Oh man, this game is so much fun in multiplayer. My friends and I finally got the game and we decided we'd lan it up for a while and let me just say, wow. We played from 7pm to 3am (we're on break from college) finding good trade routes, taking the occasional mission, and just exploring.

Right now we have three freightors and me as a fighter escort/scout. Its a hell of a lot of fun even though I'm sure we're noobs. I think the most fun I had was when my friend brad was formed on me and I started flying him into a planets atmosphere or just generally slamming him into stuff. Though messing around was fun, we decided to start trading comodities.

It was basically decided that I would scout out systems look for good trade routes while my friends were hauling cargo between our best known routes. Well, I started heading towards rheinland space and found a way to more than tripple our money at a space station in an asteroid field (forgot the name of the system). It seemed like a blue milk run that we could more than tripple our money with. We hauled are cargo there, patted ourselves on the back (not literally) and headed back to try it again. Our trade route turned out a little more dangerous than we anticipated.

Our three frieghtors along with my fighter entered our last jumpgate. We were all pretty excited figuring we could buy any ship we wanted in just a short matter of time... and one by one we came out of the jump gate and were dead within seconds. Our frieghtor's level two shields held for only a few seconds. There must have been 15 + outcasts on the other side of that gate. My friend brad was first out, he didn't even know what hit him, jon and dave came next and managed maybe 5 seconds. My liberty elite with level four shields managed to get clear of the gate. I came out kind of laughing a painful laugh realizing we spent all our money on cargo and would have nothing after respawning. I decided I would attempt to avenge my friends deaths but my shields were dropping quickly, I tried to run but was hit by a cruise missile. I watched my speed drop to 80. It seemed quiet for a second until I was comsumed by a storm of red laser fire. My shields and hull were gone in seconds.

You might think that would have taught us a lesson, but we started all over again this time I would go through the jump gate first in my fighter to make sure everything was safe. We managed to raise a lot of money with our new scout and scoot method. Jon had to leave and I ended up piloting two ships at once (LANing is awesome). This method seemed to work until I lost my fighter. More importantly though, I finished the last cargo run and we could finally get new ships.

Though it was tough going, we managed to get our low level ships to rheinland space and bought a humpback. God, that thing is a slug on downers, but with a cargo hold of 250, we didn't care. Now with one level 22 ship, it almost seemed like the pirates, xenos, and outcasts were leaving us alone. We were lane hacked by some rogues in the liberty sector and they didn't even attack. Of course we siezed the oppertunity and dispatched them in short order. Now with our humpback we were able to really bring in the profits. We headed back to rheinland space. Brad, basically our 'bank' ship sent me about 200k to buy I new ship. I'm now the proud owner of a banshee. (yay!)

We had hours of exploring and adventuring and we aren't even a quarter of the way through the game. I think it was good that none of my friends had heard anything about the game. I talked them into buying/playing and they seem to like the game as much as I do. Now there is a relationship here. They didn't know anything about the game, but when they played and it was fun. If you play FL with out all the expectations or knowing false claims of MS, or whatever else, its actually a fun game. My friend jon said he couldn't remember the last time he played a game so long. So just play FL for what it is (like so many have said before). There is a lot of fun to be had.

-=Andrew=-

Edited by - sellout on 16-03-2003 22:11:26