I remember that messing with the Ra95 "rules and aftermath.ini" files was my first encounter with <modding>. There was an interesting thing once, when I replaced the Primary=M1Carbine froma rifle soldier with something called "Dogjaw". This thing caused such a severe crash that I thought I was in Zombie Smashers 2 bashing and breaking skulls...
Anyway, after this I turned to Freelancer. I did some easy things, like changing hp and dmg values and similar stuff. The thing is that back then, in 2007, I didn't have network access at home. The damned UPC cable providings didn't have coverage for my street - I had to do special requests to get that connection...
So I didn't know about no Freelancer mods, no communities, I didn't even know how the multiplayer option works in this game. But I got curios and I went to a lousy cave like internet café called, believe it, Matrix and I found out.
The first site I came across was The Starport. I found some tools there and the Discovery mod. With this thing I learned to do some basic modifications to ships, I leaned to make new HardPoints, homing missiles and some other easy things. I was looking forward to test all of this cheap modding in Discovery, and I did. I soon got bored. Big time.
Well, I thought about the next thing I could do with Freelancer so I went back to the stinking rat hole Matrix.
I found out form Moddb (I think) about "the most complex mod for Freelancer ", the Crossfire 1.7 mod. I really was impressed when I read about it and I was looking forward to see it work. It did. I was completely amazed about the complexity and the level of
detail this modification had. It was like I had in front of me a huge expansion pack, perfectly merging with the original game.
The first thing I did was to change the audio files for the engine sound, the nonobots and batteries, the click sound and, as I advanced, some of the soundtracks. I've also changed the navmap texture. Now the mod was truly a big expansion pack. Together with my brother (who has assisted me in everything I've "modded" so far) I enjoyed every minute of crossfire and we were continuously amazed about the beauty poured into Crossfire. Then I tried to make my own ship. I had to reinstall everything several times until it came to me that there may be some anti-modification thing working here. And I tried to take it easy, modify just some small parts until, desperately, I started looking for that damn anti-cheat system (in desperation, now I was only looking for a way to get bigger cruise speed!!! no more godlike weapons or ships 
). After replacing and, somehow, changing everything I thought had something to do with this I started looking for SWAT. I found it and now, being my first serious encounter with a forum, I had to find out how to work my way through here. Finally Iposted something - a simple post or maybe a new thread, don't know for sure - asking who I've seen was boss around here if he would help me get rid of the anti-cheat feature (figures>>> 
). And I told him that I could only play crossfire in sp so there wouldn’t be any problem with other players... No go amigo !
Then, finally, the UPC came with that network.
It really was something...
I invite everyone with funny “first days on SWAT” stories to post them here 
(But you can always PM if you get stuck.)
