased so it won't be too difficult to find things. A funny story (to me anyway), in one of the earlier beta builds I was running some missions out in the edge worlds, and I was on my way to a waypoint and I saw this ship with no name or other identification on it. It was a Liberty Freighter and I was thinking "what is it doing all the way out here???" so being the kind of person I am I shot at it. The weird thing is the target reticle turned red and the battle music started, but it didn't move or shoot, and still didn't have a name or anything. What DID happen was a bunch of guns and cargo came off This was before derelicts showed up on your nav map so I was pretty suprised

Post Sat Feb 08, 2003 9:19 pm

"3. Random dialogue has improved greatly since the first build we received. That said, it's still not great. It's one of the weakest points of the game actually, because it sounds like they just pulled random people to record them. The actual conversations are good, but the voices... Eek You can skip them if you want to, and just proceed to the text (important) portion."



are you talking about the dialogue up in space, or in the bars and on the planets and such? Also, isn't it a good thing that it sounds like random people recorded them? i mean they really are just RANDOM people

Post Sat Feb 08, 2003 9:30 pm

Do you have any encounters with capital ships in MP? Are there fleets for you and your co-op buddies to engage? Also, tough are they? I assume you need some kind of heavy rockets like you had in WC.

Post Sat Feb 08, 2003 9:37 pm

The story of Freelancer still follows the one with "strange aliens blowing up our sun" ?



And multiplayer has a multiplayer version of singleplayer (with the story) ?



Lastly, does the game have a long story line/missions?

Post Sat Feb 08, 2003 9:50 pm

So what would you say FL is primeraly a RPG, Space sim, or FPS, or all three a litle bit like deusex{apart from space sim}.What made DS such a gr8 game was it did a litle bit of everything so well.

Return to Freelancer Discussion