what I would like but do not see it happening is allowing differnt ships to have differnt inherent speeds. Why do all ships go the same speed?

Some of these might be more of expansion ideas:

- Better planet (atmosphere) detection for AI ships, so I don't have to wonder what that big blast (ships exploding by crashing into a planet (atmosphere)) was every second time I leave a planet docking ring (ok, maybe not every second time, but I've seen/heard it happen at least 5 times in my 15 hours of game play)

- Different ways of sorting the price list of goods (or have I missed this?) It's somewhat boring to scroll through a hundred lines of text just to find the price on the station/planet you're headed to, especially when you're not interested in going outside your current system. Sortings might include system, price, travelling distance or alphabetical

- Some sort of onboard ship computer for checking prices in space. Sometimes when I load my game, I've forgotten where I was going to sell my goods /buy new goods

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Some sort of onboard ship computer for checking prices in space. Sometimes when I load my game, I've forgotten where I was going to sell my goods /buy new goods

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When in space, click on the inventory icon or press F7. Select a commodity you are carrying and then click on "Trade Routes" appearing in the lower right of the the dialog box. You now see a list of every base you've visitied so far, sorted by the best to worst price for the selected commodity. It get's better: when you click on one of these places, the navigation map shows you it's location close up and personal. You can now plot a course right away by just clicking the base/docking ring and using the "best path" command.

That should solve your problem of not knowing where you were heading with your stuff. However, it won't help you to find out were to get stuff.

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"In all likelihood you're going to die out there. We're all going to die out there, but none of us needs to be reminded of that fact. So you die, you never existed." - Lt. Cmdr. 'Angel' Devereaux

Edited by - Lev Arris on 09-03-2003 01:55:20

I would like to see more mission types and more engrossing missions.. (how original)

but I would also like to see more race arenas, competion areas etc.. with credit amount entries and placement awards.. (it would be great to place 5-10 light fighters and have them race around a track with demolition acceptable!)

yeah, thats my sportscenter highlight!!

Yeah, I forgot that you could check where to sell your current cargo. But if you made a "mental traderoute" you might not want to sell the item where you get the most money, so the other function I mentioned is needed, as well, in my opinion

Patch suggestions. Probably not all do-able, but hey, I can dream can't I?

Simple (relatively):

1). Keep laid out navmap routes when saving games. So if you save, quit and reload later, your pre-marked route is still marked on the map.

2). Change trading so that you don't get level advancement credit until you sell your cargo. I've "leveled up" when buying items. This shouldn't happen until I actually sell them for a profit.

3). Fix game AI so that Planetary docking rings don't "Crush" NPC freighters. I've seen this happen 5 or 6 times during the SP campaign.

4). Fix AI so that NPC enemies don't disengage from current fights to come after you. (Very unrealistic).

5). Move the gun mount that is on top of the tail-fin of the Anubis fighter. It looks really stupid up there and there's a perfectly good, unused, Hardpoint just behind the cockpit.

6). Allow you to visit the base trader on the prison station before you re-launch. After the fighting to get to the base, you really need to reload Shield Batteries, Nanobots, missels, etc. before you start the run out.

7). If you trade your fighter in for a freighter, (or vice-versa), keep the ship you traded for sale at the same place, so when you want to go back and get it you can. Or, allow ownage of multiple ships in a "hanger" you could rent somewhere.

More Complex:

. Look into adding 1 more monetary "level up" between scripted missions. This would allow players to be slightly higher in level by the time they get to the last 3 or 4 missions and be able to get better ships. Along with this, I'd make the Anubis itself a slightly better ship (little better armor, able to handle 1 level higher shields and weapons). I was way overmatched by the Aliens in the last few missions and actually had to run around just trying to stay alive. This really detracted from my enjoyment of the game and my ability to participat in the fights. ***An added benefit of this is that it would stretch the "Scripted" part of the game out a little more, providing more play-time in the SP game.

9). More variety in "Job Board" random missions. At least let the corporations hire us for "Escort" missions! If you own a freighter, maybe let them offer trade runs for say, 50% of the profits. (I know it sounds silly, since you can trade anything you want,anywhere you want, but a lot of people get much more satisfaction from completing a mission that was "given" to them. Plus, you wouldn't have to plot out your course, or decide what to buy or where to sell it).

10). Just a couple more "Scripted" missions after the Aliens are destroyed and you're told to "get a job". Maybe from "The Order". Just enough to keep you going until you max out at level 38.


PS- I haven't seen it mentioned on the Forum, but am I the only one who noticed that some of the NPC voices actually sound WORSE in the final release then they did in the Demo? It seems that some of the NPC speech strings were improved, but with different voices that aren't as good as the ones in the Demo. Just wondering if I'm the only one who noticed this?

For a patch? I'd definately say more mission variety. The game is so polished in some areas, and others, it was like the devs had a release deadline approaching, so the last thing they did was create a random go to point x random mission structure. It'd tickle me pink to recieve escort missions where you went through two or three systems, or base defense. Currently all random missions can be summed up as this adlib:

Greetings (Faction) Pilot

We Need you to fly to (point in system)

And destroy (Person Base or Fighter Group) of (Rival Faction)

possably Tractor in (Escape pod or Document)

The game randomizes four variables, using faction tables to select an enemy. Based on the results of two of those, more appropriate mission objectives are added.


For a future expansion:
First and Foremost
1) A new campaign

2) More ships

3)More levels of weapons

4) new systems
the general expansion stuff

basicly, mission diversity. The storyline missions make it so exciting, except for the fact that you know that it is scripted. The following are my suggestions:

1.Missions-- escort duty, shippments of goods, transport a person, defend a base.

2. ability to interact w/ ships in space, ie. hailing to ask for assistance, give assistance, "drop your cargo or die". I'd love to be able to assist a convoy for money and rep.

3. Real economy, prices change w/ availability. This would make for great trade races if convoy x is also taking luxury food to manhattan.

4. npc freelancers (that way you can kill w/o damaging rep)

5. different ship speeds.

6. ability to knock out ship subsystems such as shields (for good), engins, weapons, ect.

7. When encountering a fight, no more all enemies turning and firing at you.

8. Less anarchy, it seems theres all this fighting all the time next to BIG military bases.

ok, I've pretty much been playing all weeknd non stop. There are definetly issues that need to be addressed in this game.

Like someone above said, you can tell they spent alot of time on certain things, like the universe itself which is very well done and full of hidden ships and things. Then there are the things that you can tell they didn't spend time on, namely missions. The campaign is way to short and there are no side missions? As it stands right now, I feel I have been ripped off by purchasing this game and it was like a tease. It has so much potential but it looks like it was just thrown together to meet some release date.

There had better be a patch or mission pack being made. There isn't enough content in this gam to justify 50 bucks.

Has anyone heard anythign from the developers?

1) more mission diversity. when I go to a job board and click between the jobs, sometimes the one thing that changes in the text is the ares. Otherwise all three jobs are the same, verbatim.

2) seriously, more ship diversity. give me a reason to own different ships. Let me personalize my equipment to my flying style. let me trick out a light fighter because I want to sacrifice strength for speed. anyway, you probably get the point. allow ships to have different speeds, and so on. more mods for your ship in general.

3) randomized prices for MP servers. I don't know about dynamic economies. doesn't the nueral net tell you the prices? it might make the travel different, but it seems like it would still be easy to figure out. either way, it needs to be at least randomized so there is something to discover when it comes to trading.

4) greater differences in weapons. damage seems pretty close between different levels.

personally, I don't see a need to allow you to own capital ships and the like, but that's just me. That seems better suited to the type of game X is.

honestly, I'm glad I bought freelancer, but I don't see it having much staying power unless some serious changes occur (at least for me). seems like instead of balancing the game, they just made classes of ships nearly identical to each other so the game would play the same regardless of what the player did. If they want this game to take off as a multiplayer hit (and therefore give it some real longevity), it has to allow more personalization for your "character" and still allow it to be playable.

Also, I'm not trying to deny that this game is fun. The combat, trading, and exploring are all enjoyable. But as it stands, there's no "character" to really draw me into the universe. I don't care too much about my ship because it feels very similar to the last ship I owned and all the ships I'm flying against. I guess I can pick the heavy fighter that looks the coolest, but that doesn't feel like enough.

I understand that a patch won't make this the game that was first imagined, but it seems like core gameplay stuff needs to be put back in somehow.