Crossfire Roleplay

My personal basic idea is somewhat different here, it is more focused to play a role (and much less focused on PvP itself). Reason is quite simple, PvP is not what majority of players wants or like (for a reasons, and I think can fully support it with personal experience from other "space" game with much more players) and in CF are roles fully focused towards PvP with keeping only low touch with the local game environment itself. Simple server RP rules were working for some time and then slowly stopped for: players leaving to other games, other mod(s) or changing interests due less play times etc etc. The worst imo however is that in CF (MP) is almost complete lack of interest to play certain official role (merc, cop, smuggler, pirate) in a way where it is meaningfull. Meaningfull imo is, that smuggler do smuggling, merc do hunting or helping other roles, pirates chase others (this is very likely only one RP which really was working the longest) and police to keep crimes off (and bcs I played this role for a long time I know well that interest doing Police RP was the lowest). What I experienced allot was that players did almost exactly opposite and avoided play an official role as much as possible, mainly because it was part of PvP ... why I should smuggle when I know that this cop/pirate will chase me, .. meh, I will no do it now and will wait till he logs off ... sounds familiar? ...

Question(s) is(are):

1. can we do some changes to what we have now to bring up more playing a role (and have more fun even if with small number of players at server) without fear of PvP?
2. Is possible make server official RP more tied with local Freelancer/CF environment?

I personally think that if player like to play a role in game, then there is much bigger chance that he will have much less problem accept PvP. One from steps which may help with this is, that ingame environment (NPCs, Factions of FL/CF) will be inseparable part of this. It is just something for discuss here, it could be that it is or will be not possible realise or worse that mod admin will see it as clearly bad idea

Few ideas:

Make server role required part for players (i.e. license will be automatically applied after hard-set character play-time) but using different philosophy:

1. license (automatic) will be smuggler: offer not only trade BMGs but increases also normal profit for trading up by 50(?)% . On flip side it however reduce possibilty to be allied with police/pirate factions (maximum +2? bars). It also may reduce profit from missions/pods.
2. Mercenary license: except bounties (PvP) will grant income bonus for all missions and delivering escape pods (+50%). On flip side it will reduce possibility to be allied with Police and Pirates (+2 bar max). It also can reduce profit from trading.
3. Pirates license: except tax, working for pirates factions will grant you income bonus. Flip side is maximum neutral rep with police factions (+2 bars)
4. Police ... opposite to Pirates.

For Police and Pirates licenses: visiting as hostile opposite area will bring heavier damage to your ships (+30% more damage from NPCs).

Coalition license: Increasing trade profit in Coalition up by 200% and the same for missions and pods income (in Altair sector ofc). Flip side is maximum reputation reduction in Sirius space (+2 bars). Coalition pilot can go fully hostile vs Sirius space licenses (and opposite) ... just some basic idea.

All above is just something for discuss, bring new ideas, think little more about RP, i.e. playing a ROLE and this role will make difference how local ingame environment will react on player.

______________________________

EDIT: Reason for +2 postive reputation is disallow ships purchases from "opposite side" ... can be maybe too harsh, I think +3 allows buy so it could be set as maxiums for examples above.

Proposements:

1)Maybe to buy best equipment has to be in every capital planet not every base to not been so lazy. Or just specific military bases in every sector that could prepare you for war with highly performed weapons, shields and all other stuffs your ship need. All in one place not shields in this base guns on other base(only human guns, for aliens lets go hunt him or to buy only from clans).

2)Bribe on some base or planet for every faction. You can change your frienships with other factions from one place. Who will be your enemy or friend.

3)is good

4)When exploring you can have map explore in all your chars. You are same person no matter you fly with BS, fighter or train you are the pilot.

5)Lets bring jump device only for system to system from one sector. U cant jump from Sirius to Canis. The device will need materials or parts to be produced like cloaking device. That can ruin RP and PvP, so put countdown for use.

6)I dont have problem with rocks with my BS and train but docking in tradelane is pain i hate it.

Ideas:

1)you can start from bretonia, liberty, cusari and rheinland. Home systems have same weak factions for new player. You cant start from coalition there is hard for newbie with starter ship. Also dont start from sol is to early to face styx. We start only in sirius other option will be unbalanced i think. I like custom paint part.

2)good one

3)yeah is good for event teleport not to wait for someone half hour to come from omega 41 and get kill in X system

4)fighters can kill all. Cruisers and destroyers are for killing BS but no one play it.

5)BMGs in other sectors must be more profitable because danger is bigger.

With more players interesting in PvP we can bring back ASF|SCF back on table.

Most of players on CF are older than school years and cant play for long to travel 30min from X to coalition because of RL. Or to escape from doom space to human space is endless run.

I can agree to disagree... While you make good points there's also good counter points, personally I think it's fine as it is but also, once you think your product is done/finished is when it's officially dead. There's a thumb-rule for successful products to never become satisfied.

But, realistically speaking, here's a couple of answers.

1. I agree that most of everything mainstream should be sold at a wide variety of stations/planets, but also, the scums of the underworld doesn't often take their blueprints to mass production... For example, I can't see Corsairs sharing their design with Hessians, or Outcasts basing their weapons production on Planet Manhattan.

2. Pretty much same as above, realism... If you punch Elon Musk in the face I don't think he's gonna want to make deals with you later, or if you go into Wallmart and harm someone you're not gonna be welcome again. Pretty much the same applies to factions in FL, if you're unfriendly they're not gonna want to make deals with you.

3. I'm not a veteran Crossfire player like many of you are, but there are extremely valuable BMG's, just gotta know when and where, most clans knows and are willing to share that info with their clan members. Hokkaido->Omega7 as far as I know are always pretty good, and sometimes you can haul diamonds on your way back via Frankfurt. I agree with mining tho, and maybe even a look into personal bases (?).

4. Re-playability is important, personally I enjoy the journey more than the destination. And starting from scratch is good, it gives you more room and depth for RP experience to branch to your liking. Best alternative imho should be to randomly spawn with a new character at any base/planet in Liberty space, and maybe even random affiliation tables for more randomness.
Sol just doesn't feel like the place to start in as that's where we escaped from, according to the lore.

5. Indeed it does, idk if that's good or bad but it's realistic, and it gives tradelanes a purpose. They could speed up tradelanes if anything.

6. Totally agree, and I think their shields are too damn poor as 1 VHF can take down a warship single-handed. And I'd also like for these warships to be able to fire all around, as far as I know there's no warship that can fire behind itself.

Theoretically a Dreadnought should be able to take down alien ships solo, they have fleets and motherships with what appears to be cloaking technology as they pop up in your face... Enough to worry about on its own imho.

Maybe if OP changing the version status of CF with each update like we have new stuffs from start of 2.0 till now. I mean we have renaissance and we still in 2.0. Will have new update soon and still will be 2.0. From point of view of someone who see CF2.0 before 1 year and see it now is still 2.0 he will think "Men this mod is dead no updates from 1 year, no one play it and no one care about putting stuffs there in look other mods they are 8.35 or 4,37 they are far more than Swat-Portal". This type of guy just dont know how much posibilitys we have, and how much things that no one have only because see some highest numbers for basic freelancer with stupid changes. I dont know that is the real case. I just thinkink public.

And i dont want 3.0 for something like new system, just 2.1 maybe. Little steps-steps by steps.

the version structure is based on main release of the mod and its 10 main chapters (thats why we ended with 2.0)

Increasing the version number just for minor updates such as bonus missions would make stuff more complicated during the patch process.

first impressions means they will try it or not. i don,t think changing version numbers each time something is updated will entice them to play either. i respect the mod owner and the team know what they want the mod to do and where it is heading as they always have. i,m sure we are all aware it is an old game but doing pretty darn good to have creative mod like crossfire added to it and be still in the top ten its important to remember that we all have r/l and its a game that more importantly is played over many timezones. suggestions are always welcome but sometimes its not possible.

I wanted to let you discuss a bit more.

I am a bit late with the reply but here we go.

Ill comment on the initial ideas and suggestions

Quote from ILIYAN

Hello ladies and gents,

As the title says it, I'm writing you this message regarding the Roleplay that we have in CF and what we can do improve it. We've had these types of discussions in the past, but didn't lead to any positive feedback (probably because we drifted away from giving the ideas and it turned into a debate), so this time I propose that whatever ideas we get, we take the best of them and start building up from there and implementing them into CF.

First off, I'll start writing you what people have suggested to me before and then I'll give my ideas because small things truly matter, it kind of reminded me just now of "Luke 16:10".

So, let's start.

Proposements:

1) People want to buy ammo/upgrades from every base, rather than cruise for an hour-two around Sirius (and even more if they have to travel to the other sectors) to get what they need. (Maybe except for Singleplayer, that could be ONLY for MP, after all, MP must have all of the benefits).
2) Being able to buy whatever you wish regardless if you're neutral OR friendly, of course that would be an exception if you're hostile to the base/faction. Because as it is now in CF, you must be friendly in order to buy an item or a vessel, which is kind of ridiculous because in RL at least, you don't have to be a friend to every client so you can do business with them.
3) Return of the highly rewarding trades (such as BMGs, Exploits like those in New Berlin - Stuttgart with the Prisoners), the exploits should be constants like they were before and only the BMGs should be rare (like twice a week). Also, mining should be implemented as well... yes, we do have mining now, but not as developed as it should be. My idea (ok you'll read it in the ideas section).
4) They are really tired of having their every new character having nothing (imagine if you've explored the whole CF Universe and when you make a new character, it was like all for nothing) -> I'll expand that in the Ideas section.
5) Traveling takes up too much time -> I'll expand that in the ideas section.
6) When you're driving a Capital Ship (either that be a train or a Battleship), when it hits a rock it'd be best NOT to do a 360 degree turn, but just "move-aside" -> a little optimization

Ok...so let's bring in the ideas (the proposements still count as ideas though, those were just a few that I've heard from the people).

Ideas:
1) What if we were to bring ALL of the CF Sectors into play? What I mean is, we don't always get to start from New York and have all of the action in Sirius. The other sectors in CF remain desolate only except if we have to go there and buy something (or take the alien weapons). Now what I propose is the following:
- If you get to start from New York, you're bound to be Liberty Affiliation and you can freely go throughout Sirius as long as you have a good reputation (also the other factions in Sirius such as the germans, japanese, britains etc. should be included as well with a starting point - the faction's HQ or home planet).
- If you start with the russians, you can freely visit Sirius as long as you buy a bribe/license because as long as I remember, the Coalition isn't really friendly with the factions of Sirius
- If you start in Sol (from Earth), as The Order... I guess the same applies.
Ok, so you get where I am going with this, right?

Now... what would be the benefits for each faction?

- Custom paint job (their ships)
- Custom license for your affiliation
- Trent's new outfit and maybe a tattoo signifying that he belongs to ____ faction.
- You get to have special missions only for your own sector (go NPC hunting) and maybe you can also hire an npc squadron to go with you on your missions, which those missions must award you well
- And maybe other things to do in your sector that you've chose to start from. Perhaps if you start off as GMG, your purpose would be to go into the Inner Core and do those 'special' missions with an npc squadron by your side that would bring you amazing rewards. Same applies for The Order, their mission is to protect Sirius from the Nomad threat, right? Let's make that a reality as well. Perhaps, if you have the option to start as a Nomad, you can do the same -> Attack Sirius.

And that is ONLY for "PvE" type of Roleplay... what if we bring the PvP part of that? o_O We'll have unending battles, hehe.
=> So, you get the idea.

2) Maps
- If you start off from Sirius, you should have the entire Sirius sector explored. If you want the other sectors explored as well, you might buy those 'charts/maps' from the bar. That should apply for the Altair sectors too. People told me that they don't want to keep minimizing the game and browse through the CF Wiki here on the portal in order to know where they are going, they want to have the whole map visible In-Game (like it's in the other games).

3) Traveling
- Due to the RL of most people, they don't want to waste so much time traveling in order to get where they want to. What if we enable an FTL Drive or Teleport in specific parts of the CF Universe? At least to cut their traveling time significantly, so they can get to the action fast and... have their fun.
=> Especially a teleport would be amazing for the Arena when an event is about to begin, so they can instantly jump there and participate.

4) Bombers / Battleship-Slayers
- We currently have NO vessel or weaponry able to take out a Battleship. The only vessel you have that is able to take out a Battleship, is unfortunately your VHF - And in which you have to be really good in order to fight a battleship and even that is a boring-type of PvP.

So, what I propose is this:
- Bring back some Destroyers (like the Kusari Destroyer) and make special bombers that are agile enough and deadly enough to take out a Battleship in just 3-4 shots. Torpedos that are able to destroy it in just a few shots (3-4 should suffice). Because the best torpedo that we have available is the Coalition Torpedo and its max damage is like, what.. 30-35k? Not to mention you can't have 50 of those, but only 15-20 at best due to the weight and Battleship with the Armor Upgrade has 900k Armor, so good luck destroying one anytime soon.

5) Trading
- As I've already mentioned the trading, exploits and BMGs shouldn't be only in Sirius but also in the other sectors (if we get the Affiliation things working) and being able to make 100-200mil an hour or so with the exploits, with the BMGs even higher => Because people don't want to waste so much time, I guess.

ASF vs CSF should be brought back AS SOON as the Server gets populated again. And the paint jobs (for ASF/CSF) should also come into play as well, because really.. the small things matter the most.

We have all of these sectors, all of these awesome factions and stuff... just waiting to be realized and have a purpose. ^ ^


I guess that's all for now, more when I get some rest or when I do some brainstorming throughout the week. OK people, THIS IS YOUR TIME TO SHINE, time to bring those ideas of yours here and what of them we can make them possible!

In the end, all would be left is to advertise the new things throughout the internet so we can bring some people back to CF (and possible new ones), but ONLY when we make those awesome ideas a reality first.



- Yours truly,
ILIYAN (formerly Cryzis)

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1. Ammo being sold everywhere in SP and MP.

Well, SP and MP are connected so it would be tricky to seperate it (not impossible). The way I see it some faction specific ammo (e.g. Coalition) should remain in the specific territory. It makes not much sense if factions sell their ammo to enemy factions.

However, I can imagine an exception. Clan bases. It would be possible to allow clan traders to have access to all ammo. This way the clans would gain a bit more importance, the SP is not affected at all and the weapons are officially not sold by enemy factions.

2. Bying stuff when neutral.

That is possible but the way I see it this would potentially lower the effort for players to such a level that they might get everything they want with ease and get bored.

Maybe I am wrong with that but the sweetest fruits usually hang up very high in the trees.

3. Return of highly rewarding trades.

Generally I dont think that money is an issue in the game. RP however is.

I personally like the dynamic way how trades work atm. Every once in a while a super lucrative route appears because stuff is pretty much random.

4. hmmm

5. hmmm

6. This is tricky. The FL engine is very hard to handle. If you have good fighter gameplay usually battleship due to their size and mass sucks. You can get around with it by reducing the mass but then they fly more light fighter ships. To find a working balance is really really hard.

I can try to take a look into this issue but I can not promise that I can come up with something that would be an improvement.

(ideas section)

1. Alternative starting locations are in theory possible. That however is something Huor needs to include server side.

I can not say how much work that would be at all, Im just the wrong person to ask here.

What I can say for sure is that limiting the reputation to a faction is by default not supported by FL. I can imagine that it can be controlled via server software (e.g. resetting the reputation on every launch so the main Affiliation is set). I am not sure which side effects this would have. For sure you wouldnt be able to change Affiliation to a different faction any longer.

As for the listed benefits.

- Custom paint jobs wont be possible (the textures are client controlled and adresses via hash codes -> it wouldnt be possible to change textures and also very hard showing the alternative textures to other players). It might be possible to have completely different looking version of ships and replace the default ones if max affiliation is reached via our CES (content exchange system). Question would be how to texture that many ships again.

- Custom licenses - why? what kind of licenses? For what purpose?

- Trents outfit -> in theory possible to change if we have such a feature included in the server software

- Special missions per faction would not be possible. The stuff that is offered at the bases is offered to ALL players equally no matter what faction they have. The mission layout is based on the faction that offers it... not the person who accepts the mission. NPC wingmen are generally possible in FL but usually have a few gameplay issues. Some stuff might break here. I also would like to see players teaming up more than having people with NPCs wings.

- There never will be the point where you fly nomad or dk ships. I am totally against that. Human players should play with ships that actually have cockits with humand interfaces.

2. I always considered exploring the universe a fundamental part of the game. Starting with a full map in my eyes is not what keeps people playing the game. Exploration does.

Already today you can visit bars and the NPCs there will tell you rumors about interesting places which then automatically get added to the map. If people think that we need to include more of these rumors when sure... point out what is missing and I will include it.

Map information is stored per character not per account.

3. FTL... ok. And what would happen to RP when people teleport out of critical situations?

What happens to trading when people teleport from one base to another?

Teleporting to Arena might be an option... yes. But only during events and I have no idea who to make that possible atm. Huor might have an idea... dunno.

Another question would be how stable such an FTL would be. I know that teleportation commands in the past have lead to crashes. There certainly are ways to prevent that meanwhile but I am not really sure about the current state.

4. As far I can tell we have specific torpedoes on cap ships which can deal massive damage on battleships. Also are some cruisers and gunboats primarily designed to bring down battleships. If tweeks are required in that area I am open for suggestions.

I generally oppose the suggestion to be able to take out battleships with ease in just a few shots. Whats the point of battleships if they can not endure longer?

5. If people can make 100-200mio per hour... what are they going to do tomorrow? After a day trading they wont need money any longer and players might have no reason to play anymore.

I generally dont see the current trading system a weak point here.

We need people to do RP... which means they need to disturb traders... by taxing them... by fining smugglers... by fighting pirates. That is what the server needs in my eyes. Trading by default seems fine to me the way it is. At least I have not heard of a trader on the server that couldnt pay his/her bills.

Quote from Martind Forlon

My personal basic idea is somewhat different here, it is more focused to play a role (and much less focused on PvP itself). Reason is quite simple, PvP is not what majority of players wants or like (for a reasons, and I think can fully support it with personal experience from other "space" game with much more players) and in CF are roles fully focused towards PvP with keeping only low touch with the local game environment itself. Simple server RP rules were working for some time and then slowly stopped for: players leaving to other games, other mod(s) or changing interests due less play times etc etc. The worst imo however is that in CF (MP) is almost complete lack of interest to play certain official role (merc, cop, smuggler, pirate) in a way where it is meaningfull. Meaningfull imo is, that smuggler do smuggling, merc do hunting or helping other roles, pirates chase others (this is very likely only one RP which really was working the longest) and police to keep crimes off (and bcs I played this role for a long time I know well that interest doing Police RP was the lowest). What I experienced allot was that players did almost exactly opposite and avoided play an official role as much as possible, mainly because it was part of PvP ... why I should smuggle when I know that this cop/pirate will chase me, .. meh, I will no do it now and will wait till he logs off ... sounds familiar? ...

Question(s) is(are):

1. can we do some changes to what we have now to bring up more playing a role (and have more fun even if with small number of players at server) without fear of PvP?
2. Is possible make server official RP more tied with local Freelancer/CF environment?

I personally think that if player like to play a role in game, then there is much bigger chance that he will have much less problem accept PvP. One from steps which may help with this is, that ingame environment (NPCs, Factions of FL/CF) will be inseparable part of this. It is just something for discuss here, it could be that it is or will be not possible realise or worse that mod admin will see it as clearly bad idea

---

Few ideas:

Make server role required part for players (i.e. license will be automatically applied after hard-set character play-time) but using different philosophy:

1. license (automatic) will be smuggler: offer not only trade BMGs but increases also normal profit for trading up by 50(?)% . On flip side it however reduce possibilty to be allied with police/pirate factions (maximum +2? bars). It also may reduce profit from missions/pods.
2. Mercenary license: except bounties (PvP) will grant income bonus for all missions and delivering escape pods (+50%). On flip side it will reduce possibility to be allied with Police and Pirates (+2 bar max). It also can reduce profit from trading.
3. Pirates license: except tax, working for pirates factions will grant you income bonus. Flip side is maximum neutral rep with police factions (+2 bars)
4. Police ... opposite to Pirates.

For Police and Pirates licenses: visiting as hostile opposite area will bring heavier damage to your ships (+30% more damage from NPCs).

Coalition license: Increasing trade profit in Coalition up by 200% and the same for missions and pods income (in Altair sector ofc). Flip side is maximum reputation reduction in Sirius space (+2 bars). Coalition pilot can go fully hostile vs Sirius space licenses (and opposite) ... just some basic idea.

All above is just something for discuss, bring new ideas, think little more about RP, i.e. playing a ROLE and this role will make difference how local ingame environment will react on player.

______________________________

EDIT: Reason for +2 postive reputation is disallow ships purchases from "opposite side" ... can be maybe too harsh, I think +3 allows buy so it could be set as maxiums for examples above.

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I generally agree with what is said about RP. People used to avoid it when possible and we somehow need to avoid it. When people start avoiding RP... others will follow until there is no RP at all.

That is the core problem.

That is also why other servers manage to keep RP running... they simply dont allow that RP can be avoided.

We dont need any hardcore RP rules that restricts players more than it should... but we need something that prevents that our RP system collapses once every few months.

1. an automatic application of licenses would be nice... I just dont know how to trigger it.

We also would need to have a way to prevent that players easily can change licenses and avoid RP this way.

This is pure theory right now but I could turn licenses into internal components so players can no longer unmount them. The question is how players are supposed to choose their role and how to prevent them from simply buying a different license on the fly.

If smugglers get +50% profit from normal trades then people would most certainly avoid Trader RP completely (in my eyes not a good idea) and generally I have no idea how to increase profit for just one faction. As stated before it might be possible to reset reputations using on ever launch if a license is equipmented (dunno atm).

Technical problem with the different price stuctures is the fact that the prices for the clients HAVE TO match the prices on the server. IF its not the case then the player gets banned. So having different price structures depending on what RP a player has (even if I would know how to do it) would instantly lead to a server ban.

2. again... I dont know how to increase the profit range.

3. yep, again the issue with the profit range

4. see above.

It would be great to specialize the RPs more and have their source of income prioritized... but atm I can not tell how to make that possible.

The scaling damage based on RP licenses is also something I am not sure how to do it.

Introduction of a coalition license seems a nice idea.

Quote from (IOC)Ice-Warrior

Proposements:

1)Maybe to buy best equipment has to be in every capital planet not every base to not been so lazy. Or just specific military bases in every sector that could prepare you for war with highly performed weapons, shields and all other stuffs your ship need. All in one place not shields in this base guns on other base(only human guns, for aliens lets go hunt him or to buy only from clans).

2)Bribe on some base or planet for every faction. You can change your frienships with other factions from one place. Who will be your enemy or friend.

3)is good

4)When exploring you can have map explore in all your chars. You are same person no matter you fly with BS, fighter or train you are the pilot.

5)Lets bring jump device only for system to system from one sector. U cant jump from Sirius to Canis. The device will need materials or parts to be produced like cloaking device. That can ruin RP and PvP, so put countdown for use.

6)I dont have problem with rocks with my BS and train but docking in tradelane is pain i hate it.

Ideas:

1)you can start from bretonia, liberty, cusari and rheinland. Home systems have same weak factions for new player. You cant start from coalition there is hard for newbie with starter ship. Also dont start from sol is to early to face styx. We start only in sirius other option will be unbalanced i think. I like custom paint part.

2)good one

3)yeah is good for event teleport not to wait for someone half hour to come from omega 41 and get kill in X system

4)fighters can kill all. Cruisers and destroyers are for killing BS but no one play it.

5)BMGs in other sectors must be more profitable because danger is bigger.

With more players interesting in PvP we can bring back ASF|SCF back on table.

Most of players on CF are older than school years and cant play for long to travel 30min from X to coalition because of RL. Or to escape from doom space to human space is endless run.

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1. in my the ability to buy best equipment should not be possible everywhere. Players need to have a reason to explore the game and to travel around. Ammo... might be an exception.

2. again I think stuff should be spread out for players to actually visit all the different systems

3. ok

4. linking different chars is atm not possible. FL only loads one char at a time.

5. again I consider FTL pretty toxic for RP

6. the issue with battleship docking is the fact that these ships are so tall. The mount required to dock on tradelanes ideally would have to be infront of the ship... the mount for being docked on stations needs to be in the middle. The problem is that the game engine only deals with ONE mount point so you can not have both. For a fighter thats not a big deal since they are smaller and the front and center points are almost the same. To improve the situation I gave battleships faster cruise engines.

(idea comments)

5. making BMGs more lucrative should be possible.

Quote from guenni7

I never joined a Clan because I couldn't decide if I want to tax people or smuggle goods.
Maybe it would be easier with only two types of licence: Good guy (can fine and take merc jobs)/Bad guy (can tax and smuggle).

Regarding the points mentioned at beginning of the tread, I think they would change the feeling while playing very much away from the original game.
People with short time available to play maybe don't even play games with endless space. On the other hand, I spend much time on the game and even I feel that's long travel routes are getting more and more boring. I think I would like faster trade-lanes and that all rifts work both-ways, so you don't have to travel a complete galaxy to get out.
Map exploration status shared on all your chars would be very nice, and much more logical. But I think that's hardcoded in the game.

Another thing we should keep in mind, that some of the ideas mentioned sound like a lot of work for the MOD-writer,
I don't think he's willing to put so much effort into the MOD when the SWAT homepage shows:

Donation Status

0%

0%(0€ from 90€) for the month February

So we maybe should discuss the smaller things that don't need too much work to get it don (As speeding up trade-lanes, that's just changing a number in a ini-file).

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Having only 2 licenses (good vs bad) is a situation we had years ago and it did not turn out working.

It caused significant problems between the players and also was very hard to balance.

Quote from (IOC)Ice-Warrior

Maybe if OP changing the version status of CF with each update like we have new stuffs from start of 2.0 till now. I mean we have renaissance and we still in 2.0. Will have new update soon and still will be 2.0. From point of view of someone who see CF2.0 before 1 year and see it now is still 2.0 he will think "Men this mod is dead no updates from 1 year, no one play it and no one care about putting stuffs there in look other mods they are 8.35 or 4,37 they are far more than Swat-Portal". This type of guy just dont know how much posibilitys we have, and how much things that no one have only because see some highest numbers for basic freelancer with stupid changes. I dont know that is the real case. I just thinkink public.

And i dont want 3.0 for something like new system, just 2.1 maybe. Little steps-steps by steps.

I am generally opposed to chaning the version numbers with each update as this would be a lot of effort behind the scenes.

Everytime the version number changes we have to do updates to the core files and that does not always work correctly in windows for some reason. Alternative would be to create a new installer for every new version and force the players to download the entire mod again... but that would certainly not please the people with bad internet. The effort and the risks of increasing numbers simply is too high to be worth it. Other mods usually don't bother about that stuff... but these other mods usually just come as an ordinary FLMM file and are maybe just a few MB big. For CF it so far was a better method to patch the mod via launcher and not touch the version numbers.

There might be a version 2.01 release someday but final decisions on that are not done yet.

I see that people might think "not much has changes in the past years" when actually many updates were released. I guess we have to think about different means to make changes more visible.

Maybe displaying changes on the launcher somehow and/or informing players better on the download sources.

Quote from guenni7

I think Ice-Worrior has a point here. When I came back after a long time not playing and saw CF still has the same version 2.0, I thought wow, nothing new after such a long time? I knew CF from before, so I downloaded it anyway, but if I would have been new and searching for a MOD I probably would have chosen another one that looks more "under developement".
Nice side-effect with newer versions: A fresh install wouldn't need to download nearly 2K files on first launcher startup (Honestly, I thought that is insane when it did that).


Something I forgot in the first posting: Another way to speed-up travel times would be to shorten the jump animation, it's nice to see for some time, but then it feels just too long. Or an option in settings to disable the whole animation?

It is possible to shorten the jump animations but only for the entire game/all players.

There is no option that would allow a player set a lower value... since that would be cheating. The CF anticheat bans people which try.

If you think about it... it would be an unfair advantage when trying to escape other players.

Quote from ILIYAN

Hmmmmm.... what if we don't put any version numbers or other 'names' to the title of "Crossfire".

What if we just announce all of the changes like a Major Update, like the "Lost Fleet" for example and the name of that Patch would be something like a "RP" title for it, implying what type of new things are going to be implemented.

IF of course all of the ideas that we gather here are going to be implemented, because some points like "is it worth the time and effort" were honest ones, but if we are just going to add new things to the mod itself and not look at the RP aspect of it, then it's really not worth the time and effort.

However, after the new update gets released, if you don't know what else to add to the mod... let's discuss these ideas here in the meantime in case you change your mind.

But in the end, it all comes down to you OP (and the rest of the Dev Team), we are not forcing you here... just decided to share our thoughts. The decision is up to you and we're good whatever you decide.

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Adding the names of the updates would usually be visible only when people are already in the game. I dont see how that would make a difference.

Putting this aside could you instantly tell me how version 1.9 was called, or 1.8, 1.7, 1.6... ? I dont think that people remember such stuff.

• Quote from ILIYAN

  6) When you're driving a Capital Ship (either that be a train or a Battleship), when it hits a rock it'd be best NOT to do a 360 degree turn, but just "move-aside" -> a little optimization

  

  Quote from SWAT_OP-R8R

  6. This is tricky. The FL engine is very hard to handle. If you have good fighter gameplay usually battleship due to their size and mass sucks. You can get around with it by reducing the mass but then they fly more light fighter ships. To find a working balance is really really hard.

  I can try to take a look into this issue but I can not promise that I can come up with something that would be an improvement.

  • The hook has a spin protection mechanism when setup. But as far as i can see asteroids usually wont be considered. I am even not sure if it works as its intended. Although i roughly remember that it had an effect when a player was hitting a BS. Maybe some more experimenting with it could help to understand the algorithm

• 

  Quote from SWAT_OP-R8R

  1. Alternative starting locations are in theory possible. That however is something Huor needs to include server side.

  • Um, yeah. So we span a new player in the middle of no-where with a starflier just because we want to have rotating starting points= Or how is that supposed to work? Or do you mean after you logged out from New York and you login the next day or just the next time you appear at a random set of possible stations - so maybe in Nephele? I am open for ideas how this can work.

• 

  Quote from SWAT_OP-R8R

  3. FTL... ok. And what would happen to RP when people teleport out of critical situations?

  What happens to trading when people teleport from one base to another?

  Teleporting to Arena might be an option... yes. But only during events and I have no idea who to make that possible atm. Huor might have an idea... dunno.

  Another question would be how stable such an FTL would be. I know that teleportation commands in the past have lead to crashes. There certainly are ways to prevent that meanwhile but I am not really sure about the current state.

  • This could become a player command which is generally available. The generality however can be limited depending on special items - similar to the cloaking. At least i could imagine this and depending on the distance the charging could take longer or we take a price (money) which is automatically taken from the player. In general this could be possible - the beam command which the admins can use work similar just without any game play mechanism

• 

  Quote from SWAT_OP-R8R

  1. an automatic application of licenses would be nice... I just dont know how to trigger it.

  We also would need to have a way to prevent that players easily can change licenses and avoid RP this way.

  This is pure theory right now but I could turn licenses into internal components so players can no longer unmount them. The question is how players are supposed to choose their role and how to prevent them from simply buying a different license on the fly.

  If smugglers get +50% profit from normal trades then people would most certainly avoid Trader RP completely (in my eyes not a good idea) and generally I have no idea how to increase profit for just one faction. As stated before it might be possible to reset reputations using on ever launch if a license is equipmented (dunno atm).

  Technical problem with the different price stuctures is the fact that the prices for the clients HAVE TO match the prices on the server. IF its not the case then the player gets banned. So having different price structures depending on what RP a player has (even if I would know how to do it) would instantly lead to a server ban.

  • For my understanding that could be applied only to smugglers. When BMGs would be general available to everyone then as soon as a player has them bought or illegally tractored in or traded them in space a player could automatically get become a smuggler - this would make it necessary that the ships keep one item (internal eventually) free to use for it. But I am not sure if the effort to realize it is higher than the benefit it could bring. I dont have any idea how a pirate or police or trader or merc license could be applied automatically. Somehow this would turn our current license mechanism out of order and concepts needs to be evaluated.
  • Forlon has some good starting points for the discussion. Bonus rewards are possible to calc server sided.
  • I am not sure if its possible to determine serverside if a player is in a hostile area to have an effect of damage it takes and can deliver.
  • Dont get me wrong - i am not against it. But this is something bigger than just a few side notes here.

• 

  Quote from (IOC)Ice-Warrior

  4)When exploring you can have map explore in all your chars. You are same person no matter you fly with BS, fighter or train you are the pilot.

  • Hm... Eventually this could be possible when reading the char file: just have to read all account char files and make the visit section globally (somehow). Could be done with server sided hooking.

• Quote from ILIYAN

  As for "people not wanting to download the huge-sized mod", can we compress it even further? They are able to compress huge BluRay movies into 2-3GBs (with the new x265/HEVC codec), isn't there anything related to modding?

  • Video compression codecs usually don't are good with file compressions. They analyze how much for each frame changes and only compress the none changing part very good. The mod should already be compressed with highest possible compressions. Anyway the idea of the updates provided by the launcher was that only changed files needs to be downloaded. I am not sure how much this would be when we increase the version every now and then, at least there are a lot of files affected (also due to server sided comparison and anti cheat detection). Maybe i find a better concept of doing the download and increase its speed.

All in all there are some good ideas - i would prefer opening special threads for it as then its easier to contribute to one special topic and not mix everything in very long posts.