Posts by Centaurian

Look, everyone, I'm as addicted as

the rest of you, but all this frenetic activity is not helping. Take the week off, go play

Open SP at home, and wait 'till OP gives the "all clear"! This is the best thing you can

do to help the situation... Meanwhile, go to the donation link and drop a few euros in to

encourage OP that he's not just busting his a** to appease a bunch of whiny wankers! Good

things are ALWAYS worth wating for...

I apologize in

advance if this is old stuff for some of you, but I have spent a lot of time searching the

forums to find rules & info on the use of multiple characters in CF. I see from the

serverstats and player activity in the game that many players are using multiple characters,

but I'm not sure how that is supposed to work. Obviously, from the number of possible

cheats on the stat board, there are rules, but I haven't been able to find them. I gather

from game chat how they might be used, but I'd like to do it right, and not get flamed as a

cheater just because I'm ignorant about it... Any and all advise will be appreciated,

thanks!

Inevitably, when

pirates feel no remorse, and have no compunction about ravaging "easy meat", the rest of the

civilized galaxy is compelled to respond in kind, merely out of self-preservation, not to

mention upholding decency and propriety. One does not have to be victimized more than once

to quickly be apprised of this reality. Of course, as in life, we must not drop our guard

and present them irresistibly easy targets!

As for me, I will gladly come to the

aid of anyone I see under fire by these reprobates, and hope that most of you would return

the favor...[81]

OP, I didn't see a fix for Holman station in that

list. I had forgotten that you had sent out a warning on that base, and tried like 3 times

to dock there the other day, resulting in server crashes. I finally remembered, but could

you put a warning on the console announcements until it's fixed? That might help cut down

on crashes...? Or am I hallucinating again?

Thanks to Vlad's tip, and the tips on mapping, i got thru in maybe

less than 3 hrs. I spent a lot of that time shooting 'hunters, as they were a nuisance for

me. Biggest problem was server lag, as i had several jumps where i was clear of the gate,

but had my ship explode as if it hit a minefield. another player was with me at the time,

and he got nuked, too. Word to the wise: if there's a lot of lag, spare yourself the

frustration and get thru it when there aren't many players on. The worst of it for me was

with more than 20 players. Granted, my ping is normally 190 here in Arizona (even w/1.5

mbps DSL), but the game is normally quite playable. Either way, it was an interesting

problem!

I ordered Starlancer on Amazon today (new, retail box) for $8 US, including US

shipping. The "Shroud" is on the cover!

OK, well OP, how does one atone for having taken a passing interest in other

servers? I mean, once I finally got online, and saw how many there were, I picked a few

that each had something different. However, I have been spending all my time at CF, exept

when the server goes down, and only then do I switch to a competing server until CF comes

back up. You can confirm this by checking times... Had I known this would come up, my

choices would have been different! Anyway, I respect your uncompromising commitment to

keeping the community pure and friendly for all who wish to join it.

BTW, I just got

Starlancer (new retail box) on Amazon for $8 US, including shipping. Lo and behold! The

"Shroud" adorns the cover!

@ Rubby: that is the coolest sig! I would love to know how you do that...

@

Raven19: what time are you on? Since you're so willing to suit up in a body bag, I might

as well give you a hand...

Here in AZ, we call it

Taco Hut or Pizza Bell, since they can't make up thier minds... You got to be careful not

to drink too much of that tasty Baja Blast Dew! Haven't seen one here w/KFC, maybe that's

the problem...[690]

You can still get a decent Logitech (USB)

joystick from newegg.com or zipzoomfly.com for about $20US. I got one for another game, but

was disappointed that more of the buttons did not have actual interface w/game controls.

The stick calibrates fine, but most of the new games don't interface with the stick

buttons. Works ok for flying, though I've gotten spoiled by having steering, throttle, and

guns all in one hand w/mouse... Now, though, I guess i'm going to have to check out SL,

even though I'm already existing on 4 hrs. sleep/day!

10. Bank of Sirius - This could be a

fantastic additional faction! Orbital Spa & Cruise would be the template, since they

already have armored transports & ornate uniforms. There would be one Bank base in each

house, using a modified prison ship (looks like a vault), stationed near a battleship for

security, surrounded by weapons platforms or minefields. The Bank would ally with military

& police only (BMM/Kreuger possible exceptions), would trade in precious metals and

diamonds, buying consumables at 10% higher rate than other bases in the same system.

Bounties for jobs would also be 10% higher than other bases. Each House has at least one

good location for such a base: Liberty = inside NY Alaska Gate minefield, or between Rio

Grande/Denver in Colorado; Kusari = south of Kyushu battleship or between Shikoku

battleship/prison; Rheinland = south of Hamburg battleship & Planet Kiel; Bretonia = west of

New London or between Cambridge/Bship Norfolk(?). The fun new feature of this faction

would be its role as a surrogate Swiss bank for the economy: instead of a news ticker in

the bar, the news icon would be replaced with a safe icon. This would bring up the Trade

screen, which would then be used to place guns/goods/cash into the players safe deposit

box. Players would be limited to one box anywhere in Sirius, and may only make transactions

with it at the branch where it was opened. There would no doubt need to be a capacity

limit, similar to a ships cargo hold for goods/guns, and maybe $200 million in cash. The

question is whether the cash amount will conflict with the games limit on player cash. The

vault would then serve as a player repository for surplus equipment, and rare cargos. This

scenario also creates a whole new category of piracy activities and targets, and more astute

reputation management. For instance, if your box is in Kusari, and you are hostile to

Kusari Police, the bank might not let you dock, no matter how badly you need to get to your

stash! Since its functioning as a Swiss bank, players could also stash black market goods,

or even buy unmarked securities from the bank (also black market).

8. Mountable Broussard collectors - There are large expanses of the CF

universe filled with gas/dust clouds which display as minable in the navmap, yet there are

no means to mine the unidentified resources. To more fully use the colorful nebulae in

these systems, a Broussard collector (postulated in Star Trek and elsewhere) could be

mounted by those players interested in gas mining. These would be scaled to ship size as

shields are, but with penalties for weight, cargo capacity and combat survivablility. The

weight of the unit would be comparable to adding supplemental level 1 armor, with a fixed

sacrifice in cargo space of 25-50 units, depending on ship size, to discourage its use on

fighters. The combat penalty would accrue if volatile gases were in its tank (oxygen,

hydrogen, methane); hull breach would occur @ 10-20% integrity instead of 0%, to reflect

detonation of the collector tank. Gases would be added to the commodity list, and

correlated with the color of gas clouds: green = nitrogen, blue = oxygen, orange = carbon

monoxide (think Leeds smog!), red = hydrogen, yellow = chlorine, dark green = methane.

Additionally, gas mining would put the freelancer in direct competition with GMG, so they

will never be friendlier than neutral, even after bribes, and hostile most of the time!

Some metric of distance/# gas units would have to be set for collection rates.
9. Space

anomalies - Space is a harsh environment, and ships are fragile in the face of staggering

physical forces. This could be made more immediate by random, infrequent cosmic events

which render a system or systems impassible, or nearly so, due to increased radiation, comet

swarms, passing black hole, whatever. These would be of medium duration, and be lethal to

all but the strongest ships (think of Omega-11). Notices of these events would appear in

the news service in the bars of all bases in the surrounding area, or all of Sirius. Such

events complicate travel, which is the kind of thing we face in our commute every day; so

why not in space?

5. Clan Flagships - Allow each

serverclan to pick a ship design that will be unique to their clan, complete with clan logo

livery. (The ship colors here would be easier to implement than pasting them to every clan

members ship.) These ships would only be available to clan members at a base within clan

territory, and might have a unique weapon. This gives more prestige to being a clan member,

and adds spice to clan campaigns.
6. Clan bases & music - Allow serverclans to select

the base exterior & interior design, and perhaps uniform. Currently, all the x-worlds seem

to have the same base & bar. Since unique music plays when the Nomads appear near any

player, and when players enter different systems, perhaps clans could choose some MP3 files

they would like to represent them (for example, shark theme from Jaws, Empire fanfare from

Star Wars, etc.)
7. Clan news posts - News items that clans wish to publicize could

possibly be imported from a clanserver forum into the news service in the bars of bases

close to the clans home system. An example might be a news flash that X clan has issued

KOS orders to its members against all Y clan members in Sirius, signaling the start of yet

another clan war This would give players a new reason to read the news at bases!

3. AI bounties

- If #2, above, is possible, the same generator might be used to generate bounties within

systems for players who have exceeded the nominal bribe threshold with factions based in

that system. These bounties would then appear on the job boards of bases in that House, and

become available for any player to take on. This would add significantly to the

opportunities for PvP, except for the standard exemptions (NY, players under rank 24, etc.).

For example, if a player continues to attack Bowex ships (anywhere in Sirius) past the

$150K threshold, then Glasgow and other bases in Leeds would post a bounty (essentially a

job) on all job boards in Bretonia. I think the trick here would be to either issue the job

when that player is within the system (like Leeds), or to somehow decouple the job from the

Mission Commission, so that the job can be done without the assignment of waypoints, ranges,

etc.
4. Random jumphole instability - In the SP game, the characters mention checking to

see if jump holes are phase aligned before attempting to enter them. As an alternative to

closing gates and jumpholes in order to discourage extreme wealth accumulation, make the

jumpholes lose their alignment on a rotating basis, so that they remain closed for a

period of 10-20 minutes. This makes piracy a much riskier proposition, makes pilots think

on their feet more of the time (especially when fleeing from enemies), and is more

consistent with popular theories about wormhole behavior. It also drives more traffic to

the established trade lanes, where pirates have more targets to compensate them for their

increased difficulty of escape.

Okay, at the risk

of being flamed as a spammer, I'm posting these ideas per OP's suggestion. I'll break

the lot into pieces, so it doesn't turn into a book, and so you can all blow out whatever

items have already been hashed over...
Crossfire/Sirius Expansion Ideas

The

following features are offered, hopefully, in ascending order of difficulty with respect to

implementation. Consider this a wish list for improving the dynamics of the game in real

time. It is my hope that other Freelancers will also see them as enriching the

already-superb experience of the Crossfire gaming community! -Centaurian

1.

Long-range scanners - Currently, the longer-range scanners do not appear to provide much

benefit, especially in the subspace group. A player needs to be able to target a ship from

long range to scan it, and at the moment, there is no visual cue to do so. Perhaps this can

be fixed to at least display the ship target [ ] in white, to provide a scan target. The

ship would be listed in the HUD box as soon as it came within scan range, and that listing

updated with the visual display. Upon scanning, the target changes to the appropriate color

to represent the reputation status.
2. Dynamic bribe costs - The current maximum bribe

cost is $150k, irrespective of extenuating circumstances. This cost would be adjusted

upward by the AI if a player is acting on a Kill-on-Sight policy, for instance. While there

is already a time and service modifier to reduce the necessary bribe, it seems logical that

a continued campaign by a player would increase the settlement, even to the point where the

rift could become irreconcilable. A unit cost per attack could accrue up to some threshold

(say, $1 million), where a blood feud would ensue, and the enemy status would be more or

less permanent. If a player is successful in killing the wanted player, the

recently-deceased players rep with the contractor would be wiped, and start at zero. But

since most players wont know why someone is out to get them, they are not going to allow

themselves to be killed just to fix their rep woes.

Even weak support makes for a useful distraction! Once you get a REAL ship, even the

40+ missions are gravy train...

So, you're wishing for

pirates, eh? Be careful what you ask for... So far I've only raided corporate ships, and

then only when they've shot at me first. Add to that the annoyance of neutral houses

siding with hostile (to me) corporations when i want to trade, puts me in a foul humor, and

I may be tempted to take it out on some hapless freighter, especially if they're in a clan

that's dissed me.
Still, the whole economy depends on maintaining some

relationships,which makes the shifting alliances all the more interesting. If you fall

asleep out there, you may get a rude awakening!

well, here in AZ, I never

saw more than 25 players, and the server shut down 4-5 times w/no warning, usually after 1-2

min red lag icon. ( I have 1.5 mbps DSL) most players got right back on in only a minute

or so, so no real bummer IMHO. Just mildly annoying. BTW, all the SP jh's now seem to be

closed; is that part of the plan to stop instant millionaires?

Ok, so I'll just wipe it, re-download and reload then? I'll

try it tonite. Thanks for the quick reply. OP uber alles!

Since I started trading in Black Market goods, I've seen a problem with my tractor beam.

Most of the time, I can add BM goods to my cargo even if the hold is full of "normal" goods,

so they don't seem to have a space limitation. However, when i've already got a larger

number of BM units in my hold than the "normal" capacity, I can't tractor in normal goods.

The tractor stays engaged, but I don't get the normal "tractor failure" warning as when the

hold is full. Also, the tractor will not disengage unless I fly out of range. I've lost a

couple of good salvages to this. I've also had a similar tractor hang in Stuttgart with

only normal goods aboard. All this in a Titan. Please advise, Danke!