So what mods do you reccomend?

[Bullwinkle]

Shant wrote:


SolCommand wrote:
"Shattered Worlds" is a cool mod also, very well made.http://www.freelancer-swwt.com/
Where do I download the mod from? I can't find any download links on that site...
... yeah, figuring out how to download the Shattered Worlds mod is a bit like finding wrecks in the game -- you have to follow little clues! I followed the link at the bottom of the page to ModDb (which hosts downloads for many mods), read the page there, found a link to another page which led to another page which linked to a .PDF file that gives instructions for how to download.Or, as it turns out, you can just go the the Shattered Worlds Forums page and click the big, friendly, button that says, "Getting Started": ([url]http://freelancer-swwt.com/Forum/index.php?action=page;id=4[/url] On closer inspection, I see that this is a multiplayer mod only. By the way, SolCommand is a modding "top gun". Check out his web page: [url]http://solcommand.blogspot.com/[/url] playing a couple more of these mods (BigDaddy and Phoenix), I am beginning to think that none of them have a story line that is much different from the vanilla version. Many change details that make the original storyline missions different... new ships, weapons, commodities, rumors, bases, systems... but (mostly) not different missions (or story). Like you, Shant, I would love to find different stories to go with the changes in the game. I will say that I find variations in NPC (AI / enemies) behavior to be pretty fun. Both Crossfire and BigDaddy did nice jobs with that. BigDaddy starts out brutally hard but gets easier if you survive long enough. I built my own weapons at first, but found that the game is more survivable if you can struggle your way through the first few missions. It is not even easy to run away in BigDaddy... the NPCs are merciless about chasing you down. Hauling cargo is more profitable, but you have to earn your credits. Just getting your cargo from Fort Bush to Pittsburgh can be rough! If you are a good pilot, it is an interesting challenge.Did you try Crossfire? That is still at the top of my "most creative mods" list. When you get to Mission 14 (and the wreck puzzle that follows), you will see some Alliance and Coalition ships with crazy behavior; flipping end to end while playing goofy music through the comm. They seem to emit some kind of disruption field... if you let them get close to you then your own ship will go berserk for a few seconds. It is vaguely reminiscent of the Infinite Improbability Drive from Zaphod Beeblebrox's Heart of Gold (from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy). Well, almost, but not quite, entirely unlike the Infinite Improbability Drive...Don't panic.

[Shant]

I tried the crossfire mod, 1.7. Problem is it kept messing everything up. I couldn't 'deactivate' it in the mod-manager without some sort of error. Then it asks if you wanted to restore backups. I click 'yes', but after that I can no longer activate crossfire anymore. Strange issue, never happens with any other mods. Good thing I backup my Freelancer folders like you told me. Still managed to lose all my save data though...I need to find where the game saves are stored to ensure that doesn't happen again.

[Bullwinkle]

Shant wrote:
I tried the crossfire mod, 1.7. Problem is it kept messing everything up.
Hmmm... could you restate that in less technical terms? Were you able to play the game?
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I couldn't 'deactivate' it in the mod-manager without some sort of error. Then it asks if you wanted to restore backups. I click 'yes', but after that I can no longer activate crossfire anymore.
Oh, yeah... I forgot to warn you about that when I mentioned the false virus thing. Crossfire has some quirks but it is fun enough (IMHO) to be worth a little extra effort. Here are notes from my experience:[*:17rmq7rg]Crossfire installs differently than most mods. It has a real installer program. I assume that has something to do with their anti-cheat code, which is also the reason for a different launcher program and the false virus alert. For those of us who only play single-player mode, anti-cheat is useless, but we get stuck with the unintended side-effects.[*:17rmq7rg]Because of the Crossfire installer, it is no surprise that FLMM cannot deactivate Crossfire correctly. I didn't even try to do it that way, but I'm a professional geek. [*:17rmq7rg]FLMM's "restore backups" technique is pretty simple... it removes everything it added during mod activation and restores the original files. Well,
almost all off the original files... there is a known bug in FLMM 1.31 that does not always restore one of the DLLs properly. Darkone has a copy of the culprit DLL in the downloads section, but I find that just copying the Freelancer tree is easier and more thorough (plus it allows me to keep a history of any of my own mods with which I am currently experimenting). [*:17rmq7rg]Unfortunately, the developer(s) of FLMM never fixed FLMM 1.31. Instead, they made a major overhaul to FLMM for versions 1.4x (and 1.5x?). The bad news is that 1.4x+ is not compatible with 1.31 mods, which is pretty much every major mod in existence. So the community is in a weird state of limbo... 1.31 has a minor bug, but 1.4x+ is somewhat pointless. I believe that there are legitimate reasons for this situation, but it is still a pain for you (and the rest of us).
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Good thing I backed up my Freelancer folders like you told me.

[*:17rmq7rg]I am glad that you had a backup of your Freelancer folder! That is the easy solution to all of the potential problems with mods.[*:17rmq7rg]The only problem with restoring your Freelancer folder is that it could leave FLMM in a state where it thinks that Crossfire is still active. So you cannot deactivate Crossfire but you cannot activate other mods. There is a simple solution for this, which I will describe in another note. Do you use REGEDIT? If so, then it will be no problem for you. If not, then I want to be very careful to give you 100% bullet-proof instructions. Good?
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Still managed to lose all my save data though...I need to find where the game saves are stored to ensure that doesn't happen again.

[*:17rmq7rg]Saved Games include all of the information about your current game, including your ship, weapons, cargo, and systems visited. As a result, Saved Games may be mod-specific. Using a Saved Game with the wrong mod can crash Freelancer. [*:17rmq7rg]Because Saved Games are mod-specific, FLMM automatically puts them into separate folders every time you activate a mod. So you have not lost your Saved Games -- FLMM just moved them for you.[*:17rmq7rg]Don't feel bad about not knowing where your saved games are stored. Microsoft, in an attempt to make things easier for you, actually made it much more difficult than necessary. I would like to post a full set of instructions on this topic, but it is complicated by different versions of Windows. Perhaps Darkone will let me use the Wiki?[*:17rmq7rg]The short version is that single-player games are in:
Documents\My Games\Freelancer\Accts\SinglePlayer (Vista) (or My Documents\My Games\Freelancer\Accts\SinglePlayer for XP). If you look at that tree in Windows Explorer you should see one or more sub-folders created by FLMM. Your saved games for each mod are in those sub-folders. You can simply copy a save from one of the sub-folders into the SinglePlayer folder and it will be visible in Freelancer.[*:17rmq7rg]Note that Saved Games have computer-generated names and there is no easy way to see the title that you created for the save. Usually you can work with "Autosave.fl", or perhaps you can identify your saved games by Date Modified. [*:17rmq7rg]If you want to know more about Saved Games I can go into a little more detail. Or check out the IonCross Freelancer Character Editor. It isn't perfect, but it is an easy way for a human being to view (and make minor changes to) a saved game.Feel free to ask questions or report troubles here.... I will be happy to help as much as I can.

[Shant]

Thanks bullwinkle, well beyond helpful as usual. Here's what I'm thinking. When I restore the Freelancer vanilla and then run FLMM and activate crossfire for the first time, it works and activates without any errors. I was able to play for a little while. The problems started when I shut the game down, started FLMM and tried to de-activate crossfire in order to try another mod. I'm thinking as long as I don't deactivate it I won't have a problem. Besides I've tried a few of the other mods and crossfire seems to offer the biggest changes. I noticed the ship AI is much rougher. Enemy ships 'wag' from side to side when I'm on their 6, making it hard to focus my fire on them. I wasn't even able to get to Pittsburgh during my first run! I don't mind it though, since there's no difficulty setting I'll just approach it as though the game's on 'hard' mode (more like 'very hard'!). Still, it's hard for me to tell if I'm being too aggressive or not aggressive enough. I never had to use hit & run tactics during my first playthrough of vanilla. If that's what it takes, I'm fine with that as well. It adds a different gameplay element. At what point do I start to see the new ships/weapons? Oh, and what do I do with those million dollar licenses?

[Bullwinkle]

Shant wrote:
Thanks bullwinkle, well beyond helpful as usual. Here's what I'm thinking. When I restore the Freelancer vanilla and then run FLMM and activate crossfire for the first time, it works and activates without any errors. I was able to play for a little while. The problems started when I shut the game down, started FLMM and tried to de-activate crossfire in order to try another mod. I'm thinking as long as I don't deactivate it I won't have a problem. ...At what point do I start to see the new ships/weapons? Oh, and what do I do with those million dollar licenses?
Right, that's all good. To be honest, I only activate mods in FLMM. Instead of deactivating a mod, I change the name of the Freelancer folder, make a fresh copy from my vanilla backup, and use FLMM to activate another mod.The trick to doing this is to clear FLMM's "memory" of the activated mod. If you are familiar with REGEDIT, look at HKey_Local_Machine\Software\Freelancer Mod Manager. You will see a string value for each activated mod with a name such as mods\Crossfire1.70. I just change the name by adding "x-" to make the name of the string x-mods\Crossfire1.70. The only important part is that the prefix "mods" must be changed to something else (almost anything else will do). If you are not familiar with REGEDIT, then maybe forget that I mentioned it? It really is not hard, but REGEDIT has the ability to screw up your PC if you do something wildly wrong like, say, deleting the SOFTWARE key. That would be, um... bad. As in "reinstalling-Windows-from-scratch bad". But, if you are careful, it is not all that hard and not all that mysterious. Finding some of the wrecks in Freelancer is more difficult.If you make a Restore Point before fiddling with REGEDIT you should be pretty safe. Mostly. Probably. Shifting topics, there IS a difficulty setting in Freelancer. It is in PerfOptions.ini, which lives in Documents\My Games\Freelancer (above the Accts\SinglePlayer folder where your saved games reside). The default value is 1.0. "God mode" (invulnerable) is 0, and anything above 1.0 increases the difficulty. Figuring out whether to fight or flee is part of the game, and will depend on your shields, weapons, skill, number of opponents and their ships/weapons/skill, etc. It's all about situational awareness, and it is part of your job as pilot to figure out what to do in each battle. I think you knew that... I'm just covering all of the bases, as usual! :)The million dollar licenses are for multi-player. I think they put a logo on your ship. If you fly around without one (in a sophisticated ship), then everybody picks on you... in other words, you have no friends at all. Yikes!I've played so many mods in the past couple of weeks that the ships and weapons blur a little... if memory serves, I think that I found a ship called the Raven's Claw that served me well in Crossfire. You can find it as early as the Liberty section of the game (after your second stop on Pittsburgh), although it is a bit expensive. How much of a hint do you want here? If you want specifics then we should start a new thread clearly marked "Freelancer Spoilers".You will find other ships and weapons scattered throughout the game. Here are a couple of general "rules of thumb" (but beware of the exceptions to the rule!):[*:2czydkmp]Ships can show up on almost any base, but the best fighters are usually sold by military factions (on battleships) or at outlaw bases. The Outcasts have some of the best gear, but the Corsairs have good stuff, too. [*:2czydkmp]The best smuggler/pirate freighters (big cargo and many guns) are usually sold by pirate factions... as you would expect. I mentioned the Dromedary in another thread... it's the best vanilla pirate freighter, sold only by the Lane Hackers at Mactan Base in Magellan. [*:2czydkmp]You may have to hack your saved game to raise your level in order to be able to buy some ships. I just set my level to "30" at the beginning of the game, and that allows me to buy anything I can afford. The levels, IMHO, are a little half-baked, so it feels more like fixing a bug than cheating to me. [*:2czydkmp]If the Outcasts and Corsairs hate you (probably because you are too much of a wuss ), then try the Zoners (at the Freeports). The Zoners are highly independent, with only a mild dislike for outlaws. Otherwise, they will trade with almost anyone. Some of the Freeports have the best-available "civilian" ships and weapons.[*:2czydkmp]The Bundschuh also have exceptional gear in the vanilla mod. Their role in other mods varies. You will naturally arrive at their base (Bruchsal) at a later point in the game, but you can go there on your own (as long as you attain the proper reputation with them).[*:2czydkmp]Another place to get top gear is on wrecks. The hardest-hitting (Level 10) guns are only found on wrecks (or, in some systems, by killing Nomads).By the way, don't feel as though you have to pay attention to Juni's constant whining about hurrying up to do her next mission. She will wait until you are done earning credits and getting the gear that you want. So, when you have the chance to "get a job", take it as an opportunity to prepare for the next wave of missions.Notes on travel restrictions:[*:2czydkmp]At the beginning of the game you are restricted to New York. The best fighter in New York is usually the Defender. The Rhino may not look like much on paper, but it packs a lot of forward-facing-guns and a lot of cargo space on the cheap. It is a little sluggish to turn, but good enough when you slide.[*:2czydkmp]As I mentioned, in Crossfire, I think there is a jump hole from New York to another system that has very high-end ships (at high-end prices). 'The good news is that you can get there without leaving New York (although you may have to hack your level).[*:2czydkmp]After your first trip to Colorado, you can travel throughout Liberty. That's California, New York, Colorado, and Texas. Don't forget the prisons in Texas... in some mods they pay well for prisoners.[*:2czydkmp]When you get chased out of Liberty you can go pretty much anywhere in Sirius with a couple of exceptions: You cannot go from Texas directly to Rheinland (although the long routes through Krusari or the Omegas work), you cannot go from Colorado to Krusari space, and you might have trouble using jump
gates from Magellan or Cortez back to California. However, you may be able to get back into Liberty via jump holes. If you have some spare cash, a couple of bribes will bring your rep right back up to normal so that you can resume trading in Liberty again. Since Manhattan pays best for a couple of commodities, it can be handy to be able to return to Liberty.[*:2czydkmp]Even when the authorities all hate you, there will usually be an outlaw or independent base that will welcome you. It is a good idea to get a feel for where the different factions have their bases so that you can find a friendly base wherever you are.If you want to know specific bases for ships and/or weapons, we really should start a different thread. It is not super-secret information, but this is an adventure game, after all.

[Shant]

Yeah I should've been more specific in that question. What I meant was, when will I start to see the crossfire unique weapons/items? So far on manhattan and pittsburgh it's all the same weapons/ships as vanilla. Crossfire adds a lot of new gear, does it not?Yeah I use regedit fairly often. I was going to ask you if you thought it was a good idea to rename the freelancer folder after each mod that I activated for it, but then I realized that the mod would remain activated in FLMM. Having tried to deactivate a mod after putting my vanilla folders back got me into trouble once already so I figured I'd scratch the idea. Your regedit idea will fix that. This, it seems to me, makes for the best solution. Full proof. I'll rename my folder "Freelancer - crossfire", and then put "Freelancer" (vanilla) back, do the registry trick, and I can try other mods without worrying about crossfire. That sound about right?Oh, on your suggestion I downloaded discovery 4.80 (I don't play MP). It doesn't, however, have the flmm extension, it's rather just a collection of folders and files. I think you warned me about this once already, but how do I implement these mods? Install the folders over vanilla?Lastly, on the fight/flight thing, it's not a question of knowing when to run or fight. I realize I should run when I'm getting my ass kicked, along with the factors you mentioned. My query is more about the situations where I don't have the luxury of running. My ship is absolutely worthless at the moment and I'm getting creamed, but I can't run or the guy we have to protect will get killed and I have to go back to last save. But the enemy ships are tearing through me with ease and I can't tell if it's because I'm being too aggressive...let me ask it like this. Do you ever find yourself needing to fire up cruise and get away from the enemy until your shields return, and then go back to continue combat and repeating this cycle as necessary? I never had to do that in my vanilla playthrough, I'm just wondering if that's going to become necessary with crossfire.

[Bullwinkle]

Shant wrote:
So far on manhattan and pittsburgh it's all the same weapons/ships as vanilla. Crossfire adds a lot of new gear, does it not?
Unless I have my mods confused, one of the best Crossfire-specific ships is available immediately, right from New York, before Juni unlocks the gates to the rest of Liberty. If you want me to tell you where it is then we should do it in a clearly marked "spoiler" thread, ok?
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Your regedit idea will fix that. This, it seems to me, makes for the best solution. Full proof. I'll rename my folder "Freelancer - crossfire", and then put "Freelancer" (vanilla) back, do the registry trick, and I can try other mods without worrying about crossfire. That sound about right?
Exactly! That is precisely the way that I do it. If you also keep track of your saved games, then you can flip back and forth between mods without having to start at the beginning again.
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I downloaded discovery 4.80 (I don't play MP). It doesn't, however, have the flmm extension, it's rather just a collection of folders and files. I think you warned me about this once already, but how do I implement these mods?
Just change the mod's file name, giving it the .flmod extension: Discovery480.zip.flmodThen use it with FLMM.(.FLMOD is just an invention by the author of FLMM that associates properly-formatted .ZIP files with FLMM)
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My ship is absolutely worthless at the moment and I'm getting creamed, but I can't run or the guy we have to protect will get killed and I have to go back to last save. But the enemy ships are tearing through me with ease and I can't tell if it's because I'm being too aggressive...let me ask it like this. Do you ever find yourself needing to fire up cruise and get away from the enemy until your shields return, and then go back to continue combat and repeating this cycle as necessary? I never had to do that in my vanilla playthrough, I'm just wondering if that's going to become necessary with crossfire.
Worthless ship... so you're still in the Starflier that Juni gave you? That is perhaps the most vulnerable time of the game because you have weak shields, thin armor, and she gives you those wimpy Liberty lasers to start. Yes, about the only thing you CAN do in the Starflier is run away. Oh, but then your buddy, King, drags you into a couple of knife fights against superior numbers of well-armed and well-trained enemies... yeah, you're pretty much toast (*heavy sigh*). The safest thing to do would be to give up and go play a Sid Meier's game. But Juni is counting on you... Heck, the very survival of humanity in the Sirius Sector depends on your ability to survive those first couple of missions! I know you're going to man up and meet the challenge! Here some early game tips:[*:355y883p]The Starflier has one advantage over all other ships: It is the lightest and most nimble ship in the game. Use that to your advantage and avoid being hammered too hard.[*:355y883p]Cruise engines are great for escaping from pirates, but they have two problems in battle. First, they take five seconds to warm up. Your thrusters don't work during those five long seconds, so you cannot even slide or run... you are a sitting duck. Second, if you flee too far from the center of combat during a mission, then Mission Command (the "Big Brother" people who pay you) will fail the mission on you.[*:355y883p]However, you can still use thrusters and slides to avoid being hit, and you can weave through asteroid fields to further avoid taking fire. That gives your shields a few seconds to recharge, which can make the winning difference.[*:355y883p]Note that the combination of sliding and thrusters allows you to keep your speed up while increasing your turn rate -- a double win. When combat is inevitable, turn your engines off and just slide your way through the battle. [*:355y883p]Also note that you can conserve your thrusters while sliding. Just tap your thrusters once in a while to keep your speed up.[*:355y883p]Another good defensive technique is to
fly in a corkscrew pattern. Pick a visual point of reference (star or planet, for example), and keep it in your field of view as you fly in moderately tight circles. So you are headed roughly toward your point of reference, but your ship is constantly changing direction, right? It is very difficult for the NPC's to clobber you while you do that. They might get in a shot or two, but they won't get you with a full salvo.[*:355y883p]Now that you have a couple of survival techniques, let's turn our attention to squeezing more firepower out of your little Starflier. The Liberty lasers are the weakest of all lasers, and lasers are the weakest guns in the game. They can be effective weapons, but you will need more than the Starflier's three guns to do much damage with them. Sell your lasers, and sell your nanobots and shield batteries, too (now you really have to avoid taking much damage for a mission or two!). That will give you enough credits to buy LavaBlade plasma cannons. These hit MUCH harder than lasers. [*:355y883p]Remember to use your tractor beam after ever kill. You may pick up nanobots or shield batteries from the wrecked ship, in addition to valuable cargo and maybe even bad-ass weapons.[*:355y883p]Remember, also, that enemies drop unused bots and bats when killed. Therefore, the more quickly you can kill an enemy, the greater your chances of recovering bats and bots from them.[*:355y883p]Note that your targeting computer considers many factors -- speed and direction (vector) of the enemy, your own vector, and the average vector of the "ammunitions" of all of your guns. In other words, if all of your guns have the same speed, then your targeting computer will be more accurate.[*:355y883p]Since the physics are Newtonian, the vector of the ammunition is added to the vector of your ship. If you are sliding backwards, your gun's shot will be slower. If you are thrusting directly toward your enemy, then the speed of your gun's ammunition can be nearly doubled. Use that to your advantage.[*:355y883p]If you watch the enemy AI behavior closely enough, you will see that they have some "habits". One is that they tend to evade when you attack, and attack when you evade. This gives you a clue that you can use to your advantage.[*:355y883p]Finally, let's put all of the above together to give you an effective offensive maneuver. I think of it as "space jousting":[*:355y883p]Target a single enemy ship ("R" key).[*:355y883p]Turn your engines off. Fly at full thruster speed directly toward your enemy.[*:355y883p]When your enemy is in range, fire all your weapons and do as much damage as you can. The combination of your ship's vector and your gun's vector will give your weapons maximum accuracy, speed, and damage.[*:355y883p]Use your peripheral vision to keep an eye on your shields. If your shields get too low, then break away. Otherwise, keep hammering the varmint. [*:355y883p]As you pass the enemy, flip end-to-end without using your engines (still sliding). You will now be flying backwards, away from your enemy, at high speed, but your guns will be facing the enemy.[*:355y883p]Keep sliding backwards until you are about 1,000 klicks from your target. Since you just hammered your enemy, he will usually fly away from you, too, so this only takes a couple of seconds.[*:355y883p]Your enemy will turn to attack you again, but you now have the advantage because you have already made your turn! Lean on your thrusters and head full speed at the enemy, repeating your assault.[*:355y883p]Using the corkscrew and space jousting, even your puny Starflier can take out most of the enemies in New York. The Outcasts that hang out in the Badlands are tougher, especially when they team with a wing of Rogues. However, by the time that you get there, you should have had a chance to upgrade your own ship and weapons.[*:355y883p]Since Juni's missions are mostly combat, many players prefer to upgrade to stronger fighters. The Defender is the strongest fighter in Liberty (do you know where to get one?). [*:355y883p]However, as mentioned elsewhere, I find that a Rhino equipped with LavaBlade guns and turrets is a formidable craft. It has twice the cargo space of the Defender, with similarly tough armor, and it has more guns than the Defender. You must be good at sliding in order to maneuver a Rhino effectively, but the jousting technique gives you enough of an edge to be able to take out even the very quickest of light fighters.

[Shant]

Phew! This mod is very unforgiving! An average battle that used to take 5-7 minutes now takes nearly an hour! The enemy's shields recharge almost as fast as I can damage them, and when I do manage to do some damage, it seems every enemy has at least 3-4 bots/bats, so I have to get them to use up all their bots/bats and then slowly widdle down their hulls. Fortunately I got lucky a few times and made it to a battleship where I bought the defender. I still feel dreadfully under powered and outgunned.
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if all of your guns have the same speed, then your targeting computer will be more accurate.
HA! THat's brilliant! I would've never thought of that one. The lavablade...is that the one with a refire rate of 2.00? That may take some getting used to...I've been relying on missiles to do the bulk of the work for me. I use the lasers to chop away at their shields/hulls and when I know they're out of bots/bats, I start firing missiles in conjunction with jousting. I find it very hard to hit them with missiles from behind, we need to be coming at eachother. Haven't tried the corkscrew yet, will give that a go on my next run. The rhino...is that a freighter?

[Shant]

Oh I checked out solcommand's page you posted for me. Looks like he's putting in a lot of work! Is it primarily a 'new ships/bases mod'? Any idea when it's looking at completion or if there's a beta? Hard to find that info on his site. Also, he links a mod on that page called XLR...ever heard of it? http://www.smfweb.com/forums/xlrdev/index.php

[Bullwinkle]

Shant wrote:
Oh I checked out solcommand's page you posted for me. Looks like he's putting in a lot of work! Is it primarily a 'new ships/bases mod'? Any idea when it's looking at completion or if there's a beta? Hard to find that info on his site.
Hopefully SolCommand will respond directly, but my sense is that he is a graphic artist who makes 3-D models that can be used in games (and, perhaps, in other places?). I believe that he is contributing the artwork part of the job, so that a more programmer-ish kind of person can turn it into a finished mod.But don't take that as "official". :)I have seen him around on other boards... he seems to know what he is doing (as in, he's a pro).

[Bullwinkle]

Shant wrote:
Phew! This mod is very unforgiving! An average battle that used to take 5-7 minutes now takes nearly an hour!
Yep. The assumption is that you have already played vanilla Freelancer at least once, so you probably want more of a challenge this time. Stick with it... you will sharpen your piloting skills and the missions are definitely win-able. For me, the first few missions are always the most difficult. That Starflier really is a "hunk of junk" as Tobias puts it. But jousting is sort of a "hit-and-run" technique, and it is effective, even in the Starflier.Here are more tips about weapons:[*:eqb2m7jr]In order to compare weapons, multiply Refire Rate x Damage to get amount of damage per second.[*:eqb2m7jr]NPCs have quicker reflexes than you and they target more accurately than you can (pesky AIs!). Therefore, if you hit them with a laser shot, they will immediately begin to evade. So, just because you tagged them with one laser blast does not mean that you be able to continue to hit them for the several seconds required to destroy them. [*:eqb2m7jr]That is why a harder-hitting weapon (such as a plasma cannon) is more effective against AIs. You may not get as many hits with a plasma cannon, but each hit does enough damage to be significant, even if they do evade your second and subsequent shots.[*:eqb2m7jr]Missiles in Freelancer kind of suck. You would think that they could develop better homing devices if they can travel faster than light, wouldn't you? Oh, well... some people do well with missiles and mines, but I put three LavaBlades on a Starflier before I fly the very first mission.[*:eqb2m7jr]The only missiles that really hit their targets effectively are the cruise disruptors (Wasp and Hornet in vanilla... some mod has a Mosquito that is quite excellent). Hint: They have uses beyond just cruise disruption.[*:eqb2m7jr]Since missiles consume credits and don't really work all that well anyway, considering using all guns. [*:eqb2m7jr]Add a mine if you want to add a little more firepower. The NPC almost has to run into a mine, so the time to drop it is just before they pass you (or if they are chasing you). [*:eqb2m7jr]The hardest-hitting guns in the game are slow compared to lasers and tachyon guns. They also have low refire rates. Learn to aim better, and use them effectively while jousting, then you won't have to chase the NPCs for an hour just to get in a lucky shot!
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Fortunately I got lucky a few times and made it to a battleship where I bought the defender. I still feel dreadfully under powered and outgunned.
OK, that's great! The Defender is pretty good, and its turret fires forward which effectively gives you an extra gun. Try fitting it with all LavaBlades and see how you do.Note that the cheapest LavaBlade hits a lot harder than even the best lasers in Liberty.Also, keep your eyes peeled for a better shield for your Defender. The farther you get from Manhattan, the better the available gear becomes. If you get a chance to sneak out of Liberty early (before being chased out), then you can make friends with the Outcasts or Corsairs and buy truly superior gear from them.Tip: Graviton shields have the best price-to-performance ratio. I always buy the best graviton shield available.
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if all of your guns have the same speed, then your targeting computer will be more accurate.
HA! THat's brilliant! I would've never thought of that one.
Your enemies are computers, so it helps to think like a computer in order to beat them!
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The lavablade...is that the one with a refire rate of 2.00?
Yep. It took me a couple of times through Freelancer before I figured out the above tips about how the AIs behave and how to beat them at their own game. Like you, I flailed with lasers for a long time before I finally tried the LavaBlades.
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Haven't tried the corkscrew yet, will give that a go on my next run.
It's a life-saver, literally, when you've been hammered too hard.
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The rhino...is that a freighter?
Yep, it is the budget-rate freighter available at Pittsburgh, among other places. It doesn't look fancy and it doesn't handle like a Porsche, but it gets the job done. A Defender has 6 guns while a Rhino has 8.... that means an extra couple of hundred damage points per hit, or more. Think of it as a tank with big cargo hold, and maybe it will be more appealing. :)BTW, I see that Crossfire 1.8 is now in "public beta". It is HUGE compared to 1.7... the download is seven times larger! I just installed it so that I could give you better answers about Crossfire. I will let you know if I discover anything interesting.The one thing that I have noticed already is that the installer does not cause a virus alert, which is nice.

[Shant]

How were you able to change your rank from within ioncross? There are a lot of options there but nothing for pilot rank.

[Bullwinkle]

Shant wrote:
How were you able to change your rank from within ioncross? There are a lot of options there but nothing for pilot rank.
Nuts... that is one of the things that you will need the Save Game Editor for. I uploaded the Save Editor (and the IonCross Editor) to the Freelancer / Tools area here. With any luck, this should be the link.Here is what it looks like... as the name suggests, it is pretty simple:[hsimg]http://lh6.ggpht.com/_biKAIDtcThA/S0fc-5lHHJI/AAAAAAAAAHo/142n3OZPGec/s720/FL-Save-Editor.jpg[/hsimg]At first, just ignore the stuff that is not obvious and stick with the easy things such as Rank and Money. When you feel up to it, you can edit anything about your character here, including reputations, cargo, etc. The IonCross Character Editor is more human-friendly, but it won't let you edit the Rank.

[Bullwinkle]

Shant wrote:
Phew! This mod is very unforgiving! An average battle that used to take 5-7 minutes now takes nearly an hour!
I just ran through Mission 1 in Crossfire 1.8 and, as you say, it is pretty tough. You are tightly restricted on ships and weaponry, even though Crossfire at least gives you some "angel capital" to get started.As soon as I got the Starflier I upgraded the shields and bought the three biggest plasma cannons that they would sell me (LavaBlade Mk IIs). The Order ships (Avenge the Donau) take some work but they don't shoot back much. The Rogue ships go down in one or two passes with those LavaBlades, usually leaving bots and bats behind. That's good, but there are a lot of them and it can be hard to survive long enough to kill them all!As soon as I landed at Pittsburgh the first time, I upgraded to a Rhino. They don't sell plasma cannons at Pittsburgh so I had to buy laser turrets. Still, the 8 guns on the Rhino do a good job... taking out the tougher Rogues around Pittsburgh and Maine in a pass or two of jousting. You probably noticed that you have to be very careful when approaching the Rogue base near Pittsburgh. Those Weapons Platforms are brutal. You have to take out those two platforms quickly in order to be able to focus on the fighters. I am just beginning with Crossfire 1.8, but my experience so far is that it feels more stable than 1.7, even though it is a beta version. When you are ready to try it, you can find Crossfire 18 beta here.Another difference in version 1.8 addresses your earlier question about fancy Crossfire ships. The Pittsburgh Ship Dealer sells a Werewolf Very Heavy Fighter that sports a vicious-looking cannon. In fact, the entire ship looks like part of the cannon, as though they slapped an engine and a cockpit on a huge cannon and called it a "ship".The Werewolf costs 8 million credits, but it looks as though it might be worth saving up for.

[Bullwinkle]

Shant wrote:
At what point do I start to see the new ships/weapons?
Well, I just explored around before meeting Juni on Manhattan for Mission 2 (in Crossfire 1.8). I am impressed with what the Crossfire team has done since version 1.7. The overall feel is more polished, it seems more stable, and there is a place you can go that reminds me of Alice's Restaurant (because you can get anything you want!). There are ships galore, and most of the weapons and other goodies as well. So you can beef up your ship to a very high level before you even leave New York (officially).I know that you just installed 1.7 and the 1.8 version is only a couple of days old, but I think you're going to like it.I'll bet that your saved games from Crossfire 1.7 will work with 1.8... it is worth a try, at least.

[Shant]

Yeah, may as well try 1.8. I suppose I should just copy over a vanilla installation and install 1.8 from scratch via flmm, yeah?

[Bullwinkle]

Shant wrote:
Yeah, may as well try 1.8. I suppose I should just copy over a vanilla installation and install 1.8 from scratch via flmm, yeah?
Yes, exactly.Also, try copying your Autosave.fl, from the Crossfire1.70 folder that FLMM will create, back into your SinglePlayer folder (Documents\My Games\Freelancer\Accts\SinglePlayer). If it crashes, then just start a new game.Were you able to edit your rank with the Save Editor?

[Shant]

Yeah I was, but I'm gonna leave it as is. Reason being, I'm going through the game way too fast now, and bumping up the rank will only speed things up more. I'm already past the dexter hovis (racing) part. Last time it took almost a week to get that far.

[Bullwinkle]

Shant wrote:
Yeah I was [able to edit my rank], but I'm gonna leave it as is.
Sure, I understand. I just wanted to make sure that my instructions made sense, and that you found them (because I edited a message -- adding links and a pic -- rather than posting a new one). Personally, I kind of hate it when people give only a half-useful tip, but I never know for sure what the reader knows and what he/she doesn't know (plus I assume that others will read the thread in the future). So I tend to write everything I can think of, in the most organized way that I can, but sometimes too much information can be as confusing as too little! In other words, I know that I write too much sometimes, but it is hard to know which parts to leave out!

[Bullwinkle]

Shant wrote:
I'm going through the game way too fast now, and bumping up the rank will only speed things up more. I'm already past the dexter hovis (racing) part. Last time it took almost a week to get that far.
Yeah, I feel ya on that one.First, remember that you can adjust your difficulty in PerfOptions.ini (in Documents\My Games\Freelancer). If you buy a better ship, then maybe adjust your difficulty. Try 1.5 or thereabouts... it makes the AIs tougher but not impossible.Second, you bring up a very interesting point, Shant, and it is one that I have been thinking about in the background for a couple of weeks now. I have an open question that I would like to ask of you (and anyone still reading this thread) -- would it be helpful to have a few mini-mods that could make small adjustments to the game while co-existing with whatever major mods you may be playing?This applies to Single Player only. The Multi-Player crowd would consider it "cheating" unless it is built into whatever mod the server runs.I am thinking along the lines of small mods that you could activate or deactivate within FLMM without screwing up, say, Crossfire. For example, you mentioned the Hovis race, which is tuned for vanilla cruise speeds. The race is quite challenging in vanilla but, in Crossfire, Hovis just blows past one of the gates and gets lost, making it far too easy to win. So an example of my idea would be a small mod that temporarily sets cruise speed to vanilla speed while you compete with Hovis, then allows you to return to normal Crossfire speeds for the rest of the game. This would be similar to the Speed Mod that comes with FLMM, but with more options.While I am at it, FLMM makes it easy to give the user choices, so the mod could allow you to, for example, crank your cruise speed way up for easy exploring of an uncharted system, then go back to a more normal speed for playing the missions. Note that any mod implemented with FLMM requires you to exit the game in order to activate or deactivate the mod.Here are some ideas:[*:20ew47f4]Shorten or eliminate the 10-second jump gate animation that serves no purpose other than eye candy.[*:20ew47f4]Better ship, weapon, and/or shield, available at Manhattan, purchasable at Level 0, to take some of the repetitive frustration out of playing Mission 1 (if you have already played it before). This could be as simple as allowing the player to buy a Patriot or Rhino on Manhattan before the first mission.[*:20ew47f4]Larger cargo holds, which allow you to make money faster, without having to do the same run over and over again. You would still need to trade intelligently, but there are only so many times I can do the "diamond run" from Dresden to New Tokyo before I want to scream. [*:20ew47f4]Expanded Speed Mod, with more choices.[*:20ew47f4]Dromedary (or other ships, such as Very Heavy Fighters - VHFs) purchasable at low level, so that you can buy them during the storyline game, when you need them. Most of the really great ships can only be purchased after completing the storyline, which is pointless for those of us who only play the storyline.[*:20ew47f4]Turn off the intro movies.Things that I have played with, some of which are just for messing around (they could unbalance the game):[*:20ew47f4]A gun that actually hits what you aim at. It is viciously effective -- perhaps too much so. Maybe it could be tuned differently.[*:20ew47f4]Cruise disruptor missiles that do some damage when they hit (explosive and/or EMP-shield-damage).[*:20ew47f4]Faster engines, thrusters, and/or cruise speed. I have not found a single setting that works in all scenarios, so the idea would be to allow the user to change speeds for a single mission, then return to "normal". [*:20ew47f4]More powerful power plant -- so that guns recharge faster.[*:20ew47f4]Instant-on Cruise Engine (or faster-charging cruise engine... vanilla takes 5 seconds to charge). Makes Cruise Speed easier to use, but also makes it harder for enemies to nail you as you try to flee.[*:20ew47f4]Discount Debit Card. Buy, say, $1,000 (or $1 million) for $1. Just a cheap way to increase money without making repetitive cargo runs.Things that I would love to do but are impossible, difficult, or I just don't know how:[*:20ew47f4]Faster Trade Lane Top Speed. This is hard-coded into Freelancer. While it is possible to change, there is no reliable way to automate the change in a way that will work under all circumstances. [*:20ew47f4]Skip the cut scenes. The cut scenes are a big part of the fun of Freelancer, but some of them are pretty long. Like Dexter Hovis's long-winded race tutorial... if you have to run the course a dozen times in order to beat him, that's something like half an hour spent just listening to him say the same thing, over and over. The best idea I have come up with is to truncate the cut scenes... like play the first 10 or 15 seconds, then just cut it off. It's not very smooth, however. Too bad you cannot just press Escape to skip them, as you can with the intro movies.[*:20ew47f4]Instant take-off and landing. If you really want to find all of the surprises in Freelancer, then you have to stop at a lot of bases. Each base has a few seconds of animation during docking and take-off that do not matter much to your ability to evade enemies but which take up time, making it a little tedious to visit all those bases. My sense is that there might be a way to shorten this, but I have not yet figured out how.If I could get my hands on the source code for FLMM, I could do more with it, but I have not seen it posted anywhere.So here are my questions:[*:20ew47f4]Do any of these ideas sound fun or interesting?[*:20ew47f4]Do you have ideas of your own that we could add to the list (at this point, I am mostly interested in small-ish projects).[*:20ew47f4]Which ideas would be your favorites?