Posts by MeVriS

I definitely see your viewpoints there. Playability is the main concern for me as well that's why was carefull about this and asking if it would be possible. I already shared my thoughts about the most likely outcome (in my opinion, that is). It would just be nice to have some diversity in your loadouts as off now there really isn't. You either use the weapons with a high fire rate or a lower fire rate or a mix of both if their projectile speed is matching. But overall there is not much difference other than personal preferences.
The fact that changes to some degree would at least implicy a more realistic universe is just a nice side effect to this. It just would cover a wider variety of playstyles. Of couse it would mean that some guns wouldn't be as much used as other guns, especially in 1v1 pvp but that is the case already anyway. People mostly use either the Coalition Gatlings or the PPC and maybe some alien weapons as they are basically the same weapons with slightly different damage values. As for the balance: Vanilla Freelancer never was a particularly well balanced game as there where always guns or modules in general that where straight up better than others. That's not bad at all as it encourages you to search for this better stuff but just adding more variety to already existing weapons wouldn't nessecarily break this concept, it just would mean an awfull lot of testing and balancing but as the weapons never where really well balanced in the first place you guys could only improve it
There are already different roles for pilots for working together as a team, especially in bigger events. There are battleships, repair ships, bombers and stuff and they do fit together quite good but when you're out exploring in a small team with your friends or maybe clan mates with only some VHF there are only little options to do things. In fact, almost everyone has the same stuff on similar ships with only little degrees in variation. Maybe one has a ship with more b/b on it for sharing if nessecary. maybe one has a ship with more cargo to haul all that stuff you come across. That's good as it is but in case of weaponry there does pretty much only one doctrine exist as an awful lot of other options right now are either not effective or simply not existant.
You allready have a pretty much none combat effecting role system with mercs and smugglers, etc. Why not giving the player the option to choose from different combat roles, aside from which ship you are piloting? The long range lasers are just one option to choose from and it's still a pretty much raw idea that could be adjusted. I even have to admit, I have developed this idea more or less on the run. My first concern was that slow moving laser-projectile-whatever-thingies where somehow bothering me but somehow as I kept on writing... this whole idea came up
Hopefully you guys can figure out what I'm trying to suggest here but for me the whole idea is kinda intrigueing. Personally I'd like some more variety, some factor "x" you'd have to handle in larger engagements or engagements in general. And hopefully you can see the point. It would be a change but if done propperly it wouldn't break the game. Personally I don't have much experience with other mods beside Crossfire as I stopped playing freelancer shortly after it was out and I was through the campaign, There weren't many good mods around that time and so I lost interest in the multiplayer pretty fast as, beside occasional dogfights somewhere in omicron with everyone piloting Titan, Sabre or Eagle, the game offered little to do. You changed that a lot and keep changing and adding things even now, more than 10 years after release and you're doing a pretty damn good job at it and CF 2.0 is already loaded into the tubes, ready for launch but if you don't intend to stop after 2.0 you need ideas for 2.1 and 2.2 and 8.9
This would be such an idea I believe. Just make a note, stick it to your wall and if time comes to give it a second thought you can still decide whether to do it or to let it be just a note on your wall

I haven't found any similar threats regarding this and as change to numerous projectile speed values would massively impact the way the game is being played I'm suggesting this on a very, veeeery carefull basis. But I still feel it needs to be adressed in some way as space sims or simulations in general try to be as close to reality as possible while still providing fun gameplay.
Simply said: The thought of laser based weapon's "Projectiles" travelling at speeds ranging from 700 to 1100 m/s is plainly mind boggling as even most common used projectiles these days reach that speed inside eath's dense atmosphere and with gravity pulling them down. I mean, if being overly realistic, even spacecraft could easily outrun these "Lasers".
Laser rays would travel at about 0.99 lightspeed in normal space relatively close to a star which would be about 299.000 km(!)/s
I don't say you should change every laser's projectile speed to that degree as you'd technical wouldn't even see any shiny pewpew anymore but you could triple or quadruple the speed (to create the illusion of light speed) and drastically reduce the damage of laser and many particle based weapons.
The aiming assist of FL is broken anyway. Anything farther away than 400m and not moving directly towards you or away from you'd only hit if it doesn't change direction at all as your weapons fix themselfes to that tiny red cross as soon as your crosshair gets close to it.
So while making lasers less usefull at close ranges with reducing their damage they''d instead become more like the "sniper" category of weapons as the improved projectile speed would counter the horrible aiming assist - I mean it IS horrible. Sometimes my weapons even completely switch targets on their own if another ship is slightly ahead of and very close to my current target. Call me stupid but I haven't yet found a way to turn the assist off. If anyone knows how, please, pleeeeease share your knowledge with me, oh wisest of elders
If you consider this request stupid simply ignore it and don't be mad at me. There's some contra, no doubt but the pro would be whole new weapon category without even introducing new weapons at all. And a new support ship role as well for group pve and pvp. On it's own a ship with these situational weapons would be highly outclassed against the standard close range brawler but they'd shine at long ranges. Maybe raising the power consumption as well would further limit their close range capabilities.
Technical I don't see any obstacles besides the question: can the graphics engine even handle projectiles moving that fast or would they blur or flicker in a way that would not be asthetic at all? Asthetic isn't a main concern but I still believe it quite important.

Star Citizen is a two edged blade as it stands now. Roberts did some amazing games in the past and takes credits for providing help in the development of some other great games (like Freelancer itself) but there were as well some more or less catastrophic projects. I'm still curious though as modern technology applied in the right way could massively improve gameplay on space sims. But you're right, OP. The way it's been hyped over the last months is mildly said: concerning. Normally such a hype means the game will either be a total failure, bugged beyond measure and completely unfinished on release or it will be candidate for game of the year. At least that applies to AAA games backed by large publishers like EA, Ubisoft and co. but there has never been an independent kickstarterproject hyped to this degree so there is basically no way to indicate which way Star Citizen will take.
Either way, even if it comes in an unfinished state it will be a massive competitor to CF as there are not many comparable games still played and still functioning on modern systems and I do believe, from the way Star Citizen has been showcased so far, that it will be comparable to CF in terms of online gameplay and there are a lot of people out here hungering for fancy graphics and propper physics even if it's not needed to make a good space sim. That's not a bad thing in general as, if we are all honest, the genre badly needs more attention and the way this attention is gained these days is through fancy graphics, pathetic as it may be. And the reason why attention is so important is simple - even a great game like CF is no fun to play if there is none around to play with because nobody knows of it's existance.
I myself came here simply because Star Citizen made me hot again for space sims, so I did some reseach about what is available right now and eventually found this. And if Star Citizen happens to be successfull in the end and in a playable state unlike X -Rebirth for example it eventually will gain even more attention and as Freelancer is highly related to Chris Roberts and discussed in Star Citizen Forums more people will know about Crossfire as it is sure to mentioned as high quality mod or even unofficial addon to FL.
And if it happens to be unsuccessfull diasappointed people might start looking for alternatives out of frustration and eventually end up here.
Either way, keep up the great work as I do believe more and more people will start playing CF simply because the genre gets a lot more attention then during the last 5 years or so. And all because of Star Citizen (for good or bad we don't know yet ^^). CF needs more playes and it truly deserves more attention.

Sol News

Title: Latest victims to the Kessler Effect

This is Sol News Broadcasting with the latest news,
Today an uncautious maneuver of an unregistered spacecraft on the run from local authorities caused a chain reaction inside the dense debris field around Earth. Two freigthers caught by suprise suffered extensive damage by drifting wreckages leaving one dead due to secondary explosions on one of the freighters while numerous broadcasting and surveilance sattellites where either destroyed or rendered beyond repair. Citizens of Asia could easily witness an impressive spectale as the sky was lit by falling debris for several hours. The government promised yet again to provide a quick solution for this uncalcuable thread to orbital shipping. Official speaker of ALG Waste Disposal (ALG), Reinhard Schneider, has announced that ALG is offering immediate support. The debris around Earth, it's oldest parts originating back to mankind's first attempts of space flight, have posed a constant thread to pilots over centuries, the thread only growing more potent as dozens of Coalition cruiser and battleship wreckages along possibly hundreds of fighters were added to the globe of orbiting waste during the Nomad Invasion of Sol.

This was Kate Harper on Sol News Broadcasting.

Well, err.. If had known what my suggestion would cause I'd have kept my mout shut
Nevertheless, thanks for the explanation, why it won't happen until MS stops being greedy (hah! Silly meee... )
I totally understand the reasons now that I'm aware of them and I admit personally that I prefer having licenses and huge pewpews over shiny new engines
So, I suppose we can call this one closed now

I actually meant inertia thrusters - the one's nessecary for an object to be able to turn on it's own in space. Sorry if I wasn't clear enough on that. But if game says no it says no. I don't have any modding experience with freelancer whatsoever and only very little with modding overall. To be honest, I didn't really think of it to be realizable as you guys would surely have come up with a similar idea in all that time but I still felt the need to make the request just in case none of you thought about it yet
Besides: me visiting any forum at all and making suggestions just means I'm really, REALLY engaged with the game and concerned about it's future as I normally avoid forums or social networks in general like the plague
Eventually I'll come up with an idea that would actually be realizable or some of the stuff of my rubbish ideas would still help you come up with something entirely different - I'll just keep up making way too ambitious requests until then

Just thinking, but to serve both viewpoits you could introduce inner-sector warp anomalies that only capital ships would be able to enter on their own. Others would have to be in formation with the capital to be dragged along into the anomaly. The exits would be other anomalies and therefore fixed in place but you would be able to choose of different destinations (inside the current sector) and there would only be very few of this anomalies. Other players could easily montor this and even more important: they would provide an excellent ressource for clans to fight for as every clan would love to have untaxed and safe access to one of these anomalies. Personally I think this would spice up PVP and RP as well rather than killing it and it would give players and clans some late game ambitions to expand, explore, exterminate, exploit (make it a 4X Game ). naturally these anomalies would only occur in systems that are ownable to clans with one or two exceptions to allow to get into vanilla space - exit only (which could still enhance piracy and smuggling) - Just an idea It could be hard to do with whatever tools you have, don't know but I think similar mechanics are already used in vanilla and CF campaign. If you are uncertain you could introduce this in an extra update to see how players use this "fast travel" or if it is used at all due to the massive restrictions. And if massively breaks anything you could still kick it out again later. I don't think it's really needed but it wouldn't hurt to try out this or a similar system as soon as CF 2.0 is out and you got some time to catch breath and think of things to come.

The idea is simple and in my opinion those two things are currently the only parts of your ship you can't really customize to your needs. While simple this would still be some mayor project and therefore I don't think it would still fit into CF 2.0 at this stage but maybe a future update.

First thing to do would be a slight reduction in base speed and maneuverability / turning rate to all ships (or at least the ones where upgrading those two would make sense in the first place). I have a reduce of 5-10% in mind here, nothing too serious as it would otherwise affect early gameplay negativeley.

Then introduce the upgrades in various tiers with various benefits and downsides as well:

Maneuvering Thruster Upgrades
Increases turning rate in small steps (maybe 5% per tier up to max 25% - just a suggestion) while simultaniously reducing armor strength in the same amount as putting more, bigger or even more unstable thrusters on your hull would simply reduce the armor coverage or your ships and provide bigger weak spots

Engine Upgrades
Basically the same as with the thrusters - 5% steps up to 25%, again MK I to V, while reducing cargo space for 10 each tier, up to 50 as bigger engines mean more power/fuel need, therefore you'd need more space. But I'm suggesting a small reduce in armor strength as well (2% with each tier up to 10%) as a bigger engine and power core or fuel tank would be more likely to take major damage from weapos fire. This Upgrade should not affect cruise speed, as it is just perfect right now. It would only affect the base impulse speed and therefore the max speed while you're running the afterburner.

This said you would also have to adjust the current Armor Upgrades to increase the impact on mass respectiveley to simply prevent players from haveing a VHF that handles just as a LF while still being able to increase the armor. My intention here is simply to customize your favourite ship even more to your playstyle. You will be able to have a VHF that turns like a HF for example but you'd have to make serious cuts to your survivability. You could as well optimize your sluggish and slow freighter into a fast smuggling vessel or courier ship that would have more chances to get away while space is on fire - but you would sacrifice some of your cargo space. Or you could make an already agile interceptor even more agile and fast but you'd literally have a cargo bay with as much space as common wallet - which leads me to the next adjustment that would be needed: base cargo space. Ships as the Butcher for example would need some increase in this matter as it would still be nice to be able to get about 10-20 pods into your cargo even with the max engine upgrade.

These is a mayor request, I'm aware of that, but I think it 'could' improve gameplay and would provide even more stuff to eagerly search for, more possibilties to mess around with your outfit, then fail and mess around even more until you finally find your much personally golden path. Needless to say: "Need MOOOAAR UpgradeZ!!"
Hopefully I'm not too ambitious here and you take your time to consider my request - would be so awesome to tune your engines

EDIT: This would as well provide the opportunity to add some specialization to Liberty and Bretonia as they lack in that regard right now. The Kusari have their shield upgrades, Rheinland has it's power generators. Let Bretonia and their respective criminals have the engine upgrades and Liberty the maneuvering upgrades ad all of the houses would ever be happy to have something the others don't have

Thanks for the help with the launcher. Somehow I never thought of it that easy. It crashes sometimes when I maximise it but at least it shows buttonz!
Thanks as well for the resoultion fix but I figured it out myself already. The resolution in Documents/My Games/Freelancer was correct. That's where I searched for first. Later I found that in the freelancer.ini in my installation dir. it showed 1024,768 instead.
That somehow streched my game all over the freakkin wall. Would have needed a whole cinema at least to fit the screen

Hey there, I'm from germany and I came here as I digged up my oooold copy of freelancer and thought of how to spice it up a little. So i went to modDB, found crossfire there, installed it, whined over the launcher and therefore.. I ended up here in the tech support. So far I have to say crossfire is one of the most ambitious mods I have ever seen and I have seen a lot of mods for the elder scrolls and other games. Hopefully I'll see you all on the server once I get the issues with my launcher solved at some point

I don't know if you are still taking suggestions on 2.0 but you might reconsider the pacing for the single player. I am 2 hours into the campaign and still level 2. The fights take longer as NPCs use nanobots, shield batteries and countermeasures, which is nice but combined with the fact that you need about 10-12 random missions to get from level 2 to 3 and therefore to mission 2 the game quickly becomes a mindless grinder. It doesn't help at all that during all that time you don't get any new gear to keep you on the line as you can buy practically everything that's offered in New York with the money you start with.
I'd like to see the new crossfire missions and content but as it stands I don't think I can bring up the patience to even get there - in fact I don't even have the patience to grind me through countless random missions to even get to story mission 2.

A simple solution would be to adjust the rewards for missions in single player or to reduce the level requirements in SP, if that is possible. I remember doing only 2-4 random missions from the bar to bridge the time between story missions.

I know improving single player is not the main target for this mod but it would still be nice to get to the story missions faster as they are great while the randoms really aren't. Not by any means - they never ever where any good in fact ^^'

hey there, folks. I'm new to the forums and installed crossfire the first time. after updating the launcher, starting the game and restarting it the "new" launcher seems to work fine so far with one exception: the lower bar with the start buttons is missing. I don't get any erreor messages most of the time and several reinstallations of freelancer, FLMM and crossfire couldn't solve the issue. It's just as if the launcher does not fit the window. I have the same problem ingame with the 1920x1080 resolution - it doesn't fit my screen for some reason and the fonts seem overly stretched. Dunno if the one has to do something with the other but I felt like mentioning it.
So far the only fix to that problem seems to copy the complete "EXE" folder from FLMM/Crossfire 1.9 to my Freelancer folder everytime i want to play the MP.

System specs are:
Win7 64 bit
Intel Core i7-3840QM 2.8 GHz
nVidia Geforce GTX 680M
16GB DDR3 RAM

If there is a solution in the forums I must have missed it as I literally scrolled through thousands of posts with most of them regarding the "gecko" error for winXP or various other error messages (which I don't get at all)