About that pirating comment earlier. Its entirely possible to pirate and not have it effect your rep. Simply don't kill the transports. Shoot out the containers they are carrying.. it will dump the cargo and leave them intact. A good strafing run from underneath will pop the containers w/o doing damage to the transport.. tractor and run from the angry escorts. Pirating missions from pirate bases would be a nice addtiion as well.

Yes Aerundel, thats you begin a merchant transporting goods, what we all want is a freelancer taking up delivery runs with something that fits along the faction based story line. they have set enought examples here but you still don't understand them. The items begin taken on the run from point A to point B its what your friends/faction want to transport and there is a dame good reason why they don't want to do it them selfs(high risk). That sets up the feel of the mission. Everyone remembers why Han Solo is wanted by the bounty hunters, He dumped his cargo (on a spice run mission).
There is a marked difference to looking up market prices and transporting goods. That is the most boring thing i can think of to do in a open ended game. Running missions with results to as listed above plans to attack/raid a base is what gives the game "depth".
Also what eles is missing is hire for patrol runs and base defense missions Capital ship defense(destory all incoming torpedos and heavy fighters), all of
which was in P1,p2 and WC had. Missions high profile bussinesmen hireing guards for him self going from trade base A to planet B.(escort missions)
All of these missions that make a freelancer are missing from the game.Now we have the freelancer game aka "privateer for newbies" as someone has stated.

I totally understand them, but I disagree with the need for them. Like I said, the missions would just be templates like the other random missions. And as far as templates go, you can never have enough. People would still complain even if they added cargo missions, because there won't be enough VARIETY, blah, blah. People will ALWAYS complain when templates are involved because people are bored easily.

I'm saying *I* don't need the extra mission types. What happens if I were to take a cargo mission for X credits, but I could just buy resources from that same planet/base, cart them over to the destination of the actual mission, but get MORE money than what's offered by the mission? I'd rather have the game in my hands instead of the developers worrying about pointless balance issues like that.

And btw, by running a neutral/friendly faction's cargo through their enemy's territory, you will increase your rep with that faction (unless you don't KILL anything, perish the thought). Another reward accounted for! =)

I add my vote for having cargo-hauling missions. As others have outlined, this would be something out of the ordinary. Either the goods would be unique "mission items" that you could'nt sell on the open market, or there'd be some strings attached such as blockades you have to run and hunters after you.

You should be able to take cargo missions from criminals who normally hate you, so you can gradually get on their good side. You know, have some shady underworld contacts. Meet some Rogue in a dark corner of the bar, etc., to take something to another such guy elsewhere. Can't be going to their bases at first because they still hate you, just not as much.

I can't see how DA thought this was redundant. You want redundant missions? How about comparing these:

"Go to Point X, kill So-and-So"
"Go to Point X, kill So-and-So's ship, and bring his escape pod back here."
"Go to Point X, kill So-and-So, and destroy the special cargo that spills out."
"Go to Point X, kill So-and-So, and bring the special cargo back here"

Boy, that's some REAL variety there . These so-called different types of mission are identical up to 99%. The only difference between them is sometimes you have to make a round trip to get paid instead of having direct deposit at the scene. You mop up the wreckage anyway. Whoop-dee-doo.

-Bullethead

In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is strength, in water there is bacteria

quote: "I totally understand them, but I disagree with the need for them. Like I said, the missions would just be templates like the other random missions. And as far as templates go, you can never have enough. People would still complain even if they added cargo missions, because there won't be enough VARIETY, blah, blah. People will ALWAYS complain when templates are involved because people are bored easily."

What you don't understand is we had all these missions before, we played them and we loved them. They worked and the number of nay sayers was little and without passion. I didn't go complaining about them than so why would i complain about them here and now?
You didn't know this because your new to this line of games.
Never in all the time i have played computer games(since1982) have i feel so strong that the dev team has let us down as most of us has seen the wonders its games used to perform but that is another story and unrelated to this topic.

There have been open-ended games NOT set in space you know, so I'm not "new" to it. I mean, I've played on MUDs, which are quite open-ended. And the best part about those kinds of games is your imagination. I'm just applying it in Freelancer. Mark my words, I'm NOT opposed to missions being added. Hell, the more the merrier. However, I will not be disappointed if they aren't added, which is what you guys are setting yourselves up for. And I also won't be one of the people whining for even MORE stuff, which will happen no matter how much crap gets added...

Edited by - Aerundel on 11-03-2003 05:57:46

by the way is doing wonders to me post count lol.
sorry you misunderstood "line of games" i meant Chris Robert games.
I wouldn't base the impression that people will be complaining and asking for more once its added. I'm also playing everquest at this point in time, and have done so for 2 years now and UO before that, belive me i know all about players complaning about games, try going to a everquest forum or news group. To give you an example od game depth, EQ has over 700 quest thats completely different, yes i know its a MMORPG but it does fall in line with the open ended game genre. we not asking for anywhere near that amount here, all we want is to do something other than travel to location X and shoot ship X down.
A point i also wish to make is the content of the game has be the key that fires up your imagination, just like a pen and paper AD&D game, the DM has to paint the picture of what its happening and you the player used your imagination to trasnfer his words into pictures in your mind. Trying to do that with looking up inventory list on trade list to buy and sell cargo to me is braindead. What your saying is we have to fill in the content that is missing with our own imagination than i would ask you this, what the hell we paying DA for ? lol we can load up the stock exchange list from the traders websites in real life and use our imagination to fill in the blanks than we are buying this companys shares, ok lets wait and see if we can sell it at a higher price.

Guys... I think we all want to see the cargo missions, but neither I or AFAIK anybody from DA ever said that the cargo missions where taken out because of rendundency?!? It was a question on cutting this ever-growing project down to a shipable product.

Hell, most of the things the guys here complain about was in the game, but that is a game that the guys making Strike Commander, Wing Commander and Privateer could not make in a little less of 6 years development time...

Freelancer is a base, and hopefully we see a lot of add-ons, if the game sells well. But again, a lot of work and content went into Freelancer, and it delivers on IMHO 95% of all the aspects. The last 5% for me mainly beeing a bit more varied random missions.

As it stands, I would like to close this thread... Not because we disagree, but this issue has be stated a zillion times in the past month... Move on guys, DA got the message!



Best Regards
Christian "Bargib" Koerner
Editor in Chief, The Lancers Reactor