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... which leads me to the question how a player should be able to earn such a fee when not being able to launch
It works on the assumption that the player has lots of cash or has other means of getting it, which is the point of the fee, so that the cap ships, being so powerful, would be scarce and access to them somewhat restrictive.
and what if somebody cant pay such a fee or forgets to pay....
ship gone? char damaged?
I was gonna ask you that, as I don't know the limitations of the engine. I was thinking something like ship can't undock if not paid.
there are no hardpoint types left we could use
thats a limitation of the FL engine and unless we get the source code this cant be changed
Okay, there's nothing to be done about that, I suppose.
The only money we take here is for donations to keep the server running and that is given willingly
I was referring to an in-game credits charge.
I appreciate you taking the time to reply, and not just dismissing the idea out-of-hand. I'll respond in a smiliar fashion for the sake of ease:
1) The increased range doesn't mean much given how fast fighters can close the distance. Besides maybe fighting NPC cap ships, it doesn't mean very much
2) Yes, I was completely wrong about the main gun not doing damage. I'd tested it out on stations and wrecks and it did none to those so I erroneously thought they did no damage at all
3) I wasn't trying to imply that there weren't different types of gun, but that it would make for more fun if they could be swapped between factions ships. An Bretonian cruiser fielding Rheinland weapons, for example. Maybe someone prefers the aesthetics of the Bretonian ship over the Rheinland ones, but prefers Rheinland weapons. Since all weapons seem to be compatible at the fighter level, why couldn't this be possible at the cap ship. I'm not advocating for cross-class (BS turrets on a cruiser) compatibility, either.
4) I'm not saying they shouldn't have their own specific purposes, just that they should have better survivability. Cruisers are DN killers (by merit of their main gun damage and range) but don't have nearly the armor and longevity, gunboats can be outfitted with large cannons to help take down cruisers, or many turrets to be portable anti-snubfighter platforms, eta...
5) I meant there aren't any visible hardpoints. I can't equip/unequip (or even see) weapons or shields, this would dovetail well with concern 3
6) I'm not saying you can't do it. In fact, I don't have trouble bringing down fighters -- if I survive long enough to land a hit. At present, snubfighters still melt certain capships with even small numbers
7) Nobody is advocating for this server to be "more like" Discovery. If any of us wanted to play on Discovery, we would, but we choose to play on Crossfire in stead for a variety of reasons. I'm not suggesting the cap ships become unstoppable one-man shows so that the server populated exclusively with people flying around in big ships, just that they are made slightly more robust so they can be game changers if they show up. That's one of the reasons I advocate for (significantly) higher prices, maybe a monthly in-game fee to keep them running.
I'm just spitballing to see if the class of ship can't be tweaked to make them a little bit more enjoyable, or more relevant.
Disclaimer: This is a request for a significant rework of capital assets. I understand that the mod team is not terribly large, nor are they paid for their time, and understand that these things aren't as easy to complete as they are to propose. I would love to help in any way that I can.
Over the last week of spending perhaps too much time on Crossfire, I've been quite impressed with the diversity of ships available for piloting. Spread out over the server as they are, they also incentivize people traveling to sometimes forgotten systems to get a unique ship. I think that's great, and I also very much like the way different ships seem to have different roles. The mod only really seems to fall short in one regard: capital ships.
I recently picked up the Liberty Cruiser in Daedelus, and was somewhat disappointed to discover the ship had essentially not been worked on at all. It lacks all hardpoints (so the damage/projectile speed/range/etc) of the weapons are completely unknown, the lack of the ability to swap different turrets (shouldn't different factions have different damage types?), and the fact that the main gun does no damage. When I say it "does not damage," I don't mean the damage it does is very little, I mean it literally produces no damage on a target Turns out it just doesn't do damage to wrecks or stations. Pair these things with the fact that, even with Armor Upgrade X, the ship is still torn to shred by even the lowest class of snub fighter. I've also seen dreadnaughts that get melted by NPC snubfighters.
I propose that capital ships should be reworked, and at least given some of the attentions that have generously been afforded to the fighter craft. As it stands, there is no purpose to any cap ship, and they don't fit their role at all. A Dreadnaught should be a veritable fortress, with snubfighter craft pea-shooters glancing off like they weren't even there, leaving bombers, gunboats, cruisers, and other dreads to have the specific role of cap-killers. As far as suggestions go, I think all cap ships (gunboats and above) should be given significantly higher shields, armor, and damage output as well as a serious price increase to help offset how powerful they would be (and how powerful they should be). Also, if they could be given individual hardpoints for the swapping of different factions weapons.
Capital ships are supposed to lead fleets, smashing through swarms of fighters (that exist to fight other snubcraft, and clear the lanes for bombers to do the heavy lifting), lay siege to planets/stations/other fleets, and survive to do it all again. At present, capital ships are just giant paper targets that look pretty.
This time I was docked on Battleship Bismark in Utopia
I had purchased and equipped a Weight Reduction Kit Mk III in Tau-23 just before moving to Tau-31
I'd be down for escort duty.
Alrighty, I guess I got the answers I was looking for from the people who mattered. While not entirely satisfying, I guess it's something I'll have to live with. I continue to very much enjoy the server, and will strive to grow more patient. For the record: I didn't notice this in any of the starting systems, or even when I was grinding rep in Dublin. I first noticed when I was hunting Hessians in Hamburg in a Valkyrie I had to go all the way to Omicron Theta to get decent guns in haha
Right, the point of my post is that it isn't difficult. It's what's known as "artificial difficulty." Increasing the health of an enemy does not make an enemy more difficult, it just makes it take longer to kill. This is a cheap and easy tactic to get people to think a fight is difficult when it isn't. In the case of the Crossfire mod, the fights with these enemies are not difficult (I rarely use nanobots or shield bats), but it is long, drawn-out, and tedious.
The main point is this: I've played Freelancer a lot for a long time. I know how the combat system works, the patterns the enemy takes, and the ways to fight them. Giving the enemy infinite nanobots and shield bats, and swift regen, does nothing but kill the fun, and turn dogfights into tedious slogs. Check around online, it's the chief complaint made about this otherwise really good mod.
Hello,
As this is my first post here on the forums, I would like to preface by saying that, besides the music in the prisons, I absolutely love the Crossfire mod. I played Freelancer a great deal from 2003-2008 and played on many RP servers during that time (Frostworks was my first, if anyone remembers that) and I've been on Discovery on and off over the last few years. I very much appreciate how the look and feel of the Crossfire mod makes everything seem fresh and new again. I also really like the little things like the wings on some fighters folding during cruise. I also like how shield and weapon types matter now for resistances.
Anyway, I would like to propose an alteration for consideration: NPC armor and shield regen. I can imagine the current settings were implemented to make the NPCs "harder," and while something like this is a perfect example of artificial difficulty, I would contend that, in the current state, all this does is make dogfights with NPCs into a tedious grind, rather than making it more fun and challenging. The outlandish speed with which the enemy's shields regen, the seemingly random amount they come back after they are knocked out completely (indeed, both the time it takes for them to come back online, and the amount regained seems to be complete random, from the vanilla amount all the way to full shields), and the seemingly bottomless amount of nanobots the enemy ships have mean that any dogfight I get into is more annoying that anything.
I very much enjoy dogfighting in Freelancer, both against players and NPCs, but now whenever I have to engage with an NPC it feels like a grindfest; while some enemies are downed in seconds flat, some take up to 5 minutes. This also removes something that was present in vanilla: the ability for skilled pilots to take on NPCs in much better ships. While I was never capable of it myself, I'd seen people in Starfliers take on Sabres (both NPCs and PCs) because they were able to grind down the enemies shields, then target their shield emitter. With the speed that shields regen, there absolutely no way for this to happen anymore. You either have big enough guns, or you don't, and no amount of skill on your part matters, at all, when determining whether or not you can take down the enemy.
I understand there's a desire to make the dogfights in Freelancer more difficult, what with their pathing being very predictable, but turning every dogfight into a boring chore is not the way to go.
Thank you for your consideration.
