CF 2.0 SP feedback

Quote from Mister No

I don't know is this a heresy here but if you could merge CF with Discovery Fl that would be thing of beauty.

Quite possibly heresy, though this isnt the first time someone has suggested this. And do keep in mind that this is still in the

THX for your input and open minded comments

Quote from Mister No

Campaign is not well balanced imo.

That's something ALWAYS very difficult and from what was heard during development (even of "older" version) there were many adjustments - mainly in downgrading difficulty of Missions (due to player requests). So, ... in the end : there are some really hard missions, some easy peasy missions and some missions seemingly hard - until you know the "trick" what has to be done (not always the solution is killing ).

Sol System is ... VAAST and meant to be filled by eventually player missions, when the feature of creating and adding own "campaigns" will be activated.

Boring DK systems ... well then you might have found the "easy" way to go through there, you can also "pop it up" by your own behavior (take the gunboats on as the first one i.e. ).

The "End Game", well, yes ccompared to what you have been through until then - easy, but from what I heard the aforementioned "downgrading" took also place in this one.

Take it as "story ending tale" to be more or less passiyly enjoyed like a movie.

Quote from Mister No

It's to bad for multiplayer,so litlle players online

It's up to you and your friends to change this

Quote from Mister No

...could merge CF with Discovery...

No heresy ... beside the technical impossibilty, both mods feature and service quite different kinds and tastes of gameplay, maybe the most important : CF is MUCH MORE (not to say almost entirely) centered around fightercrafts, where Discovery pleases much more the taste for Capital ships and those you love to fly and fight with them.

For SP part: done settings are compromise between too easy and too hard. Was mentioned mission when undock from coal carrier which I played many times on normal diff and enjoyed it, same it was in some other harder set missions .... and here it is, it simply is not possible to balance difficulty for everyone taste. Next to this here are technical difficulties which made every change extremely problematic. Do wonders on such old game with locked code have limits (even if they were pushed significantly). There are indeed some long journeys parts in SP, but they are 1) limited and 2) they show at least partly size of crossfire universe. There is also alot nice environment around, I used there often turret view to look around.

For MP: we still in beta here, but maybe can help use little different look on How is CF space composed. Sirius and newly also coalition space in altair were meant as primary areas for server role-play interaction. Next are here areas (like part of Inner Core invaded by 'dooms') for mainly PvE. And as 'last' are here parts done for explorers which have rly alot to visit.

why are there such long travels and so much flight in empty space?
Answer: because exploration is part of the game and part of the CF storyline is exloration of new worlds that no other human beings visited before.
You can not expect to a travel from Sol to Alpa Centauri (i mean now... in sense of a first travel there) and expect human colonies there or human ships flying around there.
Fact is if you want to explore new space you will have to pass alot of space and you will have alot stuff to discover before first settlements in such system can even happen.
That is callled realism... and these travels are important for the CF storyline to show that we are not living door by door with the coalition or the kavash... it was important to show the colonized regions are tiny compared to whats still out there... and its important to show how vast the DK empire actually is/was.
Conclusion.... it was done by purpose because it was important to do that.
The mod introduces more than 100 new systems. Only very few of them are bigger than the vanilla ones.

Difficutly is a thing that you certainly could argue about.
Since Crossfire 1.53 I have reduced the difficulty of the mod with every mod release. Compared to the days back then the difficulty in CF2.0 is a joke.
The mod was tested by 4-5 people while the storyline was created.
Gearhead, Huor... Martind Forlon .... etc could tell you now that the difficutly of the missions was alot harder when i original designed them.
However at the end we were at a point where we said the difficulty is ok.
I personally play the mod when doing the final storyline test with a drake until reaching mission 11 and then with an eagle until the end.
No special weapons no special gear... and since im not the best fighter anymore (im getting old) the difficutly must have been ok.

Missions in Crossfire are even during the story mode very dynamic designed.
We used to script large fights with many conditional settings during pretty much 70% of the storyline. In the later part of it I decided to give fights a more random layout.
This random stuff might turn a mission difficult when you try it once... and when you try it a 2nd time it might be totally easy.

The last fight indeed might appear easy to you.
Problem during the development was that we had so many ships in that combat that the fl engine had massive problems to handle all this.
We wanted the battle to be massive but FL is designed to tell the enemies either to set you as primary target or simply to set you hostile.
Primary target means 20 enemy ships will nail you down with 3 seconds.
Making you just a hostile target means these 20 ships will fight against you and pretty much all other ships that are friendly with you (which also is a good amount of ships).
How many of these 20 ships decide to attack you is totally random.
One day only 2-3 fighters decide to turn on you... the other day 10 fighters will do. Its random... the experience is different everytime you try it.
But the experience never will be "1-2-3-dead".
We of course could have doubled the amount of enemy fighters to raise the amount of ships which attack you... but... this would also increased the chance that if you have bad luck 20 fighters nail you down.
The FL engine is limited... and we made the best out of it.

Especially on the last few missions we decided to give story and realism higher priority than anything else.
We decided to create these giant fleets and the battles between them instead of letting trent be the guy who saves the galaxy alone.
He got his 15 minutes of fame when destroying the Nomad City and doing all the other great stuff that was possible to be done as single fighter or leader of a wing, but this final fight in Inner Core was a Fleet battle and Trent was just a tiny part of the fleet. Certainly a more or less good fighter but actually just one of many. He discovered the threats, he made the alliances... he prepared this last battle. But in the end we wanted that the humanity fights united and we wanted Orillion to be the hero who saves the galaxy (because he sacrificed his entire life to save humanity, not only during this battle).

Are there going to be updates SP?
Well... that depends...
I didnt just want to create a storyline and then everything is finished. No!
I had a main storyline that I wanted to tell... and so I did.
However, I included the possiblity to add new story missions to the game as a kind of "sidestory/bonus mission". One of these bonus missions was released already with the mod in order to show what can be done.
I was hoping that the member of this community would work together to get new bonus missions developed and released bit by bit.
So... the story must not end... if the community want to keep it going then the mod would support that. I clearly included the possibility to add content to the storyline.

Are there bugged missions in CF?
NO!
Every mission was tested like +100 times by us prior releasing the mod. (no joke)
The problem is... the mission design assumes that the player does follow the mission path.
If the player does not stricly follow the instructions certain mission triggers wont work. This will cause problems during that mission.
Since the CF1.9 storyline... several thousand security triggers have been added by me to prevent that false player decissions can break the missions. However... there are probably a million ways to play this game and the storyline and to develop a security trigger for every eventuality might take me another 2 years of development.
So the best solution if something is not working: "load the last mission generated savegame and this time follow the mission instructions."

You are totally right that this server should have more players online.... yes.
however... FL is a dead game.
The CF server already is one of the top 3 servers (eventhough we are still working on the MP features and often have downtimes due to updates and minor problems)
Fact is... its main playtime and there are currently 182 users playing Freelancer on 68 servers.
We wont get 500 ppl on the server. If we get the double amount of people we currently have it would already be great.
FL is a dying game... for many years already... and while nearly all popular servers and mods around us died we kept this mod and this place running with relative good numbers of players compared to others.
However, unless you are a great magician and can pull large numbers of players our of your hat the situation on discovery and on CF wont change.
(I tried and my house if fully of rabbits now)

Merging Crossfire and Discovery is actually impossible.
That are two mods with 2 completely different structures and phylosophies behind them.
The features are different and incompatible with each other and so are the concepts behind the 2 mods.
It might sound strange but when I say that something is impossible then it is impossible. You wont find a FL modder who has more experience than I have.
Its like merging windows with linux... the only outcome is that you go crazy after some time.

There is another reason why merging is a bad idea:
Discovery is full of people which play it because they love to fly battle ships.
Crossfire is full of people which are glad that its remained a fighter game.
Discovery players like the faction based roleplay.
Crossfire players like the free roleplay based on "professions".
Which group of people do you want to disappoint when merging something?
There are 2 different styles of gameplay... you can not keep both of them running.

oh one more thing...

The mod is designed to have enemies which you originally should not engage in SP.
By experience i can tell that pure SP players have not the skills to engage such NPCs.

However... during the storyline you only have limited contact with them.
Either you told to run once they appear on the screen (yep you are told to run) or you only engage them when you have an escort wing.
Alien Gunboats clearly belong to these NPCs.
These always were extremly hard to fight in CF... and originally they were part of the Dynamic universe concept. They used to invade sirius from time to time. (we will re-introduce this soon)
Other hard npcs are specific coalition combat groups or coalition rogues and of course the Ancient drones.
The difficulty of these specific NPCs has to be hard... because of the MP.
The MP Community has learned to fight them... thats the point.... offering a real challenge to the people which love the hard fights.
We have events which lead player fleets deep into Altair or Inner Core space to fight against these hard NPCs. We have players which meet to hunt such extreme hard opponents together.
And we have combat training and tutorials for people which join the server and want to improve their skills.

You are certainly right that a big universe is not good for player interaction on a MP server.
We know that.
Thats why you wont find human colonies in the large systems... you wont find clans there... you wont find a reason to regulary visit these "far away systems".
The focus of CF still remains on sirius... and despite having many new systems in sirius the travel times are not bigger than in vanilla FL.
Lots of player activity is focused around the major houses.

Quote from SWAT_OP-R8R

The difficulty of these specific NPCs has to be hard... because of the MP.
The MP Community has learned to fight them... thats the point.... offering a real challenge to the people which love the hard fights.

... As a "convertite" from from dedicated SinglePlayer to (almost ..?) addicted OnlinePlayer let me tell you :
Once I lamented loudly about the "weird super-duper" abilities of NPCs on the server, then I started to "use" them as ... sparring for improving my SP abilities, now I go hunting them on the server, Ancient Drones, Inner Core Aliens, DK Gunboats - sometimes even alone ... for sparring against other MP players (sparring that I REALLY need ) and for what it is still not enough.
There are players who do these NPC hunting all alone even on a regular basis, trying to make an ingame fortune by selling their very interesting loot .

Just to tell and assure you : there IS a learning curve vastly improving your abilities to counter every NPC to be found. Now, the NPCs in SP are ... "easy peasy" and not much of a challange anymore, ... part of why I - nowadays - prefer playing it Online - beside the fun you can have with this great community here.

Quote from SWAT_OP-R8R

They used to invade sirius from time to time.(we will re-introduce this soon)

gimme, gimmme, GIMMMMEEE

Quote from SWAT_OP-R8R

They used to invade sirius from time to time. (we will re-introduce this soon)

I got a question about the SP mission ai's. Not talking your special targets nomads or anything like that im talking about run ofthe mill random mission npc ships. Is there a limit to thier usage of shield batteries and nanobots? Im finding Its taking up to several minutes to kill each target because of the rampant use of these repairs.

Dont get me wrong though i do agree that they need to use them and i enjoy that theres some degree of difficulty in fights now but when i can park myself behind an enemy hold my trigger down for 30s and watch as it keeps rehealing through that, and then proceed to chase it across space for the next 2-3 minutes as it keeps rehealing to full everytime it does a little afterburner jink and gets my guns off it for 5 seconds it gets a little crazy.

Its worse now that im up to the Blood Dragon base missions where im sent against Kusari Navy. Navy ships are big and fly very slow so i have to make very limited passes or i'll be destroyed by the other ships i cant be chasing. Such fast passes mean my enemy is back to full everything each time and this just drags on. I dont want shield bats/nanos to be taken from npc's just a realistic limit. My ship has 26/26 (heavy fighter) so those Kusari heavies should only have a typical heavy fighter load too, not hundreds. They have enough to reheal to full 10-ish times before they cease all maneuvering, fly straight and let me kill them (why do they do that too? after about 3 minutes they give up evading and just fly in a straight line till i blow them up)

NPCs above lvl10 can use about 1/3 of the ships normal bots/bats capacity.
NPCs below that level use less.

What 'might' look as if they have soo much : unlike we 'human' player can only use bats and bots to 'repair ti the full', they seem to use only a few at a time, not repairing fully but only partial, lets them use them over a longer time.

Quote from NucNuc

What 'might' look as if they have soo much : unlike we 'human' player can only use bats and bots to 'repair ti the full', they seem to use only a few at a time, not repairing fully but only partial, lets them use them over a longer time.

I have noticed that! i like to fit my ship with faster firing weapons as i find if i keep sustained fire on them they dont pulse thier repairs at all (or maybe they do but my sustained fire is nullifying thier reps and it just doesnt show up), its only when they get off a realy good evade that they get time to boost shields to full and if im not quick they then pulse up the hull. Faster guns also seem to be better at those times where is misfitted my ship and power drains out, i at least have some small pathetic stream of damage still applied on target lol. Am slowly working on finding the right balance for each ship, usually requires me to have spare unfitted guns which i can juggle around as needed

Any idea why after a minute or 2 ships stop evading and just fly straight?

Also another question is it a crossfire thing for commodities to randomly change? I had found a really overpowered route with zero jumps that was netting me 120k credits every 2-3 minutes. But i then progressed further into the story by a level or 2 and when i went back the commodities had totally changed, so i had to go back to the general mission running. No complaints if it is a random thing, that makes it feel more dynamic and if you find a valuable cargo run it makes capitalising on it right then a wise decision as it may move later.

Every day brings different trading routes. Land on as many bases as possible so you can find a good one every day. Also, try keeping one unit of every commodity in your cargo for quick looking up. (in single player)

Quote from slashpurr

Any idea why after a minute or 2 ships stop evading and just fly straight?

Their try to flee you at top speed to get the possibility to turn in engine kill back on you (limits of KI against real pilots). Stupid but ... for you, helpfull

Quote from slashpurr

...that makes it feel more dynamic and if you find a valuable cargo run it makes capitalising on it right then a wise decision as it may move later.

Quote from NucNuc

Their try to flee you at top speed to get the possibility to turn in engine kill back on you (limits of KI against real pilots). Stupid but ... for you, helpfull

its very helpfull when they stop evading. I have noticed that the single player nomad interceptors are literal glass cannons and despite not having shields they also drop shield batteries. Is that intentional? Not that im complaining about free shield regen in combat just asking cause, where did they get the shield batts and what for if they cant use them! lol

When i found that epic no jump trade route i stopped doing missions and much to Junis dismay failed to respond to her hails, i made myself several million credits instead! lol

Ok so i just encountered the non classic mission nomad fighters, 19k hp now we're talking! I fought and killed about 8 of them at a jumpgate, by the time i was done i had moved 7.6km off the gate and every last one of those alien freaks was dead! lol

Quote from slashpurr

....i made myself several million credits instead! lol

many women might find this ... attractive

ROFL

Quote from NucNuc

many women might find this ... attractive

would they find a Series R Borderworld Very Heavy Fighter attractive as well? cause i may or may not have spent my money on one of those /hides

Sure is glorious at beating nomads into the next plane of existance