Posts by SWAT_OP-R8R

there we go...

ignore what I wrote above... going to give the coalition hq a 4th try

As already mentioned 2 weeks ago on discord, there was a small setback since my USB drive died and all data on it, inlcuding the latest version of the update, was lost.

It took me a week to restore everything that already was finished and working but I lost some tools and plenty of assets that can not be restored that easily.

That means I have to do some additional work in order to replace the stuff that got lost.

On top of that I did some decisions regarding the upcoming Event System came to the conclusion that it might be a good idea to put some additional content into the update. This stuff actually was meant to be released at a later point but releasing it prior the event stuff goes live makes more sense.

I am specifically talking about the Order Ship refresh (the Order ships that are only spawning in Sol). These ships are going to be replaced with new 3d models. With the new automatic Event system these ships can be earned in MP by participating in the server events. We are talking about ~20 Battleships/Cruisers/Gunboats and ~5 fighters/bombers.

The ship models hopefully all will turn out to a much higher quality and are meant to mimic the color scheme of the Order fighter (light brownish as a basse color).

Size and handling will be more similar to vanilla ships.

So far I got 50% of these ships into the game already... but there still is pretty much work to be done. Work that I actually wanted to do last weekend but I got stuck with some other 3d model refresh that refused to work until late last night.

If everything works the way I have intended for today I can post some images of the new Coalition HQ later this evening. I had to removel this station 3 times from the scratch to finally get it into the game without errors. But I think the result is worth it.

As of now the update (only the already finished parts) has a size of 1.2 Gb and +800 files. Writing the patch instructions for the launcher will be an intersting task.

Ok, where do I start?

Maybe it is a bit tricky to compare different games or even different mods.

What works for one does not neccessarily have to work for the other.

I know that Discovery has a clan base feature and that back when we developed the one for CF we clearly decided to do stuff differently both in the way how the base is constructed and also how it is maintained. We have a very modular approach and I think this is a strength of our implementation.

This being said... the server side code as a result also is VERY different and making adjustments now is extremely difficult and time consuming. Only Huor who created the original code can do that and I am not really keen to ask him for even more work to do (especially since I requested his help in a different area just recently).

But lets talk about the stuff we currently have.

In order for clan bases to work every system in the game needs to be prepared. Every system already needs to have a dummy base before a clan base can be constructed. This base never is used unless a clan starts the building process. For player bases you literally have to multiply the amount of dummy bases by X and with +150 systens in CF we would end with hundreds or thousands of these preprepared dummy bases.

On top of that each of these bases would require to have interiors.... NPCS.... market settings and adjustments for the dynamic economy.

That is the underlying efffort that needs to be done before even a base can be constructed.

Maintaining the stuff is even worse.

Right now I have a payment system in place that allows me to see which clan has payed for which system and can pretty much check if a clan system still is a clan system based on that.

For payed player bases (if i understand it correctly) I would also have to figure out which player has payed for the base... link the payment somehow to the player account on the server (which I dont knoow how to do) and have a controlling mechanism to figure out which players are no longer paying.

That is an adminstrative mightmare.

On top of all of that there is a bug bugging me ever since the clan bases were introduced.

The server sometimes is mixing up the names and ids of the bases... we have this problem for years and never figured out why it happens. Its a bug we never fixed... therefore I wrote a script which automatically checks clan bases for errors and tries to correct them after they happen.

This seems to be working... but the configuration once again has to be done manually, right after a clan base was constructed. So with player bases the same error mitigation has to be done aswell for every player base. I guess that is going to be even more effort and I would not be able to guarantee that when there are 100 player bases that everything still works as intented.

I still favor clan bases over player bases because of the technical reasons explained above.

And maybe we should try to focus a bit more on how to get more players to the server again... and how to keep them busy with the help of clans.

Originally the clan bases were only be meant to be a foundation for an even bigger gameplay system on the server which unfortunately never was introduced due to a lack of players and the amout of coding effort.

But since we already talk about this topic...

Clans were meant to be able to conquer and extend their territories in CF.

The clan base was the foundation for that from which clans were meant to work for system influence by supporting other systems with supply deliveries.

There is a commodity in the game "supply goods" which pretty much at this point serves no purpose. It can be bought at clan bases and was meant to be delivered to other systems. The server was meant to log this trade and clans which gained a certain amount of influence via these trades would gain ownership over further systems.

At least that was the idea... a competitive long term gameplay loop for clans.

just run the cf installer again and select it there

I guess no reply means "go ahead".

Anyways. The update is going to get a bit bigger since I am in the middle of adding a few thousand bug fixes related to IDs, CRCs and materials. This will fix some minor visual issues and restore some broken wireframe views, but also should in theory improve the stability.

Size of the update currently is well over 500 files and ~700mb. This might further increase but since I want to release this update somewhen this month I probably won't be able to publish everything planned.

The stuff I listed above for sure will be part of the release but there are some experimental changes that just take too long to be implemented (e.g. a rework of bonus mission return to main story scripts). Ill release that stuff as smaller updates later on.

Here are some vids I recorded while working on the current update:

Im trying to gather some info regarding a previously proposed fix to hud elements (speed and thruster) not showing on 4k.

The solution so far was to change two values in fonts.ini to

My question is if worked for both hud versions, modern and classic?

I am working on two bug fixes that in would overwrite this file each time FL is launcher as a side effect. I would want to know if this fix is working for both versions so I can maybe apply these settings by default (si editing the file will no longer be neccessary).

Some might have noticed that the update list above day by day got a bit longer and more detailed.

As work progresses I decided to add a bit more content and do a few additional detail improvements.

While some are self explaining there are others that are not.

There are changes done to Nomads in Inner Core. This involves Nomad encounters which will despite their same ship class have a different, more agressive look. Essentially this is meant to mimic an "evolution". Nomads in Inner Core and Nomads in the outer regions of the galaxy were separated for ages their bio engineered design changed over time in Inner Core.

The Nomad stations in Inner Core also got updated to match the previously updated Nomad design.

Freelancer 2024-03-25 20-36-56.png

Freelancer 2024-03-25 20-37-31.png

The OrderHQ got a small redesign aswell since this station might be used as a trading hub in combination with the new Event system.

Furthermore have I decided to introduce a part of the Coalition refresh. This stuff was more or less sitting on my HDD for 2 years since I was not sure what to do with it.

I guess before it never gets used its best to release the content bit by bit and hope that everything fits.

As a result the appearance of many Coalition stations will change, all along with an improved functionality. All the Coalition stations will have their docking animations improved. Most of the stations will receive mooring ports to allow cap ships to dock them. A very few of them will even have mooring ports that can be used by large freighters and trains. This might introduce new trading opportunities and will improve the usefullness of cap ships also in the Altair sector.

I have so far only been able to test the small ship docking ports of the stations. In theory the mooring ports should be working but I simply do not have the time to test them all with all the different ship classes. IF there are issues on some stations these need to be reported via Ticketsystem and I can try to fix it later on.

With the update of these coalition stations I also have done a complete revision the general docking behavior of ALL the ships in CF. This would have some positive effects on NPC behaviour in all sectors of the map and might reduced locked docking states in some areas.

There are more changes and improvements that might be introduced but for some stuff I need some help of Huor.

no its part of vanilla FL

faction fc_f_grp

a faction without description

where did you find this?

good question, next question (I have no answer to this yet)

The "Nomad Planet Killer Event" (for a lack of a better name) is going to be an upcoming automatic server event prototype.

Prototype because it might be the foundation for many more similar events or events with a different structure but same automatic nature.

At this point I have to mention everything is highly experimental and most certainly will have to be rebalanced during the first few iterations.

There also might be unforseen technical issues that have to be sorted out after the first event runs.

Background/Idea

The FL intro describes the exodus of the Alliance fleet from the Sol system and the extended non-canon Intro shows that Earth is destroyed by the Nomads right after that.

In Crossfire I went with the version of the original Intro and some aspects of the extended version. Here the Nomad attack happened... but did not destroy Earth. Instead it only whiped out the remaining humans on it (cleansing it).

With the return to Sol and the recolonization of it the Event scenario is based on the return of the Nomads to once more whipe out all human life in Sol.

For the duration of this Event the task is to destroy a Nomad Planet Killer which is escoted by Battleships, Reapers, fighters, bombers etc. (the whole variety of Nomads).

Destroying any kind of Nomad capital ships will lead to a reward drop.

Damaging the Nomad Planet Killer by x% will periodically lead to a reward drop. (e.g. do 5% damage you get a loot drop, do 10% you get another... 15% etc. )

Destroying the Nomad Planet killer will eventually lead to a much bigger amount of rewards.

The Event will last for 24 hours.

Not destroying the Planet Killer atm has no consequences but once I have figured out how to log stuff like this a kind of penalty will be introduced. (this whole thing still is in an early stage)

What will the reward be like?

For the first tests of this event probably just dummy rewards will be used to avoid that wrong balancing lead to an unwanted flood of reward drops. Maybe some energy crystals... dunno yet.

Later on I was playing with the idea of introduced a reward currency. Some kind of token that can be collected accross multiple kinds of automated events and once the player has collected enough token there would be a reward shop where special stuff can be obtained. This in the end would work similar to how cloaking devices are currently assembled.

The token system would allow players to prioritize on what reward they want or need and reduce the "bad luck" part of the looting. I also think that the replayabilty of these events will increase.

This event will repeat periodically once tested and balanced.

The server news (on the launcher and on stations) will inform players when this event is active.

Future events might be based on similar invasion type structures but also might add an exploration factor into it. One idea of this would be to have time limited wrecks which contain token or even mining operations (which only can be done using Mining ships), kinda like a gold rush scenario.

However, first this Nomad event.... and more information about it will be published here once available.