fox's Un-named Freelancer Mod-Thing Public Beta 0.95

Changelog for Mod-Thing veterans:

Since Beta 0.9:

-- Fixed bug with Jumpholes not 'sucking you in' properly.
-- Removed Ceylon's pathing mod. This fixes a bug with the pathing routine getting confused and in the end crashing the game / sometimes the server.
-- Fixed NPC Repair Ships using a Light Fighter engine. It came like that too, oddly enough..
-- Restored default 1.0 exe's. The exe's in previous versions were left over from 1.1, which would cause problems if running 1.0. Using a 1.0 EXE on a 1.1 patched server has turned up no problems, however, so it should be good.
-- Fixed a loadout error with Rheinland Police, using 2 Class 7 guns and 2 Class 6 guns on their Banshee - They don't cheat anymore. ;)
-- Changed HF Shield mount to Class 7, and Nanobots / Battery limit to 50. This should make them a little more worth using now.
-- Increased probability of getting loot from astroids. This should turn Astroid Mining into an activity you may actually wish to do now. :P
-- Fixed the turrets in the Arena not shooting stuff.
-- Fixed the Nomad's repairing hull after their hull reached 0. This was very irritating to the player and the NPC, because you kept having to re-target it after it 'died', and it usually lost a gun or two. By the end of it's 90 nanobots, it wasn't a very formidable target. =P
-- Gave ships in the Arena an additional Arena Token, and a full Nanobot / Shield Battery loadout.
-- Removed the 'IDS Editing Tutorial' folder. That was from when I first learned to IDS edit, it was written by Chips. I just completely forgot that it was there. =P
-- Lowered Cruiser / Gunboat / Destroyer engine rumble volume a tad - It was a little annoying, especially in a small Gunboat like the Kusari one (I could hardly hear my guns over that thing)
-- Added an anti-camp zone for the Battlegrounds - You shouldn't get completely murdered every time you pay a visit now. ;P

Since Beta 0.8:

-- NPC's disappearing from right under your nose should be fixed. Often happened fighting Cap. Ships or Freighters in a fighter formation.
-- Fixed almost all the cap. ship encounters not showing up at all. This was an error in the encounter files, not the systems as I thought.
-- Removed the tm sign from Ship and Engine Classes.doc =P
-- Added in the Osiris Battleship. It has 10 guns instead of the normal 16, and a reduced hull, but has a shield mount. See the ship classes file for more info.
-- Corrected various infocards - For example Heavy Fighters - They have a strafe / reverse speed of 3/4, not 1/2.
-- Added the standard Tractor Beam for sale at the Prison Station in Alaska, which is abandoned and neutral to everyone. Before, they were only for sale at Manhatten, which meant you had to create a new character to buy one and haul it out to you if you were hostile. But don't lose your Tractor Beam anyway. It's a real pain (I got a rare once when I first got a VHF, and realized I forgot the tractor). =P
-- Corrected errors in the mod script.
-- Added in the player version of the Pirate HF. It had mysteriously gone missing, which would explain why you might crash at a base selling them. Player versions of ships do not drop guns to stop duplicating abuse.
-- Tweaked the AI a little. AI now thrust a lot more. Skilled Light Fighters should strafe quite a bit more now too.
-- AI Cap ships now love missiles, and spam them as they were designed to be. Be wary of flak turrets, I'd recommend shutting off auto-cm's if they're on. :P
-- Bribes removed. There were problems with how reputation is set up - it's designed to go really slow up for a reason; Bribes I thought were a bit cheap. Also, sometimes there'd be an odd loophole and Nomads or B.P.L. would suddenly go way up - Nomads go way down every time you kill something and B.P.L. goes a tiny bit up, and this was affected by bribes.
-- Fixed some fuses. Some ships, namely the Kusari Battleship and Osiris (even though it was unused =P), wern't blowing up properly, and you just disappeared as soon as you died, instead of going up like fireworks.
-- Newbie base with starting Light and Heavy fighters for $2! This give you the choice to start off the game with either a Light or Heavy. Beware, you can not re-dock with this base, it sends you to Manhattan! =P
-- Starblazer, newbie Heavy Fighter, added.
-- You can now see ship stats on the ship purchase screen.
-- Fixed station-ed Battleship hitpoints - Was 500,000, should be 600,000.
-- NPC's now fly Osiris, Prison Liner, and Luxury Liner.
-- Removed excess junk. =P
-- Fixed up SP - You start off friendly and hostile to the same factions in MP, have the same money, start in the newbie base, etc.
-- Made low NPC, high NPC, and no NPC patches for servers who wish to lighten the load on their servers a little (load goes down a ton with no NPC's - the data sent back and fourth from each player is reduced at least by half I think), or completely lag it (I would NOT use the high NPC patch on a public server). =P
-- Made every base abandoned for the no NPC patches, since there's no way to affect your reputation that much.
-- Revised Cost-A-Lot-Block system for Cap. Ships to fix engine problems.
-- Much 'thicker' engine effects for Cap. Ships - It was a side-effect from the above fix but it looks cool none-the-less.
-- Revised IONCROSS hashcodes.
-- New 'try-before-you-buy' mode, for single-player. It gives you a whopping amount of $999,999,999 and two test Capital Ships. Since ships cost so much, this is so you can see if the ship you want is indeed worth it, before potentially wasting your money.
   Try not to abuse this. I know it's hard. ;P
-- Added a Docking Ring to the Prison Station in Alaska, so Capital Ships can land there to respawn for the arena. Yes, you heard me. I put a Docking Ring on a base. I don't care if it's silly, it's functional. =P
-- Added a constant sound to the warp, instead of a simple cruise disrupt sound. =P

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First off, this mod wouldn't be here without the following, so I'd like to thank:

Pathfinder Studios - for making Evolutions, which I referenced many times for NPC ship conversions. Evolutions itself was a huge tutorial (I like to learn off examples). I also stole the icons from it, so thank them for those. =P
Crabtree - for making Advanced Battleship Encounters, which I heavily modified. Changes include the 'war' formations, changes to loadouts, how they're placed, etc.
Ceylon - Better Pathing Mod (whatever it's called), which I used before but removed because of glitches.
The many authors of tutorials at TLR - I learned how to do Nomad cap. ship encounters, fixing silent guns, etc. from them. Thanks guys. =)
Starfyre Studios - for making TNG. I got a few concept ideas from the mod, such as the Arena concept, when my friends and I played it (and we did a lot).
Ioncross Mod Team (well, whatever they're called =P) - for making Total War, which I got many, many, many concepts from. I'm telling you, if you've got no-one you know to play with, and want a solid server to play on, this mod rules. =P
Glitch - for the nice jet-black mod. My testing ships were 'made' from this, however they are not available in the final mod. I left it in as a selectable option because it adds a little something different.
BlazeME - For making Freelancer Fifth Gear. I (with permission) used his great AI in here that made giving me a challenge against the NPC's possible. =P
Tinyfish - for that INI editor thing. Besides the fact that I really really wished Calculate Column worked, this thing rules all in the form of FL INI editors. :P
Xerx - For making OpenSP. In the future, I plan to give users will have the option of reserving SP for play in a special system where an example ship from each class is just one dollar - That way people can 'try before they buy'.
All the other modders out there - Without you guys, Freelancer would be close to dead by now. =P
Digital Anvil - for being kind enough - intentional or not - to leave most game files in .ini form instead of hard-coding it all or doing something else crazy. Without that, there wouldn't be very many mods at all.
My parents - for putting up with me sitting in my room all day playing games with my friends. And bugging me to get a job. =P
My dog - for giving me inspiration for rare item names by slobbering all over my chair. Thank you Thumper..
Wasabe - for player looting, of course. My player-looting system is indeed based off this, and I forgot to give credit last release! Doh. =P

If I forgot anyone else, and I used something of yours here (especially if I shouldn't have for some reason), please tell me! (contact info below)

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The mod:
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Okay, so you're like 'WTF?' because you (hopefully) just read the 'thanks to' section of something that you have no clue about. Anywho, I'm not going to go into detail (never mind, that's a lie - I spend way too long on these things), so I'll list it all and you can be spared the essay.

-- Gameplay-wise:
- The foundation of this mod is that there should always be something to do - rather it be because the rep goes up really slowly, ships cost a LOT, etc.
- Ships are set up into classes. There's 'Light Fighter', 'Heavy Fighter', 'Very Heavy Fighter', 'Freighter', 'Transport', and 'Capital' (Cruiser/Gunboat and Battleship)
- The higher up the class in that list, the less agile the ship is, and thus less adept to dogfights. Of course, the higher up the list are what's more suited to fighting things like capital ships and stations (which the exception of Freighter and Transport).
- The game is a reputation struggle. Do something like fail a mission, blow up depots / platforms of the faction, or even killing a single ship will decrease your reputation with that faction much faster than before - which is bad. Choose wisely. =P
- Like any other mod out there, player-looting is included - however errors such as ships not displaying explosions (Player Battleships, namely) have all been fixed. Also, the same system has been implanted with NPC's.
- The game is tougher with NPC's (big thanks out there to BlazeME for this), bigger formations, and even full-blown capital ship-to-ship combat. Fight too long, even when you have a battleship, and you're dead. =P
- Almost everything takes up cargo, except for stuff which could not due to technical nonsense. This should help prevent people from collecting 150+ items by accident and corrupting their character, which can be a complete pain - I'm sure everyone's experienced this with storage at one time or another.
- Liberty and Bretonia hate Kusari and Rheinland. This was done because at the time I didn't know how to make pirates use capital ships, so I just put them to war. This may cause you to have to re-think your trade methods. Hey, it gives me an excuse to have some really cool fights in the systems in-between the houses. =P
- There are rare items. Yay. Now when I say 'rare', I mean 'rare'. Like, PSO style 'rare' if anyone's played that game - You'll maybe get one rare item every 100 or so kills, if even that, unless you're really lucky. Rares mount on the Mine, Counter-Measure, and if you want - the Shield mount. Some rares just 'mount' on your ship, however these probably take up cargo space, so it might not be good for your playing style. For those interested, there's at the moment 6 types of rares, all weighing in for a total of 64 rare items, 76 if you count the guns. Expect more to come too.
- THERE IS NO F1 KEY. There are things in this mod that could be abused like no tomorrow, and since I can't remove the 'select new character / server' buttons I took out the menu as a whole, which means that you'll have to just quit instead using alt+f4.
        BE SURE TO BACK UP 'USERKEYMAP.INI'! It is in the same folder area as your save games - use FLMM or the windows search thing to find it. This mod changes some control options, and if you go back to any other mod some controls WILL NOT FUNCTION. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

-- System-wise:
- To my knowledge, the biggest and baddest mine-maze ever, inspired by a certain secret system in Evolutions. It stretches 1 1/2 systems - Be sure to look for the Nomad Boss challenge thing, and of course I stuck Planet Toledo in there for the fun of it.
- Two arenas, making use of the Nomad Dyson Sphere for those that have played the campaign (I haven't and still aim to =P) - There's an empty PvP Arena, and an NPC Arena, which usually gives a fun fight or two.
  Please note that in the NPC Arena, to actually fight NPC's, fly up a bit - to around 10k above the gate in the center. NPC's don't appear by the ground because they simply go straight through it. This is a generic Freelancer problem - NPC's don't hit anything at all except you - And I couldn't figure out how to fix it.

-- NPC-wise:
- NPC's are much more numerous. Many fights are anywhere from 3 on 3 skirmishes, to full on 24+ capital ship-to-ship wars. These numbers are configurable in the form of patches I will release, if I haven't already.
- NPC's are much harder. There are indeed a greater number of ships, and missions are tougher too, thanks to the AI.
- NPC's are sharp-shooters. Like said, they'll waste you if you're not careful. =P
- NPC's act as close to human players as possible - meaning they're flying the same ships with same loadout possibilities - they snipe with the VHF's, spam Nanobots and Batteries when in a panic, use Torpedoes, etc.
- NPC's have re-worked loot stuff. When you kill them, they'll sometimes drop a mounted gun, shield, thruster, etc. This does not apply to players though, because of duplicating abuse - you 'respawn' with your mounted equipment rather it was looted or not.
- If the server wishes so, you can have NPC's cargo-scanning you tossed and have them follow you instead (needs re-working, but it's there and kinda works).
- Capital Ships abound!

-- Ship-wise:
- Makes use of no new ships. Granted, I'll probably 'port' custom ships later in the form of a patch, however I like to retain the Freelancer atmosphere, and as cool as flying a Rutar fighter is (hehe, those were fun =P), it just doesn't fit in.
- Just about every NPC ship is flyable. They are classed appropriately as I saw fit. Example would be the Heavy Lifter - It's a transport, with some minor changes. Or the Repair ship - it has no guns, however can carry 800 nanobots and shield batteries for the team. That's right. 800. Of course, with no shield or guns on it, you've gotta have one helluva team to be healing. =P
- A ship's godly-ness comes from it's items, particularly any rares. That's why everything costs so much - You could make the Patriot single-handedly take down a fully armed VHF with the right equipment. However, a VHF can easily out-gun a Light Fighter from over 3 kilometers away with the right equipment as well. It's a pretty random world out there, so be prepared.
- Every ship is balanced in it's own way, as seen below:
        Light Fighters - handle the best. They can hold up very well in a dogfight, with full strafe / reverse speed, agile turning, and a quick cruise charge. These things are next to impossible to hit. However, if you're not an ace shot, then you won't hit a thing and these are not for you. =P
        Heavy Fighters - handle quite sluggishly. They have 3/4 the strafe / reverse speed, sluggish turning, and a slightly longer cruise charge-up. Of course, they can hold 2 more guns at 1 class higher, and have a torpedo.
        Very Heavy Fighters - are more a support fighter then anything. They have 3/4 the strafe / reverse speed like HF's, but have no thruster! They also take an eternity to charge the cruise, which means that in a VHF you better be equipped to fight - because you're not getting anywhere fast. However, they can use every HF shield as well as every LF shield stacked on top of that - meaning you have two shields. They can also use up to Class 9 guns. Another nice thing they have is a rear mount for any capital turret - mount an MKIII Transport turret, and you can just turn around and set up shop. =P
        Freighters - are a mix between trading vessels and fighters. They handle like cows on roller skates, however can mount 8 Class 7 turrets. They have 2X the capacity of thrust then the Light Fighter, however it does not regenerate - you can only make 2 or 3 quick escapes.
        Transports - have no shield, however have the cargo capacity for proper trading. Large transports / trains / etc. can hold even more cargo, however are longer and easier to hit - all it takes is one good torpedo shot to completely ruin your day. Best to have some kind of escort, or stay in populated areas.
        Capital Ships - cost a fortune, and can not mount lower then Class 8 guns. This means you'd have to do some pre-planning before buying one, because they do not come with any either. To get capital class guns, you've gotta go hunt some battleships. Granted, without capital guns this is no easy task, I recommend grouping up with some VHF's with torpedo loadouts and collecting guns.

-- Capital Ship notes:

Okay, first off, as you may have read, they cost a fortune. However, there is something in place even more cruel - the Battleship Permit Legislature.

            "The Battleship Permit Legislature is an organization formed between all houses. It is the one remaining link that Liberty and Bretonia still have established with Rheinland and Kusari, through the war between the two sides.
      The B.P.L. is run by what was The Order, and they review cases of who wants to purchase Capital Class ships. When a majority of the Legislature votes to grant a person rights to own a Capital Class ship, said person shall be granted entry into B.P.L. owned ships, previously occupied by various Navy personnel.
      In these ships, you may buy a permit to any Capital Class ship of that house. It shall be promptly then warped your way for your boarding and hiring of crew.
      Due to recent troubles with attempted hijackings, B.P.L. Capital Ships are fully authorized to fire at will upon anyone without a grant. Already, some hijackings have been successful and now pirates are starting to show up with Capital Classes in their ranks. It is advised that such people with bad permit status keep a good distance away from these B.P.L. ships.
      If you wish to receive a permit, your case is automatically reviewed and displayed in your Reputation Screen, where you are reading this just now. A red color on your permit means your case was denied, white means it was accepted. If it is green, it means the B.P.L. is showing particular interest in you and would like to see you at once.
      If you see a B.P.L. ship approach you, ignore it. They patrol Manhattan regularly to register new pilots in the permit database, and often like to horse around with whom they see, because operating 'behind the scenes' is boring. Just fly away."

Yeah, that pretty much sums it up. Incase you didn't read that, basics are that all Capital Ships are sold at bases owned by the B.P.L., which you can not enter until you have made so many kills to please them. This was done so you can't hop on a server, have somebody give you $35,000,000, and go own things. You need to make the kills needed to get a battleship, and then of course somehow obtain the armament needed from other NPC Capital Ships.

But trust me, it's worth it. ;P

Now, flying a Cap. Ship is different than most mods. I say that because of one thing - Cruise. First off, Cap. Ships have NO cruise. Second, they have NO power regen. Instead, when you hit cruise you begin some wacky generator cycle that re-fills your energy bar. They do however have a warp drive that goes cruise speed - Just takes a bit to get up there. You can stop an NPC's warp with a cruise disruptor, however this does not work on player battleships. This is because I had to design warp a bit differently with NPC's.

So, yeah - In theory, Light Fighters could dodge all the shots until the power was gone, and then wreck an entire fleet. However, a Cap. Ship power supply is massive and the regen is quite quick, so you'd have to be pretty dumb to get killed by a single Light Fighter.

On a side-note, you'll see 'Cost-A-Lot Blocks' on Cap. Ships. They're special engines designed to.. Make the ship cost more. Now, I'm gonna say right now to NOT UNMOUNT THESE. Every 'engine' contributes to actual speed. If you were to unmount one, you'd lose a bit of the max speed. If you were to re-mount it, you'd lose your main engine, which is about half your speed. So don't be a fool and try to exploit the system in any way (although I dunno why you would other than to give someone quick credits), because you'll make your ship suck and shave off the price considerably if you lost any.

I have also mysteriously somehow solved tradelane problems. Usually, the Cap. Ship you're piloting will enter the tradelane anywhere from in it to a couple hundred meters away. So just hit 'dock' on it from a ways away, and let the auto-dock procedure thing do the rest.

Oh, right. One last thing I'd like to note - Cap. Ships (along with the Luxury / Prison Liner) can NOT dock with ANY station. Planets only. This may seem a little silly with the Luxury / Prison Liner because they group with the rest of the 'Transport' classes, however most good trade routes are Planet > Planet, so I didn't think this would be an issue. Now, should you want to buy another Cap. Ship, the bases they are sold at are the ONE type of station you can dock with. This may look a little silly, but just think of it as "extending a boarding platform" or something. And yeah, the Cost-A-Lot Block's should refund your ship decently. =P

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Other notes / known bugs:
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-- Some of the ships you see in screenshots (mentioned above) are not in the final mod version. They were my testing ships that I made a tiny bit cool because I was bored. I'll class them in appropriately in the future, alongside the Mining Ship and Osiris.
-- This mod IS still Beta. I think it's pretty near that elusive 1.0 status, however it still loves error messages in the console and MIGHT crash.
   On that note, I worked pretty hard to get rid of crashes. I might have missed one or two, however I'm pretty sure this is nice and stable for the server admins. Only thing bad that's happened to me is all the crap the console spits out - however this does not seem to affect server performance so I think it's fine.
-- The Tradelane Disruptor was from the days of where nothing could hit a tradelane ring. Now, ships pass right on through rings, however shots hit them fine. The tradelane disruptor does however knock a ship around nicely. =P
-- Ignore the Repair Turret on the Repair Ship. It used to do negative damage, however as soon as I pointed it at some Liberty Battleship passing by the poor Battleship want down in flames - Negative damage obliterates things instantly. For now, it does nothing, however it'll do something in the future (shoot out nanobots? =P).
-- Players can't see another player's engine trail. This is because the engine throttle is not sent over the network - Even when players move it looks like their engine is still stopped. Because of this, on that computer the trail is not drawn because the game thinks the engine is still 'off' even though the player is in fact moving. This is because I used NPC trails, which allows you to see them from your ship on your screen. In normal FL, you can see other player's trails because those are set to draw, even when the engine is 'off'. However, those trails do not show up on the ship-owner's screen. (I hope I explained that well =P)
   I believe this can be fixed by inserting "textures = fx\beam.txm", next to "textures = fx\sarma.txm" and "textures = fx\planetflare.txm" under any trail with _playtrail at the end of it in engines_ale.ini. I would have done this, but not all ships have a player trail definition, so for the sake of consistency I decided to leave it for later. It's a small problem anyway and I'd end up somehow crashing the game otherwise. =P
-- Is it me, or is the Flying Toasters screensaver from the old Afterdark CD the best scrensaver ever? :P

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Server stuff:
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Just some notes I'd like to stick in for people who want to run a public server:

-- The NPC count is very, very heavy. This is because I love big fights, and so do my friends. I find it amusing when people hoax screenshots to make it look like a complete war's going on - I didn't need to hoax these. =D
   But anyway, I would recommend the max player count not be above 16-something if you're running the default NPC count. I doubt this mod'll be that popular anyway, but unless you're running on a godly connection some of the 20+ NPC fights will bog down your server.
   For this, I have included the option of lowering the amount of NPC's for larger servers (especially ones with communities), that might *BIG GASP* switch over to this mod. You can pick a low NPC count - 1 to 9 NPC's instead of 11 to 19 NPC's in a fight is what you'll get. Or, if you want to run a really big server, you can opt to have NONE. Yes, you heard me. Missions only. This frees the Battlegrounds and NPC Arena into two nice PvP arenas as well. =P
-- I will try my best in future versions to avoid player-wipes. I know they suck, and it'll be especially painful to those seeking Cap. Ships, because most of that can not be redeemed with money.
   If I do have to do a player-wipe, I'll probably put in the option to give players compensation for their loss (however this will obviously apply to new players as well), letting the server choose anywhere in-between 1,000,000 extra cash to 20,000,000 if they desire. So don't worry about wipes. =P
-- There is no admin ship. The B.P.L. ships are just un-used Defenders with flashing lights and a few rares, which is why they're so strong. Kill enough crap, and anyone can be as strong as one of them too. (minus the lights =P)
   So, if you wanted an admin ship, my advice would be to take your favorite fighter, take IONCROSS, stick some lights on it (to show you're an admin I guess), and load it up with really good rares. :P
-- IONCROSS files are included, and get rid of all the extra stuff that came with the default files.
   I also believe that everything mountable has a hashcode, and everything that shouldn't be mounted (cloaks, infinite power, whatever) does not. This means you can simply have IONCROSS ban all unknown equipment and wipe half the cheaters off the face of your server.
-- This mod loves error messages, like said. And I mean spamming them. I know about 'em, and if anyone has any tips that might help I'd GREATLY appreciate it.
   So just ignore the errors. I know about 'em and it's partly the reason this is still beta. =P

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Other stuff:
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Smooth Operators is a small, private 'clan'. We used to have a website / board, however due to annoyance of running such things those no longer exist. They got boring. =P
While playing Freelancer, we play on my off and on my not-so-dedicated server, "- fox's House of Pain -". I and my right-hand man, Mr._Smooth, played a bit of EVO and Total War online - there's a chance you might have seen either one of us. Well, I'm back, I guess. :P

I go on AIM by the name of foxUnit01, and my E-Mail is foxUnit01(at)hotmail(dot)com. If I use anything else, chances are the name contains 'fox' 'Unit' and '01' in it. :P
If you have any bug reports, comments, complaints, mindless rant (no spam please =P), questions, or stuff you think I should change / add, then please, contact me! If there's stuff in here that people think sucks, then I'll never know and it'll just keep sucking. =P

If I used something that I forgot to give credit for, or I used something I shouldn't have, I will try my best to work it out promptly. If it's something I shouldn't have, it will be removed immediately.

I hope you all at TLR enjoy this mod - It's been in the making since late January, where I was just beginning to learn how to mod FL. I previously did mini-mods of Evolutions and TNG for my friends' and I's private use, because we all liked to just play by ourselves. However, I wanted to do something more - I was sick of having to keep up-to-date with the mods, yet there was always some bug that I didn't know how to fix that had me update. So I eventually started this - the first thing to go in was Crabtree's BS Encounters. I didn't even know how to IDS or shiparch edit at the time. Since then, the mod has come a long, long way for me. So again, I hope you enjoy it, because I enjoyed making it.

And excuse this readme. It's long and doesn't make much sense because it was pieced together over the course of a month whenever I made changes to it. =P
