Posts by Tryst

I managed it with a freighter. It may be slow but has a lot of guns and a good balance of shield and hull busters will knock them down like flies. -- My idea of an OS is one that operates the system, not a self contained package of every piece of software ever invented.

That is providing you can get used to the controls. They are so touchy that the slightest move and you are all over the place. Both my friend who got the game from his uncle in the US and me are both stuck on this race. It´s only mission 6 and we can´t get any further no matter what we try... We have even tried firing cruise missiles at him but it stops him for a couple of seconds. Even tried editing the mission ini file but I can´t see what to remove to get a win to start with. And yes, we both suck as pilots but this race is really ruining the game for both of us. -- My idea of an OS is one that operates the system, not a self contained package of every piece of software ever invented.

Not being in the top ten could also be a result of so many pre-orders. These figures, like so many statistics, will lie. "Sales" refers to money passing hands and not shipments being made on pre-paid goods. in which case, FL may not get into the charts for a few weeks. -- My idea of an OS is one that operates the system, not a self contained package of every piece of software ever invented.

<font size=1 face="trebuchet ms"><BLOCKQUOTE><hr size=1 noshade>starting work on 1 big mod...that makes fl become the game it should be <hr size=1 noshade></BLOCKQUOTE></font><font face=´trebuchet ms, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica´ size=2> {sarcasm} OK, no problem. Now what I need is all the information about every .ini file in the game from you so I can get started. Once I have this, I´ll just re-write all the code for Freelancer to accomodate what you have just proposed. Just give me about a week or so... {/sarcasm} Now go back and re-read the forum... 90% of the people here are still tinkering with various ini files to see why this number in an ini file´s record is important and what it affects or what field in one ini file´s record links to another ini file´s record. The information is still not available and unless you have secret links to DA´s programmers, I doubt you could solve this puzzle any faster. Everyone is working small scale because that is all the information available now allows for. Once ALL the information required is available, maybe you will see everyone working toward a really big project. Damn, I´m just happy that I´ve managed to add a cloak to my ship via one of the weapon slots. I set it up to mount in the cruise disruptor slot so the cruise disruptor shortcut key triggers it. It doesn´t activate and cloak the ship though so it might require some extra code from the EXE that may not be avaiable or maybe I have missed an ini file that cross-references it. If I can get it working, I´ll try to port it over to the slots where the shield and thrusters are and find another way of activating it. -- My idea of an OS is one that operates the system, not a self contained package of every piece of software ever invented. Edited by - Tryst on 12-03-2003 15:30:13

<font size=1 face="trebuchet ms"><BLOCKQUOTE><hr size=1 noshade>Not only are you the only freelancer... you are apparently also the most hated individual in all the galaxy. A lone pirate can be fighting for his life against four bounty hunters and the minute you show up and try to quietly sidestep the whole engagement... BAM! He´s not only fired a cruise disruptor up your tailpipe, but he´s coming to finish the job with his four attackers still busily setting fire to various parts of his ship. He´s not gonna make it, but with his dying breath he´ll spit in your general direction. <hr size=1 noshade></BLOCKQUOTE></font><font face=´trebuchet ms, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica´ size=2> I´ve even had them forget their battle altogether just to gang up on me. Maybe the reward for killing the only Freelancer in the galaxy is better than killing one of a thousand pirates. -- My idea of an OS is one that operates the system, not a self contained package of every piece of software ever invented.

I lived in Singapore back in 71 for two years just along the Bhukit Timah {sp} road and the Waverly guest house (as it was called then) just down the road from the Tiger Balm Gardens. Great country and nice people. I´ve always wanted to go back to stay. I live in sunny <img src=smilies/icon_smile_clown.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle> England now and hate this country. We get everything 10 years after everyone else and pay twice as much for the privilege. -- My idea of an OS is one that operates the system, not a self contained package of every piece of software ever invented. Edited by - Tryst on 12-03-2003 11:53:35

I used the savegame on the downloads board to get over the level 2 ending in the demo to log in more flying time. Bought a freighter and loaded it to the hilt with guns. Minor Spoiler below --------------------- I have to say, the freighter out performs any fighter for sheer power since there are twice as many guns on it and a good mix of shield buster and hull buster guns hammers down the enemy in no time. My friends dad shipped a copy over to him from America but he forgot me <img src=smilies/icon_smile_sad.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle> so I´ve had a chance to play the full version. I got to the mission just before you leave Liberty for Bretonia and got hacked to bits in my Liberty heavy fighter by dozens of naval ships while trying to defend Juni´s friend. Went back a couple of saves and picked up the Liberty Freighter and loaded it with guns <b>and hacked them to bits </b> the second time around. There is no way a freighter should be better armed than a heavy fighter, especially since there is little real difference in the handling. The only difference I can see between them apart from the number of weapon mounts and cargo size is that the heavy fighter can carry cruise disruptors. Spoiler End -------------------------- It strikes me that when the ships were originally designed, the plan was to have a lot more difference in handling. In the years it has taken to develop this game, too much work has gone on the aesthetics and not enough on the actual gameplay. And as I suspected, the race has got up my nose so far that it´s the end of the game missions for me. When he says go, you should already be punching the controls and not waiting for a cut-scene to end first. The other ship is controlled by computer in the absolute and precise manner that computers do best, not bumbling around and making mistakes like a human player would. The race should have been left for MP games, a 1 on 1 with another mistake making human. -- My idea of an OS is one that operates the system, not a self contained package of every piece of software ever invented.

<font size=1 face="trebuchet ms"><BLOCKQUOTE><hr size=1 noshade>You would have thought that Microsoft could have hired a proof reader. Or at least use their ´fabulous´ grammar-checker in MS Word. <hr size=1 noshade></BLOCKQUOTE></font><font face=´trebuchet ms, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica´ size=2> Sorry to tell you this Jericho but their &quot;fabulous&quot; grammar checker in word is about as good as the proof reader who checked the packaging on Freelancer. I have often laughed at the attempts of Word to correct my obvious gramatical mistooks. Navel ships probably came from the Orange County system <img src=smilies/icon_smile_big.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle> They probably *did* use word to create the text for the box. Get it to check the last sentence in the paragraph above and you´ll see what I mean. <img src=smilies/icon_smile.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle> The output= &quot;I have often laughed at the attempts of Word to correct my obvious grammatical mistook.&quot; -- My idea of an OS is one that operates the system, not a self contained package of every piece of software ever invented. Edited by - tryst on 10-03-2003 23:48:48

misc_equip.ini but you will have to search to find which one relates to your ship. Notice that the first one is infinite power which charges as fast as you can use it. Great in battle if you have the full version and have power hungry guns. -- My idea of an OS is one that operates the system, not a self contained package of every piece of software ever invented.

The differences between ships (or lack of) has been discussed before if I recall. That´s why someone was talking about a mod to balance speed and power. I´d agree that upgrading sounds pretty pointless if, as everyone seems to point out, there is no real benefit from it. I have noticed in the demo that there is little real difference between one gun and the next version of the same gun. So it´s an extra 3hp off the enemy´s hull for every shot. Oh whoopee, that means a dogfight is reduced to 1000 shots from me to kill the enemy instead of 1020 while his 5 mates are raking my hull to pieces. Not much of an advantage considering it costs an extra 1K credits. May as welll keep my mk1 gun and my 1K credits since the end result for me is death either way. It´s something I am going to hack as soon as I find out the weapon names. -- My idea of an OS is one that operates the system, not a self contained package of every piece of software ever invented.

<font size=1 face="trebuchet ms"><BLOCKQUOTE><hr size=1 noshade>A flip side to the initially posted topic, but how would you modify the single player game to make levelling up slower? <hr size=1 noshade></BLOCKQUOTE></font><font face=´trebuchet ms, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica´ size=2> 1. The diff2money could go both ways. change the second value in each mission to 10 and you´ll only get 10 credits for every mission. 2. Buy a lot of expensive missiles and mines and use them a lot to keep your money below the level up limit. It made the demo a lot longer for me. 3. Just simply don´t trade or take local missions between game missions and run from pirates if they shoot at you so you don´t earn any bounty from killing them. You can explore as much as you want that way. (Another way to extend demo time) 4. Simplest way by far. Accept and then ignore the game missions until you are ready to do them, from my understanding, you won´t level up until you´ve completed the mission. -- My idea of an OS is one that operates the system, not a self contained package of every piece of software ever invented.

In the shiparch.ini in the dataships folder, the first number after each ship is the level required to buy the ship. As for how to make then buyable for any station, I´m working on something like that right now and am after the same info. I have the demo and want to see how many ships it´s possible to use in the demo or if only the ones that are featured are included in the code. -- My idea of an OS is one that operates the system, not a self contained package of every piece of software ever invented.

Awww come on, at least she´s one step up from a 2D picture in a top shelf magazine for these guys, they *are* getting there but slowly <img src=smilies/icon_smile_big.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle> -- My idea of an OS is one that operates the system, not a self contained package of every piece of software ever invented.

Can´t anyone get some inside info about the data files like they did with SL so we can mod everything ourselves? Or is this going to be another hacking session with no outside help. -- My idea of an OS is one that operates the system, not a self contained package of every piece of software ever invented.

Since I´ve been floating in and out of these forums since Starlancer was new to the market, I also admit to being disillusioned with the so-called Neural Net flying after all the hype it´s had at TLR. In combat I was also expecting more tactical and less point and shoot. I certainly expected a lot more than simple mouse control that was used back in the days of Elite on the Atari ST so it´s nothing new. I must say though, the auto pilot is a step up with it´s object avoidance built in but that´s the only thing that stands out as being different in that respect. I also expected a bigger storyline than 13 missions. That says it is being marketed purely for it´s ability to continue after the missions are completed. I would also have preferred to see a similar diversity of missions that you see in Elite FE. Transporting goods and packages and taking passengers as well as the shoot this and kill that missions but all across a wider playing area, maening you may have to go into Rheinhart space to transport something for someone in Liberty. Also specific times so you are on a schedule to be somewhere by 1am to deliver the goods to John Doe. Overall, I give it a straight 10 for graphics, ( a l ot of great work has gone into this part) and an 8 for size (since Elite, although mapped out for you, was far bigger even that many years ago but FL is bigger than similar games on the market today). I´d give it a 3 for control because it does require an extreme amount of practice and could lead to boredom before proficiency for many people. Gameplay, I can´t really comment on since I´ve only played the demo but it left me very unimpressed with what I´ve seen so far. It may not be mission specific but I´d hardly call it a true freeform game. And Finally, the Neural Net... What Neural Net? Oh, you mean the Auto pilot... I´d say 7 (an extra 2 points over average because of the collision avoidance). @Croweater. Don´t hold your breath for Elite 4, it may not ever happen. DB has too many fingers in too many pies and not enough staff to do it all. He´s also more interested in palm pilot games and conversions to plam top systems right now. No news about E4 for the last 5 years, not even a sniff of what´s to come or what´s been done so far stinks of a shelved game. -- My idea of an OS is one that operates the system, not a self contained package of every piece of software ever invented. Edited by - tryst on 07-03-2003 23:40:57

Piotrr Some good points but without the ability to increase your level, it means most of the game is going to be inaccessible in freeform unless you start doing some serious hacking into the ini files etc. To be truly freeform, it requires a starting point wheere you have full neutrality with everyone and a (small) ship to start off with. Who you upset and who you befriend is entirely up to you and you don´t have to pay out fortunes just to repair your rep before you can go into your chosen career path. V.V. had the right idea with Terminus but then killed it by making you chose at the beginning. From what I understand, Juni will wait forever for you to take her up on the next mission she has for you. Hmmm, my boss wouldn´t wait forever and if I didn´t do it, he would find someone else who would. It appears that the FL universe stands still without Trent to do the dirty work - Now *that´s* power! <img src=smilies/icon_smile_wink.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle> <font size=1 face="trebuchet ms"><BLOCKQUOTE><hr size=1 noshade>Sounds like an excellent starting point for some practice to me. How do you know about the handling, by the way? I can´t see in your post that you tried it yourself yet? <hr size=1 noshade></BLOCKQUOTE></font><font face=´trebuchet ms, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica´ size=2> I did play the demo but it obviously won´t show everything and believe me, I practiced all night on it but still found it extremely hard to control properly. I have played quite a few games but never had this amount of trouble getting used to the controls. I have played Elite, Frontier and First Encounters and the mouse control was good but in FL, it is over-sensitive and hard to keep the ship controlled properly. The difference comes from the way it is controlled. In Elite, it stops where the cursor is which means you have to keep moving the mouse all the time to keep going around in circles, In FL, you move the mouse left and stop, you will keep turning left until you center the mouse again. Even a dampening override would help, allowing users to dampen the movement. In real life, the thruster output would be increased to give more force against a turn so it stops more rapidly or you would buy more powerful thrusters to do the same thing. I am playing Elite FE even now on my 1.3 Duron and loving it so I am not lacking practice with mouse flight control. Dampening in the game would change the inertia values to give less inertia and therefore less oversteer. However, as this would also mean more inclination to drift and respond to slight mouse movements and harder to aim when flying in a tstraight line, an increase is required to make it harder to turn to start with. Unlikely that this would be incorporated now as it would mean a major mod to the actual coding which is only something DA could do and it wouldn´t be very high on their priority list. I played against my friend online in MP and we were playing Terminus, He is a far better pilot than me he dealt out death to me several times before I´d even got a couple of shots at him. (I managed once by popping out from behind an asteroid and shooting him up the ****). If he can´t cope with it, I don´t stand a chance. He´s also played more games than I have including a varied selection of mouse controlled games so he´s well used to mouse control. I only have experience with mouse control using First Encounters and it´s vastly different. <font size=1 face="trebuchet ms"><BLOCKQUOTE><hr size=1 noshade>Yep, that´s even worse. LEVELS decide what ships and equipment you can buy. In multiplayer this limitation is gone, even playing multiplayer with yourself. In &quot;No Story&quot; mode the restriction is still there, but you can take ANY mission, and then it´s all based on how much money you have left to go until the next level, so that you can &quot;level up&quot; by getting money, sort of like in Multiplayer, but the equipment and ship restrictions are still in place. <hr size=1 noshade></BLOCKQUOTE></font><font face=´trebuchet ms, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica´ size=2> I admit to not understanding why the level restrictions were in place to start with. If you´ve got enough money to buy a certain ship:- a) you´ve played it for long enough to become proficient as a pilot or you´d have been dead long ago. b) No salesman would refuse a sale just because someone is not good enough (experience wise). Could you imagine Porsche salesmen refusing to sell a 911 Porsche to a kid who´s just got his licence? He´d be sacked, especially if I was his boss! You take it out and crash it cos you can´t handle it and that´s your problem pal, just part with your cash before you drive it away. -- My idea of an OS is one that operates the system, not a self contained package of every piece of software ever invented. Edited by - tryst on 07-03-2003 22:25:03

Thanks for the help. I was wondering if it was possible to buy all the ships for a specific faction in every base for that faction or is it one here and another there etc... Reading all the other posts, it seems that you have to go hunting for specific ships so you may never find them all. ------- Boscoe . I´m fine thanks my friend... And you? I see they made you a Moderator now. Is that the promotion you get for being a fixture on this site? <img src=smilies/icon_smile_big.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle> -- My idea of an OS is one that operates the system, not a self contained package of every piece of software ever invented. Edited by - Tryst on 07-03-2003 15:38:59

Just a couple of Questions piotrr 1. Considering you can´t afford a new ship and you have to take the first mission with Juni to get one, how do you repair your rep enough to join with the pirates and use their bases? 2. Given that you can´t get out of the manhatten system because the jump gates are locked out to you, what is the point of starting your career as a pirate if you are stuck in one system? To be a game that is truly freeform, you have to start with a ship and then choose your own path from there. <img src=smilies/icon_smile_tongue.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle> Frontier and First Encounters got it right in that respect but FL seems to have forgotten that you anger someone by reneging after accepting a mission. It´s not a good way to start since you may want to go off and explore, get some credibility with various factions and advance in levels before starting the story. Oh but wait, you said to Juni &quot;Thanks for the ship now ark off&quot; and there´s not much chance of her asking you to do the mission later. <img src=smilies/icon_smile_evil.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle> Also, there´s this little problem with levels. Level advancement: Mission Hmmm. It appears you can´t even get to level 1 unless you accept Juni´s first mission. That´s a bummer, you can´t even gain any levels to get a nice big ship and some decent weapons, so what happened to freeform? No wonder you didn´t make it as a pirate. B-) A friend in the US bought the game and spoke to me on MSN last night. He´s put me off the game now. He said there´s a mission where you have to race against someone and it´s almost impossible. He´s tried it nearly 100 times and has not won yet. He´s now stuck since the autosave still launches you into space at the start of the race so he can´t go off and do something else instead. You can´t shoot him, you can´t disrupt his cruise engines and to top it all, you (a human) are flying a race around a twisting course with a computer controlled pilot in a ship with exactly the same capabilities as his (cruise = 300). It puts you at a disadvantage by forcing you to click on an OK button on a screen before starting, locking you into auto flight so you have to press space and then fire up the cruise motors while he whizzes off into the distance. If it let you organise the controls and make ready before you start the race, it would give you more of a fighting chance. He says that it´s the end of the missions for him and he´s only on level 9 (I think he said it was 9). Well, he´ll never get to see the final outcome of the misison based game. So, as far as he´s concerend, he may as well go back to playing Elite Frontier with trading, local missions and fighting off pirates. If I wanted a spaceship racing game, I would have bought one. He also said that while he was trying to fight off several pirates, some Bounty Hunters joined in and started to get in the way, complaining about being shot at when it was them who flew across his line of fire. He very soon became enemies of the Bounty Hunters because they didn´t have the sense to keep away from a stream of plasma coming from his weapons while he shot at pirates. I´m not really keen on the mouse flight (being a joystick jockey myself), it´s too sensitive but if I turn the sensitivity down, it´s hell trying to work on the menus for trading and equipment etc and it only slows down the mouse movement and not the ship movement, it´s still like trying to control a bar of soap on a wet slide. you can´t even use ´match speed´ like you could in SL while you worry about where you are pointing your guns. This news last night has really put a downer on my buying the game. If I´d gone out and bought the game, I would have been more than a little p****ed off with DA and MS when I got to that racing part, i don´t like racing games and never will. I´m not a great pilot at best, I am the first to admit it but this would stop me dead in my tracks since: POOR PILOT+UNFAMILIAR CONTROLS+SENSITIVE HANDLING = NOT A HOPE IN HELL OF GETTING FURTHER. I may as well play First Encounters as well, I bought it years ago and still play it purely because it is a freeform and open ended game but it also had a storyline and I have played both the freeform and storyline. I am not an advocate of piracy but I will tend to dl warez to find out if a game suits my preferences. If I don´t like it, I´ll delete it. If I do like it, I´ll buy it. I am annoyed that the US got a release date over a month before Europe and I was planning to dl the warez version to play until it was released here and I could buy it but with the latest news, I don´t think I´ll bother with the warez version or buying it. -- My idea of an OS is one that operates the system, not a self contained package of every piece of software ever invented.

Some of them are great. You hit a rock in your car and try to find the button to tell the nanobots to repair the hull. When a guy at the local bar you been going to for ages suddenly asks &quot;You´re new here aren´t you&quot;, you try not to punch him on the nose. Someone on the street shouts out to his friend Trent and you answer. You begin to fancy Juni. You feel lost when the dialogue with people in town deviates from the standard responses. You hear a rumour that your girlfriend is seeing another guy and respond &quot;Every little helps.&quot; You dump your girlfriend in the hope that Juni will then date you. ********* and finally, you know when your really hooked when: You actually get a date with Juni. -- My idea of an OS is one that operates the system, not a self contained package of every piece of software ever invented.

if it were possible to incorporate this at all without all the source files and a lot of development time. I admit that a dynamic market is what I´ve wanted to see in trading games for a long time. Also, the actual amounts being sold should change as each player or NPC buys or sells those items. I found in the demo of FL, there seems to be no limit to how much stock any base has of a certain item. If it´s in stock, you can buy as much as you want of it. I found a good couple of cheats to get money but it screws up the demo as it takes you over the level 2 limit and ends the game. but it´s nice to know for later reference. -- My idea of an OS is one that operates the system, not a self contained package of every piece of software ever invented. Edited by - Tryst on 07-03-2003 12:09:40