Posts by Ether Dragon

I do think this ship would be a step up from the Fed-Ex. I hate slamming any ship, because I know someone spent time designing it. I never actually thought the ship was bad, just that it never fit into the Freelancer universe. I always thought it was designed more as a joke than for actual inclusion in a serious mod. I see the Freightliner the same way, but maybe I just need to lighten up. <img src=smilies/icon_smile.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle>

*whimper* I came here to beg you not to put ANOTHER semi into the game, but it looks like it´s already too late. Sigh. Welcome to &quot;Rednecks in Space.&quot; Lets change the character model to Ashton Kutcher with his John Deere cap on, and all sing &quot;Convoy.&quot; <img src=smilies/icon_smile_wink.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle>

Woot! I like your take on Battleships. I agree with it wholeheartedly. I was only curious since you DID make a few non-FL ships available for flight, starting way back when with the Whitestar. I´m still waiting for some mod to let me fly a cruiseliner. <img src=smilies/icon_smile.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle> I´m waiting for a game that does massive spaceships well. Probably the best I´ve personally seen is the Starfleet Command series, even with as bug-ridden as it was. I was honestly hoping for something in Freelancer when it came out, what with their talk of freighters, but &quot;oh well.&quot;

MD, are you looking at the fixing the flight controls for the battleships in your next update? I took a couple of them for a spin, and they spun me instead. Also, maybe you´ve already answered this, why are you adding new battleships but not the existing Freelancer ones?

I´ve found that it´s best to ignore the info cards for the most part. Some are correct, some aren´t. What I typically do is select the ship for purchase and hit the &quot;buy&quot; button. The game then takes you to a panel where you can trade ship components. That is where I learn about the ship. I can see how much cargo it actually holds, what weapons it can carry, and a few things that the info-card wouldn´t tell me, like: the number of afterburners it can carry, or if it has a hyperdrive (two engines listed.) Once you´ve finished looking at the information, just back out of the purchase. Edited by - Ether Dragon on 11-08-2003 21:07:12

You´re playing it in open SP mode? The problem I encountered seemed to effect the MP server. When I think back on it, once I exited the server, the frame rate improved again - noticeable from the ships coasting around in the menu´s background. It´s when I tried to work with the server after exiting the game that I encountered more difficulty. It was very slow to respond when I tried to drag through the menus, and didn´t respond to my mouse clicks (view players or shut down server.)

Has anyone mentioned a bug with the Battleaxe? I bought this ship yesterday in Magellan. When I launched, the game suddenly took a dive in performance. The framerate dropped substantially. I exited the game, but that wasn´t enough. I tried to shutdown the server, noting that it still registered me as being online. It wouldn´t shut down on it´s own, so I had to kill it via the task manager. It popped up an error message, and I´m sorry I didn´t write it down. When I restarted the server and the game, I found myself back inside the starbase. When I launched again, the exact same thing happened. I restarted everything, bought a different ship (E-wing,) and went on my way. I haven´t been having much luck with the new ships of late. I had a different problem with both the Sky Hawk and the Voyager, but I found that issue was tied to the fact I had the Freelancer 1.1 patch installed. I reinstalled sans patch, and that stopped my crashing.

Nevermind. Figured it out myself. <img src=smilies/icon_smile.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle> Edited by - Ether Dragon on 05-08-2003 04:54:45

If I could make a mod, it would probably be something that tries to build onto Freelancer without changing it´s core. How would I go about that? 1.) All original FL ships would stay unmodified and remain in game. 2.) All original ships would be made available to players <b>excepting </b> military or police capital ships. Cruise liners and trains would be acceptable, but not Gunboats or Battleships. 3.) Any new ships added to the game would have to be original, and preferably have a FL &quot;feel.&quot; The ships being presented for the &quot;New Universe&quot; mod are a good example. The reason for this is simply that any ships stolen from other backgrounds just don´t &quot;feel right.&quot; Whoever heard of an X-Wing or the Enterprise using trade lanes, for example? 4.) New equipment and upgrades for the ships would be added. Armor, engines, powerplants, etc., are all great. 5.) I´m undecided about adding the Hyperdrive system, it´s a blessing to the players, but also fairly unbalancing. 6.) All added ships would be balanced within the original framework. No &quot;uber&quot; ships tearing up the universe. Lastly, I think it would be nice to have a lot of larger ships that were operated by a crew rather than just one person would be interesting. Gunboat sized, or so. The ships wouldn´t actually be piloted by multiple players - there would be no real difference on the player end; the ships would just be on a larger scale. How often have you ever seen a sci-fi universe that was mostly populated with single-man craft? I like the idea of ships with living quarters, multiple decks, engine rooms, galleys, etc. It just adds so much more romance over a lone guy sitting in a cockpit. These large ships would have maneuverability akin to the Humpback, ie., very little. This would give the ships a more cumbersome and stately feel, as well as make players more reliant on turrets. The reliance on turrets would give players more of a feeling of a crewed ship.

It´s not there anymore. According to his 2.01 build notes, MD moved it to Colorado in order to make room for the Starfury SF-3 &quot;Vengeance.&quot; **EDIT: Found it. The Sky Hawk now resides at Planet California in the California System. Edited by - Ether Dragon on 04-08-2003 20:04:06

<b>Where is the Sky Hawk? </b> According to your build notes, the ship was moved to Colorado system, but I´ve checked every base - even bribing for Xenos faction, and I simply could not find it. <b>Congrats on the release of Rebalance Lite, MD. </b> It´s too bad that I can only run one server. I like the idea of scaling things back a bit, but I doubt my other players would agree. Then, too, I don´t know if I could give up my hyperdrive. <img src=smilies/icon_smile_wink.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle> <b>New Idea: Maneuverability Upgrades. </b> A friend of mine was mentioning how sluggish his Y-Wing was, and it got me to thinking. &quot;Wouldn´t it be neat if you could buy maneuvering thruster upgrades.&quot; If there is a balance concern about such a product, he suggested making the upgrade subtract from your armor rating. Perhaps something like: Mk.1 upgrade subtracts 10% armor, Mk.2 upgrade subtracts 20% armor, etc.

Quick question: Which ship has the largest cargo hold AND a hyperdrive system? Does either the Galaxy Transport or the Gallofree Med. Transport have a hyperdrive? I´m basically looking for a good exploration vessel that can haul freight on the side. Edit: Just checked both Transports, neither one has a hyperdrive. Original question still stands, though. <img src=smilies/icon_smile.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle> Edited by - Ether Dragon on 01-08-2003 20:31:52

Nice to hear. <img src=smilies/icon_smile.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle> I think I found a bug for you, btw. Don´t know if anyone else has forwarded it. I went and bought a Bretonia Gunboat yesterday afternoon. After purchase, I quit the game. Another server player called me up a little while later to tell me my server was down. When I checked, I found the server was still running, but opted to reset it anyways. When I entered the game a little bit later, I was back in my former ship, being shot at by Mollies near the Battleship where I had purchased the Gunboat. &quot;WTF?&quot; thinks I. I redock and purchase the Gunboat again. The next problem I run into is trying to arm the thing. I move the weapons around a little bit, trying to get it to look more like the default gunboats (a primary cannon on each wing tip, turret on top.) To my utter shock and horror, I find that I can only mount a gunboat weapon on one wing - looks really dumb, MD. I gripe, I moan, I say &quot;f___ it,&quot; and decide to buy a Corellian Corvette at Leeds. I launch. The server crashes. When I get it back up and running, and re-enter the game, I´m sitting in my old ship outside the battleship again. Hmm. Time to go to Leeds...

MD, is there anyway you could incorporate Baked Potato´s new custom ships into your mod? They seem a little too well armed/armored for their maneuverability, but they look pretty interesting. It´s nice to see an original ship design for the game rather than something recycled from another source. <img src=smilies/icon_smile.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle>

That´s something about Microsoft games that I find extremely annoying. Their HUD´s for every game I´ve played of theirs has been this overly simplified HUD that was apparently designed by Fischer Price. Everything about it is annoyingly large and dumbed-down. I don´t know if they´re worried about players with poor eyesight, or what. I tell ya, developers really need to go old school and offer customizable HUD´s. The kind where you can choose your preferred colors, brightness, and resolution. It´s extremely annoying to have huge blocks of text or highlighted nav points that obscure your view. As for the suggestion that the HUD or cockpit detail was &quot;too complicated,&quot; that´s the lamest excuse I´ve ever heard given the detail levels of the decade-worth of past games that offered such &quot;complicated&quot; options as panning cockpit views and HUDs built in to the dashboard or canopy of the craft. &quot;Complicated&quot; is adding a pilot´s hand and joystick animation in the cockpit that mirrors your actual movements. <img src=smilies/icon_smile_wink.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle> <img src=´http://image.com.com/gamespot/…7628/iwarde_screen005.jpg ´> <img src=´http://pc.hotgames.com/games/xwingv/scrn01.jpg ´> Edited by - Ether Dragon on 29-07-2003 17:07:29

MD, been awhile, but I´m back in the game. I´ve been playing off and on for the last couple weeks, having reinstalled your mod. Nothing major to report, since I had to start from scratch after removing TNG. Two things I´ve noted, however: info cards for some ships are inaccurate (something I´m sure you already know,) and one of my server players has been crashing the server pretty regularly. On the info cards, the one that I know of for sure is the Clydsedale. The infocard says it has about twice as much cargo as what it actually has. That was a nasty surprise when I threw all my savings into it´s purchase on the basis of it´s cargo capacity. Also, the new Lambda Shuttle only lists as having 5 cargo units. I can´t imagine that being the case. As for the crashes, I have no clue why it´s been happening. The guy that´s been doing it hasn´t reported anything out of the ordinary, or any certain action he was doing prior to the crash. He was the only one online anytime it crashed. This weekend was pretty frustrating. I would walk into the computer room and find the server had crashed. I´d restart the server, and five minutes later it had crashed again. I probably got about a dozen phone calls from the guy asking me to restart the server. = / Given that I can´t give you any detailed information on the &quot;why,&quot; this is just to let you know that it´s happening. If you´ve been getting a lot of such reports, I figure this will at least give you some warning that there´s a problem. If not, I´ll just tell the guy that it´s time for him to do a reinstall. <img src=smilies/icon_smile_wink.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle>

MD, please forgive me. I abandoned the Rebalance mod in order to try out TNG. I had high hopes for it because of your involvement. I´m not saying that it´s a bad mod, but I think it´s changes are a bit too radical for my tastes. It seems intent on taking the Freelancer out of Freelancer. I´ll probably be coming back to your mod in the near future. I´ve had to cut back on my gaming time of late, so I´m not sure exactly when that will be. My server has been pretty quiet of late, too; most notably since the decision to switch to TNG. Everyone will be happy to hear that we´re going to have to endure ANOTHER character wipe. =) Your mod has a lot going for it, not the least of which is that it´s past the early growing phases and more refined. Anyway, just peeked in to catch up on events. I´m not even around enough to classify as a lurker for the time being. A couple quick questions while I´m about: You´ve probably addressed this before, but do you have any plans to add Freelancer capital ships at some point? You have the White Star, so I assume that size isn´t so much an issue. Just curious, as there are a few I wouldn´t mind flying, but I´m not pushing. Also, do you have any plans for updating the older ships with hyperdrives? My understanding is that you´ve added hyperdrives to many of the ships added since it´s discovery, but none have been retrofitted. If you´re not planning on limiting the tech to any specific ship type (ala cap ships in TNG,) I think adding them to the older ships would be nice. If nothing else, it would increase the variety.

Personally, I don´t mind that the engines can´t be switched from one ship to another. I think more systems should be like that, armor and powerplants in particular. Think about it, these systems are specifically designed for one particular ship. Even if you get a Mark IV engine for your light fighter, it´s the Mark IV model specifically made for that ship. You can´t expect the engine from one ship to fit into the engine compartment of another anymore than you would expect to put a bus engine into a VW Bug. If the engine &quot;problem&quot; is ever fixed, it would be interesting if they added some roleplay limitations to the system. Perhaps only factions like Junkers and Pirates can transfer engines in their ships (which are often made out of salvaged and stolen parts.)

Any chance that you could alter the capital ships so they come equipped with the same armament as the NPC version? The cap ships just don´t have the same menace when their guns are nigh invisible do to the difference in scale.

Just to pose a hypothetical: is it necessary to rebalance the original ships? What would happen if they were put into the mix as is? Perhaps they wouldn´t be as powerful as the newer ships, but so what? Is the Defender heavy fighter as powerful as the Falcon heavy fighter? Doesn´t the Valkyrie light fighter out perform many heavy fighters? As long as the price reflects their potential, what does it matter? They can be the economy craft of the galaxy; a step up from the starting ship, and step towards the uber ships. Anybody who has a favorite ship isn´t necessarily going to want to see it modified, as it wouldn´t be the same ship they fell in love with. As a bonus, it saves you the extra work.