My thoughts on Freelancer, Vega Strike

peteyg · Post by **peteyg** » Sat Dec 27, 2003 5:36 am

I got Freelancer for christmas, and have put about 9 hours into it so far. I think we all know what kind of game it is (Privateer/Elite-ish), and that the gameplay has some similarities to Vega Strike. I could not help but think about Vega Strike while playing, about both the things that I think Freelancer does far better than VS, and the things Freelancer does poorly that Vega Strike can do well, and generally ways that Vega Strike might be improved.

Overall, I really do enjoy Freelancer

The single thing that Freelancer does that Vega Strike currently has no potential to do, is the 3D bases with animated characters and cinematicly scripted camera transitions. Vega Strike can have a good clean base interface, good prerendered backgrounds, and all that... but it will never equal the wonderfully crafted environments that represent Freelancer bases. It's entirely possible for Vega Strike to be a super-awesome game without all the coding and art efforts which would be required to implement such a thing... though Freelancer's immersive bases have really wowed me.

Another thing that I think Freelancer does well is its limited universe. All the systems are handcrafted and pregenerated... and the galaxy is just smaller than in Vega Strike. I think this feels a lot nicer than VS's randomly generated star systems... but VS should continue in this. Perhaps after a while, someone can write up a smaller universe for Vega Strike that encompasses a smaller number of handwritten systems, which might make an interesting mod.

Freelancer has two major flaws. The first is that there is some BS about 'levels' in that if you haven't achieved level 7 you can't buy level 7 guns or ships, even if you've earned the cash. I will say no more of this, since it is clearly stupid.

The second flaw has to do with the main plot. It completely hijacks your game, essentially taking the 'free' out of Freelancer. The plot determines entirely who you are friends and enemies with, where you go, and what sort of ship you need to have. Although I think it is a very good story, it seems to be extremely linear, and it doesn't give you much choice at all. You are cut loose from the plot every once and while... but are summoned back as soon as you've gained a 'level'. Which wouldn't be so bad... if 99% of the bulletin board and fixer missions didn't consist of 'go to navpoint and kill the enemies'.

Minor niggles:
-There are a lot of handy features in the trade system... keeping track of the prices on bases you've been, highlighting the most profitable trade route... but it is extremely flat, and not fun at all. The prices don't change at all, let alone have major fluctuations that the player can take advantage of.
-No way to get faster engines. 'WTF?!' I say!
-Planets are tiny, and space stations looks totally silly next to them.
-Fixers should give out significantly cooler/higher paying/more dangerous missions than the bulletin board. They should also offer some cool unique missions that let you get more involved with their faction.

Minor goodnesses:
-The cookie cutter radio chatter is priceless. Actually hearing a voice say "My convoy is shipping... Boron.... to.... New California... from.... Texas", even if slightly disjointed is just the coolest thing ever.
-The atmospheric effects in different parts of space... flying through clouds, large asteroid fields, etc... and how they actually affect your ship in different ways.
-FTL travel instead of autopilot.

Overall, I think that Vega Strike can take a few things away from Freelancer, and be better in a lot of ways.
1. People need to start writing missions, plots, campaigns, random events, epic quests... things that will engage the player more in the open-ended aspect of the game. This is something Freelancer doesn't do so good at.
1.5: A major, long-term campaign for each faction that can be taken if the player has a rep of at least 75/100.
2. More graphical goodness. Vega Strike is pretty, but it needs some features (better nebula, asteroids, etc)
3. High speed FTL mode to replace the insta-jump autopilot replacement.
4. Unique, interesting locations for the player to visit.
5. Random derelicts to plunder/salvage... random artifacts in asteroids on the frontier to boost ship performance, or that sell for a lot of money.

That's the kind of stuff I've been thinking about while playing Freelancer. Maybe I'll have more. Anyways, I'm going to go back to playing now.

CainFA · Post by **CainFA** » Sat Dec 27, 2003 12:50 pm

I've played (and finished Freelancer) and i don't think it's so good.
Technicaly it's good(but X2 is better)but have a lots of flaws gameplay wise.
First the bases always sell and buy at the same prices.All the ships go at the same top speed(120 m/s and 200(or 300 can't remenber)m/s with thruster)and have the same maniability.
The level system is ,like peteyg said, very bad.
Beside the story missions you only have 6 kind of missions(destroy station,destroy all ship,recover cargo,destroy cargo,capture a bad guy,destroy a specific ship).Pretty limitless.
About the FTL travel i don' know what are you talking about.
The only 3 means of travel in freelancer is using your good old engine,using the trade lane(think gate in Cowboy Bebop in much slower and slower) and using jump gate for changing of sector.This will not be so bad if freelancer was not the sequel of starlancer in which the ships was faster,more powerfull and equiped with their own subspace drive and jumpdrive.
But i'm with peteyg about the fact that VS can take something of Freelancer but i think it'll be better if VS take some ideas of X2.
In X2 you can own differents types of factorys,you can capture ships,you can destroy any stations,have capships and carriers(who can carry 150 fighters).And graphicaly X2 is a better than Freelancer.X2 have bumpmapping and realtime shadows.But it don't have 3d bases(only 3d hangar) and don't have the possibility to land on planets.

Duality · Post by **Duality** » Sat Dec 27, 2003 5:24 pm

For some strange reason, I don't like the ideas from X2. Like capture ships and own factory ships. I can't figure out any more ideas I like from X2.

Grabbing some ideas from freelancer would be nice, like hidden wormholes in nebulas.

Just a guess, X2 is for people who would rather like to take big responsibility of big things like buildings. Kind of like homeworld meets simcity mostly. A pilot virtually becoming an empire.

My style of a space privateer game is fly a ship, trade money, upgrade to a bigger ship, get some wingman and kill enemy fleets as such, and probably own a carrier for fighters to dock at, thats just for single player only.

Silverain · Post by **Silverain** » Sun Dec 28, 2003 11:52 am

peteyg, welcome to FL flight status!

Some comments:

Depending on how VS calls system info, I don't think it needs to be limited. Where specific systems are designed, this information is permanently stored in the game files (e.g. system 'xyz' has two suns, four inhabited planets, 2 stations etc - all for specific requirements and this information remains static (example - Sol)). Random systems not required for specific things remain as current.

I agree - no leveling. You have the cash, and found the item - go ahead, make your day.

VS should not have a 'main plot' as such. <opinion> I see it as we have BBS mission computer for generic missions; we then have fixers to give us better, cooler, missions. These fixers depending on reputation can also offer campaigns (mission series). As such, you could enrole in Confed forces and fight in the 'Debenum Campaign', a series of 40 missions flown from a carrier against the 'insert name here' forces - a la wing commander. Or pirates, aera or whatever takes you fancy. Yes, this means people writing missions. Unless we have a mission editor though, mission generation will be slow. But as VS gains popularity, it will come.

I agree with the minor goodnesses, they add atmosphere (no pun) to the game.

Overall, we can look a few things from various games (I had a look at EVE corporations - interesting).

My $.02

Mr. Surprise · Post by **Mr. Surprise** » Mon Dec 29, 2003 6:47 am

Well as for vegastrike, space-flight(as in flying a starfighter) should be primary because I think thats the type of gameplay it started out at the first place. I know everyone can control any other ship like gunboats and carriers.

But however, if you want to take out the leveling in multiplayer mode of vegastrike, be very aware that old old players will just create alternative characters and give them millions and expect to see a name that no one was ever saw in a powerful ship that will just kill newer players for a sport.

How about an experience system instead?? where you have to have a certain amount of experience point fly one of the ships or even buy a gun?

Or how about a reputation requirement where you have to actually obtain a ship or buy guns/eqipment while your at it? If you want one of those big star ships, then you actually have to have more than 500+ reputation rating to fly one of those.

Multiplayer on the other hand, lets make the multiplayer mode more Jumpgate-ish(a 3d space combat mmopg) type without the NPC wing man(its what you have players for in multiplayer) and capital ships(whats the whole point of every player flying a giant buildings alone when they manage to get infanate amount of cash?) except for the multi-person ships where a gunboat up to 6 people. I know it wouldent be realistic or add any depths in to the game but fighting in small ships only against other players is a lot funner than point and click capital ships or commanding wingman to kill another player, duel wise. Wing-commander/X-wing type multiplayer is what I am excatly looking fowards to. It was my dream.

Well multiplayer server could be customizable by the ship/map/prices you wanted. You could add custom ships to the universe which the server uses. I would highly recommend you come up with 100% original ideas. Then I would by playing for hours.

The bottom line about multiplayer is that with a DSL line, you can only fit up to a maximum of 32 people unless if you can come up with advanced network arcitecture to have more than players fit on a DSL line(perhaps a static universe minus the economic which is supposed to be dynamic but thats just me).

Now an additional feature for multiplayer is we could have a bounty list for players.
Like add a person to the bounty list, and set the credit amounts which will be taken from the credits you have.
Example:
Test_man - 50000
MoBo - 14000
SeXyMaN123 - 300

If Test_man was killed and had a bounty placed on his head, then the killer will recieve money for the kill. Thats if his name was on a bounty list which was for confederate space only.

Except for, if the bounty list was a located in Confederate space, and Test_man was killed in Area/Rlann/Indipendant/etc space, then he will not get the credits for the kill.

Now there are more than one different bounty lists. Bounty list could be located in aera/rlann/neutrial/or whatever space.

Oh and Squads need to be added in multiplayer as well because in freelancer, I didn't like multiplayer because there was no squad feature. Just Clan Initials next to their name and I didn't like that. We could have squads leaders can change their reputation against other squads or players manually and not automatticly(ie kill a faction ship and automatticly lose rep with that faction).

And please don't get ideas from EVE-online because its just a point and click perseudo RPG type game with people being captains of their starships. I've played it before and it seem to had a poor combat system with an eye-candy graphic trying to push the excuse of it why being a good game. I played that game once and I had been obliterated just trying to go through the gate at least 5 times. I got killed twice trying to return to station with ore in hold by other big ships and there was absolutly no skill in trying to evade attacks. And there you go, I canceled my account.

Some things I don't like about freelancer that the flight intera is way too slow and you have to get to cruise speed in order to get descent traveling speed. Plus there was no joystick and the combat wernt realistic by using a Banshee taking out waves of Sabres or Titans. The AI was dumb. Even it tried evading while you were behind them. The players ship can't roll. The systems planets and structures were all on its horizontal axis. At least the ships doesn't stay on the horizontal axis. And there wasn't orbiting, all of the people had the same american accent, and a static universe/economy on top of that. Overall, it was mostly horrible. The only thing I liked about this game was the landing on the planet scene, and hidden jump holes. The multiplayer was 101% horror. There was like a bunch of high levels, 1/3 of them in Sabres, 1/3 of them in Titans, and 1/3 of them in Eagles just going after level 1s using maxed out guns that don't even use anu energy plus shield deliberators. Some popular servers had a program that will kick a player out if he was modding was one little good thing. But then players ignored the no PKing in the new york which finally made me stop playing the freelancer multiplayer in disgust.

Oh, and one more last thing for the vegastrike single player feature suggestion, is to have multiple plots instead of one(or none) like freelancer. So if you accepted a mission, you would go on a story line campaign and give up freelancing for a while. Or add some "choose your own adventure"(anyone remember the books) style on it too. it would be very difficult to do. But there would be benefits like getting items or ships that are not availible in the public market. If anyone remembers the obtaining the Turner ship mission in frontier elite: first encounters, its what I'm talking about.

well that should wrap things up.

richard · Post by **richard** » Tue Jan 27, 2004 5:32 am

My biggest gripes with freelancer in the end were:

1. The scale was horribly wrong. Planets, and anything you docked with were way too small. Take the size of your ship when outside some of the stations compared to when it's inside in the hangar - a lot of stations would have to have Tardis-like qualitites to fit their hangars inside, let alone anything else :) I'm so glad that VS has the potential to have *huge* stations and captial ships :)

2. Boring missions. There was just so little variation - there's only so many times you can "go to sector X and blow everything up". The "story" had more interesting missions, yet those weren't in the mix when you were outside of the story mode... I've already seen a Developer thread in which the Python code to script an encounter was given. Yeah!

3. Those stupid trade lanes. If your sense of realism wasn't already killed by point #1, the concept of trade lanes would finish you off. It's like the game designers didn't realise that planets move!

Fortunately, VS fixes, or is capable of fixing, all of these :)

Freelancer had some plusses:

1. The graphics were incredibly pretty and yet still fast. VS seems to hit frame rate problems more often.

2. Trading would remember prices, making setting up profitable runs much easier.

3. Did I mention the graphics? :)

Post by **hurleybird** » Tue Jan 27, 2004 9:25 pm

we just need some bump-mapping, and Dx9 stuff

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Post by **hurleybird** » Tue Jan 27, 2004 9:26 pm

we just need some bump-mapping, and Dx9 stuff

Post by **hurleybird** » Tue Jan 27, 2004 9:26 pm

we just need some bump-mapping, and Dx9 stuff

richard · Post by **richard** » Tue Jan 27, 2004 9:35 pm

Yeah bump-mapping! Purty.

Boo DX9! (one of the main reasons I'm *here* is because VS runs on Linux :)

etheral walker · Post by **etheral walker** » Tue Jan 27, 2004 9:56 pm

DX9? what's that? How does it work?

peteyg · Post by **peteyg** » Wed Jan 28, 2004 9:14 am

Oh shoot! this is where the posts are that got Hurley over 1k.

DX9 as in DirectX? what about us poor sods who use Linux and such?

richard · Post by **richard** » Wed Jan 28, 2004 9:24 am

Tempted to make snide mark about "DirextX9" and "work" appearing in the same sentence, except perhaps as "DirectX9 is a lot of work".

... but I won't ;)

Post by **hurleybird** » Wed Jan 28, 2004 8:21 pm

oh, sorry. When I said Dx9 i meant Dx9 class pixel and vertex shaders. Which you should find in opengl 2.0

chuckury · Post by **chuckury** » Thu Jan 29, 2004 8:32 pm

peteyg wrote:1. People need to start writing missions, plots, campaigns, random events, epic quests... things that will engage the player more in the open-ended aspect of the game. This is something Freelancer doesn't do so good at.

This may be a stupid remark because I havent played the game yet (Still downloading). But to expand on what he just said, I think someone should make a mod where in the menu theres a button campaigns then theres another menu with make a campaign or play a campaign and you can donwload other peoples campaigns.

peteyg · Post by **peteyg** » Fri Jan 30, 2004 9:34 am

That functionality is already present! All you have to do is select a non-default mission with a campaign, and away you go!

Or all the campaigns can be placed into the default game, and the player can find them on his own... I think that would be a better way to go than making the user select which campaign he wanted to do.

szabo · Post by **szabo** » Mon Feb 09, 2004 7:47 pm

One thing that I didn't like about freelancer is that in fact it's a 2D game with some 3D graphics slapped on. Everything is in the same plane: planets, bases, trade lanes. asteroid fields, etc. If you try to fly too much above or below the plane, you get pulled back.

For me it felt more like a doom-like shoot-em-up rather than a space adventure game. A long shot from Elite and Elite-like games.

Thumbs down from me. Apart from a few nicer graphics, FL has nothing on VegaStrike.