As my current project, Deus Ex Mundo, approaches a public release this year I am already thinking of a new project probably more ambitious than my DEM and the original Freelancer we all love and hate sometimes. I want to build a new freelancer suite.

This new game would be a rip-off from freelancer and fl mods. But keeping the basic freelancer ambiance that we all love so much but with a whole new story to it.

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So my questions are:

What would you like to keep from freelancer? Trade lanes, jump gates, the easy ship manoeuvring, individual system maps... PVP… and there are soo many things in Freelancer that are awesome and just need a bit of refreshing…
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What would you like to kick out?

Trade lanes (I think they are sometimes a big pain in the ass but useful at the same time...) PVP
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What would you want to add?
A new storyline. (mandatory to not get copy right shits happening with micro shit etc)

A larger local map.

A larger galaxy map (more systems).

More liberty on the bases (actually walking from the bar to the landing pad and so on.
Maybe walking inside ships if they are large like cruisers, battleships… to go fix shits when they go wrong)

Add random brteakdowns of your ship to force to call for help to be towed somewhere to fix your ship(this is just another silly idea)

A game editor that one can buy for a price to make mods of the game more convenient.

Possibility to build your own modular home base(s) that is(are) automatically connected to NPC trade runs to earn hard cash or trading goods for player trade runs.

In PVP, for large battleships to add crew members that each have a thing to do,1 pilot, and gunners etc.)
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What I would add:
Things to buy: Power generators of various sizes depending of ship class to be more flexible in ship set-up and cost. Armor like in UV. Various engines for each ship class. Modular trade ships (you can add containers to trade more shits but at the cost of lower manoeuvrability).

Bring back police and customs in PVP maps. Bring back aliens.

In PVP maps, add the possibility to take fighter ships aboard a larger battleship (docking on BS)

Add a vastly more large maps of a galaxy.
Add a 3D map for the galaxy to seem less flat (this is just a silly idea for now and may make the map system too complicated to use)

Add the option for more than 1 galaxy to play in

Add battleships to single player games to buy and keep them for PVP too

Possibility for certain ships and set-ups to move from one solar system to the other without using jump gates thanks to new engines that allow hyperspace travel

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What I would kick out:
Trade lanes (they can be cool for some stuff but are more a problem than solution IMO

Multiple jump gates, instead I would just put in 1 JG and a menu that allows you to chose your destiny where you want to go (within a limit of connected systems)

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Some other things:
I would reduce the number of each ship class models available unlike UV (not spitting on UV eh, I fucking love UV as it is). I would put more effort to modifying the ship set-up one can buy for a price (power supply, boosters, armor, shields, cargo hold, etc)

I would build a new single player storyline (if peeps want to waste some time on a good story line script, I am all ears!!)

What do you think? Post comments below for our future of gaming in space sims

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Woot!

I hate the gigantic tradelanes next to tiny planets.
The original planet docking rings were ridiculous (which is why I removed them).
How much can you pack into a system without glitches? If you can fit 50 planets and 50 bases maybe no need for multiple systems?
Or, like many other games, just go to a menu or map, select a destination and fast travel (perhaps with fuel costs, disruptions etc).
The BIGGEST pain in making my Sprague system was freelancer textures are one-sided only. From the back side there is no hit box. I had to build interior hit boxes, very complicated. Descent 3 had two sided textures, no such problem.
Story, I loved the storyline from Privateer. Just a guy going out and being a pirate, a trader, a fighter, etc.
Building your own space station or planetary base would be epic! Would need resources, money etc.

this is a tough question, but I think the main ussue will be performance as if there are many planets to render, I have to switch between textures very often and this is basically the most time consuming in GPU time

Bases I could go for a master texture that includes all parts for all bases and make the bases modular to reuse the same texture over and over, this would require just 1 texture switch to render as many bases as I want unlike planets as they use each one their own texture

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Freelancer used a 'trick' to pack things in, one which became a modelers nightmare.
They shrank everything to about a tenth size. So when you built something complicated, like a new ship model, then shrank it to fit, many vertices that were 5 units apart are now occupying the same space leading to errors and visual glitches. Hopefully you can overcome that.

I got ideas to overcome this. Will try to buiuld the ships in the right size to begin with so scaling will become useless (where possible)

I will make hitboxes different too

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Already down to building the bone of this game, so far I get a video playoing and when done playing the video a black screen, this is awesome

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Still waiting for ideas of you guys, spit out ideas I will try to make them work

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A few things there will be:
A power generator( depending of its size you can put more or less equiupment on it
Fuel consumption (player will have to refuel his ship to fuel the power generator, if he dont he will have to call for help to get towed somewhere)
Guns, turrets, missiles, torpedos, mines, counter measures, shields, armor, nano bots, shield batteries, loot, various ship classes ranging from light fighter to ultra like in UV but less models of each, but you will have the joy of setting up your ship to match your needs and what you can buy here and there. Freighters, battleships with doking cap if I go gorilla and make a multi player version (this is pretty tough) Info cards like FL. Loot beams with various ranges. Radar with various ranges.

What I need:
Ideas
Some help for 3D physics
one or more people making ship and base models in wavefront format
one or more peeps to make 2D art

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Should there be base walk around? Or simply a goto thing like in FL as it is now?

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Thrusters, they will have a max thrust speed independant of ship size, but it will take more or less time to get to max speed depending of ship weight

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I imagine calling the game FREE SPACE, at least its an idea for now

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I like the name ;)

A cool feature would be a rotating visual of the ship as you place the desired turrets and missiles. Say you like to fight spiraling to the left, you can easily place your best turrets and missiles on the left side.
Right now a player has to find and use programs to see where turret01 is placed.

ah!! this sounds like a plan

keep coming the good ideas

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what are the known copy right on FL from microshit and so on?

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by default, my version of FL will not require fixes for large screens, but there will be a minimum screen size reaquirement

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