Mostly Harmless

Gunbladelad · Post by **Gunbladelad** » Tue Aug 06, 2013 10:50 pm

I have to admit that I've been having fun with this during the time the Discovery UK server's been down, but I do have to say it's extremely tricky to make any kind of funds early on - the fastest method being completing missions, which is in itself no easy task as you'll spend most of your time trying to inflict any hull damage on the enemies at all. I've done a bit of poking around and it seems as if there's not really much reason for players to upgrade to haulage ships at all in terms of the actual price lists. Mind you, I probably have been spoiled with the Discovery Mod's massively profitable traderoutes...

Stormprooter · Post by **Stormprooter** » Wed Aug 07, 2013 3:15 am

I have to admit that I've been having fun with this during the time the Discovery UK server's been down, but I do have to say it's extremely tricky to make any kind of funds early on - the fastest method being completing missions, which is in itself no easy task as you'll spend most of your time trying to inflict any hull damage on the enemies at all. I've done a bit of poking around and it seems as if there's not really much reason for players to upgrade to haulage ships at all in terms of the actual price lists. Mind you, I probably have been spoiled with the Discovery Mod's massively profitable traderoutes... Cargo capacities and commodity prices are all inherited from the original Elite - which perhaps does not work so well in Freelancer - this aspect as well as general game balancing will be looked at for the next version. I remember from the original Elite that it was not easy to make big money fast.

Gunbladelad · Post by **Gunbladelad** » Thu Aug 08, 2013 10:14 am

The balancing can wait for now as it'll be likely a substantial amount of time before people make enough funds to be able to afford the larger haulage ships. I did kind of "cheat" and used Freelancer Companion to bring up the price lists. It does seem a bit odd to me that computers fetched a much higher profit than alien items though. Such a pity it's (almost certainly) not possible to encode bar NPCs to purchase things at boosted rates. (like the BBS in Frontier and FFE)

Stormprooter · Post by **Stormprooter** » Thu Aug 08, 2013 10:39 am

The quickest way I've found to build up some cash is to trade between Quitiri (buy computers, sell furs) and Isinor (buy furs, sell computers) in the Zaonce system until you have upgraded the starting ship (Adder) with the best shields, best engine, power plant, scanner and get a beam laser, ecm and plenty of missiles and do the easiest missions possible. I have found that the destroy installation missions are the simplest, if you know the trick to them, which I will now share: Get to about 3km from the things you need to destroy and stand off attack from there, creep towards them slowly until your laser is in range - you will be out of range of their defenses, if you have to destroy any ships in the area as well, after destroying the installation/missile platforms, head towards the nav point for the enemy ships to appear, then take them out. When you start completing missions, the money soon starts rolling in and you can get bigger and more powerful ships step-by-step. I did the following Adder (light fighter)Sidewinder (small fighter)Viper Mk I (medium fighter)then straight to a Cobra Mk III (very heavy fighter) Making sure I had enough cash to upgrade shields, engine and power plant when getting a new ship.

Gunbladelad · Post by **Gunbladelad** » Thu Aug 08, 2013 7:12 pm

Don't worry - I've already upgraded to the Cobra - I've had plenty of time during the Discovery UK server downtime - it was actually the base kill missions that I used to raise funds quickest.

Gunbladelad · Post by **Gunbladelad** » Fri Aug 16, 2013 8:35 am

Out of interest, Stormprooter, how long do you think it will be before you're able to implement multiplayer in this? If you want an extra pair of hands to test things out I should be able to get things going on a LAN to see how it pans out.

Stormprooter · Post by **Stormprooter** » Fri Aug 16, 2013 9:09 am

I have no idea on timescales for multiplayer - it's not an aspect of FL development I have looked at in any way as yet. I have not had time to do any more work on this since I released it back in June - so I really don't know.I think I have to get familiar with server stuff like FLHook and other bits to do with anti-cheat - will cross that bridge when I come to it. I hope to get back onto development in the next few weeks.

Gunbladelad · Post by **Gunbladelad** » Fri Aug 16, 2013 9:40 am

No problem - While I've not done much in the way of flhook coding, I have experimented with the plugins that are present in the Discovery 4.86 mod and it seems straightforward enough. Just give me a nudge if you're needing help and I'll see if I can work it out.

Gunbladelad · Post by **Gunbladelad** » Wed Nov 06, 2013 9:19 pm

Any news on this at all?I know on your facebook page you mentioned that work is in progress on Multiplayer, which was on my wish list for it.

Stormprooter · Post by **Stormprooter** » Thu Nov 07, 2013 3:20 am

No problem - While I've not done much in the way of flhook coding, I have experimented with the plugins that are present in the Discovery 4.86 mod and it seems straightforward enough. Just give me a nudge if you're needing help and I'll see if I can work it out. Still in the planning/research stages at the moment. I have managed to get FLServer running with the mod on my development machine, but I am struggling to find time to add in FLHook (something I will have to learn). There are also a few additions to the mod I want to add. These are asteroid fields & pirate bases (pirate bases should be hidden), adding these will then allow me to add pirate patrol paths & trade lane attacks. There are other bits and pieces I need to sort out to make multiplayer work completely properly - config files for starting a multiplayer game and the like. I have made some progress though, I have managed to get the Thargoid Warships to start appearing again (I lost them when fiddling with difficulty settings and state graphs and nasty things like that, that don't make much sense to me) Also fixed a bug where it was impossible to buy turrets for the Python. With the recent releases of BF4 and CoD Ghosts, I am somewhat distracted at the moment

I will probably spend a few more hours on this over the weekend, but I do intend to get this completed - then I have to find a place to host it...

Gunbladelad · Post by **Gunbladelad** » Thu Nov 07, 2013 4:43 am

Sounds like you're making promising progress on this. I've mentioned your last post to some of the team on the PTC server who are one of those looking for a new mod to host due to being dissatisfied with the direction the Discovery Mod has been taking and yours was one of those that was discussed a while back. Remember that I'm more than happy to help you out in whatever way I can.

Stormprooter · Post by **Stormprooter** » Thu Nov 07, 2013 4:55 am

Sounds like you're making promising progress on this. I've mentioned your last post to some of the team on the PTC server who are one of those looking for a new mod to host due to being dissatisfied with the direction the Discovery Mod has been taking and yours was one of those that was discussed a while back. Remember that I'm more than happy to help you out in whatever way I can.Well, if someone is interested in hosting the mod, I'd better get cracking!

Thanks for this, it has given me some extra motivation to find time to get on with it. How's this for a plan: I will get the current 'fixed' version as ready for MP as I can and send it to you to have a look (probably via my dropbox) - perhaps you can get FLHook configured on it, and also perhaps submit it to PTC for them to try out.One possible extra change will be the starting money and commodity prices - I have had some feedback on this already, that not enough cash can be made on commodities quickly enough - so I may multiply all prices by 5, and increase staring cash to 5000 Cr to make trading more worthwhile - not entirely sure about it though.I can probably have this ready for next week. If you could get FLHook sorted, and send me back the relevant files, I can then have a look and work out what is going on with it. Meantime, I will add the extra bits I want to add (asteroid fields, pirate stuff etc), then publish the new version when it's ready. (End of this month / early December - perhaps optimistic, but probably do-able)

Gunbladelad · Post by **Gunbladelad** » Thu Nov 07, 2013 6:04 am

Admittedly the PTC team will have tech people with more experience in modifying flhook's data than I have (My experience has been mostly sorting out developer foul-ups in the plaintext ini files and finding obscure bugs ingame nobody else seems to encounter), so the odds are I'd probably request their help along the way with anything I get stuck on. Adjusting the restarts and funding for them is relatively simple - virtually every server host does that themselves anyway. Commodity prices (in Discovery anyway) can also be adjusted server-side using flhook too - usually with "event.ini".

Stormprooter · Post by **Stormprooter** » Thu Nov 07, 2013 9:17 am

I'll get back to you on this next week (If I can remember to do so), if I forget, just reply here and I'll get an email alert

Stormprooter · Post by **Stormprooter** » Mon Nov 11, 2013 5:22 am

Pretty much got everything sorted pre-FL Hook - just got an outstanding issue with player levels for OpenSP/MP - player status is always reporting next level requirement as 'Mission' and it is impossible to rank up. I have posted a question on the RIP forum (where I got the TCM Starter Pack which my mod is based on) - just waiting for some reply on that. Staring money increased to $5000, commodity prices all now x5, return of the Thargoids, also buffed Thargoid Warships as they were a bit too easy to destroy. I want the levels to work properly so that I can add Adoxa's ranks plug-in - this will allow me to report a player's rank along with their 'Elite' ranking - i.e. Harmless, Mostly Harmless, Poor, Average, Above Average, Competent, Dangerous, Deadly and - = E L I T E = - . I will then be happy for it to go to multiplayer for 'testing', before I add the other stuff in.

Stormprooter · Post by **Stormprooter** » Tue Nov 12, 2013 9:46 am

Levels and Ranks are now sorted for both OpenSP and Multiplayer. I have disabled the widescreen hudshift by default (this was causing a few problems for a few users) - I will update the destructions document to show how to re-enable it for 16:9 screens (it's just uncomenting one line in dacom.ini) The current version is ready to be server-ized, so if PTC are interested to test it out, I am happy to let you guys have it as it is - just let me know and I'll upload to my dropbox account and send you the link. It runs as multiplayer OK as far as I can tell, but I have only used the FLServer.exe program as is, without using FLHook or anything else server-side. Cheers

Stormprooter · Post by **Stormprooter** » Wed Nov 13, 2013 7:23 am

New version has been uploaded to MODDB and should be available for download in the next 24 hours. Just has to be approved by MODDB admins.[url]http://www.moddb.com/mods/freelancer-mostly-harmless[/url]

Stormprooter · Post by **Stormprooter** » Wed Nov 13, 2013 2:06 pm

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Post by **Pinback** » Wed Nov 13, 2013 2:12 pm

Excellent video Stormprooter

Geraldine · Post by **Geraldine** » Wed Nov 13, 2013 5:22 pm

Great to see our favourite naughty bugs make an appearance! :girlcrazy:

SpaceSimCentral

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