K, here's another one...

- Capital ships :
You should be able to purchase civilian capital ships which would also serve as mobile bases. Passing traders can request docking permission and, when docked, can prompt trading which will bring up the typical trading screen. What they purchase might be limited or they might simply choose to sale you things and move on. Unfortunately I'm not sure how well this would work in MP-- maybe just jump out of the trading screen if enemies are detected or your ship comes under fire. Different capital ships have a certain fighter/transport capacity in which you either use to store your own ships or keep open to those who want to dock. You could also hire mechanics to handle ship repairs and a crew to man turrets if you leave the ship in your fighter. Some of the higher class cap ships may even be able to handle docking with large freighters for trading of vast quanities of things.

Anyway.. just an idea. What's the fun in being a freelancer if your success can't get you past a fighter?

Makes sense to me, Rikaelus... Why limit entreprenuers to the blue-collar-level? May not be as fun as piloting, but the opportunity should exist, and it would add some nice depth to the game, I think.

The cap ship might be a bit ambitious, but what about being able to purchase your own 2nd, 3rd, 4th freighter which have AI pilots? Then you get the best of both worlds - you fly a fighter as an escort for your own personal fleet of freighters. You'd work just as you do with just one Freighter when purchasing, selling, setting waypointss etc, but with massively expanded cargo capacity. Escorting your own freighter fleets would be more of a challange too, since your not just covering your own butt AND you have a lot of cargo at stake if you fail to protect the ship/ships. So logically, you'd have the option of buying additonal fighters and pilots to help protect your freighters.

You also have the additional challenge of maintaining/equipping your fleet with the best stuff. It would be like having your own Lance in the Mechwarrior games. And you could also choose to hire pilots - both Freighter and Fighter - to pilot your new ships. Like the Mechwarrior games they would have skillsets thatw ould improve with experience, but you've also go to pay them a wage. Think MechWarrior 4 Mercanaries, but with cargo!

Of course, if you expand your potential to earn money in such a fashion, you've got to expand your potential to have somethign to spend alkl that money on too . . .

Yep.. could even expand the civilian capital ship idea so that various companies have them out and about. They'd be slow and probably wouldn't have thrusters. They could also suffer damage if you take them into asteroid or debris fields so to gain access to places in those you'd have to jump into your personal freighter or fighter and leave your ship behind. (hopefully it can take care of itself).

Would be cool to see your ship go to battle with an enemy corporation while you're knocking down their fighters in your own. Have them suckers cost a lot of money as well, maybe starting at 10 million or so. Imagine what it would be like to see your cap ship go down. Youch. Millions of creds down the drain for your ship, plus equipment, plus hired hands, plus any other ships you had docked on it... plues the cargo. I'd cry.

You'd definately need to be able to name those suckers yourself, too.

dmwnz,
While that's a good alternative idea, I think it would come with too much micromanagement, and with so many ships that belong to you, it would be frustrating to lose one and not even know why. You'd be depending a lot on AI which, when push comes to shove, can be a bit unintelligent. I wouldn't trust computer AI to that level. Plus that would potentially involve a lot of changes to communications options and the equipment/trading screens. Ironically my idea could just use stock screens and internal ship backdrops already in the game.

Edited by - Rikaelus on 11-03-2003 22:53:47

... and have a spot on the ship that displays your company logo, so you can design your own one.

No - I don't think it would involve too much micromanagement.

1) You wouldn't be able to send ships off with just AI. The ships would have to go with you, although you'd choose which of your ships would go.

2) The game already handles AI piloting. For freighters you'd just set waypoints and then form up on them. For fighters, you'd just need to had in a comms system that allwos you to select a target and then tell wingmen to

a) attack that target or
b) defend that target

pretty standard stuff for psace/flight sims.

Since your ships go where you go, whenever you are at a base you'd have a list of all your ships and just click on each ship to then get exactly the same buy/sell commodities/weapons screens you do currently for one ship.

The only new addtion would be a personnel screen in addition to a ships screen, from where to check the status/skills of your pilots. You also need to assign them to each ship (which you'd need to be able to rename).

If you've ever played the Mechwarrior games, or MechCommader games, then there are penty of existing models for how this could work and I think you could integrate these thigns into the current meu system of FL and it woudl work fine.

I actually think that would be less hassle to manage than owning one huge cap ship and having to deal with the complications of that.

Actually i just thought a ship maker would be cool i.e. you could custom build your own ship in 3DSMax or something, but it wil have to fit specifications using specially labelled objects and exported via a provided plugin. Might end up with a lot of really bad looking user made ship downloads but for the few that are sweet it would be worth it... I would probably get started on porting the SL ships over

Kip.

*tractor beam fail

What complications?
You're either in it or your not and any kind of new command decisions could come in those pop-up things. Other than that, you'd control just like any other ship trading would be done in those stock screens.

Anyway..

To your idea, I know I wouldn't want to lose ships. If you're coming out of an engagement and a couple of your fighters are pretty bad off, I know I'd want them to stay back, for example, and be conservative so they're not destroyed. That would require new commands which could be unwieldy-- especially in fast-paced situations. If you wait too long in a place you just fought, chances are you'll be caught again. You'd also have to worry about your ships getting hit by cruise distruptors: would your entire fleet fall back and engage even if you're willing to sacrifice a couple fighters to save the rest? You're entire fleet fleeing would be next to impossible to manage-- especially if they have to wait for each other to form up to enter gates and the like.

Sorry if I sound negative, but I think these are legitimate issues that would need worked around.

As for the trading and equipment screens, yeah I guess it wouldn't be that hard... you'd lose a good chunk of realism, though, if you're entire fleet has somehow landed on an oil platform with only one available docking platform. The trading screens could have arrows at the top to cycle through your ships. How would landing on a planet work? Would you be the last to go land, your fleet going ahead of you. Any case seems to present a lot of risk if you're engaged or become engaged mid-docking.

Most of this has been covered, but hey - it's an open board, I can comment.

Joystick

Hey, I want to fly. Not play clicky-clicky with the mouse. This has been covered to death, 'nuff said.

More realistic flight engine

I'm a fan of games like Tie-Fighter, where you actually felt like you were moving through space, and you ducked your head when ships flew by at close range. Privateer had these same flight engine flaws. It is time to bid this arcadish engine good night.

True Differences in Ships

Already mentioned by some, but this is a KEY difference and should have been implemented. Anyone who played the original Privateer rememebers that you only had 3 ship options (not counting the horrible piece of junk you started with), but boy were they unique. You had the fighter: sleek and stlylish, very fast, maneuverable, and plenty of room for weapons, but she had a small cargo space and was low on armor. You could outrun most of the enemies with this ship, and blowing stuff up in it was sure fun. Then you had the freighter: big and bulky, and not very maneuverable, but she had a mammoth cargo space, and multiple turrent locations. Medium armor and decent space for shields made this ship the ideal Trader vehicle - you could eat up entire planetary supplies with that thing's storage space. Then there was the tank: slow as a slug, but could hold the most armor and heaviest shields. Medium cargo space, but she was meant to live through just about anything (becuase she sure as hell wasn't fast enough to get away from anyone). The least maneuverable of the bunch, and you knew it when you tried to fly her. A brick.

Freelancer doesn't have this variety, and has 10 times more ships (30). Most of them are ugly as hell too. They all have the same turn rates (because it's based on your mouse). There's no difference in maneuverability or speed.

Ships should have greater variety, and should have some trade offs. You should have to make a choice: trade speed and maneuverability for shield power and armor, etc. Privateer, a very old, old game, did this so much better with only 3 ships...

Remove Levels

Levels in a game like this are just stupid. There's no other way to put it. With games like Privateer and Elite you measure yourself by the amount of money in the bank and your ship. I don't need no stinking "level" to tell me how good I'm doing, and I certainly don't need it to restrict my playability in what is suppose to be an "open-ended" universe.

Make the game open-ended

This is simple: you should be able to leave the main story alone and go off and do whatever you like, and not be artificially restricted because of your "level". Privateer was like that. You were free to leave the main story at any time, and return later. That's open play.

More mission variety

This one has been covered a lot too. I think we can all agree that Freelancer just doesn't have any variety or depth where missions are concerned. One of the fun things about Privateer was that the computer generated missions actually had some variety! It was fun and exciting to play those missions. Trying to maximize your reward vs risk, and trying to select multiple missions (you were limited to 3 at a time) that were all fairly close together, so you could kill 3 missions in one flight. Maybe take a patrol in one sector, along with a bounty hunting mission in the same sector, and finish off your trip with a cargo run. People have thrown in a lot of mission ideas like escorts and whatnot... there's a lot more room than just the "go here and kill rogues" of Freelancer.

Better NPC interaction

Already stated, but needs to be said again. Did nobody play games like Dues Ex? Morrowind? And why are the bars in Freelancer so desolated? They are like tombs... they have no character.

Ability to own a base w/ multiple ships

Mobile or not, doesn't matter. I've always felt like this was the one thing that Privateer could have done better. Allow you to purchase a base of operations somewhere. An abandon asteroid, or whatever. Then buy multiple ships. Maybe you have a great freighter for cargo runs, and souped up fighter for bounty hunting and assassination attempts. The job board gets pumped into your base and you get to look around the universe for those missions that you are best equipped to handle. A great trade opportunity shows up, so you can jump into the freighter and go handle it. A bounty shows up and the reward is just too good to pass up, so you hop in the fighter and head out... Would be fun.




There's so much in this game that could have been better. Hell, if they would have just cloned Privateer and given it this graphics engine, it would have been better than this game is now.

Yeah, the combat system would ned some rejigging, but if we are talking FL 2 here, then I think it could do with some rejigging anyhow.

Cruise disruption of wingmen/ecorted ships: Number of ways to handle this. An easy way would be to drop everyone out of cruise automatically iof one ship is disrupted. From a gameplay point of view it would be easier to handle. For a slightly more complicated alternative you could have a voice warning - either from the ship concerned or your ship's computer - that one ship has been disrupted and then you drop out to help. I think you'd have to have it that if your ship drops out, all your ships automatically drop out, but I don't think that's a problem.

With docking, it really wouldn't be any different to how it is handled in the story missions when your flying around with other characters (like when there's you. Juni and the 2 scientists). Once YOU dock, they all dock.

Now since that could be silly/cheating if you get to the dock and some/all of your ships are in combat some distance away, you'd have to make it that if you tried to dock without ALL other ships being within a certain distance of you that you got the old "Unable to dock" message followed by "(shipname) not in range of docking ring". Just a thought, but I think there are ways to develop what alreday happens to handle these situations.

As for losing a ship? Well, that's part of the fun, isn't it? No pain no gain. I know with the Mechwarrior games and MechCommander games, I never liked losing a cool Mech but often it would be balanced out by additional salvage and the same would hold true here -if 90% of you convoy gets through you've got the money to replace the lost ship. The risk involved would be a plus for me, not a minus.

Besides, if you kept the frequency/scale of attacks as they are now you'd probably have to run it so that YOUR AI ships actaully had recharging shileds, which other AI do not.

I just like the idea, with all thise space to play in - of keeping on expanding my emapire and that resulting in more complexity/things to organise. The environment is already perfect for AI wingmen. Bars would be the places to hire them AND occaisionally you'd come across some really good piot who would join you after you do a quest for him.

dmwnz...I think controlling a fleet is really cool. I think it's a natural extension to Rikaelus's idea with owning a capital ship/base. We're digging pretty hard into a deep economic sim here, but I feel these would be really great layers to add to the existing FL universe - if only to increase the replayability of the admittedly already long game.

And it would be neat to have other human components to your empire in multiplayer, but I guess I'm getting too ambitious already.

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Erm... in space you CAN fly forever at speed. The ships aren't really usaing fuel when they're at full speed

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so what is burning at the back of the ships?

Yeti, he's pointing out the fact that you do not need to expend fuel to go at a constant speed through the vacuum of space due to inertia (not taking into account the gravitational fields of nearby planets), like what happens when you use engine kill. You need to expend fuel to accelerate or decelerate or change direction. It's not really realistic to show thrust cones when the ship is not accelerating or turning, but it sure does look cooler.