Probably a question of balance, I mean if you could wade into the last stages of the game with a battleship (and indeed, crew for it etc..) then taking on a few heavy fighters would suddenly be very simple indeed. To solve that they'd have to put in something that's a threat to battleships in the game to make it harder and if someone tried the same mission without a battleship they'd be facing incredibly steep odds purely because they didn't get themselves a battleship. All in all it's a lot of balancing. That said... it might be nice to make it possible after the end of the missions...

Does YOUR government let you buy a battleship, or even a destroyer? Mine wants to take away handguns, much less let me buy a fighter!

Plus, you are a Freelancer, you're not technically part of a Navy or Security force. You work for yourself, and one person could definately not buy, let alone crew, a capital ship.

I got confused.......

i was wandering around in the demo folder......

F:\Games\Freelancer\DATA\AUDIO\DIALOGUE\ASSIST_03

or where ever your FL dir is

anyone with the demo play those 2 wav files

........

what do these mean? heh, prolly just put in there to confuse nosey people like me

EDITED for spoilers.


Edited by - ElectricBrain on 03-03-2003 09:18:19

What the hell are those? Omfg? What the *HELL* is going on?!


*head explodes*

RaK, I noticed those two files as well. Makes you wonder..........



I don't really run this place but I have an understanding with the people who do.

Odd that those are still in the demo. Let's just say the story does not continue as it seems it will in the beginning


<@ElectricBrain> TACH IS DEAD! <@Tachyon> am not <@Tachyon> stfu <@ElectricBrain> no u stfu <@Tachyon> no you
<@ElectricBrain> no u <@Tachyon> no you <@ElectricBrain> no u <@Tachyon> NO YOU I WIN
-- Our very fine IRC ops --

Talking about the capital ships, it's not even just a matter of balance...

Say they did let you get one, what would you do with it? Assuming you're talking about one like the Mississipi or something, it would be incredibly unwieldly to fly and control. Since you're only a single pilot, and there's no auto-target for turrets, it means the massive firepower at your fingertips would only be concentrated on one target at a time, resulting in overkill and massive blind spots.

And you'd have ships landing/taking off from your ship all the time. How would you deal with that?

I don't even think those things would fit through a trade lane, or a docking ring... And you'd be smashing ships out of your way all the time : P

"What is left when honor is lost?"
- Pubilius Syrus

if someoen had a capital ship it would be

a. impossible to run by urself

b. IF YOU HAD A ****ING CAPITAL SHIP YOU WOULD BE SO UBERLY-SUPIEROR THAT IT WOULD ACTUALLY MAKE FREELANCER GAME BECOME BANKRUPT

c. you know how much you would have to get to buy one? try billgates times 100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 to the 10th power.

-I trade for a living, rouges piss me off, come get me, catch me if you can, i will leave you in the dust, or you'll die trying, take your pick.- #Part of the traders protection pact# @Heretic Inc. We trade because we own.@

It would not be compatible with the dynamics of the FL character. You would be only be a trader with such a huge ship.

I came. I saw. I conquered. And sometimes get conquered.

I can't imagine docking those ships into fort bush.

......

those are all things u hear in the single player gamem ull understand when u play it

EDIT: Stop posting it.

Edited by - ElectricBrain on 03-03-2003 09:19:11

Other games have successfully incorporated capital ships why should it be impossible for Freelancer?

In answer to the points above:

1. Being able to buy a capital ship of course you could afford a crew.
2. The game can be tweaked so that you are not that superior. Your capital ship could be used as a moving base.
3. Making money is so easy in Freelancer (Demo) with the static trade routes that you could easily earn enough in time.
4. You would never dock the ship itself you would use your private ship to dock and make all the arrangements.
5. The AI can be tweaked so that other ships do not fly into you or you into them.

It can be done! Just look at X-Tension.

What would be really cool would be if you could, instead of having other ships dock with yours, have a few fighters which can be launched at any time

A comment about the money side of the capship deal:
If you could buy capships, why wouldn't you be able to buy those huge trader ships? From what i've seen, they can hold about 10000 units of cargo.... so you could make around 10 million credits per run. Pretty soon everyone would be flying around in a huge battleship with around 50 million credits extra to play with.

The whole thing could probably be evened out by
-making the traders really weak (no shields, only one turret slot for all of the weapons) and by amking the extremely likely to be attacked (think about it, it's unescorted and therefore an easy target)
-disableing cruise engines on capships, so that they can fight, but they can't explore or do much else.