88 Flak is a fast-paced combat mod with Unreal Tournament 2004 style speed and Team Fortress inspired balancing. It aims to bring quick and brutal arena-like combat to Freelancer, revolved around years of refined class balancing. In addition, it aims to expand the gameplay experience with numerous new features - including docking on player Battleships (use teammates as mobile bases), ability to hire AI wingmen, dynamic AI routines (88 Flak's AI is hailed to be the best in Freelancer), advanced graphics/audio, and more. Created by foxBox (foxUnit01) on January 21st, 2005; with continued work today via contributions by the 88 Flak community Wiki / Forums: http://www.memes.no/88flak/ Version 1.27, listed on server list as 88.27 "the screenshots just do not do this mod justice. the combat is like nothing before in freelancer and is something that needs to be experienced to be understood...it can easily rival the intensity of something like freespace." - Chip "...in my opinion the best Freelancer mod I have ever played, it has everything I ever wanted in a Freelancer mod. Balance (most important), Capitals, and Difficulty." - Why485 "This mod is AWESOME. The AI is absolutely groundbreaking." - Matt001 "...and it has to be the first mod where you can get into circle fights with the ai" - KillerJaguar "88 Flak. Goes Great With Whisky." - Dread Pirate Lowsound "I'm somewhat surprised FL didn't just go NO WAY! and just crash" - M0tah ====== Table of Contents: ##1 - List of Features ##2 - Options List ##3 - SP Mode FAQ - How to play Flak by yourself ##4 - Running Freelancer on Windows Vista / Connecting to the 88 Flak 24/7 Server ##5 - Capital Ship / Weapons Platform / Station FAQ ##6 - Multiplayer Wingmen FAQ ##7 - AI Companion Bot FAQ ##8 - Useful Information for Running a Server ##9 - MP Character Updates List ##10 - Other Notes / Known Bugs ##11 - Source Code / Use of INI Code ##12 - What's Coming ##13 - Contact Info ##14 - Thanks To ##15 - Changelog ====== ##1 - List of Features ====== Gameplay: -- Turns Freelancer gameplay into class-based warfare with insanely fast-paced combat. All ships, equipment and other gear is balanced so that no player - even a brand new player - is left in the dust. In the end, combat boils down to the greatest skill and tactics, instead of greatest ships and equipment. -- Huge emphasis on teamplay. Unlike normal Freelancer, friendly NPCs will come to your aid in the middle of a fight, assisting you when the going gets tough. Got a lot of hostiles on your tail? Retreat to a friendly area and they will be dealt with. -- Enormous fights. Both friendly and hostile NPCs can join fights in progress, meaning a simple skirmish can escalate into a full-scale war if not ended abruptly - factions use both Capital Ships and Mobile Stations and are not afraid to roll them out when they need to. -- A variable universe - factions are no longer constrained to their simple spheres of influence, and will send ships across a system - even across the galaxy - to deal with issues. Gaians hate you? There's a small chance a wing of Gaians could pop up in Rheinland to make your life miserable. Friendly with the Kusari Naval Forces? Perhaps you'll run into some KNF ships helping you out in the Border Worlds. -- NPCs and players can be seen until 25km out, allowing for more PvP opportunities. Group members can be seen until 300km out as well, allowing for easier organization with groups. -- Players can join and attain special ranks in factions. Not only do you get a tag in your name when you join a faction, but you also obtain a reputation towards other players - join the Liberty Rogues and you will appear hostile to all players on the Rogues' hit list. Approaching that player would play danger/battle music and show your name under the hostile contacts list. -- Everything you could do in a mission (attacking a Station, etc.) is just played out real-time. This means you could see NPCs attack - and possibly destroy - a Station right in front of your eyes. Or you could destroy one yourself, and reap the loot reward. -- Full player, NPC, and even Station / Weapons Platform looting. ALL cargo (not just some cargo) will drop off players and NPCs - if a player or NPC is carrying 1207 H-Fuel, then that player or NPC will drop 1207 H-Fuel on death. This means a pirate can make a healthy living hunting player-traders down. -- Death Penalties - approximately 6% of your total equipment and ship worth (NOT bank account) is subtracted from your account when you die - if you can't pay your fines, random amounts of equipment will be confiscated from your ship. To put it another way, this is equivalent to paying a full on-base repair bill when you die, in an effort to make retreating from battle more cost-effective than just dieing on the field. AI: -- AI Bots - 30 unique player-like AI NPCs (spanning 52 unique loadouts) that travel the universe in search of glory and fortune. AI Bots can be placed in to an AI Companion squad for solo or cooperative play. When in an AI Companion squad, they will accompany you wherever your travels take you and attack any NPC with a hostile reputation to you. You are given four wingmen "slots" - you may assign a bot to each slot, allowing configurable squads of 1 to 4 bots. Additionally, you may create your own companion bot from an existing player! -- Hirable NPC wingmen squads, which stay with you until you die, log out, land, or jump systems. You can obtain wingmen by paying large amounts of cash or by using high faction reputations - which are not easy to obtain. -- Advanced AI with potent tactics and combat ability. AI will chase fleeing targets with cruise, use Counter-Measures, strafe and afterburn effectively, prioritize targets based on their loadout, and finally serve up a good beating in general. AI Bots (mentioned above) possess combat prowess that will best the average player in a 1v1 fight. -- AI has no combat bias and will attack any target of opportunity - not just players. Factions hate each-other just as much as they may hate you. -- Friends don't let friends fly alone - gaining friendly status with a faction does more than just paint green targets on your HUD. Friendly NPCs will go out of their way to assist you in combat, excuse any accidental friendly fire, and even assign escorts to guard you for free (assuming you have faction's unique token, which requires very friendly rep). -- NPC loadouts and ships are the exact same as what players use. AI Bots in particular feature highly customized loadouts tailored to that bot's fighting style, many of which were built in-game before being exported to the AI Bot's loadout code. -- In addition to AI Bots, there are also regular Freelance NPCs that carry out simple day-to-day tasks in random selections of ships. They can be trading, hunting ships deep within enemy territory, or just flying on patrol. Graphics / Audio: -- (Optional) High-End Special Effects, where special effects will be drawn at a 20km distance, and also forces the engine to handle 10 times the amount of effects it normally can. Paired with the high-end sound system (below), this makes for an amazingly immersive experience as you see (and hear) battles unfold before you're even in range yourself. -- (Optional) High-End Sound, where all sound can be heard up to a 6km distance, and also forces the engine to handle more sound channels. -- (Optional) Battledust, which generates fog and debris off fighting, creating dark clouds where heavy combat areas have occurred. Highly recommended, as this adds huge atmosphere to large fights, but may introduce large performance hits. -- (Optional) Subtle Bloom and other post-process effects, via use of experimental ENBSeries Post-Process effects by Boris Vorontsov (http://boris-vorontsov.narod.ru), included in 88 Flak under non-commercial distribution. Do not be mistaken; 88 Flak's Bloom integration does not over-saturate the image, reduce clarity, etc. - only does what a correctly configured Bloom should do, and that is brighten specular highlights. -- (Optional) Eye-adaption (post-process) - sitting in a dark area while looking outside to a bright one will dynamically adjust the lighting values - looking straight at the sun will be blinding for a second, until the scene adjusts to a darker image. -- (Optional) Dynamic Lighting on explosions. Capital Ship slugfests (during which there are many explosions) will literally light up the area. -- Loads of effects enhancements by Why485, ranging from Ace Combat-esque Missiles to the mighty Flak Cannon arrays that can easily put dozens of explosions in the air - all optimized to give as minimal an FPS hit as possible while still looking sexy. -- Cool death effects, of course - watch your ship catch fire and tumble before you die, or your Capital Ship go up in a blaze of explosive glory, etc. -- All of these graphics enhancements are optional, and can be easily toggled. As such, 88 Flak's system requirements are no higher than vanilla Freelancer. Ships: -- 122 pilotable ships in total, almost all from the original Freelancer game - only the Serafina Freighter, by Asmo, was added. NPCs use all ships as well. -- 56 Fighters/Freighters, 17 Capital Ships, 31 Stations, 9 Weapons Platforms, 2 Liners, 5 Transports/Trains/Lifter, the Repair Ship, and finally the unique Storage Depot. Yeah, those are all from stock Freelancer, minus the Serafina Freighter mentioned above. Aside from Planets and Stars, if you saw it in the original Freelancer, you can fly it here. -- Mobile docking - players can dock with player-flown Battleships/Stations by using a /dock command in chat near the targeted player; the player may resupply or even logout in the belly of his/her friend's Battleship/Station. -- All ships received the best balance possible - no one ship is truly worse than any other ship. This creates very diverse fights against both other players and NPCs that aren't just one-sided equipment-fests. -- A more realistic flight physics engine, where instead of simply bouncing off objects, a more logical collision will occur - scrape a wing on an asteroid, and you will be turned slightly towards it. -- Because of the way ships bank when turning, complex evasive maneuvers like barrel rolls can be pulled off with ease. Systems: -- No Trade Lanes. Nope. None. Cruise travel speeds are faster, but travel requires one to manually truck it everywhere. If you're worried about finding new bases, Trade Lane Buoys now mark where Trade Lanes used to be, and all of them show up on your NavMap from the start. -- 18 dockable bases that are available for purchase in various systems. You can not move them from their spots, nor do anything else with them for that matter, however they're excellent re-supply / respawn points, carry every gun and shield in the game for sale, and they DO shoot at other players / NPCs. Very handy for clans, but be wary as you may be sharing the space with unwanted guests. -- Complete re-do of asteroid fields - asteroids can now be pushed around - and mined - by ships. No more jamming your Battleship on asteroids, they just bump out of the way. No un-used asteroid models or poor pop-in distance on the asteroids either - the fields will look just as good as they did before. -- 3 PvP Arenas, using the last few levels from the SP campaign - the Lair, and the outside / inside of the Dyson Sphere. Arenas can be used for Death Penalty-free combat against other players and AI Bots. -- A unique hub system that allows players from all corners of the universe to meet up, trade rare items, and engage eachother in the connecting PvP Arenas (mentioned above). However, players can only exit the hub from the sector they entered from, and can not trade or drop commodities, meaning normal trade and travel balance is not affected. -- Unique challenge systems (high-end dungeons, basically), where players are pushed to the limit against insane bosses with unique rewards. For example, one challenge system requires players to travel roughly 400km of "Mine Maze" tunnels, which will instantly kill the player upon contact - players must navigate the tunnels, with waves of hostiles attacking them, to eventually fight a superboss at the end. -- Locked systems such as Tohoku have been unlocked, and transformed into fully-functional, NPC-populated systems. Misc: -- Multiplayer support of the singleplayer storyline event system, making it possible to write scripted storyline missions for multiplayer. (extremely beta, work-in-progress) -- Custom 88 Flak FLHook (or FlakHook), designed by M0tah, integrated directly into the mod. Seamless integration technique requires absolutely no setup. FLHook was originally developed by mc_horst, with continued development by w0dk4 and various other coders in the FLHook community - see Thanks To section for other FLHook contributors. -- 94 collectable rare items, which are gained at random off killing NPCs. These include things such as cool guns, shield modifiers (modify your shield capacity or shield regen), power modifiers, scanners, tractor beams, and even ships. -- Extended configuration, both client and server side. Options include whether you want so see objects across a system or not, what types of NPCs appear, NPC population limits, etc. -- Possibly the most in-depth playable Nomad system - small buoys in each system allow you to resupply while maintaining proper hostility towards all factions, with the added ability to take Nomad AI wingmen (as per all other factions) with you on raids. -- Special "quests" that demand a bit of riddle solving, and a bit of time on your hands. However, the rewards for accomplishing these are worth it to say the least. Want more info? Well, the screenshot directories sum it up pretty well: http://www.memes.no/88flak/screenshots/gameplay1.htm and http://www.memes.no/88flak/screenshots/misc1.htm ====== ##2 - Options List ====== Options are grouped as follows: "SP Only" - These options are intended for SP mode only. Changing them may have an undesired effect on multiplayer play. "MP Client" - These options affect only the person who selected them, and have no effect on any other players. "MP Server" - These options are for the server host to decide on. They take effect server-wide, even if the joining clients do not have the option selected. New characters are notified of which options the server has selected. -- Essential Options -- SP Only: Enable full OpenSP support? - No / Yes Enables tweaks to the mod to help support OpenSP mode, until FLHook can be properly ported to OpenSP architecture. Currently, this consists of fixing reputation changes in OpenSP (reputations are completely handled by FLHook in MP), and removing cloaks from purchasable ships as they can not be toggled in SP (they are permanently on). As such, it is actually possible to play Multiplayer with this enabled - just don't plan on hosting any servers or purchasing any ships with a cloak mounted, or you will be kicked for cheating. Default: No MP Client: Enable Global Server Workaround? - No / Yes Enable this option to enable w0dk4's Global Server Workaround, instead of attempting to connect directly to the fllistserver.com project. The GLS Workaround is more reliable, however can sometimes ignore manual direct connects specified with the -s parameter when launching Freelancer. Default: No MP Client: Enable Battleship / Station Anti-Spin? - Yes / No If enabled, Battleships and Stations will be protected against "spinning", which occurs when another ship collides with you in Multiplayer (Singleplayer does not suffer this bug). However, this solution causes Battleships and Stations to violently "wag" back and forth during autopilot; if this bothers you, switch this option off. Autopilot will be completely restored, and you will still be partially protected from spinning, however NPCs may still spin you once and a while (even though AI are designed to avoid ramming ships). This option is automatically disabled when full OpenSP support is enabled, as anti-spin protection is not needed in OpenSP. Default: Yes MP Client: Screen resolution ratio? - Many options Selecting this option will shift HUD elements around to best match your screen resolution ratio. Default: 4:3 (1024x768, 1280x960, etc.) -- Player-Purchasable Base Ship Selection -- (activated with packaged Ship Selector addon) MP Client: Ship (1/2) at Player-Purchasable Bases? - Many options This option will select which ship appears for sale at any Player-Purchasable Base. Please note that this ship only appears for you, and not necessarily anyone else using the base. If this is your first time playing Flak, don't worry about this addon. Default: None -- High-End Graphics / Sound Options -- MP Client: Enable Post-Process effects? - No / Yes (version 1) / Yes (version 2) Enables use of experimental ENBSeries Post-Process effects by Boris Vorontsov (http://boris-vorontsov.narod.ru), included in 88 Flak under non-commercial distribution. No parts of the plugin have been changed, except for the plugin configuration to better suit Freelancer. For more info, please view the files in the "exe/ENBSeries Information/" directory. Requires a graphics card with Shader Model 2.0 support or better. (GeForce 6100+, Radeon 9500+, etc.) Version 2 features a custom-written for 88 Flak by Honken. It is a work-in-progress - Version 1 and 2 look drastically different, so it's down to personal taste. Since Version 2 still needs some work, I'd recommend just using Version 1. Default: No MP Client: Enable high-end view distances? - No / Yes (10x) / Yes (Unlimited) If enabled, this will tweak the in-game Level of Detail (LOD) manager to render objects at a higher distance. If the 10x option is picked, the distance in which an object is rendered is increased by 10x the normal Freelancer distance. If the Unlimited option is picked, there is no limit to how far away an object is drawn. Please note that unless you have a very high-end PC, this will probably introduce quite a bit of FPS lag. Try the high-end special effects and sound system first. Default: No MP Client: Enable high-end special effects? - No / Yes / Yes (higher effects distance only) If enabled, special effects will be drawn at a 20km distance, and also forces the engine to handle 10 times the amount of effects it normally can. This also enables usage of Why485's new Missile, Torpedo, and Flak Cannon effects, which require the high-end special effects tweak to function. Finally, this enables explosion debris for Missiles and Torpedoes. Paired with the high-end sound system (below), this makes for an amazingly immersive experience as you see (and hear) battles unfold before you're even in range yourself. Default: No MP Client: Enable high-end sound system? - No / Yes If enabled, all sound can be heard up to a 6km distance, and also forces the engine to handle more sound channels. 3D Sound MUST BE ENABLED for this option to function correctly - however, 3D Sound has been known to cause stability issues, so use it at your own risk! Paired with the high-end special effects (above), this makes for an amazingly immersive experience as you hear (and see) battles unfold before you're even in range yourself. Default: No MP Client: Enable Battledust? - No / Yes / Yes (2x duration) / Yes (2x duration + thicker) Enables or disables the "Battledust" system, which generates fog and debris off fighting, creating dark clouds where heavy combat areas have occurred. Highly recommended, as this adds huge atmosphere to large fights, but may introduce large performance hits. This requires high-end special effects to be enabled; otherwise, the battledust effects will overload Freelancer's rendering capacity. Also, please note that this disables the new hit effects system which allows hit effects to play when hitting your craft, due to a code conflict. If Battledust is activated, 88 Flak will simply revert to the vanilla hit effects method, where hit effects are hidden if hitting your craft. Default: No -- Camera Options -- MP Client: Change "Rear View" to "Tactical View"? - A few options If enabled, "Rear View" (default V) will be changed to a "Tactical View" - this positions the camera 1.5km or 3km away from your ship, allowing you to shoot everything immediately surrounding you - rather it be in front of you, behind you, above you, etc. This is especially useful as you can turn and use "Rear View" at the same time. Great for Capital Ships looking for an immediate readout of all ships surrounding them. Default: No MP Client: Wide camera turning with Capitals? - Full / Partial / None Wide camera turning allows the camera to pivot up to 180*, allowing you to shoot targets behind or to the side of you while turning towards them. It essentially eliminates the need for Turret View. Although this takes a while to get used to, it highly increases the efficiency of these ships, and as such is recommended. Default: Full -- Visual Options -- MP Client: More realistic space backgrounds? - No / Yes If enabled, backgrounds are simple patterns of stars, instead of the artsy backgrounds Freelancer carries by default. This gives the space presented a more realistic feel. Default: No MP Client: Normal thruster effects? - No / Yes Forces use of Freelancer's normal "smoke" thruster effect; Flak normally uses an effect that draws a contrail, however some think the flame effect is too large and would just prefer the normal effect. Default: No MP Client: Draw Contrails on ships? - Yes / No Enables contrails (trails given off wing tips) to be drawn, like in normal Freelancer. Engine Trails are always drawn, so if you don't like all the trails, toggle these off. Default: Yes -- Server Options -- MP Server: AI difficulty? - Normal / Easy / Very Easy / Hard Turning this to Easy limits Nanobot / Shield Battery usage, making them easier to kill. Turning this to Very Easy decreases accuracy, firing rate, missile usage, and thrusting skill, in addition to limiting Nanobot / Shield Battery usage. Turning this to Hard grants near-perfect accuracy, firing rate, missile usage, and Nanobot / Shield Battery usage. They will never deliberately miss a shot - even if they are screaming by at 500m/s, so you will have to constantly evade incoming fire. One Hard NPC is roughly equal to the skill of most casual players. You will receive double Credit Chip loot from killing AI on this difficulty. Default: Normal MP Server: Random Capital Ship fleets? (all factions) - Yes / No Allows generation of large Capital Ship fleets that roam the universe, composed of up to 8 ships. These are the only fleets that feature Battleships. Please note toggling this off disables ALL Capital Ship fleets for every faction. Smaller Capital Ship patrols will still spawn, unless those are toggled off too. This does not affect NPCs in Challenge Missions. Default: Yes MP Server: Random Capital Ship patrols? (all factions) - Yes / No Allows generation of small Capital Ship patrols that roam the universe, composed of only a smaller Capital Ship and a few fighters. Please note toggling this off disables ALL Capital Ship patrols for every faction. Larger Capital Ship fleets will still spawn, unless those are toggled off too. This does not affect NPCs in Challenge Missions. Default: Yes MP Server: Random Capital Ship patrols? (Nomads) - Yes / No Allows generation of small Nomad Capital Ship patrols that roam the universe, composed of only a smaller Capital Ship and a few fighters. Please note toggling this off ONLY disables Capital Ship patrols for Nomads. You do NOT have to use this option if you have disabled all Capital Ship patrols - it is only for if you specifically want Nomad Capital Ship patrols gone. This does not affect NPCs in Challenge Missions. Default: Yes MP Server: Random Capital Ship patrols? (Freelancer NPCs) - Yes / No Allows generation of small Freelance NPC Capital Ship patrols that roam the universe, composed of only a smaller Capital Ship and a few fighters. Please note toggling this off ONLY disables Capital Ship patrols for Freelancer NPCs. You do NOT have to use this option if you have disabled all Capital Ship patrols - it is only for if you specifically want Freelance NPC Capital Ship patrols gone. This does not affect NPCs in Challenge Missions. Default: Yes MP Server: NPC Count? - Normal / Low / High / Ridiculous This option raises and lowers NPC counts in systems. Normal will have a max. of 8 NPCs in a normal area. Low will have a max. of 4 NPCs in a normal area. This can make things a bit dull, unless you have Hard AI on. High will have a max. of 16 NPCs in a normal area. This has the possibility of making things a bit tougher, since a group may get a full hostile 16 NPC spawn. It will also probably lag an internet server. Ridiculous will have a max. of 32 NPCs in a normal area. Don't even think of running this on a server, because it earns its namesake. This does not affect NPC counts in Challenge Missions. Default: Normal MP Server: Allow Wingmen License to attract wingmen? - Yes / No Allows players to lead AI NPC wingmen squads. I HEAVILY recommend this be left enabled; most of 88 Flak's combat is balanced under the assumption that players have AI helping them at all times. Default: Yes -- Soundtrack Selection -- (88 Flak Soundtrack addon, downloaded at http://www.memes.no/88flak/downloads/beta/88flakv127_st.zip.flmod) MP Client: Soundtrack selection? - 88 Flak ST / Alternate Heavy ST / Vanilla ST (new title screen tracks only) Toggle between the two different 88 Flak soundtracks. I'd recommend that you play with the 88 Flak Soundtrack, however I suppose it all lies in musical taste. For more information on the soundtracks, please view the soundtrack readme. Default: 88 Flak ST ====== ##3 - SP Mode FAQ - How to play Flak by yourself ====== Q: When I start up SP Mode, I am warned that SP has issues and that I should play multiplayer! What's the deal? A: Indeed, while Flak supports Open SP, there are quite a few issues - among other things, cloaks and AI wingmen do not function (though the AI Companion Bot does). Thus, the best way to experience Flak is indeed to just start up a multiplayer server (run flserver.exe in Freelancer's EXE folder, by default C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Freelancer\EXE\flserver.exe) and connect to it via LAN in the multiplayer menu. The performance hit is ignorable, and you never have to worry about your save-game being deleted for any reason (since it's just an MP character instead) This finally has the added benefit of multiplayer wingmen / AI Companion Bots (which only work in multiplayer), designed to aid solo pilots. Q: The computer I play Flak on has no internet / network access! When I run a server it doesn't show up under the server browser for LAN or internet! A: If this is the case, run a server normally, and change your Freelancer shortcut to run "freelancer.bat" instead of "freelancer.exe" - this automatically runs Freelancer with the instructions to manually load your server into the server list. If the BAT file doesn't work, you can do this manually by running freelancer.exe with "-slocalhost:2302" (no quotes), which will allow you to connect to your server with no LAN/internet connection. An example of this would be - "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Freelancer\EXE\Freelancer.exe" -slocalhost:2302 Q: I tried what you mentioned above, but the server still doesn't show up under my server list! A: I personally have run into this problem with FLServer sometimes. If you run into this issue with Linksys routers, like I did, upgrading the router firmwire will fix this. Also, if you're running Windows Vista, please see section 4, "Running Freelancer on Windows Vista / Connecting to the 88 Flak 24/7 Server" Q: I tried what you mentioned above, and it worked, but people are joining my server and I don't want them to! A: The answer to this is simple - when you start FLServer.exe, there is an option called "Make this server internet accessable" - simply un-check this option and no-one from the internet will be able to join your server. Q: Isn't hosting a multiplayer server and playing on it on the same computer make Freelancer run badly? A: Not at all. As long as you're the only player on the server, the server only has to send information to you - and you're on the same computer. Thus, with no other computers to communicate with, the CPU hardly has to do any work at all with the server. Q: Flying solo is fun, but are there any multiplayer servers available? A: YES, there is a 24/7 dedicated server for 88 Flak. Be sure to hop on! Q: I tried what you mentioned above to host a server, and it's not working for XYZ reason! A: Please see the contact info below to get in touch with me - I may be able to solve your problem. ====== ##4 - Running Freelancer on Windows Vista / Connecting to the 88 Flak 24/7 Server ====== To connect to the official 24/7 88 Flak server, you will need to directly connect to it via one of five methods: Option 1) Provided it is up, 88 Flak should attempt to automatically connect to the new community-run Global List Server - the 88 Flak 24/7 Server should show up on this list when you look at Internet games. Option 2) Use FLSPop - a quiet, low-memory background tool that will automatically notify you of when new players are online, as well as the player count. It can be used to launch Freelancer with the server already on the list; this is the most recommended approach to playing on the 88 Flak 24/7 Server, and can be found at http://www.memes.no/88flak/forum/viewtopic.php?t=379 Option 3) Change your Freelancer shortcut to run "freelancer.bat" instead of "freelancer.exe" - this automatically runs Freelancer with the instructions to manually load the 88 Flak 24/7 Server into the server list. Option 4) If the BAT file refuses to work, run "fldirectip.hta" in the "exe" directory of your Freelancer installation, enter "88.159.160.79" for the IP, and "2302" for the port (which is the default FL port). Option 5) Alternatively, if the BAT file refuses to work, create a shortcut to freelancer.exe with the command line "-s88.159.160.79:2302" - for example, "C:\Games\Freelancer\exe\Freelancer.exe" -s88.159.160.79:2302 To play Freelancer on Vindows Vista: By default, Freelancer's multiplayer does not function on Windows Vista. To fix this, install Service Pack 2 (SP2). If installing Service Pack 2 (SP2) does not fix the issue, try these steps: Step 1) First, if Freelancer Mod Manager does not load, or does not copy DLLs, run FLModManager.exe as Administrator (right-click on it and select "Run as Administrator", or set the option under properties). Step 2) Second, if the 88 Flak .zip.flmod file does not extract, rename it to a .zip file, and manually extract the folders to Freelancer Mod Manager's mods directory (open FLMM and press Ctrl+M or select Tools > Open Mods Folder). Step 3) Go into properties for freelancer.exe (right-click on it) and set it to run in Windows XP SP2 compatibility mode. Step 4) Run freelancer.exe as Administrator (right-click on it and select "Run as Administrator", or set the option under properties). Step 5) If servers are shown with an IPv6 address (IE 2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:733 instead of 192.0.2.235), IPv6 will need to be disabled. In order to do so, go to Network Connections (search for it), right-click on your adaptor, and then Properties. Uncheck the "Internet Protocol version 6 (TCP/IPv6)" option, and reboot your computer. As IPv6 isn't really used for anything yet, it is, for now, safe to disable. Step 6) McAfee, Norton, and certain versions of AVG do not appear to work with Freelancer; multiplayer simply won't work at all with these programs installed, as they tamper with the Microsoft DirectPlay protocols. Try switching to a less invasive AV solution, such as Avira: http://www.free-av.com/ Thanks to The Starport and Louva-Deus for these steps. ====== ##5 - Capital Ship / Weapons Platform / Station FAQ ====== If you plan on buying a Capital Ship, Weapons Platform (WP), or Station, please read this BEFORE doing so. Q: Can we really fly every Capital Ship, Weapons Platform and Station? A: You sure can. There's 17 Capital Ships, 31 Stations, and 9 Weapons Platforms to choose from, which is about every large object in the game. Q: Why can't pirate players get Capital Ships? That's not fair. A: Yes, it is fair. Pirating can be one of the best ways to make money in Flak, but is also the hardest and most risky. You CAN get Capital Ships as a pirate, but you pretty much have to be ex-Navy. Q: Okay, so I bought a Capital Ship / WP / Station. It comes with no guns, and purchasing guns is really expensive! What the hell!? A: Capital Ships are an entirely different tier of ships - buying one is like starting a character over, only with a Capital Ship and different equipment to work towards. You have two options - either suck it up and pay millions for the guns, or group with either players or NPCs to start looting equipment. This was done because Capital Ships / WPs / Stations are very clan-oriented craft, where you'll either need large pools of money or a lot of man-power (usually both) to arm a Capital Ship. But trust me, once you get a Capital Ship / WP / Station fully armed, it is pretty impressive. Q: Why do I fail at fighting other Capital Ships / WPs / Stations when I arm a Capital Ship / WP / Station with Flak Cannons / Defense Turrets? A: Flak Cannons (Large Capital Anti-Fighter) and Defense Turrets (Small Capital Anti-Fighter) are designed to take out fighters, not other Capitals. Q: Why do Flak Turrets suck? Small Capitals armed with Defense Turrets are so much better. A: They don't suck, they just have a much shorter killzone than Defense Turrets - Large Capitals are primarily anti-capital craft, whereas Small Capitals are primarily anti-fighter. It's just part of the balance. Q: Howcome Goto doesn't function properly? I wag violently back and forth! A: Normally, Battleships and Stations will be protected against "spinning", which occurs when another ship collides with you in Multiplayer (Singleplayer does not suffer this bug). However, this solution causes Battleships and Stations to violently "wag" back and forth during autopilot; if this bothers you, there is an option to disable the anti-spin protection. Autopilot will be completely restored, and you will still be partially protected from spinning, however NPCs may still spin you once and a while (even though AI are designed to avoid ramming ships). ====== ##6 - Multiplayer Wingmen FAQ ====== Q: I can't find any wingmen to hire! A: Just hang around a base - as long as you have a Wingmen License ($120,000 and lost every death) or Operative / Overseer tokens from factions (purchasable with high reputation and not lost on death), you should be able to find a fighter wing willing to assist. However, only one wingmen squad may appear in an area at a time - if another nearby player is using wingmen, you will need to move elsewhere (or just group up with that player - players survive longer sticking together!). The Wingmen License will hire all available wingmen, whereas the faction tokens will only hire that faction's wingmen. Wingmen Licenses are sold at the commodity dealer, and faction tokens are sold at the equipment dealer. Q: Are pirate wingmen possible? A: Damned straight they are. Hang around a pirate base. Every good pirate needs good cannon fodder! Q: My (XYZ faction) wingmen aren't shooting my (XYZ faction) enemies! A: Wingmen will only shoot their faction's enemies; while these are usually your enemies too, sometimes there are surprising neutralities between factions. Q: When I hail my wingmen, they demand I drop my Wingmen License and attack me! A: Don't hail your wingmen, it gets messy. This is just a Freelancer bug, in a way; there's not much I can do about it. Luckily, if another player hails your wingmen, they politely answer him/her and keep on following you like they should, so that's not an issue. Q: I travelled to another system, but my wingmen didn't follow! A: They don't follow you across systems. Yet. However, chances are what will happen is you'll get another squad right off the bat as you enter the system, as factions generally tend to have hirable wingmen on both sides of a jumphole/jumpgate. Q: Okay, I got another wing to follow me after jumping to another system, but the formation's all off-center! A: For some odd reason, there is a native Freelancer bug where if wingmen start following you after you've gone through a jump gate/hole, the wingmen form on you in odd positions, which can be irritating if you're flying a larger craft like a Capital Ship. If this does bug you, this can be worked around by simply using "Select New Character" under the F1 menu to log out and back in every time you jump systems and want wingmen. Or, just land on a base, and that fixes it too. Q: I see enemies far away on my radar that are my wingman's enemies as well, but my wingman won't attack them! A: Wingmen will only attack targets less than 2400m away from you. This increases slightly when you're piloting larger ships like Capital Ships or Stations, however. This was done so that if you're cruising along and happen to pass by a hostile wing of ships, but don't engage them, your wingmen will stay with you. Q: I'm fighting another player's wingmen, and after repeatedly Cruise Disrupting them, they disappeared on me right under my nose! A: This is because the player fled without you taking notice, and the wingmen have teleported back to him/her, seeing as they couldn't cruise away in time. Q: Will these wingmen be ported to normal Freelancer? A: Yes, in fact as of this writing a beta of the Multiplayer Wingmen Project has been released - download it at http://the-starport.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=977&start=0 (forum topic) or http://www.memes.no/88flak/downloads/beta/88FlakAIWingmenProject099Beta.zip.flmod (direct link) Q: Will these wingmen work in other mods / can I use them in my own mod? A: On their own, no, the wingmen can not function in other mods without a bit of work. See the above question. If you want to use wingmen in your own mod, go for it. I would appreciate it if you asked first (contact info below), but it isn't required - just proper credit at least. See Use of INI Code section. ====== ##7 - AI Companion Bot FAQ ====== Q: What's this I hear about bots? Huh? A: Bots are player-like NPCs that follow a player around. They are similar to wingmen, except for the fact that they're always with the player. There are currently quite a few bot companions to choose from, each with their own individual name, ship(s), and loadout. You can also build your own bot. The player can decide between rather his or her bots shoot lawfuls, un-lawfuls, everything, or just his or her enemies. Due to the nature of how bots are always with players, they are intended for solo or co-operative play only. Q: Holy crap, dude, you just revolutionized Freelancer! AI Bots!? A: Well, not really. Bots are still beta, and although they function very well, there are a few annoyances with them (see below). Also, AI Companion Bots ONLY function on your own server. You can not use them on any other server. Q: How many bots are there to choose from? How many can I have with me at a time? A: There are 26 different bots at the time of this writing. You can also build your own. You can have up to 4 with you at a time, however I would recommend you have less. Using a full squad of 4 bots is nearly unstoppable, especially if they're using Capital Ships. Each bot wingman is picked separately as well, so you can have a mix of whatever you want. The formation will adjust itself automatically to fit Capital Ships, too. Q: How come I see random bots flying around, even when I don't have the AI Companion on? A: When you haven't selected a bot using the AI Companion, it will fly around on its own and have its own reputation towards both players and factions. Thus, if you do have AI Companion on, any bot that is not in your squad can still be encountered. This means if you take KittBot with you, you can still encounter TrickBot, foxBot, etc. randomly. Q: Can I build my own bot? I want a bot that flies XYZ ship with XYZ weapons, shield, etc.! A: Thanks to the hard work of 88 Flak community programmer M0tah, you sure as hell can! BEFORE activating the mod, open up Freelancer Mod Manager, right-click 88 Flak v1.27, and click "Open Mod's Folder" - inside, you'll find a program named "ShipConvert.exe" - this program will allow you to convert an existing player file on your server into an AI bot. Currently, this conversion covers everything including the ship, equipment, cargo, name, and rank. You can optionally rename the bot as well. Beware! Since the conversion covers cargo, be sure to stock up on ammo and repairs before converting the bot, or it won't have any! Q: How do I use this Bot Generator ("ShipConvert.exe") program? A: By default, this program will point to your player accounts folder. If it isn't, simply click the "change directory" button to locate your account folder. After doing so, simply pick a slot number (1-4) and a character to convert. Click "generate" and your bot is made! Finally, activate the AI Companion with "Character-Generated Bot #" selected as your bot (with # being the slot you picked in the Bot Generator program). If the bot you generated is a Battleship, use the Battleship Formation option. Please note that, as long as you ran the Bot Generator in the "88 Flak v127" folder BEFORE activation, your bot data will remain saved even if you re-activate the mod. Q: Can I fight my bots? When I shoot them, they don't do anything, and are loyal enough to even die by my hand! A: Enter in "/botcombat on" into the chat, and your bots will try to kill you. By default, due to the number of friendly ships in 88 Flak, ships excuse friendly fire. When you're done getting smoked, "/botcombat off" will make them stop. Q: What happens when a bot dies? Does it respawn? A: In flight, no. However, as soon as you land, your bot will return fully replenished and ready to go. Q: Hold on, some bots fly Capital Ships? So I can have a small fleet at my disposal? A: Yeah, why not. I'm even featured in a Nomad Gunboat. Use me, I'm quite handy. ;) Again however, I'd recommend that "serious" playing not be conducted with 4 Capital Ships. You WILL be nearly unstoppable, especially if in one yourself. Q: How do bots work with multiple people? A: They do and they don't. Bots will follow the first player they see, but if players distance themselves from one-another then more than one bot-squad may be spawned, which can cause problems. So, if you and a friend would like a bot (or bots) to aid your co-operative travels together, then they work very well and this is for you. =P Q: When I launch from a base, or jump systems, or log-in in space, etc., sometimes the bots take a while to appear! A: This is very rare, and you'll likely always see your bot first-thing; however, if this happens, simply go on your merry way and the bots will join you at some point. Q: Okay, I have my bots following me after jumping to another system, but the formation's all off-center! A: For some odd reason, there is a native Freelancer bug where if wingmen start following you after you've gone through a jump gate/hole, the wingmen form on you in odd positions, which can be irritating if you're flying a larger craft like a Capital Ship. If this does bug you, this can be worked around by simply using "Select New Character" under the F1 menu to log out and back in every time you jump systems. Or, just land on a base, and that fixes it too. Q: I used the "shoot my enemies" option for the bots. I have my bots with me, so I decide to go shoot the nearest friendly ship so I can watch my bots kill it. However, they do nothing! A: Bots with "shoot your enemies" on only attack NPCs that you have a hostile reputation with. This is because sometimes you may hit a neutral NPC by accident and turn it hostile (friendly NPCs excuse friendly fire), but don't want to kill it because of bad reputation drop - if your bots swooped in and murdered it, you would take the rep hit for helping kill that NPC. That, or this is a hard-coded bug that I have no idea how fix. Take your pick. Q: I used the "shoot my enemies" option for the bots. I have a bot with me, but it's neutral, and does not attack my enemies! A: If you're using an old character, your reputation with bots will indeed be neutral - this causes the "shoot your enemies" code to not work. To fix this, kill a bot at least once. From then on it shall be forever friendly to that character, as it should normally. Alternatively, type "/botcombat off", which will instantly make bots friendly. This bug does not apply to new characters - they automatically start off friendly to bots. Q: I built a bot from a Repair Ship, and it won't use the Repair Turret on me - it uses it on the enemy instead! A: See the "Other Notes / Known Bugs" section for a work-around to this; AI don't currently understand Repair Turrets. Q: Do bots ever talk? They're awfully silent. A: Originally, every bot was had its own voice, however when re-designed to allow more than one bot on your wing, voices had to be tossed. Honestly though, after flying with AI wingmen in Freelancer for years, the break from constant chatter is kinda nice. =P Q: What's the deal with foxBot's custom Drake (Diablo) and Dragon (Heretic)? They look awesome! Can I get one? A: While everything I design for 88 Flak is, in some way, public to all players (unless it's an extremely beta concept not fully implemented yet), I do have to splurge a little and make something for just myself (or, in this case, foxBot). So, in short, no, sorry. ;P But everything else is available! *shot* Q: What's the deal with HowdaDoodeWTF's golden Liberator (Predator)? It looks terrible! Can I get one anyways? A: Yeah, the Predator looks awful; it's a bit of a joke. For nabbing one, see above answer. Q: Will bots be ported to vanilla Freelancer? A: No. I'm not trying to be stingy with Flak's code, it's just that there are several things in the Flak mod that bots rely on to function, so they will not directly work with Freelancer. However, I _have_ already ported wingmen, and from there you could probably design your own bot solution. Please check the AI Wingmen FAQ for more information. Q: Can I use bots in my own mod? A: Sure. I would appreciate it if you asked first (contact info below), but it isn't required - just proper credit at least. See Use of INI Code section. ====== ##8 - Useful Information for Running a Server ====== DO NOT use ANY kind of server patches that overwrite DLLs (for example, the server-side $2,000,000,000 patch), as they are either included in the mod or WILL NOT work. If you do try to use server-side patches, expect major instability from your server! Also, 88 Flak is built on and requires FLHook, so make sure all server utilities you use (like cheat protection) are compatible with FLHook. Sorry, 88 Flak can not be run without FLHook. By default, FLHook is set to enable charfile encryption - however, if you want Ioncross Server Operator to be able to correctly read unencrypted charfiles, use the included FLCodec.dll in "FLCodec DLL for Ioncross.zip" located in the "88 Flak v127" mod folder (open up Freelancer Mod Manager and go to Tools > Open Mods Folder). Simply extract the DLL to your Ioncross Server Operator folder. If you're running anything that detects asteroid mining cheats, make sure you increase the limit of maximum minable asteroids to 15! Otherwise, players will get kicked when they try to mine asteroids, as 88 Flak has a maximum asteroid loot drop count of anywhere from 1-ish to 10-ish depending on the commodity type. Ioncross Server Op. files are included, and I got rid of all the extra stuff that came with the default files. I also believe that everything mountable has a hashcode, while items that should not be used (Orbital Defense Cannons, etc.) do not. This means you can simply have Ioncross ban all unknown equipment and wipe half the cheaters off the face of your server. The NPC AI is very taxing on the server. NPCs strafe and thrust like or better than most FL players; so while this leads to beautifully orchestrated 4v4 fights, that means there's a 4v4 fight for every player on the server (unless they're grouped in one area). For this, I have included the option of lowering the amount of NPCs for larger servers. You can pick a low NPC count - 4 NPCs maximum instead of 8 NPCs. Or, if you're insane, you can raise the maximum NPC count in a given area to either 16 or 32, which will turn Sirius into a war zone. While it's neat to watch 32 capital ships / fighters blast the living crap out of each-other (great for LANs!), this is not recommended; your server will probably suffer a lag attack. ;P There is no admin ship, but there is an "ADMIN" faction which can be set on a player by dragging the rep slider for the "ADMIN" faction in Ioncross to anything above 0.9 - also, there is an "Admin Shield" and "Admin Infinite Power Supply" that can be given to players via Ioncross. The Admin Shield makes players invulnerable, and the Admin Infinite Power Supply grants stupid amounts of power. There's also a selection of "Admin / Dev Engines" in Light Fighter, Heavy Fighter, Very Heavy Fighter, and Freighter varients. These will make your engines look like Nomad engines, however make sure the right engine type is mounted on your ship (e.g. do NOT put a HF engine on a LF, or you will run into issues). Finally, although it is a pain, it heavily recommended that you defrag your hard disk after activation of 88 Flak if you're running a server. If you don't know how to do this, click Start > Run and type in the following - "defrag C:" (or whatever your drive letter is) - this will really help FLServer parse all the different INI files, which can mean the difference between a smooth server and really choppy one! However, this will take a really long time, so make sure you're not in a hurry and have lunch ready. ;) ====== ##9 - MP Character Updates List ====== If all your characters have started on or after 1.27, you're all set, ignore this. If you wish to use pre-1.27 characters, you must download and run two programs: -- Freelancer Save Manipulator by M0tah, included in 88 Flak - simply open up the "88 Flak v127" mod folder (open up Freelancer Mod Manager and go to Tools > Open Mods Folder) and run FLSM.exe - once this is open, click "Choose New Operation File" and load in the "FLSM Updates.flm" script. -- Freelancer Save Converter by Accushot, downloaded at http://forums.seriouszone.com/showthread.php?t=51200, or http://www.memes.no/88flak/downloads/FreelancerSaveConverter.zip - after downloading this, simply run it and load in the "FLSC Updates.ops" script. (I apologize for having to utilize two programs for character updates, and eventually these script operations will all be covered under Freelancer Save Manipulator by M0tah, allowing for easier charfile updates; just bear with us in the meantime, thanks) After these scripts are run, please ensure the following: -- All players flying a pre-1.27 Capital Ship or Station MUST un-mount and drop all but one Ship Engine, or they will go twice as fast and have no cruise ability. -- All players flying a pre-1.27 Weapons Platform must have their power supply changed from "Station / Storage Depot Power Generator" to "Weapons Platform Power Generator" -- All players flying a pre-1.27 Pursuit Light Fighter must have their power supply changed from "LF Power Generator" to "Pursuit LF Power Generator" and "(house) LF Engine" to "(house) PLF Engine" -- Also, any characters from 1.21 and below may contain problems that these save converters do not cover. Check each pre-1.21 character individually to make sure it doesn't crash the server. -- Finally, if you want old characters (pre-1.25) to not "own" any player-stations (not required, but recommended), insert the following into their player file though any text-based character editor: house = -0.99, li01_station_1_grp house = -0.99, li01_station_2_grp house = -0.99, li02_station_1_grp house = -0.99, li04_station_1_grp house = -0.99, br01_station_1_grp house = -0.99, br03_station_1_grp house = -0.99, br05_station_1_grp house = -0.99, ku01_station_1_grp house = -0.99, ku03_station_1_grp house = -0.99, ku05_station_1_grp house = -0.99, rh01_station_1_grp house = -0.99, rh02_station_1_grp house = -0.99, bw01_station_1_grp house = -0.99, bw04_station_1_grp house = -0.99, bw06_station_1_grp house = -0.99, bw07_station_1_grp house = -0.99, bw09_station_1_grp house = -0.99, ew01_station_1_grp ====== ##10 - Other Notes / Known Bugs ====== Normally, Battleships and Stations will be protected against "spinning", which occurs when another ship collides with you in Multiplayer (Singleplayer does not suffer this bug). However, this solution causes Battleships and Stations to violently "wag" back and forth during autopilot; if this bothers you, there is an option to disable the anti-spin protection. Autopilot will be completely restored, and you will still be partially protected from spinning, however NPCs may still spin you once and a while (even though AI are designed to avoid ramming ships). When selling certain VHFs or Pursuit LFs, you may see bizarre no-name/Object Unknown items on the cargo list that you can't do anything with. These are actually add-on asthetic items, such as the pursuit lightbar for the PLFs and extra fins for the VHFs. Attempting to transfer the items will simply transfer something else in the list instead - so just ignore them, they're totally harmless. The Serafina may not show up while docked at a base at all in certain computers. I'm not exactly sure why this happens, however it will always show properly in space - both to you and other players - so it's minor. Credit Chip amounts in the 65,000-something range ($65,000,000) may cause issues - when you pick up this many from space, or land at a base, the amount may appear to be lower than the actual amount. To correct this, log out and back in at the base you wish to sell the Credit Chips at - this will show, and allow you to sell, the correct value. Any Character-Generated AI Bots using a Repair Turret will attempt to repair enemies, not friendlies. This is because AI consider the Repair Turrets as normal weapons. To correct this, open up "data/custom_bot_loadouts.ini" and remove any references to "repair_turret" or "repair_gun" in the file. Certain weapon textual descriptions (but only weapon DESCRIPTIONS, stats are 100% fine!) may not be totally accurate - for example, Xeno weapon infocards state that the guns have a short range, when in fact their range is pretty comperable to similar weapons. Please excuse me on this; while I realize that certain descriptions could use a little clarification, weapons receive too many stat changes and rebalances to keep track of within the textual descriptions, and the automatically generated stats provide everything you need to know anyhow. Plus, to change the descriptions, I'd have to individually edit every single weapon's infocard every time weapons are rebalanced, something that would seriously be a project of its own. Considering it only affects certain textual descriptions but not stat listings (and even then, most descriptions are still spot on), I'm not too worried about it. However, all other infocards have been checked to be 100% accurate (ship infocards, etc.). ====== ##11 - Source Code / Use of INI Code ====== There is a "SourceFiles" folder containing sourcecode for all modules written for 88 Flak, such as M0tah's FLHook, DelayDisplay, and MultiIntro work. Additionally, open source work used in 88 Flak such as Adoxa's 8-Way Strafe plugin can be found here as well - the SourceFiles folder is sorted by author. See each individual file for more information. As for 88 Flak's actual INI code, feel free to use any part of it for any purpose. I only ask that proper credit be given, and since 88 Flak is very much a product of community effort, it would be best to simply credit "88 Flak" as a whole. ====== ##12 - What's Coming ====== -- Lots of stuff! This changes too often to keep updated, so visit the forums at http://www.memes.no/88flak/forum/ ====== ##13 - Contact Info ====== My E-Mail is astrout89(at)gmail(dot)com. I go on AIM by the name of foxUnit01, and my MSN Messenger (preferred method) is foxUnit01@hotmail.com If you have any bug reports, comments, complaints, mindless rant, questions, or stuff you think I should change / add, then please, contact me! I love to hear feedback, it keeps Flak going! =) Contact info for all others involved in the 88 Flak project effort can be found on the forums: http://www.memes.no/88flak/forum/ Finally, fun fact, this mod used to be subtitled "88 Flak: Mythic Drive" because I have absolutely no idea what still inspires both me and others to continue working on this project. It's pretty spontaneous, really - someone will think of something, and someone else will go "hey, that'd be neat in Flak," and a day or so later someone's working on it. It's been several years now, and we're still tweaking a project which should have died long ago. It really is a mystery. ====== ##14 - Thanks To ====== This project wouldn't be here without the following, so I'd like to thank: The Homeworld Server Admins - for providing a webspace - free of charge - for all of the 88 Flak downloads and forums, as well as hosting a 24/7 for 88 Flak way back in the day. 88 Flak would not be here without them. Worfeh, FriendlyFire and HazardFN - for hosting an offical 24/7 88 Flak server - http://88.159.160.79/ TheShadow (or Jay) and TheDarkMarauder - for hosting an official 24/7 88 Flak server for a really long time - http://freelancer.servegame.org/flak.html Digital Anvil - for making Freelancer in the first place. They made Brute Force too, another excellent game nobody knows about. Microsoft - hey, they funded Freelancer development. That counts for something. The Starport staff - for continuing a community that provides a fun place for discussing Freelancer and other space games with like-minded people. The original Lancers Reactor staff - for, back in the day, starting a community that has grown some of the most ambitious modding projects I have ever seen for video games. Everyone in the 88 Flak community - for being awesome. Seriously. Their never-ending effort and limitless imagination makes Flak one of the best projects I've ever worked on. I could not waste a better hour of gaming time (not just Freelancer) than with these folks; thanks guys. =D Man-of-War (or BountyHunter-1156D), Navck Newsclomer, Lochen - the original Flak testing crew. Although they have since gone their separate ways, back in the day they provided countless hours of support to help get Flak on its feet, and they deserve a well earned round of applause - 88 Flak would not be here without them. M0tah - for his committed work to FLHook (and six billion other applets to help me out). His work has given me the inspiration to, once again, think outside the box with Freelancer modding. From the simple FLHook "mark" command to paint key targets for your group as mission-critical, to the AI Companion Bot Generator that allows you to convert any player into an AI Bot for use with 88 Flak's AI Companion system, to even an intuitive FLHook-operated mobile docking system that allows ships to dock with player-flown Battleships and Stations, it's a lot of fun looking forward to everything he cranks out. adoxa - for an insane amount of useful plugins from http://adoxa.110mb.com/freelancer/, including JFLP, 8-Way Strafe, StoryFacitons (hide more factions from rep list than default amt) and chat-logging! mc_horst - for designing FLHook, which allows modding not normally possible within Freelancer and is the basis of many of 88 Flak's advanced features. w0dk4 - for making his cloaking implementation in FLHook, for continued support of open-sourced FLHook development, and finally for uhh being w0dk4 I guess. Oh, and his Global Server Workaround is used in Flak. Why485 - Why485 is a pretty cool guy, eh fixes missiles and doesnt afraid of anything. Major contributions to balance work, as well as his committed work to serving up jaw-dropping effects in Freelancer. "Meh, it could be better" he says, while the rest of us gape in awe. Check out Itano Circus while you're at it. KillerJaguar - for major contributions to the Capital Ship rebalancing project for 1.27 RC122. Currently dominates the majority of the Kill Count scoreboard - http://freelancer.servegame.org/flstat2-kills.html Son'a - also for major contributions to the Capital Ship rebalancing project. Currently dominates the majority of the Economic scoreboard - http://freelancer.servegame.org/flstat2.html Honken - for writing the current work-in-progress post-process shader (v2) for 88 Flak. The Phoenix Mod Team - for large amounts of support of the mod. Personal thanks to ww2jacob and Hahukum Konn, who hosted a 24/7 for 88 Flak for a while. Tinyfish - for making an awesome INI editor that I use and love. It's without a doubt, in my opinion, the best tool for Freelancer editing in my modding armory and essential for most of the balancing changes carried out in 88 Flak. FriendlyFire - for making FLDev, a totally badass toolkit that made IDS editing a breeze (among other things), as well as providing support when I needed it. Check out FL: War Torn while you're at it. Ioncross Mod Team - for making Total War, which I got many, many, many design and balance concepts from. Awesome mod. Pathfinder Studios - for making Evolutions, which was one of my inspirations to start modding in the first place. I also, uhh, "permanently borrowed" some icons from it (had NO clue how to do 'em myself, still don't), so thank them for those. =D Crabtree - for making Advanced Battleship Encounters, which I originally used as a foundation for what would eventually be. It is no longer in use in any way, as the mod has since been re-built from the ground up, but I think it's still worthy of credit. After all, without it, I wouldn't be here anyways, would I? Starfyre Studios - for making TNG. I got a few concept ideas from the mod, such as the Arena concept, when my friends and I played it. Glitch - for the nice jet-black mod. I use the jet-black skins for my custom Drake (Diablo) and Dragon (Heretic) ships, flown by the foxBot AI Bot, because every modder has to splurge once and a while and make fun toys. BlazeME - for making Freelancer Fifth Gear. I originally used his AI in the mod back when it was starting, however all current AI work is my own. Xerx - for making OpenSP - 88 Flak's OpenSP system is based directly off this, though it is handled in a slightly different fashion. Wasabe - for player looting, of course. My player-looting system is indeed based off this, though it is a little different as I have mounted equipment drop too, and have all cargo drop instead of small amounts. Argh - for making his XML Toolkit, which I used his very shiny gun balancing from, making there be a reason to use Level 1 equipment. Louva-Deus / EOA Consortium - for making FL SDK, which this mod's built off of. I'll thank them as well for making Real Space, which inspired me to redo system lighting, since it looks so nice. Asmo - for providing the community with the Serafina Freighter. The model was originally done by Yedan, and worked into Freelancer by Asmo. I tweaked the stats majorly to fit in 88 Flak's balancing, however the rest is true to the original. Dev - for researching some advanced modding techniques that allowed faction tags and increased sight range of NPCs possible. Cold_Void - for assisting in various issues, and for his explorations into dynamic lighting with FL Redemption. Nieckey - for pointers from the NR mod on getting NPC tractors to work. To my knowledge, NPC tractoring was originally pioneered by Strail. Forsaken - for sharing his findings related to stopping Battleship spinning; he should be publishing that stuff for a detailed tutorial soon, so look forward to that. Check out Shattered Worlds while you're at it. =P The many authors of tutorials at the Starport - back when I didn't understand Freelancer's files at all, they helped a lot. Thanks guys. =) Finally, all the other modders out there, rather you helped me or not - without you guys, Freelancer would be dead by now. Did I forget you? Curses! Send me a message and I'll get you on the list. =) ====== ##15 - Changelog ====== Excuse the rather messy changelogs. However, they're quite long, so no double-spacing here. The logs go in descending order, with the newest changes last. Sorry, but there's no way I'm resorting this beast. Since Beta 0.8, in order of appearance: -- Bugfix: NPCs disappearing from right under your nose should be fixed. Often happened fighting Cap. Ships or Freighters in a fighter formation. -- Bugfix: Fixed almost all the cap. ship encounters not showing up at all. This was an error in the encounter files, not the systems as I thought. -- Misc: Removed the tm sign from Ship and Engine classes.doc =P -- Addition: Added in the Osiris Battleship. It has 10 guns instead of the normal 16, and a reduced hull, but has a shield mount. See the ship classes file for more info. -- Bugfix: Corrected various infocards - For example Heavy Fighters - They have a strafe / reverse speed of 3/4, not 1/2. -- Change: Added the standard Tractor Beam for sale at the Prison Station in Alaska, which is abandoned and neutral to everyone. Before, they were only for sale at Manhattan, which meant you had to create a new character to buy one and haul it out to you if you were hostile. But don't lose your Tractor Beam anyway. It's a real pain (I got a rare once when I first got a VHF on a non-test character, and then realized I forgot the tractor). -- Bugfix: Corrected errors in the mod script. -- Bugfix: Added in the player version of the Pirate HF. It had mysteriously gone missing, which would explain why you might crash at a base selling them. Player versions of ships do not drop guns to stop duplicating abuse. -- Change: Tweaked the AI a little. AI now thrust a lot more. Skilled Light Fighters should strafe quite a bit more now too. -- Change: AI Cap ships now love missiles, and spam them as they were designed to be. Be wary of flak turrets, I'd recommend shutting off auto-cm's if they're on. :P -- Misc: Bribes removed. There were problems with how reputation is set up - it's designed to go really slow up for a reason, and bribes I thought were a bit cheap. Also, sometimes there'd be an odd loophole and Nomads or BPL would suddenly go way up - Nomads go way down every time you kill something and BPL goes a tiny bit up, and this was affected by bribes. -- Bugfix: Fixed some fuses. Some ships, namely the Kusari Battleship and Osiris (even though it was unused =P), weren't blowing up properly, and you just disappeared as soon as you died, instead of going up like fireworks. -- Addition: Newbie base with starting Light and Heavy fighters for $2! This gives you the choice to start off the game with either a Light or Heavy. Beware, you can not re-dock with this base, it sends you to Manhattan! =P -- Addition: Starblazer, newbie Heavy Fighter, added. -- Bugfix: You can now see ship stats on the ship purchase screen. -- Bugfix: Fixed station-ed Battleship hitpoints - Was 500,000, should be 600,000. -- Addition: NPCs now fly Osiris, Prison Liner, and Luxury Liner. -- Misc: Removed excess junk. =P -- Bugfix: Fixed up SP - You start off friendly and hostile to the same factions in MP, have the same money, start in the newbie base, etc. -- Misc: Made low NPC, high NPC, and no NPC patches for servers who wish to lighten the load on their servers a little (load goes down a ton with no NPCs - the data sent back and forth from each player is reduced at least by half I think), or completely lag it (I would NOT use the high NPC patch on a public server). =P -- Misc: Made every base abandoned for the no NPC patches, since there's no way to affect your reputation that much. -- Change: Revised Cost-A-Lot-Block system for Cap. Ships to fix engine problems. -- Addition: Much "thicker" engine effects for Cap. Ships - It was a side-effect from the above fix but it looks cool none-the-less. -- Misc: Revised Ioncross hashcodes. -- Addition: New "try-before-you-buy" mode, for single player. It gives you a whopping amount of $999,999,999 and two test Capital Ships. Since ships cost so much, this is so you can see if the ship you want is indeed worth it, before potentially wasting your money. Try not to abuse this. I know it's hard. ;P -- Addition: Added a Docking Ring to the Prison Station in Alaska, so Capital Ships can land there to respawn for the arena. Yes, you heard me. I put a Docking Ring on a base. I don't care if it's silly, it's functional. =P -- Addition: Added a constant sound to the warp, instead of a simple cruise disrupt sound. =P Since Beta 0.9, in order of appearance: -- Bugfix: Fixed bug with Jump Holes not "sucking you in" properly. -- Bugfix: Removed Ceylon's pathing mod. This fixes a bug with the pathing routine getting confused and in the end crashing the game / sometimes the server. -- Bugfix: Fixed NPC Repair Ships using a Light Fighter engine. It came like that too, oddly enough.. -- Bugfix: Restored default 1.0 exes. The exes in previous versions were left over from 1.1, which would cause problems if running 1.0. Using a 1.0 EXE on a 1.1 patched server has turned up no problems, however, so it should be good. -- Bugfix: Fixed a loadout error with Rheinland Police, using 2 Class 7 guns and 2 Class 6 guns on their Banshee - They don't cheat anymore. ;) -- Change: Changed HF Shield mount to Class 7, and Nanobots / Battery limit to 50. This should make them a little more worth using now. -- Change: Increased probability of getting loot from asteroids. This should turn asteroid Mining into an activity you may actually wish to do now. :P -- Bugfix: Fixed the turrets in the Arena not shooting stuff. -- Bugfix: Fixed the Nomad's repairing hull after their hull reached 0. This was very irritating to the player and the NPC, because you kept having to re-target it after it "died", and it usually lost a gun or two. By the end of its 90 Nanobots, it wasn't a very formidable target. =P -- Change: Gave ships in the Arena an additional Arena Token, and a full Nanobot / Shield Battery loadout. -- Misc: Removed the "IDS Editing Tutorial" folder. That was from when I first learned to IDS edit, it was written by Chips. I just completely forgot that it was there. =P -- Change: Lowered Cruiser / Gunboat / Destroyer engine rumble volume a tad - It was a little annoying, especially in a small Gunboat like the Kusari one (I could hardly hear my guns over that thing) -- Addition: Added an anti-camp zone for the Battlegrounds - You shouldn't get completely murdered every time you pay a visit now. ;P Since Beta 0.95, in order of appearance: -- Change: Added a 50 meter range to the Flying Permit. Apparently, people didn't get that you had to go right up to what you wanted to target (I know, it WAS quite odd), so this should assist that should you need to buy one. -- Bugfix: Fixed the bug with house navy factions. Before, they didn't care if you killed their allies (e.g. you could kill Rheinland and stay friendly with Kusari, somewhat) - Now, your reputation will be affected a bit. -- Bugfix: Utilized the new FL Scan to fix about 21 errors, most of which an invalid shop model for rare armors. =P (this should help clean up the console a tad) -- Change: Upped the ammo count on NPCs. Whatever NPCs had before, tack a "1" on it. To take advantage of the increased ammo count (which has always been there). -- Misc: Massively updated this readme so it's readable now. I put some tips in there, might want to re-read it. =P -- Misc: Created a nifty classes chart, a quick reference for the newbies. =) -- Bugfix: Fixed ship infocards. This includes LF, HF, VHF, and n00b ship descriptions. LFs were displayed as having a Torpedo, and HFs / VHFs were displayed as having a Torpedo and Cruise Disruptor mount. -- Bugfix: Added an option to fix needing a certain level to buy stuff in SP. Now (with this enabled), I'm pretty sure SP functions just like MP, with the exception of NPC collisions and draw distance (and lack of other players obviously =P). -- Change: Added equipment to the n00b base, so you can load up without having to exit and get shot at. -- Change: Revised Freight Class prices by $1,000,000 to be more worth it. They were so high due to my views on trade at the time that I worked them out (it was so cheap and easy in the original FL). -- Addition: Created a Rheinland machinegun, the Longblade. It's there for the sole purpose of providing Rheinland Police ships something to shoot with. If you want one, go kill something that has it. =P -- Change: Increased Freighter thrust capacity. -- Bugfix: Fixed a few more cheating NPCs with higher gun classes than allowed (NPCs flying Daggers, etc.) -- Bugfix: Fixed a very ugly bug with the CSV - Its thruster pointed backwards and looked like it was cooking the pilot. Oops. -- Addition: A few new effects - the thruster shouldn't lag you when it spews thrust in your face anymore, because it's changed. -- Misc: Spelling / grammar checked on a lot of stuff, because I know we're all picky. =) -- Bugfix: NPCs disappearing right under your nose should hopefully be fixed - I'm not exactly sure the cause of this, however I can say it's probably the AI, and it's always when half the NPC group flees. Any suggestions on it, simply E-Mail me. =P -- Addition: Added an anti-camp shield. What it does is provide invulnerable protection, at the expense of draining ship's power completely and only lasting 25 seconds after the first shot. This is to stop camping abuse by both players and NPCs, should a player get stuck in an unfair situation. -- Bugfix: Made the easy mode somewhat "easy." =P -- Change: Made mines knock stuff around less. It was a little annoying with the increased NPC ammo counts. -- Misc: Dropped support of no-NPC patch. It's a real big pain to update with the systems, and it was a crap idea in the first place, so out it goes. Hey, at least I can still claim I did it. =P -- Misc: NPC patches are now packaged with the mod, they're not that big and have to be updated each version anyway. -- Misc: Updated Ioncross hashcodes with the new shield, machinegun, and the FP7 Memorial -- Bugfix: Fixed a few last-minute errors relative to the puzzle-quest-thing, and made one clue somewhat reasonable for the common thinker. =P -- Addition: Changed Light Fighter class. All Light Fighters are now granted a second thruster, and twice the thrust capacity / regen. However, they are stripped down to Lv. 4 shields instead of Lv. 6. The CSV gets a THIRD thruster, however has lost two guns. The CSV is pretty much your general "get this from here to here without dying" ship - If you're going to have a person in your group to grab whatever loot drops, then the CSV is THE choice. =P -- Change: Revised Alaska and Mine Mazathon slightly so they're not as boring anymore. Mine Mazathon is now populated with NPCs, to make it a little less dull. =P -- Bugfix: Did a massive cleanup of encounter files. The randomly appearing capital ship system should, for the most part, work now. For you non-modders, this means you'll probably see over twice the amount of capital ships you saw before, both in number and the amount of systems they occupy. -- Change: Capital Ships / Transports now get the simple prospect of ramming stuff, should the need arise. Because of this, Gunboats / Cruisers / whatever also love to shoot up your shiny capital ship with their forward guns. A lot. In fact, I even got smacked by one in a fighter once. -- Change: Increased Forward Gun speed. They now shoot at a startling speed of 4,500 meters/sec, which crowns it the fastest shot in the mod. This makes them a bit more worth using, especially on a VHF, provided you can aim the thing. -- Bugfix: Fixed the Liberty Forward Gun having an inconsistent shot speed compared to other ones. -- Change: Cruise slowed considerably, to 1000 instead of 1500. This to help balance stuff out a little. -- Change: Light Fighters now have 4/5 strafe / reverse speed. Helps balance out that new thruster thing. -- Bugfix: Fixed Anubis having 8 sec. charge up time instead of 6. Not sure why this was.. -- Addition: Added a Liberty VHF, the Liberator. It's the normal version of the ship you see the BPL flying around (theirs is the Predator). As for finding it, you'll just have to look. =P -- Change: Updated my NPC Follow stuff. When turned on, more factions will follow you, including pirates, etc. Also, there is always an NPC around willing to help now. =P -- Change: Heavily overhauled NPC Follow. They now follow pretty well - meaning, they catch up to you better, snuggle up a bit closer and you can have multiple formations with you. This should make the mod much easier on the single player people. -- Change: Redesigned the way NPCs follow you - Now, when turned on, there's a commodity you can buy to have NPCs follow you. This is nice because even if it's active you can choose rather you want escort or not. -- Change: Capital Ship power supplies increased, I felt the current power supply was a bit wimpy for large-scale Capital Ship fights. Battleships get 80K instead of 50, and smaller ones get 40K instead of 25. Regen is 1.5 times what it was before. It should take 26 and 2/3 seconds to fell up that yellow bar thing. -- Bugfix: Fixed NPC Luxury Liner problems. -- Bugfix: Fixed potential rare drop issues. Sometimes, certain types of NPCs would only drop bonus Nanobots / Shield Batteries, etc. -- Bugfix: Fixed house police all using Liberty guns on their Prison Liners. Each house now uses its respective Prison Turret. -- Bugfix: Fixed NPCs that were flying the Hawk and Falcon having rather ridiculous loadouts - Class 8 guns on a LF? Sheesh.. -- Misc: As this is a 1.0 release, and out of beta, the mod now has a name. Woo, go it. -- Misc: Not related, but launched a site to help get this out there, at http://www.freewebs.com/foxunit01/ -- Misc: Everything else I forgot (I sometimes updated this as I did stuff, sometimes not) =P Since 1.0, in order of appearance: -- Bugfix: To the best of my knowledge (and ability =P), fixed crashing problems in Leeds, Tau systems, and elsewhere. This should mean that other potential crash areas are eliminated. =P -- Change: Doubled percent chance of rare drops. Rares moved up from 0.4% to 0.8% (per item), with the exception of guns, which went from 0.8% to 1.6% (per item). This means you might actually find one - kill a Lv. 19 all by yourself (no NPC help that is), and it's almost 1/8 chance of a rare drop! Of course, this is a feat in and of itself. And my math could be wrong. ;P -- Bugfix: If gunboats, cruisers, battleships, etc. didn't follow you before with the NPC Magnet, they will now. Quite fun when you have a Capital Ship yourself. :P -- Addition: Added option of alternate Trade Lane effect - this puts the "fireball" effect you see NPCs and other players on your screen, and takes away the tube effect. You may also opt to have no effect at all, if it bothers you. -- Change: Changed Capital Ship warp sounds -- Change: Changed Battleship Permit to increase faster. It now goes up twice as fast as before with every kill, meaning you can probably get a Battleship Permit anywhere from 150-250 kills, instead of in the 400's. -- Change: Made mines not so useless against Light Fighters now - they go slower, which means if used properly they CAN hit them. No matter how you used them before, it was nearly impossible to hit a LF with a mine. =P -- Bugfix: Stations now actually do something noticeable when going a splody. -- Addition: Stations now drop guns, giving a real reason to go attack one. There's a bit of money to be made too, if you have the right equipment.. -- Misc: Redid the changelog system. :P Since 1.1, in order of appearance: -- Change: Changed destroyer_default and gunboat_default to cruiser_default. What this means is that Destroyers will no longer be dumb, and gunboats will fight the same as cruisers (if they didn't before), as they should. -- Misc: Updated Ioncross hashcodes with various Transport-class engines. When doing the files, I completely skipped over the transports/trains/armored/liners. Doh. NOW you can probably use the "Ban players using UNKNOWN equipment" box to stop cheaters. =P -- Change: FOV is now 90 instead of 80 (default at 70 or something), this gives a heightened sense of speed without much fuss. -- Misc: Redid the much-needed organization. If an ini wasn't used, it's gone. Mod's a tiny bit smaller now, and much more sensible. =P -- Addition: Took away ambient lighting in systems. Now, your only light sources are suns, and possible light around planets (Planet Izu in New Tokyo is hit with two lights and looks funny/cool =P). A nice effect saying there's not much (any?) of a performance hit, and it really makes the game look quite a bit better. -- Change: Restored old asteroid lods (leftover from the first stages of the mod, where everything had a super-high lod distance). This should help performance in an asteroid field on lower-end machines, and eases the transition from far-away to detailed asteroids. -- Change: Matched displayed ship classes in-game with ship classes chart. This means Capital Ships are no longer ???, they are "Capital Class." Freighters are now no longer ???, they are "Freight Class." Nomad ships are now "Unclassified." Etc, etc. -- Change: Anti-camp shield now takes 80% damage, and decays faster. Before, you could mount it on a HF/VHF and WRECK stuff. You could achieve quite a spree with torpedoes, since they don't use power. Now, it should still get you away from a base, however once it's down in a fight there's not much you can do. =P -- Bugfix: Fixed Hogosha CSV and Kusari Police loadouts - were using Class 6 and 7 guns. -- Addition: Credit Chip. It serves no purpose other than for NPCs stupid enough to be carrying one to drop a bit of money. You can basically store as many of your credits as you want in it.. -- Change: AI now use missiles and Shield Batteries properly. They'll tend to use a Shield Battery when their shield runs out. -- Bugfix: Docking Ring no longer disappears when you kill it. This should stop crashing, as people will be able to now launch from a "dead" docking ring. -- Change: Freighters now have a LITTLE thrust regen. Not enough to make them dominate in a fight, however enough to ease some of the frustration of using a freighter. -- Change: Every commoditied item will take up half a cargo "block." This is to help the traders, because I and my friend found trading rather useless compared to fighting. Now, if you dare to make a trading run, it'll probably be more worth it - I hope this is pretty much equal to fighting in payout over time. =P -- Bugfix: Heavy Lifter was selling for $5,000,000, should have been $6,000,000. -- Change: Some pirates now use more Freight class ships. -- Change: Gun shot speeds doubled. This means that most guns travel in excess of around 2000m/sec, some even going as high as 9000m/sec! This should make hitting things a little less frustrating due to the game's rather insane ship speeds. -- Bugfix: Fixed some odd crap related to starting a character. -- Change: Increased mission payouts a tad (1.5X). Mainly because missions can be a bit frustrating - You'll leave the mission area chasing ships a lot, since they move so fast. =P -- Change: Battleships appear more often now. -- Bugfix: It is now possible to get friendly with Zoners again, if you get hostile. Interestingly enough, this was the way Freelancer was.. -- Bugfix: Pirate power supplies fixed. They had very incorrect thrust times. =P -- Bugfix: Nomads will attempt to use the Particle Splitter now. They weren't getting the 60,000 power needed to fire the thing. -- Bugfix: Mission Stations no longer drop Station guns. If you want a station gun, kill a real station. =P -- Addition: Added in every type of utility turret to Prison Station Mitchell, in Alaska. -- Change: Utility turrets have "real" prices now. -- Bugfix: Small Transport Turrets no longer have a longer range than others. -- Bugfix: Fixed "ships killed" section of Stats. Battleships, Cruisers, and Gunboats all count as "Capital Ships Killed", Transports, Liners, etc. all count as "Transports Killed", etc. -- Bugfix: The Startracker now has 4 guns, instead of 3. It looks a little odd, but it works. -- Bugfix: Fixed Player Osiris dropping guns (you could duplicate guns, etc.), and NPC Osiris not. -- Addition: Option of disabling NPCs using Nanobots. For if you find the "not dieing" thing annoying. (use a test cap. ship, you'll see what I mean) -- Change: "Easy Mode" disables NPCs using Nanobots / Shield Batteries. There. Now it's actually _easy_. =P -- Change: Mod Options Screen redone. Options are explained now in this readme. -- Change: Capital Ships changed so that they don't bounce around so much. I have just recently learned how handling works, so bear with me. :P -- Change: NPCs now use normal scanners. They used to use ones with higher ranges to produce more fights, however it's fun to sneak up on them with a better scanner. -- Change: Rogues / Molly fighters get 75% boost, instead of 50%. -- Change: Messed with flight physics some more. I know ships don't bank in space, but just for some fun ships now do all sorts of rolls. -- Change: Station guns removed. This was done for a good number of reasons, mostly concerning the fact that you could make over 500K off of every station mission. If you have any on your ship, un-mount them before you get kicked for cheating. =P If you're really concerned, station guns match many other gun stats, since it was all done off a generic table. Sorry, you can't claim prizes off your station kills anymore. =\ -- Change: Capital / Utility guns take up 30 cargo, instead of 50. This should give a chance for a VHF to snag a gun without ditching a few rares. =P -- Change: Increased Luxury / Prison Liner power supplies to let them defend themselves better. -- Change: Battleships cost $35,000,000, like they should have. Dunno where my math went wrong. =P -- Bugfix: Nomad Battleship / Gunboat turrets now sell for 150K. They're tough things to kill, you deserve a profit. =P -- Bugfix: Nomad Battleship can now actually dock with stuff. A side effect of this is that everything else can now dock from 300 meters away.. -- Change: Thrusters reworked. There is now no regen on any of them, with exception given to the Nomad Fighter's "Curse of the Kavash," since infinite thrust is such a vital part of ship. -- Change: Freighter thrust capacity changed to match HF's, since regen is now the same across all (they had no drawback like they were). -- Change: Thruster capacity multiplied by 60X for all thrusters. -- Change: Flying Permit now has a 1000m scan range, so help new people who are confused. =P -- Change: Trade Lanes removed! Muahaahaa! This makes modifications to the Cruise engine for each house's ships MUCH more important, and gives the systems a much better feel. -- Change: Kusari ships given +2 cruise charge up time. This makes their modifier +4, however infinite cruise is just awesome now. -- Change: Rheinland ships awarded -1 cruise charge time. This is because the +75 power drain in cruise really sucks now. =P -- Change: Cruising speed increased to 2500m/sec. -- Change: Nomad Fighter's thruster changed to match cruise speed. -- Change: NPCs use different mines now. Albeit a bit random, it does mean you can loot more mine ammo. =P -- Change: Reputation empathy system redone from freelancer's default system. Reputation does not go down any slower than normal Freelancer by killing stuff (except for the faction that you kill, that's the same as it was). The change from normal freelancer is that reputation goes up 1/10 of what it did before (find and replace -0. with -0.0, anyone? :P) -- Addition: Fighters added to War formations. -- Bugfix: Nomad System / Battlegrounds / any other system with large war zones no longer crash, as a result of adding fighters. Don't even ask, Freelancer's odd that way. -- Bugfix: Transport's thrust percentage now reads "0%" instead of "100%." They also get a little bit more power capacity, but the same regen. -- Bugfix: Liners no longer have unlimited cruise. -- Misc: Anything else I forgot. Since 1.16, in order of appearance: -- Change: Cruise / Nomad Thruster speed set back down to 1,300. Power drain is the same, however running out of power will not slow cruise as much anymore. -- Change: Once your cruise is actually active, acceleration is very great, and you just might get away from a fight. =P -- Change: Steering torque for ships doubled, except for Freight / Capital ship classes. This means close to 3/4 more turning speed, allowing fights to be more.. Fluid? -- Bugfix: Some client-side crashes relating to War Formations fixed. Fighters were using formations too small for the number of fighters (it'd clip off the 7th/8th escort) -- Change: War Formations now look a bit cooler. =P -- Change: Mines given an increased tracking range to 400m. You still have to be pretty stupid to smack one, but at least it'll happen now. -- Bugfix: Bretonia Gunboats / Destroyers had shields, and weren't supposed to. Sorry. =P -- Addition: Asteroid Miner. Buy one at some random undisclosed location, or stare in awe as one floats by. It is classed exactly as a Small Capital. Yes, the Asteroid Miner is exactly like the station. It even has moving arms! Who says you can't have animated parts on a ship, besides the cargo bay? =P -- Bugfix: Repair Ships now have proper light and engine loadouts. Check player-wipe avoidance list above. -- Misc: Internal version number changed to 88., from 18. - this makes a bit more sense, since it is called "88" Flak after all. =P -- Misc: Updated Capital Ship template to include Liners of both types, and the Miner, incase you want to add those to factions. -- Change: Battleship Matsumoto is now a BPL base... -- Change: Abandoned bases all sell Nanobots, Shield Batteries, and all types of Ammo. Funny, I intended for systems like Tokoku to be clan-systems. Yet the bases didn't sell anything! =P -- Change: Transport power supply capacity upped. A lot. This should provide plenty of power to cruise around for a while. -- Change: Shield damage on guns is now 60% of what hull damage is (excluding shield killing guns), up from 35%! Watch yourself now. =P -- Change: When you die and your ship turns into a fireball, it now lasts 1 second, decreasing the time you have for a revival. -- Addition: Cargo Pods for Transports. You can select which ones you want and everything like that, too. -- Change: You CAN NOT re-mount the Particle Splitter on the Nomad Fighter. If you lose it, you'll just have to die. It has 9,000,000 Hitpoints though, so I think that if you've lost it, you're gonna die anyhow. ;P -- Change: Missiles, Torpedoes, etc. all use power. This is so stop people from using them with the Anti-Camp Shield. -- Change: Nanobots now heal 1000 hull per 'bot. Shield Batteries heal 500. The boost was mainly to help Transport ships a little, when they get jumped from cruise. -- Addition: Custom Lights, to an extent. You can now replace your docking lights, if you want, with huge blinking ones. Choose between White, Green, Orange, Yellow, Purple, Pink, Red, Cyan, Grey, and Blue colors. An in-game light system is in the works, using the same system as Cargo Pods. -- Change: Re-added in F1 key. People still quit in space using Alt+F4, so I didn't see much point in keeping it out. Since 1.19, in order of appearance: -- Change: Rares now drop 3X as much as before. It's still a less than 1% chance of getting one (per kill), however is a bit more reasonable. Mind you, it's really random. You could hit a lucky streak and get 3 in one day (I did once, not kidding =P), or get none in 100 kills spread over the course of a few days. Rare is rare, and will always remain rare in 88 Flak. -- Change: Flying Permit is no longer auto-mounted at the beginning of the game. This should prevent players from launching before they realize they have no equipment. Some people just couldn't get why they had no guns, shields, thrusters, etc. Really, sit outside the n00b base on the Semi-Dedicated for a bit running 1.19 (if it still is up / running it), and you'll see what I mean. =P -- Change: Fixed Blood Dragon ships. They should have been named the "Heretic", not the "Dragon". They also should have been using Rheinland engines. Why? For the fun of it. -- Addition: Player-flyable Blood Dragon "Heretic". It was sitting there for a while without a home, but now it's buyable. I completely forgot about it, but that's good since the Blood Dragons themselves weren't even flying it. =P -- Change: Starblazer now has a different engine effect, to make it a bit cooler. =P -- Change: Cruise no longer uses power. It already sucks enough as it is to get wasp'd from cruise, we don't need players getting jumped with a dry power supply. -- Change: Rebalanced engine stats to accommodate the 0 cruise power drain. -- Change: Un-armed versions of BPL ships are now invincible, for various reasons. -- Change: Ships killed stats reworked completely. Now, ship stats read as follows: "Players Killed", "NPC Fighter Class Kills", "NPC Freight Class Kills", and "NPC Capital Class Kills" - I was very surprised when I noticed for the first time ever that there was no Player Kills section in the stats screen. I mean, come on. It's a multiplayer game. What was DA thinking? :P Stat changes DO NOT need any editing of players. Stats will show correctly, even after the change. Meaning, if a player had 6 Freighter kills and 2 Transport kills, it will show up as 8 Freight Class kills. "Players Killed" will also display the right number. :P -- Change: Nanobot price increased to $600 per bot. Shield Batteries $300. -- Change: Customizable lights system now works flawlessly. As long as you have your lights picked before you buy your ship, you'll be all set. -- Misc: Spell Checked the files again, just incase anyone's fussy about it. :P -- Misc: Shortened the List of Features to somewhat sane levels. Now, maybe people will actually see what the mod has. :P -- Change: Rare items are now really invincible. It just really sucks to lose one, and I saw that if players did they just suicided (myself included =P) -- Change: Renamed the "Trade Lane Disruptor" to the "Trajectory Disruptor" - Since there are no Trade Lanes anymore. -- Bugfix: Fixed NPC Kusari Battleships crashing the server. Man, this was an annoying bugger (hehe, I shouted "WTF!?" quite a bit =P) -- Bugfix: You can now drop rare items, if you want. This is useful for getting them to and from a storage character without the help of someone else. -- Change: Particle Splitter shows up in inventory again. There's no reason not to have it do so, since you can't even un-mount it if you wanted. -- Change: Transports and Defender have different engine "amounts" to match what you'd see in one of the title screens. I always thought it looked cooler like that, and I'm a man of consistency anyhow. =P -- Addition: Custom music for the title screens, thanks to Nine Inch Nails and DJ Icey. -- Bugfix: Un-mounted rare armors now show up in the cargo section in Ioncross Server Op, I was not aware that this was needed before. Muh. =P -- Change: Redid the way players start out. -- Bugfix: Fixed the goofed up Defense Turrets for Cap. Ships (again =P) -- Misc: Any other small changes I forgot. Since 1.21, in order of appearance: -- Bugfix: You can no longer dock with Prison Station Mitchell's bays and totally glitch yourself out. You must use the docking ring now. =P -- Addition: You can now use any engine on any ship, provided it matches the same class. This is for Fighters, Freighters, and Transports only - Custom engines do not apply to Transports, Repair Ship, Heavy Lifter, Liners, or Capital Ships. For example, you can put a Banshee Engine on a Patriot, and thus get +50 power at the expense of 75% thrust capacity (Rheinland engine stats) -- Bugfix: Fixed Border World VHF engine having +2 cruise charge added time, as stat modifications from engines should not apply to VHF's (they have no thrusters, throws off balancing). -- Change: Got rid of some of the rather useless options, such as the music and movie toggle. They just clogged up space, really. I did so because the options screen is now a bit more important with the engine choices. -- Addition: A token to remind you to always mount your scanner and tractor, as well as reminding you to make sure you've got the right engine ready to mount. I saw enough poor souls buy a shiny new HF and accidentally forget their Scanner and Tractor beam. Hopefully, people will see that their cargo bay is half-full, and see it. -- Addition: Nomads have zombified some navy dudes, and now fly navy ships. This was added in preparation for some coming attractions, as well as giving players something fair to fight in the Arena, besides the four navies. -- Change: Killing Liberty / Bretonia ships will not help your Rheinland / Kusari rep. It won't go down, however it just isn't a way of getting friendly with them any longer. This was done because pirates would end up going to a system that was completely friendly, minus the shipping companies. -- Bugfix: Mines and CM mounts now show as Mine / Rare and CM / Rare, respectively, to avoid confusion for the new people. =P -- Change: Player will receive a free NPC Magnet in the cargo bay of a new character, depending whether or not the server has it active. This is good so someone might know when it's on once and a while. =P -- Change: Missiles now use 40 power instead of 15. Don't worry, you still won't lose very much, however it balances them with guns a bit more, and really disables using them with the anti-camp shield now. -- Addition: You can now customize lights across the entire ship, instead of just the special docking ones (though those are still there) -- Misc: Shortened the mod readme considerably to more sane levels, again. =P -- Addition: Serafina Freighter, because I was ordered, rather I wanted to or not, to add it by one of my friends. *pokes Matt* -- Change: If you start with a default Freelancer rep., Rheinland / Kusari no longer hate you. This is part of the war re-balancing, not a bug fix. -- Change: Scanners and Tractors now sell at every base, to avoid both confusion and lots of frustration. =P -- Addition: Four new arenas - Two PvP ones, two NPC ones (the pairs match each-other - one has NPCs, one doesn't) -- Bugfix: Cleaned up NPC patches, the low NPC patch especially. With the way my patch system is automated, sometimes you'd get areas with no NPCs because there was "density = 0", which meant that no NPCs would spawn. I have corrected these errors on the latest NPC patch. -- Change: Doubled all gun re-fire rates. I forgot that one of the founding things of 88 Flak was to make combat insane, since the rest of Freelancer lacks any depth what-so-ever. This makes things _very_ interesting when seeing 4 or so enemy NPCs show up. =P -- Change: Re-balanced power supplies / engine stats to match increased ROF on guns. -- Change: VHF's now charge up cruise in 0.2 seconds. Got complaints with their slow speed? Hah. Think of that when you get torpedoed at 650m/sec every 2 seconds in a Capital Ship. ;P -- Misc: Any other bugs and stuff I fixed. =P Since 1.22, in order of appearance: -- Addition: Participating or not participating in the war now affects your reputation. A LOT. Killing Rheinland / Kusari will make Liberty / Bretonia pirates hate you (for helping out their enemies), killing Kusari / Rheinland pirates makes Liberty / Bretonia hate you for helping out their enemies, etc. This adds much more depth to the reputation system, and no longer enables players to please everybody. -- Change: The range for the number of missions available has been multiplied by 5. If a base offered 8 to 12 missions before, it now offers 40 to 60. Yes, I am insane. Have fun scrolling the mission list. =P -- Addition: Proper Battleship missions. They operate like destroy station missions. You may also be sent on missions to destroy captured Capital Ships. -- Change: Removed "Players Killed" stat. I could have sworn it worked, but recent tests showed it obviously didn't. Changed it to "Nomad Fighters Killed", because I wanted to use it for something and Nomad Fighters are tricky things to fight. -- Bugfix: Any NPCs using rare items didn't have those rares show up in a cargo scan. -- Change: Rare power supply modifications have been doubled, to balance themselves with the other rares that are mountable on the same slot. -- Change: Re-balanced some gun ranges. -- Change: Cruise speed upped back to 1,000, maximum velocity upped to 1,500. This balances the CSV with its 3 thrusters (hah, everyone thinks 2 is bad enough =P) much more now that everything's no longer capped at 800 - This also means that a properly equipped ship can go above cruise speed.. -- Change: Capital ships now move at a regular speed of 80, half of what everything else moves. This was done to pretty much make them bounce less without having warp go any faster. -- Addition: Most factions now use different engines for ships, to make them all a little more different - for example, Mollys use Bretonia engines on their ships. Bounty Hunters use Rheinland engines, Xenos use Pirate ones, Outcasts use Kusari ones, etc. -- Change: Changes to the physics system with collisions - you no longer bounce everywhere, you just collide. For example, ram a station. You'll just stop dead. Or, get run over by a Battleship in SP - you can actually hitch a ride if you get run over in the right spot, physics are much more realistic now. -- Bugfix: The Serafina had an extra shield mount, and you couldn't mount rares on it. Funny, a friend was using it and I didn't realize until I scanned him. =P -- Change: Rare Armor rebalanced. The armor now increases by 0.05 per level, up to 1.5 - The cargo space taken up by each increases by 2, up to 20 (10 Rare Armors). 3.5 multiplier for Battleships was just insane. -- Change: The power draw of rare shield capacity and rare shield regen items have been doubled. -- Change: Torpedoes have had their damages halved. Their price has been reduced by 1/4 for compensation. I am aware that the Sunslayer round still costs more than twice that of the Starkiller, even though it only delivers twice the damage. It should be more cost efficient to do torpedo runs with a weaker torpedo, at greater stakes of getting killed. -- Change: Capital Ship Turrets and Utility Turrets have had their cargo space reduced to 20, which means a HF can now pick one, but only one, up. -- Change: Armor on all un-armored ships (minus Nomad ships, Repair Ship, and Capital Ships) has been doubled. Trading should be a bit more.. Bearable now. -- Addition: Slightly new engine effects - The flame in engines is a little less "static." -- Bugfix: Fixed the Civilian Freighter engine effect. It was a bit too.. Large. -- Change: In Easy Mode, NPCs fire a lot slower. So maybe it's easy for real now? =P -- Addition: There are now commodities that are placed in a new character's cargo hull depending on what options the server has picked. For example, disabling war formations will put in a commodity telling the player War Formations are disabled. Or, enabling the High NPC Patch would tell the player that the High NPC Patch is enabled. -- Change: NPCs now follow much closer in NPC follow - At the distance they were at, they were ramming the player in cruise anyway - the only solution to that would be to lower cruise speed again, but that's just annoying. So I figured I might as well make them closer. -- Change: NPCs are now much more responsive when following a player. -- Change: Re-wrote the AI from the ground up, using bits and pieces of the changes I'd made to BlazeME's AI (like for example my changes to the way AI heal and follow stuff). Why? Get rid of some odd bugs, as I went crazy with the AI when I started 88 Flak. And, of course, make them shoot the crap out of stuff even _more_, which they do. =P Since 1.23, in order of appearance: -- Change: Ships completely re-worked - Brought the handling much closer to FL's original limits. It's still faster, but it allows the engine a bit more room with the 2.5K NPC range. -- Change: Cruise set to 400, max velocity set to 800. Yes, this means that speed will cap out at 800, period. Yes, this means that 3 advanced thrusters on a CSV will waste fuel (I think, I could be wrong as I haven't tried that =P). This also means that a Capital Ship will warp at 600, however with the handling change, it will get there pretty slowly. -- Bugfix: AI now properly shoot at targets other than a player. This means you get things like Pirates attacking a convoy you're escorting, instead of just you. To that who found this, you know who you are. ;P -- Change: Weapons have now been re-balanced, using Argh's weapon balance from his XML Toolkit. I have also re-balanced the capital ship, utility, station, etc. turrets, since they were not covered - They will destroy you, still easily ripping fighter craft into tiny shreds. Just a little more difficult to use now, you can't rail incoming fighters at 2K anymore. Unless using one of the forward guns that is, they still absolutely obliterate stuff, of course. =P -- Change: Ammo takes up cargo now. This should stop getting idiotic amounts of money off dropped ammo. -- Change: More NPCs use Cruise Disruptors, or otherwise something on their CD mount. You can also actually get shot out of cruise now, since it's only 400m/sec. -- Bugfix: Freeport 7 Memorial is now in "Outer Sigma-17", not "Outer Omicron Major." Oops. -- Bugfix: Fixed Battleship Mission problems where the battleship would neither shoot you, nor die. -- Change: Fiddled with the AI again. They should know how to properly flee the scene, and will do so. With great vengeance. -- Change: Updated the Cargo Pod system, to include what I wrote up for someone, after last version was completed. -- Change: In multiplayer (doesn't work in single player for the same reasons as NPC follow), you now get busted for contraband much quicker - As soon as the guy starts talking, the "drop cargo" window pops up, giving you much less time to get away. -- Addition: New engine effect for the Civilian line of engines, to make your ships look a little different. Now, if I could just figure one for Border World out.. =P -- Addition: Anti-Fighter Capital Ship loadouts, mainly using Flak Cannons, Missiles, and Defense Turrets. This should make random Cap. Ship hunting in fighters a little tougher now, as those weapons were designed against fighters. -- Bugfix: Capital Ship loadouts now use every Cap. Ship gun, which means you can now get guns like the Liberty Battleship Missile Turret. Missed that before. =P -- Bugfix: Fixed the Rheinland Cruiser using a.. Rather insane amount of guns. I think around 16 or so (should be 8, it's a Small Capital class). I dunno HOW I missed that one, especially in-game. =P -- Change: The two main pirate factions for each house now use Battleships, to make it a bit more fair between playing a pirate character, or a lawful one. I didn't hand them out too much, because that would just seem a bit odd, but it should be a little harder now for the new folks. -- Change: n00b LF's now can use Class 5 guns, and Class 4 shield. n00b HF's can now use Class 7 shields. This was mainly so you could go straight from those ships to a ship of the same class without having to purchase new equipment (unless you want to). It's also done in the hopes that new people will stay in them longer, so they won't run completely out of money the first few times they die. =P -- Change: Power supplies on ships have been re-balanced. Having your class's highest class gun is no longer quite so favorable. This rings VERY true on the Kusari Engine - Mounting class 5 guns on a LF with Kusari Engines is NOT a good idea. -- Change: Shields have been re-balanced. The higher you go, the more power they suck away. Thus, having your class's highest class shield is no longer quite so favorable either. The formula is 10X (X being level) for LF shields, 15X for HF and Freighter shields. -- Change: Capital Ship gun's refire rates have been halved, their power supply divided by 1.5. Helps match the new gun balance, and makes them not so.. Instant kill to fighters. They still destroy them in a fine display of fireworks, just not in under 2 seconds. =P -- Bugfix: The Nomad Lair no longer slaughters you. =P -- Change: Upped the AI using missiles. They now shoot them more often, instead of once and a while. -- Addition: Random nomad encounters - If a system has NPCs, it's got nomads now. They fly Nomad Fighters, any "zombie" craft, and of course have a capital ship pop up here and there as always. This should make arming a Nomad Capital Ship MUCH less frustrating, as you won't have to visit just the arena / nomad systems anymore. This can be toggled in the mod options script upon activation. -- Bugfix: Capital Ships now always shoot upon arrival. Before, they'd get stuck in power regen mode sometimes, and just sit there letting stuff blast away. -- Change: NPCs now carry many more Nanobots / Shield Batteries, in most cases 2 to 3 times as many. This makes the normal game tougher, and makes easy mode a bit easier, since on easy they don't use them, instead just dropping them. -- Change: All equipment is now destroyed when the death thingy starts, for every death type, except for one piece of equipment, which is still dropped like before. What this means is that Capital Ships, Transports, even Fighters, will now no longer be able to shoot while in their death animation/fuse (which they're "invincible" in) -- Change: Nomad Fighter has had its armor multiplied by 5. This was mainly due to the above change, since it was extremely easy to kill a Nomad NPC at that point. -- Change: Fighter death animation/fuse's time has been lowered to 1/10th of a second, making it virtually impossible for a player / NPC to pull out of it. Mostly to just stop NPC annoyances with it, especially since you lose all your equipment now. -- Bugfix: NPCs now use Cargo Pods properly again - I was wondering why I never saw any pods on transports, it was because it was in the actual hull. Silly player cargo pod system being applied to NPCs. =P -- Addition: Capital Ship deaths have been made a bit more spiffy. =P -- Change: Raised the Nomad Fighter price by 2 million, since it's a bit better now. While I don't think it steps too out of line with balance, it does kill stuff noticeably well. -- Change: All VHF's have had a third shield added, and armor multiplied by 5. -- Bugfix: Nomad Fighter AI is now no longer so retarded. I think. I hope. XD -- Change: NPCs now afterburn and strafe like absolute beasts, while still managing to shoot stuff - Quite fitting, since if you're not holding down the thruster key you'll die in 88 Flak. =D -- Change: Halved missile and flak gun refire rates from what they were as of 9/21/05 (so 1/4 from what they were in 1.23) - I noticed that with the new AF Capital Ship loadouts, an all missile loadout really IS just REALLY cheap. I was originally going to have to make people buy ammo, however that still doesn't stop actual gameplay imbalances. -- Change: If you're on maximum terms with a faction, they will fight anyone hostile to you - This isn't new to mods, however I don't think it used to happen in old versions of 88 Flak. Pretty cool, as it gives you incentive to go all the way on the rep bar. =P -- Change: AI now use all armaments (torpedoes etc) properly against ALL types of ships. Sometimes, guns were a better choice against fighters than torpedoes, which isn't right. :P -- Change: AI now carry MANY more torpedoes. Run and hide, sucka. -- Change: Torpedoes re-worked - It's now much easier to shoot one down, which is good, since it's a capital ship's only defense. Not that it's easy or anything, just easier than before. =P -- Bugfix: Lawful stuff will now attack un-lawful Capital Ships properly. Meaning, no more seeing a Blood Dragon Destroyer shooting up Navy patrols that don't care. It also means that you can take a Navy formation with you to hunt Capital Ships for real now - they won't just run when you get there. -- Bugfix: Fixed errors in strafing speed. -- Change: NPC follow tweaked. NPCs now follow you much better in cruise, it's not as easy to lose them. -- Change: Missiles now knock stuff around when they explode. Not by much, but if you get hit with a flurry it'll hurt a bit. -- Change: Halved missile and flak gun velocities. Before, they were simply impossible to evade, which was kinda cheap. -- Change: LF / HF / Freighter armors multiplied by 2.25 (except VHF armor which was multiplied by 5 earlier). -- Change: Halved (just about) capital ship missile turn rates. They now aren't impossible to dodge, for real. =P -- Addition: Finally re-did the faction infocards, to clear up a little confusion on how the war affects reputation. -- Change: Finally removed rank requirements placed on items, thus no longer needing the "Disable Rank" option to play SP "properly." -- Change: NPC Magnet is now always for sale, to avoid confusion when the server has it activated, but the client does not. If the server doesn't have the NPC Magnet enabled, NPCs will just ignore it. -- Misc: Cleaned up the options list a bit - Now, only stuff that is actually somewhat worth activating remains. -- Addition: New engine effect for Border World engines. -- Addition: Base Power Capacity and Regen stats to ship descriptions. "Base" meaning what it would be without the engine modifiers. -- Change: Completely overhauled the balancing system - it is no longer quite so flawed. When I learned that negative values for linear drag on engines worked, well.. Hehe. Basically, you can now sacrifice power for more speed, and vice versa, depending on the engine you pick - for example, Kusari engines make your ship's forward, reverse, and strafing speeds all 25% faster, but sucks out 25% of your power supply. Ouch. -- Misc: Re-organized Ioncross Hashcodes - well, this came along with the engine re-balancing really, but editing characters is now really easy - any un-needed power plants, engines, etc., were tossed. -- Misc: Added support for the Freelancer Save Converter, if there were any servers out there / people in general playing single player. As of right now, any old saves will crash a server / SP game because of the engine / power plant re-organization. Running the included project file from the save converter will fix this - I also added the stuff listed above under "Player-wipe avoidance list" -- Change: Very Heavy Fighters now carry 150 Nanobots and Shield Batteries. I realize that with good rare items, this makes them somewhat of a better choice over a LF, HF, or Freighter for PvP, however even with good items they were getting slaughtered by my barbaric NPC hordes. Remember, if you're having a tough time fighting one in PvP, they DO NOT like cruise disruptors, as cruise is a VHF's main way of avoiding stuff. Man, losing a thruster really does suck, but it makes the play style so much different that I REALLY don't want to put one on them. I mean, that's one of the goals of 88 Flak, after all - make playing each class of ship as different as possible. =P -- Change: Commodities now take up only 1/4 of a cargo "block." This means something with 300 cargo space can hold 1200 commodities. This is because Trading, with the increased difficulty, was not worth it one bit. -- Change: Cruise charge up times have been severely decreased - VHF's remain at 0.2, LF's are now at 0.6, LF's 1.2, Freighters etc. at 2.4. Since Cruise Disruption is rampant with NPCs, I tried to make getting away perhaps more fair, especially to things like Transports that are very much so exposed to such threats. Since 1.24, in order of appearance: -- Bugfix: Nomad Guns have had their odd balance fixed. While it didn't matter too much since only the Nomad Fighter can use the guns, it was a little odd to have the best gun use the least amount of energy. -- Change: Nomad Guns have had their power usages doubled, and their refire rates doubled. This puts them back into the "formidable gun" category - they were dubbed down a bit when by accident when I inserted Argh's gun balance from his XML Toolkit in - one Nomad Valkyrie did more damage to my stationary VHF (died in a few seconds) than 2 Nomad Fighters did to it (died in like.. 15 seconds). Now one Nomad Fighter _should_ be roughly equal to or better than an average HF. -- Bugfix: NPC Nomad Fighters stop being stupid. For real now - this was because they kept running out of thrust on their power supply. Whoops. -- Change: Nomad Fighter now comes with three starting guns, and can no longer mount any guns other than Nomad ones. -- Change: Weapons Platforms are now much stronger and don't disappear. Having static objects placed in systems disappear is just odd and glitchy - for example, in MP, if you destroyed a weapons platform, left, and came back, it'd be there again, but wouldn't be doing anything. They now carry the generic "explode but don't actually go anywhere" death that stations have, to protect any possible stability problems. -- Addition: 8 Weapons Platforms. They're dead-slow, and you need a BPL rep to obtain one, but for only $8 Million, they aren't too shabby of a support craft. =P -- Change: You can now loot Stations and Weapons Platforms for their turrets. Why? A. Another way to stock up on guns, if you please. B. Gives people a reward for their hard work. -- Change: NPCs now no longer hang around the area they spawn in - most now depart to other bases, just hail around if you're alone, and help to a base would be nice. Some trade, some patrol around, and some do both at the same time. -- Change: NPCs now randomly have random cargo. Random factions also like to trade, and head off to kill other stations. Want to escort a Capital Ship as it heads to escape a system? Sure you do, and you can make a handsome amount of money off it too (from loot). -- Change: BIG NPC beef. They evade like nuts now in smaller craft, and are generally much closer to fighting a real person than ever before. They also can no longer perform any special moves that you can not, and instead simply rely on holding down the thruster button and strafing to dodge stuff. I've seen a lone fighter stand up to an Anti-Fighter Capital Ship, a feat that is tough for even a skilled player to achieve - it didn't win in the end, however it did still last a good minute or so. =P -- Change: Capital Ships now go twice as fast, restored back to their old speed of 80. -- Bugfix: Fixed a bug in NPC loadouts where some Outcasts had a gun on the wrong mount. -- Bugfix: Fixed a bug in NPC loadouts where some civilian freighters had Lv. 7 guns. While this isn't "illegal" with the classing system, they were inconsistent with other factions" loadouts around that difficulty. -- Change: Random Missions now no longer offered. They were un-balanced, somewhat glitchy, etc. If not having random stations to kill bothers you, go attack a real one. You get money off it now. =P -- Change: Systems completely re-worked, NPCs now come in much upgraded formations. Capital Ships can be seen flying in groups now, usually with fighter escort; however, they can also be seen with other Capital Ships, defending a trade convoy, etc. - they're just generally used a lot more. -- Bugfix: Because of the NPC re-work in systems, Capital Ships now spawn properly, like they always should've. :P -- Change: Capital Ships have had their cruise restored, in place of warp. They now regen power by sitting still, or by killing one of their engines. Capital Ships have.. Erm.. "Proper" cruise effects, too. -- Change: Flight physics changed, again. Ships now slide a lot more when turning, and some of the heavier craft are a joy to fly with their horrid acceleration. =P -- Addition: Keyboard commands for switching to target view, and toggling through the sub-targets. Also re-added in the weapon group commands: "assign" and "fire" weapon groups were missing, not sure why either. =P -- Change: Defender re-worked a little. It now no longer has any rear-firing capability of any importance (I swapped the gun and torpedo mount on it), which should pretty well balance out the HF's now. Before, it had a gun that could fire both backwards and forwards, which the NPCs abused like no tomorrow. -- Change: Bloodhound re-worked a little, in the same fashion. -- Change: Liberator re-worked in the same fashion. -- Change: Capital Ship Missiles and Flak cannons tweaked. Capital Ship Missiles now act more like torpedoes, kicking the crap out of anything that's silly enough to wonder in its path. Flak cannons are the same way they were, lacking both the damage and unique "punch" of the missiles, however laying down a steady stream of ordinance. Flak cannons are best used as torpedo defense and deterring fighters to go into a dodging frenzy in an attempt to evade all the shrapnel. -- Misc: The font for player names now matches NPC names. Fake your favorite NPC today! =D *is shot* -- Addition: "Alternate" configurations for NPCs. What this means is that you'll have NPCs using guns that were previously un-used by anyone except players - for example, you might see some Liberty Navy people using Magma Hammers instead of their normal Vengeance pick. It also means NPCs use shield killers, etc. This applies to any faction with more than one type of gun. -- Bugfix: The Player-flown Rheinland Gunboat didn't lose its guns at the start of its death fuse, this has been fixed. Normally, Capital Ships / Transports / etc. are stripped of their guns when they start exploding, to prevent abuse of certain things. It also makes a very satisfying sound. -- Bugfix: Fixed a similar problem with the player transports / trains, and the two n00b craft. -- Addition: In addition to the above AI upgrade, NPCs now, for the most part, fire their weapons all at once like players, instead of individually - this is good as a lot of NPCs now use slower-firing guns. They still "cycle-fire" sometimes, but it's the best I could do. -- Bugfix: Fixed some silly mistakes in the blue ball quest thing. If you got stuck on a marker before, try it again - some of the clues just really made no sense. -- Change: Re-organized the stat screen - it now goes NPC Fighter Class Un-assisted Kills, NPC Freight Class Un-assisted Kills, NPC Capital Class Un-assisted Kills, and NPC Station Class Un-assisted Kills, in that order. They say "un-assisted" because kills are only logged if you did most of the damage to the NPC - if another NPC or player helps you, there's a good chance you won't get credited with the kill. Please note that you DO NOT need to get one of these kills to affect your rep (or receive loot) - merely helping kill an NPC affects your reputation too. -- Change: Rares can now drop from any NPC. Before, the higher the NPC difficulty, the higher rares you got. I however realized that there's honestly not much difference between a level 2 NPC and a level 19 NPC, since they're ALL pretty nasty and deserve to drop rares. -- Addition: NPC Wingmen for Multiplayer, in place of my old NPC follow system. This populates the systems with NPCs hired by different "NPC Magnets." They will stay with you until you die, log out, land, or jump systems - but, you can always just get another wing in a matter of seconds in that case, and they even rejoin you after a fight now. These NPCs are toggle-able by the server. -- Change: Raised NPC Magnet price to 10K. While players are still better, having NPCs with you is a very nice ability. So it now costs. =P -- Bugfix: Fixed NPC Magnet not sometimes being for sale. -- Addition: Hazard Buoys marking the entrance to Alaska in the New York system - this should make it a bit easier for new players who haven't been there before to actually find it. -- Addition: Two holes into (and out of) Alaska in the Independent World systems. They are, however, rather tough to find. =P -- Addition: Freelancer NPCs, both in a "lawful" and "unlawful" form. They cruise about minding their own business, and create some rather neat fights in places previously unchecked by a certain population. -- Misc: Removed the Howda Doode WTF Missile, which was the no-longer-used ammo for a secret gun that was mounted on a secret ship, which I made for a friend so he'd stop complaining. Just for kicks, I'll mention that he was trying to spell "Howdy Doody," or something like that. Don't ask. -- Change: Tweaked shields. They now consume an exponential power supply, raising 1.3X per level, starting at 30 for LF shields and 45 for HF shields. -- Bugfix: Re-worked try-before-you-buy mode to no longer interfere with multiplayer. Before, if the admin had it on, only the test battleship and cruiser were for sale, and the player would lack enough cash to buy either. Now, it only changes the ships for single player. -- Change: Trying to dock with the n00b base no longer sends you to Manhattan; instead, you just can't dock with it period. I did it originally to confuse people and laugh at them, but as it turns out a lot of people thought it was a bug. Hehe. =P -- Change: Halved Transport / Train / AT base regen rates for power. Before, having 5 Mk III utility turrets on a Large Transport did not drain its power much, and Mk I utility turrets gave near infinite power. -- Change: Nanobots have had their price reduced to $400, from $600, Shield Batteries raised to $400, from $300. -- Change: Capital Ship / All Freight class (except Freighter itself) ships have had their turn speeds doubled. This makes NPCs not only a little more stable with them, however makes playing one of these ships much less frustrating. I thought it was cool to have them turn like a cow at first, but it doesn't really turn out so neat in the end. -- Bugfix: Fixed a few missing contrails from player-ship loadouts, namely Bounty Hunter ships, Civilian ships, etc. More docking lights were also added to the Serafina, making use of two un-used mounts. Lights missing from the Bretonia Gunboat and Kusari Gunboat were also fixed, making player-ship loadouts now 100% correct for sure now! =D -- Change: Since stations / weapons platforms / Jump Gates / whatever don't re-arm after "dieing", their hitpoints have been doubled. -- Change: Capital Ships / Liners no longer have any strafe speed. They do, however, navigate through asteroid fields much better now (because of no strafing, trust me =P). -- Bugfix: Fixed silly little errors in stat infocards, where "Reverse Speed" was spelled "Reserve Speed" on nearly everything except fighters. Hmm. Also, "Shield Classes: None" was missing from Capital Ships - no biggie, however I don't like inconsistencies. =P -- Change: Hitpoints of mounted equipment have been quintupled, from 5000 to 25000. This means that you shouldn't lose equipment every fight now, however it'll still get quite a bit damaged (and thus cost money). -- Change: Capital Ship / Utility turrets are no longer invincible - you still shouldn't lose one (5,000,000 hitpoints), however after a Capital Ship fight or two your Battleship will probably rack up a small repair bill. -- Change: Doubled the rate that the B.P.L. reputation goes up per kill, in response to increased NPC AI - not only are your enemies tougher, but your allies are too, and 150 kills all of the sudden became an impressive feat. And grouping with other players - which is VERY recommended now - has always slowed down a player's kill intake, thus another reason for the B.P.L. rep rate increase. -- Addition: n00b system. It's basically a system with the n00b base, and two gates leading out of it to NY - the one that's accessible to you depends on if you choose a lawful or unlawful life. -- Change: Thruster speeds multiplied by 1.25X. -- Change: Power supplies multiplied by 2X. This should make shooting stuff considerably easier and less frustrating now. -- Change: Ship prices re-worked. Light Fighters are still $1,000,000, but HF's are now $1,200,000, VHF's / Freighters $1,400,000, Transports / Trains / etc. $2,000,000, etc. -- Change: AI now have spread on their guns, should help game balance be NOT BROKEN now from their difficulty. I'm serious, there was a point where you couldn't go from Manhattan to Fort Bush without dieing. =P -- Change: New Berlin, New London, New Tokyo, and Alaska now show up on a new character's navmap. This should help new players get oriented with places and stuff. -- Change: Thrusters re-worked. All ships now have infinite thrust capacity, however the less expensive thrusters have less hitpoints than more expensive ones. I realize that this is a rather linear system compared to the rest of the equipment, however this system solves the abuse problem of logging out to regain thruster fuel; also, having all of the thrusters go the same speed works out a lot of balance quirks. -- Addition: Navigational buoys marking where Trade Lanes used to be. This should make traveling MUCH easier, as you don't have to navigate a maze of patrol paths to find bases you normally would be able to easily. This also makes a pirate's life a lot easier, too. -- Change: Moved where some ships are sold around a little, to make a tiny bit more sense. -- Addition: Transport turrets are sold where Transports are sold, Train turrets where Trains are, Lifter turrets where Lifters are, etc. -- Change: Power usages for rare guns multiplied by 1.5X. This makes them only slightly better than real high-level guns despite their rarity, however the fact that these "high-level" guns can be mounted on even a Light Fighter warranted the increase. So they're still worth using if you do manage to salvage one, however you will feel the negative effects a little more now. -- Change: NPCs now carry real power supplies. The AI have reached the point where they no longer need the assistance of cheat items to prove a challenge to players. This also balances NPCs carrying high level items over ones carrying low-level ones, as they will run out of power quicker and be forced to dodge a bit to regain some back. -- Bugfix: The Prison Station Mitchell Complex in Alaska no longer buys commodities. Before, it bought commodities at normal prices, meaning you could trade to them from the next system over. While, granted, there wasn't a huge profit to be made, I fixed it all the same. -- Bugfix: Fixed Flak Cannons doing no damage to target - they have a 45m explosion radius, however they were set to detonate 60m away from the target. -- Addition: Anti-spawn-camp zone to the bottom Unknown system, so you won't get killed every time you enter. -- Bugfix: Fixed a bug with the Nomad Fighter strafing too slow, the Serafina strafing too fast, and NPCs in Heavy Lifters doing barrel rolls. -- Change: Arena NPCs are now like normal NPCs - they drop a single piece of equipment, instead of the Arena Tokens. The Arenas are rough places as NPCs use the best possible equipment; players deserve the loot if they regularly fight there. -- Bugfix: Fixed a bug with both Nomad Fighters flown by Nomads, and Defenders flown by Liberty Navy, not showing up in the Arenas. -- Addition: Nomad-infested ships are now distinguishable from normal ships, as they are on fire. -- Addition: House Navies now fly Light Fighters and Armored Transports, also flying Light Fighters in the Arena. -- Addition: Missing stats to Capital Ship / Weapons Platform Missile and Flak turrets - they were missing the amount of barrels the guns had, and the power consumption that the missiles used, per barrel. The game does stats for guns automatically, however those two stats are not normal for missiles - I had to do them manually. -- Change: Every type of ship can now land anywhere. I realize that this will look just plain silly when a Battleship un-docks with a small Border Station, however I realized that flying a Capital Ship for pirates just wasn't very feasible, since so few factions have docking rings on their bases. -- Change: Liners, due to their sizes, have had their armors increased. Their price, compared to other ships in their class (AT for example), has been increased slightly. -- Bugfix: Docking voices fixed - no more "Freelancer Alpha 12 dash 1, your request is granted. Please proceed 1." on docking rings. -- Change: Since the universe no longer cares about your smuggled goods (except your enemies, who will put up a bit of a fight for 'em), they now take up a wee bit more cargo space. Not much, however if you can hold 600 of a normal commodity, you might only be able to hold.. Like.. 540 of an outlawed one. Yes, there was a good reason cargo scanning was tossed. -- Change: Halved ship roll speeds - this should not only allow ships to be a bit more controllable, but formation flight should be fairly less erratic now. Ships can still roll a full 360*, just not as quickly. -- Change: NPCs now carry 5 torpedoes on average, instead of their normal 20. -- Bugfix: Mollys carried a Level 6 gun on LF's, which is one class too high. -- Change: Cargo now takes up 1/8 cargo space. Trading is now even tougher than 1.24, even with the inclusion of NPC wingmen, and thus I felt the change was warranted. -- Addition: Hard and Very Easy modes, Easy mode being re-worked. Easy mode makes NPCs delay longer in using Nanobots and Shield Batteries, Very Easy mode makes them not use them at all and shoot worse, and Hard mode makes them shoot dead-on to the little red "X" without missing. 1 NPC in Hard mode is roughly comparable to 1 player. -- Bugfix: Fixed Blood Dragon's Dragon (named the Heretic in 88 Flak) having the torpedo mount up-side down. This is a normal Freelancer error. -- Bugfix: Fixed the CSV not displaying a Pilot; apparently, the CSV was originally a two-man vehicle. This is a normal Freelancer bug. -- Addition: Player-flyable stations (different than the player-purchasable ones!), 29 IN ALL. Bwahaahaa. Bases are, minus players being able to dock in them, FULLY operational. Arm them however you please. Buy a Fort Bush and watch the cool things spin around and spit out green gas as you shoot stuff. -- Addition: "High-LOD" and "shipview" patches. These will increase level-of-detail on stuff, and hide ships when docked, respectively. The shipview one is useful for when you're piloting a larger ship, and it's clogging your screen when docked (useful for the pilotable stations). -- Bugfix: Awkward docking for Nomad Battleship and Gunboat has been fixed - no more needing to broadside a jump gate just to get through. =P -- Addition: Contrails to Nomad Fighter, one for each wing-tip. -- Bugfix: Player-flown Rheinland Gunboats dropped a gun on death while doing its show of fireworks - this isn't supposed to happen, because if a player ship drops a gun on death, the gun will still be there upon respawn; thus, running into item duplication issues. -- Change: Torpedo damage multiplied by 1.5 to make them more worth it over guns - thou shall now fear thy "incoming torpedo." -- Change: Arena NPC spawning re-worked - Arenas now spawn NPCs anywhere that isn't near an object (this means that, in the one with the landscape, NPCs won't spawn until you're 5K above it). Before, they had zones placed in specific areas; the purpose of that is now obsolete. -- Change: If an NPC wants to cruise, cruising will shift to the highest priority. No more having an NPC fire up cruise for 2 seconds, turning around to shoot, and then trying to cruise for another 2 seconds. This should eliminate most NPC disappearing glitches. -- Change: The period of time a station explodes for has increased from 2 seconds to 6. This now overall looks much nicer than the 2 second fuse. -- Addition: NPCs will sometimes chase a player / NPC down in cruise mode, provided it won't separate the formation too much (i.e. an escort will only go out so far, and the formation leader will only chase if the formation "agrees" to, etc.). That said, I've had Bounty Hunters chase me across NY before and chased down a Freelancer NPC with some Outcasts. -- Change: Ships now no longer auto-strafe around asteroids, objects, etc. This was to A. Fix formation flight with larger ships, and B. Make travelling a little less boring in an asteroid field. =P -- Bugfix: Fixed the New Tokyo > Honshu gate to read "New Tokyo -> Honshu" instead of "New Tokyo-Honshu" - this was, I believe, a normal Freelancer bug. -- Addition: 43 selectable ships to toss in your player-station - keep in mind, however, that the ship will be sold to only YOU. If someone else shares the station with you, they'll see what they've picked while you'll see what you've picked. Thus, should you be willing to shell out the cash, you no longer have to search for the ship you wish to purchase. ;P -- Addition: Abandoned Outpost in Mine Mazathon system, so players can re-spawn at the beginning should they die, instead of having to travel through the first half-hour of it again. -- Addition: Blue ball-things at the beginning of the Mine Maze segment in Alaska, so that player's won't spend a few hours going through it only to find you need a BPL rep at the end. ;) -- Addition: 3 suns have been added to the Mine Mazathon system. I never even realized it really needed one (much less 3) until I saw the new station all black. -- Change: Jump Gates (and Jump Holes) now operate like how Trade Lane Rings did - meaning, take a few shots at one and it will temporarily shut down, disallowing any traffic to leave the system through that side of the gate. -- Addition: Faction tokens. Basically, if you have good enough rep with a faction, you can buy an item that "mounts" on your ship; this will declare you an operative, overseer, etc. with that faction, and they will lend out fighter patrols to you free of charge. They're basically permanent NPC magnets that aren't lost when you die, and hire only that faction. -- Addition: Liberty Navy NPCs now fly the Liberator, the Liberty VHF. Previously, only players flew this. -- Addition: Freelancer NPCs now fly the Anubis and Serafina. Previously, only players flew these. -- Change: NPC Magnet now costs $100,000. This is to balance the magnets with the alternative, permanent "Operative" status in factions; it's tough to gain operative/overseer status in a faction, and this made it much more worth the effort. -- Addition: Multiplied the rate of reputation that Police factions increase by 1.5X, on average. Now, Police reputation will usually be above Navy rep, which made a bit more sense. It also balances out the faction joining tokens, since Bounty Hunter or Navy wingmen are basically better in every way over Police wingmen (unless you always want Light Fighters assisting you, Navy and BH have a chance of using heavies). -- Change: Shipping Overseer status now hires Police wingmen as well. -- Change: Capital Ship Defense Turrets are now big, scary gattling guns. They're still balanced properly, however the high-ROF/low-damage stats make it suit the role of anti-fighter/torpedo much, much better. -- Change: Large Station Turrets are no longer enormous. Don't get me wrong, big guns are fine, but it sucked to outfit a newly bought station with Large Turrets, only to launch and look like a big ball of turret-age. They now take the Small Station turret model, roughly the size of a Battleship cannon. -- Change: Halved average CM and Mine loadouts on NPCs from 20 to 10. CMs are useless on NPCs anyways, and I got sick of seeing myself haul in $250,000 worth of Ripper mines once and a while. =P -- Bugfix: SP players can no longer go through the one-way Mine Mazathon holes both ways. -- Change: Liberty Cruiser Forward Gun now has a model, and the hardpoint position on the ship has been changed correspondingly (it still looks the same). So now it won't look as odd using it on another ship. -- Change: Tweaked large ship turning stats. Battleships now turn 3/4 the speed they once did, stations 1/2. Smaller "large ships" (cruisers, gunboats, weapons platforms, etc.) retain the same turning values. -- Bugfix: If you are sniping an NPC using a VHF and it can not see you in scan range, it will enter "panic" mode and blindly cruise somewhere. Probably like a real human would do if they were getting shot from no-where. ;P -- Bugfix: Finally fixed the bug where friendly AI would not attack a Capital Ship if the Capital Ship was the only enemy present. This is due to the fact that, believe it or not, AI don't know how to attack any ships other than type FIGHTER or FREIGHTER. This means that, as a side-effect, there are now only two "Ship Type Killed" stats; Fighter/Freight Kills and Capital Kills. -- Bugfix: Utilized FLScan 1.3 to fix an error in a loadout, and to generate new shortest system paths. The pathing generation rules, thanks guys. =) -- Misc: Re-implanted SDK 1.5 to fix some tiny errors. -- Misc: Removed the Jet Black mod (by Glitch) option, to try and un-clutter the list a little more. Besides, you can just activate the mod separately anyhow if you really wanted it. Also, not having the skins present reduced mod size a tiny bit. -- Misc: Officially solidified NPC wingmen - 2 DLL hacks later and one hell of a lot of tweaking, they can finally get back on your wing after pulling a few loop-de-loops and a 180. ;) -- Change: Lights and Engine customization have been removed. I know, it's a bummer, however I found that the amount of cheating loopholes spawned from ship customization is just too great to be ignored. -- Addition: 1.1 patch now included with the mod. THIS WILL NOT OVER-WRITE ANY NORMAL FL FILES. When you de-activate the mod, the 1.1 patch will go with it. This was included for added stability and cheat-protection. -- Bugfix: You can now view your stats screen with the F8 key again. Dunno how I broke that one. -- Bugfix: Fixed an error with Light Fighter strafe speed; it was just a tad higher than it was supposed to be. -- Bugfix: Fixed an error in ship infocards. The armor amounts shown were 1/3 less than they should've been. -- Addition: 5 sexy new ships; the Pursuit Patriot, Pursuit Cavalier, Pursuit Drake, Pursuit Banshee, and Pursuit Piranha; which are used by house police forces and Bounty Hunters (and player of course). They have 3 thrusters and shiny police lights too, and will give fleeing pirates a run for the money. -- Change: New thruster effects, which is a little smaller and looks a lot better, especially on the new pursuit craft (the old thruster effect made most look like fireballs). -- Addition: Option to use the original FL thruster effects, incase you don't like Flak's. -- Misc: Any small other changes that I forgot. I think I covered just about everything though. =P Since 1.25, in order of appearance: -- Bugfix: Fixed auto-strafe still being in a few ships. -- Bugfix: Fixed an error in NPC encounters that may have caused server crashes. -- Misc: Removed references to ship selecting for player-bases in this readme; it was a tossed feature, however never got removed from documentation. -- Bugfix: Fixed an error in system NPC populations that may have caused server crashes. -- Bugfix: Removed reputation info from exit end of n00b system jump holes. This will make enemy NPCs of those factions stop attacking the jump holes and getting no-where. -- Change: NPC populations and formation sizes cut roughly in half. This makes for MUCH more balance in fights now, and common things like crossing a system are now feasible. -- Addition: All system music replaced with custom music, taken from Quake 4 and UT2004, made by ID Software and Epic Games respectively. I had the idea while actually playing Quake 4, and I think the music actually fits quite well into 88 Flak's fights. -- Change: Cruise engine speed raised to 650 from 450. -- Change: If anyone edits content.dll or common.dll, NPC Wingmen have been fortified with FormationUseStruct, shortened to FormUseStruct. -- Change: Large Turrets now take up 21 cargo space, instead of 20. A HF can now only pick up one of those and one piece of equipment; this was to stop certain Light Fighters from being able to pick them up. -- Bugfix: Fixed up Freelancer faction infocards to be a little less confusing. -- Addition: NPC counts are now changed in the mod options, instead of with patches. -- Bugfix: Fixed Liberty Police, Inc. not caring about the player killing most shipping factions. I'm not sure if it was intentional by the FL Devs or not, but it just didn't make much sense. -- Bugfix: Fixed title screens not showing the player's last flown ship after log-out. -- Bugfix: Fixed bug where some house navies didn't shoot at some pirates in the Independent World war areas, and vice versa. -- Bugfix: Fixed bad mooring point on Luxury Liner stations - you launched inside the bay, but were then stuck inside the ship. -- Change: Switched Pursuit Piranha lights to Red / Blue / White to not look as dumb. -- Change: Slowed white pursuit light to look better. -- Change: Tweaked Docking Lights to be an alternating yellow / red, to clear confusion with pursuit craft. -- Change: Fixed up the Prison Station Mitchell Complex to be quite a bit less confusing by separating the part of the complex that sells the stations. -- Addition: Anti-NPC-spawn-camp-zone around the NY > Alaska gate. You shouldn't be murdered by Freelancer NPCs / Nomads every time you jump in now. -- Addition: Many more variable NPC spawns; while formation sizes have been reduced from 1.24, you'll now see more random things happening; for example, a sizable assault force attacking a station where before it might have been just a fighter or two attacking. -- Addition: Freelancer NPCs now use Transports, Lifters, etc.; basically, you'll see freelance trade convoys, thus meaning that Freelancer NPCs now use every ship in the game. -- Change: NPC wingmen re-worked a little bit; they're now pretty much nearly 100% likely to spawn only one wingman-able wing in an area, which means you can't (without a bit of work at least) have 3 players, say, each get a wing and have a total of 9 ships. If you find that a player has wingmen and isn't going anywhere, just fly to another area and try to hire some there. -- Change: Trajectory disruption of the trajectory disruptor increased; it spins you a little more and tosses you a little more. -- Change: Torpedoes \ Capital Ship missiles now knock ships around 1/2 of what they used to. Makes facing an all-missile battleship at least escapable. -- Bugfix: NPCs now spawn again when you bring NPC wingmen into very outer zones of systems; before, if you, say, took two Navy wingmen with you about 40K straight up, nothing would spawn. This was because the NPC limit was too low in those areas. -- Addition: Variable wingmen amounts; Low NPC count has only 1 wingman instead of 2, High NPC count has 4, and Super-High NPC count has 6. In later patches, I may be able to work a bit of magic and have these numbers increase with rank instead. No promises though. -- Bugfix: Fixed 5th Contrail not showing on the Eagle. Native FL bug? -- Change: VHFs dubbed down even more; they now have 3/4 the turning speed of what they used to have, and no strafing speed; only reverse. They're still probably too good with the right equipment, however it will be considerably easier for a HF to take a VHF down with a well-aimed torpedo. -- Addition: Wrote up a Wingmen FAQ, located somewhere in this readme. -- Bugfix: Fixed help items in new player's cargo bay being completely messed up. -- Change: Made all station explosion fuses MUCH better. -- Addition: Option to have engine effects / contrails / explosions / etc. now show up at a much longer range, which means you might see things like explosions from a distant fight, etc. Having this option on also forces the engine to have 10 times the limit of effects it normally does. -- Change: Killing Freelancer NPCs of either side now can affect faction reputation positively; before, it was only negatively. -- Change: Killing Nomads now affects every faciton's reputation positively, in VERY small amounts. The hit is small because everyone hates Nomads, so it would be kinda lame if they had a signifigant reputation impact. -- Bugfix: For some odd reason, a rare armor was sold at New London. I'm not sure how that happened; rares aren't supposed to be sold anywhere. -- Change: Reduced engine nozzles / effects on a Transport / Large Transport from 5 to 3. They'll still handle exactly the same, just less trails bunched up on one another. -- Misc: Adjusted Transport camera angle to look a little better. -- Change: Factions that are friendly to you are no longer willing to attack your enemies now. Why? Well, when this happened, they indeed shot at your enemies, however your enemies never shot back, making for very lopsided fighting. I liked this feature, however until I can fix the one-way problem with it I'm going to have to drop it for now. -- Change: As a direct result of above change, factions that are less-than-friendly to you will no longer flip out when they see their friends hostile to you. I know this doesn't make sense, however Flak is hard enough as it is. -- Misc: Removed Linkin Park's "session" music, which turned out to only be used in the n00b system (hence a waste of space), and replaced the Nine Inch Nails title screen with the Red Alert 2 menu theme. -- Change: Re-worked NPCs a little so that they regularly visit their formation leader in the middle of a fight. This was done to to prevent an NPC getting too involved in a side 1v1 and end up having to teleport back to their leader. -- Addition: Added option to turn off the high-range special effects new to 1.26, as many older computers won't be able to handle them. -- Change: Re-worked NPCs to be completely un-biased towards players over hostile NPCs, at the cost of individual (ship type here) killed stats. -- Bugfix: Nomads have more-than-tripled spawn rates in the Nomad systems. There were high military spawn rates so I could test the systems without getting killed every minute, and I had forgotten to iron these out. -- Change: Nomads spawn mostly fighter swarms in Nomad systems, instead of Capital Ship groups. Capital Ships are easier to run from. ;) -- Addition: Jump Hole to and from Alaska and New York, for moving stations in and out of NY > Alaska. The hole's in a crappy spot though, so it's better to use the mine-fielded gate for normal craft. -- Change: Removed Jump Holes going to and from Kepler / Bering and Alaska; the abuse that could result from using those holes for trade was impressive to say the least; I had tried to space the holes out in a way to make it not worth it, however the distance travelled using the holes was overall much less than the normal path. -- Bugfix: Fixed Mine Mazathon holes not being correctly locked in SP. -- Change: Boosted all chances of a rare item drop 1.5 times. -- Change: VHFs have had their power supplies cut by 1/4 and turning rates increased by 1/4 by request. -- Change: Changed "Strafe / Reverse Speed" stats to be read in decimal form instead of fractions, to clear up any confusion. -- Bugfix: Fixed a native Freelancer bug where some commodities wouldn't show up in your cargo hold at all in some bases. -- Change: Nomad Particle Splitter now does infinite amounts of shield damage and power drain on the target. -- Change: Cruise charge up time is now at or above 5 seconds; Capital Ships take 10 seconds. -- Change: Removed the Flying Permit from bases. This was done to eliminate the need for scrolling in the equipment dealer for Shield Batteries. If a player lost a scanner and doesn't have the $2,000 for a new one, well.. That's just sad. -- Change: New Cruise charge up sound effects for larger craft, since their charge up times are so long. -- Change: Turned Navigation Buoys marking old Trade Lanes into Trade Lane Buoys, which have huge green lights viewable at a long distance and green flames that point to one-another for quick orientation to a trade route. -- Bugfix: If a player joins an AI formation, the AI will now slow down and wait for that player to catch up. -- Change: AI now get _very_ up close and personal in dogfights. -- Change: AI wingmen for players are MUCH stronger at following, thanks to ww2jacob of the Phoenix Mod Team for a nice set of turning values for a certain ship that made a whole lot of things just work. -- Bugfix: Rheinland Longblade is now available at every base the Stealthblade Mk I is at (Longblade is Class 4 version of Stealthblade for LFs) -- Change: Any factions that previously had "shaky" reputations with another faction will just shoot that faction now. I basically got tired of my Kishiro wingmen not giving a damn about Outcasts plundering my shiny Transport. -- Bugfix: Fixed one of the Prison Station Mitchell Complex stations selling the Prison Liner instead of Prison Station. -- Bugfix: Fixed Order weaponry and shields being way too low of a price; they are now in line with similar equipment. -- Change: Nomad Fighter no longer has any strafing speed, to help Capital Ships be able to shoot it down easier; after all, the Nomad Fighter has a one-hit-kill melee weapon on it, and most players flying a Capital Ship couldn't stand a chance against 2 or more. -- Change: Nomad Fighter can now only carry 35 Nanobots, instead of 90. -- Addition: NPCs now use Starblazer. This was supposed to be added in with 1.25 when the Serafina and Anubis were added to NPC selection, but it was missed. -- Bugfix: Fixed odd gun spot on the Startracker. -- Bugfix: Fixed some NPCs flying Border World and Civ. Heavy Fighters having a gun on an odd mount. -- Change: Removed any rear-firing capability of any importance on the Civ. Heavy Fighter (Falcon) -- Change: All Capital Ships can no longer use Class 8 weaponry, limiting them to just Class 9 (Capital Class). This was done because buying huge things like Battleships is a big deal, and while a Capital Ship gun is $400,000 players could just buy a Transport gun instead for $40,000. This is bad for two reasons; A - players would get fried in any Capital Ship combat, versus a player or NPC, and then whine about how Capital Ships supposedly sucked, and B - this made Capital Ships cheaper than intended to operate. -- Addition: AI have been tought how to use VHFs properly. When an enemy is on their tail, they will now enter engine kill and attempt to turn around so they can blast away at whatever it is following them. This makes NPC VHFs a bit more deadly in combat. -- Change: Re-balaned rare shield capacity / regen rares to use twice the power they did before. -- Addition: New rare item: Nomad Cruise Disruptor; a rare Cruise Disruptor that's like the Wasp but requires no ammo. It fires WAY slower than the Wasp however (roughly 20 seconds), and the Hornet is still easily a way better Cruise Disruptor. But, of course, you don't have to use the cargo space for ammo. -- Addition: Player-purchasable stations now sell every single gun and shield in the game, making them a bit more worth it to buy one. -- Change: Anything sold on a player-owned station has had its price cut by 1/4. -- Change: Player-purchasable stations are now $8,250,000 due to the "all guns/shields sold (cheaply) at player bases" change. -- Bugfix: Fixed a clue-hole in the Blue Ball puzzle. -- Change: Hid the Battleship Permit Legislature faction token a bit better. =P -- Change: Mining a now viable career option. An asteroid will drop anywhere from 10-ish to 30-ish loot at once. So if you were mining an average of 25 loot per asteroid, you'd have to destroy 32 loot-dropping asteroids to fill up a Combat Freighter and make decent money. Server admins, PLEASE CHECK THE SERVER INFO SECTION ABOVE IF YOU USE ASTEROID MINING CHEAT DETECTORS. It's very important! -- Change: Small Weapons Platform turrets have been changed to gattling guns, like how the Capital Ship Defense Turrets are. I think the weapon style suits the Small WPs a lot better than shooting a gynormous Cap Ship shot, and matches the style of the fast-firing mini-missiles that SWPs also boast. To players flying Weapons Platforms, please note that large WP guns are still big slow-firing guns. -- Addition: Just about every base that has a shipdealer sells 3 ships now. So, for instance, Planet Malta won't just sell the Border World VHF, but the HF and LF as well. Don't worry, the spots for the ships make sense; you won't find a Pirate LF at a shipping base. =P -- Misc: Removed any "duplicate" Utility and Capital Ship guns from the game. For example, a Small Train Turret Mk I was the same as a Large Train Turret Mark I. A Battleship Secondary Turret was the same as a Primary. Since there's no need to add in new gun classes, especially as Capital Ships for instance already have the normal guns (Primary Turrets), gattling guns (Defense Turrets), Flak Cannons, and Missile Turrets (in 1, 2, or 3 barrel varients), the "duplicate" guns were removed to clean up the gun selection a little. -- Change: Removed the Lawful / Un-lawful start; players just start off neutral to all factions now (except Nomads, Battleship Permit, etc.), right smack in the middle of the rep bar. This makes starting out much easier, and works out a few other quirks. -- Bugfix: Removed NPC enemy/friendly spawning bias. When in the middle of a fight, you may either encounter an enemy wing to make your day worse, or a friendly wing to make your day better. In 1.25, once a fight got going only enemies would spawn. -- Change: Wasps and Hornets now take up half the cargo space they did to make them more worth it. -- Addition: Glitch-free Jumpgate and Jumphole effects. The "jump tubes" now have a radius of 5000m, with a view distance of 100km - this essentially means you are thrust into a gigantic hyper-space tube. Also tweaked their effects a little. -- Bugfix: Fixed pilotable Newark Station having only 16 guns, when it should've had 18. -- Bugfix: Fixed 19 player-flown stations having trouble docking with anything but a Docking Ring and Jumphole. No, I didn't increase the docking spheres on the objects, I just moved the "dock with stuff HERE" point forward on the models. -- Change: Light Fighters now fly much more "loosely." -- Change: Battleship Turrets now fire 1.5x slower then their Small Capital counterparts, with the exception of Defense Turrets which just use 3x as much power as their Small Capital counterparts. Before, Battleship turrets compared to Small Capital turrets just did twice as much damage at twice the power usage - so if you hit every shot there was no advantage to using Small Capital guns. -- Bugfix: Fixed an odd gun spot on the Bretonia Destroyer. Since 1.26, in order of appearance (not an exhaustive/full list of changes): -- Change: All high-end commodities now require various reputations on the "good" side of a faction. This stops trading abuse with neutrality. Low-end commodities, Credit Chips and NPC Magnets may still always be purchased, however. This was also done since trading is a very good source of income in Flak; doing universe-wide trading will now require having a LOT of good factional relations, but still rakes in a LOT of money. -- Change: Factions will now refuse to sell you equipment, ammo, repairs, etc. if your reputation falls below 10% on the "bad" side of a faction. -- Misc: High-End Special Effects mod option now defaults to "off" -- Bugfix: Fixed a lot of NPC loadout errors, particularly those on the Stiletto and Falcon. -- Change: VHF turning increased by 1/2, after a mob came to my house with firey pitchforks and dragged me out into the street. ^_^ -- Bugfix: Fixed Nomad Battleship displaying Nomad Gunboat stats in-game. -- Bugfix: Fixed Navy honor patrols in the FP7 Memorial wanting to fly into the sun. -- Bugfix: Fixed a bug where if you were in a Capital Ship and exploding, the NN kept repeating "formation lost" -- Change: Engine Kill restored to all small ships (LFs, HFs, and Freighters have it now, not just VHFs). AI have been updated accordingly. -- Change: Added a gun to the Prison Liner, subtracted 10k armor from it leaving it at 110k. This brings it into balance with the other large Freight ships. -- Bugfix: Fixed activation error if you tried to activate 88 Flak with the low, high, or super-high NPC counts and hadn't activated it before. -- Bugfix: Fixed a crash with Freelance Transport/Train/Armored Transport spawns. -- Change: VHF AI tweaked to engine kill more, since that's so much a part of the VHF play-style. -- Bugfix: Fixed bad hashcodes for Defense Turrets. -- Addition: Option to disable FOV change. Flak uses a 90 degree FOV for more immersive cockpits and better field of vision. This may bother some people though. -- Change: NPC wingmen now announce their support a bit earlier, not just when they get on your wing. -- Bugfix: Fixed Repair Ship having no drag and being able to go 10k/sec. Oops. O_o -- Change: Factions go hostile when seeing their allies go hostile again. It was disabled before for a few reasons, but it was just too odd playing without this. -- Change: Doubled the distance the Trajectory Disruptor throws objects, to make it useful again. -- Change: The Trajectory Disruptor now can disable cruise and engine kill. This does NOT make it a viable Cruise Disruptor - cruise is way faster than these things. Just gives the TD a bit more beef. -- Change: Tweaked the 5 rare scanners around a bit to be a bit more useful; cargo scanning range increases from 1000 to unlimited through the scanners. -- Bugfix: Capital Ships and Stations now no longer exceed the 650 cruise speed limit. -- Change: Capital Ships now regenerate a little bit of power when in cruise. -- Change: Capital Ships now have twice the armor they did before, but cost twice as much, to make them more worth it in the end. -- Change: Cruise times changed. Capital Ships now take 6 seconds to charge up, down from 10. Liners and VHFs take 6 seconds to charge up as well, up from 5. -- Change: Un-grouped players show up at 25km, and grouped players show up at 300km, thanks to the work of Dev on the forums. -- Change: NPCs can now be seen at up to 25km; thank Dev again on this one. This makes things like Capital Ship fights much more immersive. -- Addition: Faction affiliation ( - thing) system, thanks to the work of Dev on the forums. You can join a certain faction by either paying a member of a faction at their base, or just by getting friendly with them. -- Change: Power supply of Pursuit Craft cut by 1.5X, for balance reasons. REQUIRES ADMIN ATTENTION TO UPDATE OLD PURSUIT CRAFT CHARACTERS, AS FREELANCER SAVE CONVERTER CAN'T COVER THE CHANGE. See FLSC project file description for more details. -- Change: Cargo space re-conformed to 15 for the Pursuit Drake, Banshee, and Piranha due to above change (cargo space balance changes are no longer needed). -- Change: Gun mounts re-conformed to 3 on the Pursuit Drake, due to above change (gun mount balance change no longer needed). -- Bugfix: Fixed freak server-crash issue related to NPC patrols. -- Change: Re-did the docking system. It's pretty much the same as before except that when you un-dock, you're about 1k above the station. This makes un-docking Capital Ships and Stations from Stations themselves flawless and easy. -- Addition: Manufacturing Platform added as a pilotable base. -- Change: Docking Ring removed from pilotable base selection. People who already own it can still fly it, however it was removed because I needed room for the Manufacturing Platform and it was a silly / useless "ship" anyways. -- Addition: Rochester Base added as a pilotable base. -- Change: Equipment now only takes up 2 cargo units, instead of 3, to help speed up the flow of money made off combat. -- Change: Cargo unit count of large guns has been reduced from 21 to 16, to help speed up the flow of money made off Capital Ship and Station attack runs. -- Change: Reduced amount of missiles Junkers carry by 1/4. -- Change: "War Zones" removed from the Independant World systems - instead, various factions (militaries, high-influence pirates) have a chance of appearing with war formations in every system, albeit rarely. -- Change: Removed the Anti-Camp Shield. -- Change: Freelance NPC factions are no longer useless; if you are of high enough reputation with a Freelance faction, they will shoot ANY of your enemies, regardless of the legality. -- Change: If fighting NPCs near the landscape in NPC Arena 1, they will now try to steer clear of the landscape instead of just heading straight into it. -- Addition: 10 previously un-used voice variations for NPCs, boosting the amount of different voices in Freelancer to 17. -- Addition: AI Bots (BETA) - 23 selectable AI companions (or create your own companion bot from an existing player!) that can be enabled for solo or co-operative play; they will accompany you wherever your travels take you, and attack any NPC with a hostile reputation to you. You are given four wingmen "slots" - you may assign a bot to each slot, allowing configurable squads of 1 to 4 bots. -- Addition: Freelance NPCs now fly player-flown stations as well. The chance of one being encountered is rare, however expect to see a mobile station from time to time now. -- Bugfix: Fixed missing a missing Ioncross hashcode for the cool green spinning thingies on certain stations. -- Bugfix: The pilotable Willard Research Station had only 7 guns instead of 8, and its docking bay doors were in-operable. Fixed. -- Addition: Basic Counter-Measure AI added. NPCs now fire off CMs when needed. -- Change: Freighters tweaked. Freighters can now mount up to Class 6 turrets, instead of Class 7. They also have a power capacity/regen of 6500/650, down from 7500/750. -- Change: NPCs have better Freighter loadouts. That Rogue Mule will actually put up a fight now. -- Addition: New music tracks to Kusari space for the 88 Flak ST, so Kusari no longer shares music with other houses. -- Change: Chance of Capital Ship encounters reduced greatly, to ease things up a bit on trading. You now no longer get jumped by a pirate cruiser every time you cross a system. -- Addition: ALL cargo (not just some cargo) will now drop off players or NPCs - if a player or NPC is carrying 1207 H-Fuel, then that player or NPC will drop 1207 H-Fuel on death. This means a pirate can make a healthy living hunting player-traders down. -- Bugfix: Tradelane cleanup. You no longer have to be travelling right along the path of a Trade Lane Buoy to see Transports etc. flying around. -- Addition: Regular Credit Chip loot off player-killed NPCs, to help encourage players to get actively engaged in combat instead of scavenging the loot (though that is still viable). -- Addition: NPC formation sizes now scale with the NPC count options, similar to how NPC wingmen scale. -- Addition: Resale percentage of equipment changed from 30% to 50%. This means a $600,000 Battleship Turret will now sell for $300,000; not $180,000. -- Bugfix: Price imbalances between Utility, Transport, Liner, Miner, Capital Ship, Weapons Platform, and Station turrets have been worked out a bit. -- Addition: Player-purchasable bases now do hull repairs for free. Added Thrusters, CM droppers, and Mine droppers to player-purchasable bases as well. -- Bugfix: The NPCs in New Tokyo that sold Soyokaze Depot mistakenly said that they were selling Smooth Operating HQ. Fixed. -- Bugfix: Possible fix to a rare graphical corruption problem when using the high-end effects renderer. -- Addition: NPCs will cruise after you if you are fleeing and the need for a pursuit arises. -- Bugfix: Toppled a huge bug in FL where friendly ships would stop spawning when in combat; if you are in combat and you retreat to a friendly area, friendly ships will come assist you now. -- Addition: NPCs now like the fact that you assist them in combat. Try hailing a friendly if you plan to help them; they're less likely to flee a fight if they have support. -- Change: Storage Depot can now cruise. The cruise drive itself is pretty weak, however it beats having nothing. -- Change: Battleship Permit Legislature removed; there is no longer any reputation requirement to purchase a Capital Ship or Station. The BPL rep requirement was a good idea on paper, and fine if you fly only one character, but for groups like clans it was a pain. -- Change: Boosted Repair Ship armor by 10000. -- Bugfix: Rear View now scales to ship size. This means that when you hold Rear View in a Battleship, you no longer see the inside of the ship. -- Change: Reputation changes tweaked a lot. Rep decrease from killing stuff halved, and rep increase from killing stuff has been multiplied by 5. Reputation still goes down far faster than up, however the gap has been decreased a lot. -- Addition: Engine stats of your ship now displayed in-game. Look at the fourth equipment tab (external equipment) to view them. -- Addition: Completely new Jump Gate/Hole tunnel, entry, and exit effects. You can visibly see others warp, and you probably shoot through these babies at about 30,000m/sec now. -- Change: Better Jump Gate/Hole shut-down effects. -- Change: AI Wingmen are more responsive to your lead in combat. When travelling, they will now only move to engage targets that are an immediate threat to you, and in combat will actively attempt to keep ships off your tail. -- Change: AI Traders are smarter and would prefer to not engage in combat. Cruise Disruptors will be handy. -- Addition: New contrail effects that draw for other players. -- Addition: New Border World engine effects; a nice white flame to complement the Dagger, Stiletto, and Dromedary's black-and-grey color scheme. -- Change: Missile tracking greatly improved, making them a bit more useful. -- Change: Capital Ships now have a lot of inertia, and feel a lot heavier in general. -- Bugfix: Fixed autopilot around suns. -- Change: AI are much smarter with missiles and torpedoes. -- Change: Fixed a few errors with rare tractor beams. -- Change: Reputation changes with Zoners tweaked a lot. Since Zoners by nature do not care for your legal status, the reputation hit from various groups has signifigantly decreased. Also, since Nomads are the Zoners' only enemy, hunting Nomads will help your Zoners reputation a lot. -- Bugfix: Fixed the Cargo Pod exploit, where rare upgrade items could be mounted on the Cargo Pod mount. -- Addition: All bases will 99% of the time have a wingmen squad available from that base's faction. This means that an Agira base will have Agira wingmen available, instead of just the routine Police stuff. -- Addition: Interspace Commerce exists in space now. Like the stock IC faction, they do not openly trade, but they do defend their bases and offer wingmen. -- Bugfix: Player-Purchasable Bases no longer fire on friendlies. -- Change: Ship repair costs reduced by 70%. If possible, repairing at a station instead of using Nanobots is much more cost effective. -- Addition: New "More Realistic Space Backgrounds" option. If enabled, backgrounds are simple patterns of stars instead of the artsy backgrounds Freelancer carries by default, giving the space a more realistic feel. -- Change: Because of the increase in corporate escort available, Shipping Overseers no longer receive free Police escort. Shipping Overseer status also costs (a lot) more now. -- Bugfix: Weapons Platform Missile Turrets had too high of a refire rate, fixed. -- Bugfix: All Liner Turrets were using twice the power they should've been, this has been fixed. -- Change: Torpedo damages completely rebalanced. Far more useful now. -- Change: NPC Gunboats, Battleships, and Stations, when killed by a player, now drop a large amount of Credit Chips ($150,000 to $300,000 depending on type). A player must do most of the damage for this payout to happen. -- Misc: Re-did the hardpoints on models for the Bretonia Gunboat, Rheinland Cruiser, Rheinland Gunboat, Kusari Destroyer, and Kusari Gunboat with more logical turret positions and orientations. No more odd looking turret mounts that can't "support" big guns, and no more forward-only guns. -- Change: You no longer start off with full neutrality to factions. It was just too highly exploitable - plus, I'm sorry, but pirates are pirates, and what sort of pirate wouldn't prey on a weakling newbie? -- Addition: There are now four starting options when beginning a character; starting in Liberty, Bretonia, Kusari, or Rheinland. Designed to get people away from New York and more spread out. -- Change: Thrusters re-tweaked. They now have fuel consumption again, with the Standard Thruster being the most inefficient yet least likely to be blown off, and the Advanced / Order Thrusters being the most efficient yet most likely to be blown off. -- Misc: Fixed the desktop.ini error some folks were having upon activating the mod. (blame Windows for this one) -- Change: Removed 169 "duplicate" guns from the game. Most of these were the various Station and Weapons Platform guns, however Freelancer's default turrets were removed as well - they were only used on Freighters, and all normal guns/missiles in Flak function as turrets anyways (so, missiles on your Freighters if you want). -- Change: Transports, Trains, Lifters, Liners, etc. can only mount turrets of their class now. -- Addition: Ranged Sniper Turrets for the Very Heavy Fighters, in place of the old Capital Ship mount. Firing explosive-tipped rounds, these things are extremely accurate and deadly, picking off thrusters at 3000m without a sweat. You can still stick a normal turret on the mount if you'd prefer. -- Addition: Three new Very Heavy Fighters; the Paladin (Bretonia), Hydra (Kusari), and Deimos (Rheinland) - all four houses now have VHFs. Like always, AI fly them and all that jazz. -- Misc: Dropped support of the Shipview patch, as all of the ships/stations have been fixed so that they no longer clog your screen at a base. -- Change: Ships now all sell in logical locations - meaning, Capital Ships, Transports, etc. are now all at ship-yards. If it seems logical for ships to be sold somewhere, chances are it is true that they are. -- Misc: Consolidated the High-LOD patch into a mod option. -- Change: Added Class 5 Shield mounts to Light Fighters, Pursuit LFs / CSV remain at Class 4. -- Change: Added Cruise Disruptors to Pursuit LFs / CSV. -- Change: Capital Ships now constantly regenerate power - speed is no longer a factor. The supply is still near-infinite, however comes back slowly. The main hit is that cruise eats nearly all of your regen, so if you fight, cruise, fight, cruise, and repeat, you will eventually run dry on power, which will take about 50 seconds to recharge to full capacity. -- Change: Bases now wish you good luck when you launch. Useless feature, but a nice touch. -- Addition: New "Faction Tag Removal" NPC added to all bar-equipped bases. We will conduct a hack of your reputation that will decrease all faction reputation by a menial amount to rid you of your current faction ID tag. From there, you are free to aquire any other ID tag you please through the faction joining. -- Bugfix: Fixed up the Falcon's turret / torpedo mount. -- Addition: Complete re-do of asteroid fields - asteroids can now be pushed around - and mined - by ships. No more jamming your Battleship on asteroids; they just bump out of the way. -- Addition: New high-end sound system - if enabled, all sound can be heard up to a 6K distance; the high-end sound system also forces the engine to handle more sound channels. -- Addition: New optional "Heavy" soundtrack, for those who liked the Omega / Omicron style of music in the 88 Flak soundtrack. -- Bugfix: Nomad Cruise Disruptor can now be droppped. -- Change: NPC weapons can now be blown off much more easily. While having the added layer of at least partially disarming an opponant in combat is a lot of fun, having players' stuff blown off easily is just plain abusive (and can be easily worked around by dieing and getting it back). Aside from this, rest assured that I will still develop Flak's NPCs to be as close to possible as real players. =) -- Bugfix: Fixed the annoying bug where loot over 1000m range could not be fetched using the "tractor all" button. Tractors like the AMS, Longbeam, and others will now function 100% correctly. -- Bugfix: Fixed Nomad CD using too much power for Pursuit LFs to handle - they now use 3000 power. -- Misc: Added engines to stationary Battleships, to make them look more like the ones flying around. -- Addition: Pursuit Dagger, Bloodhound, and Legionnaire. -- Misc: Since Heavy Fighter and Freighter shields were the same (and there wasn't much reason to make them different), they have been consolidated into just one shield class. -- Change: Forward Guns now do lots of energy damage, which will drive a power supply haywire (good for damping an enemy Capital Ship's potential in combat) -- Misc: AI no longer trail targets as closely in combat. This should help accidental friendly fire situations. -- Bugfix: Fixed strange radiation issues - as a temporary solution, radiation zones have just been removed from the game entirely (will anyone really miss them?) -- Addition: NPCs can now tractor any items from space, be it cargo or equipment. Also, if you drop Nanobots / Shield Batteries your wingmen take them, making it possible to keep them alive longer if you lead them effectively. -- Change: To help prevent certain abuse, the NPC Magnet and Faction Tokens can no longer be dropped into space. -- Misc: NPC Magnet re-named to Wingmen License, so it's not as silly. Also updated the description to cover more topics concerning wingmen. -- Misc: Split the Soundtrack into a separate mod, to ease up the burden downloading new RCs for people like Darklight. ;P -- Change: Mines have been upgraded to be more useful. They now do 1/2 the hull damage they did before, but 4x the shield / power supply damage they used to. They also knock ships around with 1/2 the impulse of a torpedo. -- Change: Rebalanced tractors. The Standard Tractor now has a range of 2000m with a speed of 200m/s. Also re-balanced the Loot Grab Thing to not take as much space, but have less range / speed. -- Bugfix: Fixed issues with Liberty Police - the corrupt bastards didn't care if you killed Liberty Navy or Bounty Hunter ships. In an interesting fact, stock FL code declares that Liberty Police don't care if you kill anything, which with the exception of the Navy and Bounty Hunters was fixed a while back. -- Change: House police and militaries now fire on Junkers. Junkers aren't really a criminal threat, but they _do_ harass shipping companies and end up going hostile to any lawful player anyways. Finally, this makes Junker wingmen a little more useful as they now openly attack police and militaries. -- Change: New players now start with $1,400,000 instead of $1,200,000. -- Change: Nanobots and Shield Batteries tweaked. They now cost $450 instead of $400, but repair 1250 hull instead of 1000, and 750 shield instead of 600, respectively. -- Misc: The "no ammo / repair drop" for n00b ships rule no longer applies to NPCs. Since a lot of corporations use these ships, it was unfair to pirate players whom often stalked Transport convoys. -- Bugfix: Fixed issue with High-LOD not rendering some things (like small bases) at maximum distance. Thanks to FriendlyFire for this one. -- Bugfix: Fixed, for the second time, a native Freelancer bug where some commodities wouldn't show up in your cargo hold at all in some bases. -- Change: Made a slight tweak to the economy; commodity prices were raised by a flat value across all items, which when multiplied out may make some runs more profitable than others now. -- Addition: Freindly NPCs now excuse friendly fire. You are still docked reputation if you kill an NPC (or did enough damage to count as a kill when the NPC died), however this means that grazing an NPC with a missile blast won't make them flip out. -- Change: Freindly NPCs no longer turn hostile if they see another friend attacking you; they just stay out of the fight. This means if you were somehow in a fight with the Liberty Navy and friendly Police came along, they'd just back off. -- Bugfix: The "attack your enemies" AI code has been fixed. Any NPCs using this AI will no longer turn hostile to you if you attack a friendly ship. This fixes issues with Freelance NPCs and AI Companion Bots. -- Misc: Major overhaul to autopilot to make both AI flight and player autopilot a little smoother. -- Bugfix: Fixed a bug where engine power regen modifiers were not applied while in cruise. -- Addition: Repair Turret added to the Repair Ship (many thanks to w0dk4 and M0tah), capable of repairing hull and subcomponents. It is also capable of recharging shielding. -- Addition: A second Repair Turret that can be mounted on all ships added - it has the same capabilities as what's listed above, however the repair rate is terrible and it has an enormous power usage. -- Change: Repair Ships now only hold 100 Nanobots / Shield Batteries, instead of 800. -- Misc: All ship and station fuses have been completely re-designed from the ground up. They all look a lot better (especially stations fuses, which are probably the best now), and are far more stable. -- Addition: Faction magnets now change the affiliation of the player when they are first mounted from the equipment dealer. -- Change: Re-balanced Forward Guns. They have the same refire rate, energy usage, and damage as Battleship Primary Turrets, but do an added 1000 energy damage per shot, and have twice the muzzle velocity. -- Addition: New hit effects and fire sounds for the Forward Guns. -- Change: Torpedo prices have been halved. -- Change: All ships now fly and strafe twice as fast. Note that instead of cutting drag in half, I simply doubled all the forces, which should also make the fighters a lot more responsive in combat. -- Change: Cruise speed has been increased to 750. -- Misc: HUD Contact list now updates every 1.5 seconds to give a better heads up on new enemy wings. -- Misc: Strafe / Reverse Speed is now displayed in percentages instead of a decimal multiplier (so, 25% instead of .25) -- Addition: Added an adaptation of the Transport death fuse to the Armored Transport; the AT in stock FL just blows up like a fighter -- Bugfix: System-placed stations now have the same hitpoints and fuses of their flown counterparts. This includes damage fuses. -- Change: Removed the Freeport 7 Memorial, since I have been informed that there is a Freeport 7 wreck in Sigma-17 - I have simply moved all the wrecks I created to that spot instead. Players still inside of the system can return from it. -- Change: Muzzle velocities on guns increased 1.5x (except for Ranged Sniper Turrets) -- Change: Counter-measures shoot out with higher velocity so deflected missiles do not explode as close to your ship. -- Change: Hornet Cruise Disruptors now have a 240m explosion radius (Wasps have 120), making them capable of knocking half a formation out of cruise if aimed at the right ship. -- Change: Shields now only ramp up 1.2x per level, however power usage ramps up 1.4x per level. -- Change: VHF Thruster speeds decreased slightly. -- Addition: Improved Train / Transport AI - if battered up enough, they will eject all cargo in a desperate attempt to appease pirates as they flee. -- Change: Blood Dragon's Dragon has been renamed from the "Heretic" to simply the "Red Dragon" - the Heretic was a dumb name. -- Misc: Cargo Pods have been added to the Heavy Lifter. This puts Lifter in balance with Transports, as when fighting NPCs blowing the pod up blows up the loot. -- Bugfix: Cargo Pods on Trains have been fixed up. Pods mounted on the bottom mounts are now rotated properly. -- Change: The Serafina is now a rare ship. -- Change: NPCs no longer spawn around gates. This fixes issues with jumping into a system and immediately getting hounded by hostile NPCs. -- Change: Fighter missiles now all have increased ranges and will continue to home in for longer periods of time. -- Change: Torpedoes now have a longer period of time to continue homing in. This makes them far, far more deadly, particularly against VHFs. -- Change: Adjusted NPC spawns to not spawn as many hostiles after combat. This will prevent limping out of a big fight, only to be ambushed seconds later. -- Misc: The starting n00b base sells civilian weapons instead of Liberty weapons. After all, you can pick which house to start in, so it only makes sense. -- Misc: Thruster sounds restored. -- Misc: Re-hardpointed the Mule. Fixed up the gun angles, and added contrails to the top fins. -- Addition: Integrated experimental ENBSeries Post-Process effects by Boris Vorontsov (http://boris-vorontsov.narod.ru) as a new graphical option (may be turned off). -- Change: LFs now have 100% strafing / reverse speed, to help them dodge things a little better. -- Change: Massive Forward Gun overhaul. FGs can now only be mounted on Gunboats, Cruisers, and Destroyers, and only on one specific slot - however, the guns themselves are now monsters, firing 2x as fast, dealing 2x as much damage, at half the power usage. So, 1 FG now is approximately equal to 4 FGs before. However, they only have a 3000m range now. Combined with the above steering change, this puts Small Capitals in a useful position in combat. -- Change: Doubled Credit Chip drops from NPC flown / stationary Capital Ships and Stations, to both make up for decreased gun prices, and the fact that you just slayed a Capital Ship / Station. -- Change: Complete do-over of the NPC Arenas. Factions no longer fight there; instead, it is now a place to regularly fight AI Bots if you wish. -- Addition: Mobile docking implemented - players can now dock with player-flown Battleships/Stations by using the /dock command in chat near the targeted player; the player will then land at a base where he/she may resupply. -- Addition: Swappable engines, making a return with a vengeance from the days of 88 Flak 1.24; engines can be swapped at any Player-Purchasable Base. -- Change: Re-balanced the Nomad Fighter, Nomad Gunboat, and Nomad Battleship; they're all much weaker, but now feature cloaks, to set them apart from other Capital Ships. -- Change: Trade Lane Buoys are now armed with a Small Weapons Platform turrets, in an effort to make Trade Lanes more secure. They can be killed relatively easily, but beware, pirates. -- Addition: 6 new title screens - 3 for the stock FL soundtrack, and 3 for the Heavy soundtrack. The main 88 Flak soundtrack's screens remain unchanged. -- Change: Cruise Disruptors have been slowed down a bit, to give more time for Counter-Measure droppers to work. -- Change: Gun accuracies now decrease with higher-class weapons. A Class 1 weapon will have a 0.1 degree cone of fire, while a Class 6 weapon will have a 0.6 degree cone of fire. For VHFs, it's either time to stop using all Class 9 guns, or make use of that Sniper Turret. -- Addition: Player-purchasable bases now have a single Capital Ship or Weapons Platform that will help defend the station from attacks. -- Misc: Ship stat infocards cleaned up a little bit. Also added a "Dockable: Yes/No" stat to the infocards. -- Change: Hitpoints of all Weapon Platforms and Stations quadrupled. This applies to all, solar objects and players alike. -- Change: Price of Weapons Platforms and Stations doubled. -- Addition: Starstinger added. It is essentially a full-power, non-n00b version of the Starblazer, similar to how the Startracker is the non-n00b version of the Starflier. -- Change: Adjusted the default shield damage of guns to be 40% instead of 50%, to help balance changes made to anti-shield weapons. -- Change: Re-wrote the AI targeting priorities from the ground up. Implemented a solid, bug-tested mechanism that divides all AI equally between targets in a fight - if there are too many AI targeting one ship, some of the attackers will pick a different target of interest. This means AI now avoid swarming just one ship in battle, and most importantly this means that AI no longer swarm the player in any case, with the exception of no friendly ships in the area. -- Change: LFs now have only 12500 armor, down from 13500. -- Misc: Pursuit LFs are now officially their own class (instead of a varient), and as such are displayed as "Light Fighter, Pursuit" in the stat infocards. -- Change: Rebalanced the difference in shot velocities due to the cone-of-fire adjustments - there is now less of a shot velocity penalty for using a harder-hitting weapon. -- Change: VHFs now carry 75 Nanobots / Shield Batteries, up from 50. -- Change: Cargo space on the CSV has been reduced from 55 to 35. Before, when paired up with other Pursuit Lights, it had only 1 less gun, yet 40 more cargo space. -- Bugfix: Fixed a vanilla Freelancer bug where the Tizona del Cid projectile was not called unless you were using the lowest detail settings (error in code had a vis_generic entry but not a vis_effect one as well). -- Misc: Internal client-side logging disabled, so Freelancer stops wasting CPU time writing to disk. This not only fixes the issues with Post-Process writing a 2GB logfile in about a half-hour, but also yields marginally better framerates, both with and without Post-Process. -- Change: Transport / Lifter / Liner Turrets now behave similarly to Defense Turrets on Capital Ships. This gives the ships a little bit more of a chance versus fighters. -- Change: When passing close to a ship, AI will sometimes attempt to keep shooting at your ship using Engine Kill on the pass. AI in Capital Ships will now try to evade incoming Torpedoes as well. -- Addition: New models for all rare item types, shield types, and thrusters. -- Bugfix: Fixed Heavy Lifter stat infocard. It stated the Heavy Lifter carried 55 Nanobots, when it actually carries 60. -- Addition: Added high power Orbital Defense Cannons to the Docking Ring and Mooring Fixtures (now Orbital Defense Cannon Fixtures). Planets now properly defend themselves when under siege. -- Change: To help balance the trade ships, Transports, Trains, and Lifters have received an additional 50 cargo space (bringing them to 300/350 for small/large Transport/Trains); Liners have lost 50 cargo space (bringing them to 250). -- Change: Nerfed the Particle Splitter damage to match that of a Sunslayer Torpedo. However, unlike the Sunslayer, it deals an substantial amount of energy damage, capable of knocking out half of a Cruiser's power supply. This changes the role of the Particle Splitter to a tactical weapon, versus the free kill that it used to be. -- Misc: AI, when travelling, now visit more stations. For example, in Dublin, you may see Armed Forces patrolling to/from Graves Station or Battleship Hood instead of just Battleship Essex and the jumpgate. -- Change: AI Wingmen now come in doses of 4 ships, instead of 2. This makes wingmen a reliable helping hand that can be used to operate in enemy territory, and protect you from random pirate attacks. -- Addition: AI Capital Ship wingmen added into the wingmen rotation. Your chance of getting a Capital Ship is, for now, random, however this can hopefully be expanded in the future. -- Misc: Updated with new hardware database to be more compatible. -- Change: Transports, Trains, Lifters, and Liners all have 2x as much armor. Nanobot count was not raised. -- Bugfix: Fixed cargo drop on all Weapons Platforms. Cargo is now properly jettisoned outwards, instead of just sitting inside the ship. -- Misc: Re-oriented a few hardpoints on the Bretonia Destroyer to make the ship a little more useful. -- Change: Every Capital Ship loadout has been redone from the ground up with more logical weaponry choices. -- Change: Completely reworked every Capital Ship weapon in the game, thanks to the work of KillerJaguar and Why485. -- Addition: Added Liberty Cruiser Defense Turret, Kusari Gunboat Primary Turret, Bretonia Gunboat Defense Turret, and Rheinland Gunboat Defense Turret. -- Misc: Corrected names for all Gunboat, Cruiser, Destroyer, and Battleship turrets to include the house in the name ("Liberty Cruiser Primary Turret" instead of just "Cruiser Turret"). -- Misc: Capital Ship missiles are now fired via the Torpedo key, and as such can be fired independantly of the Flak cannons. -- Change: Torpedoes and Capital Ship Missile Turrets will now disrupt cruise. -- Misc: Firing Torpedoes and firing Cruise Disruptors is now mapped to the same key, "FIRE CRUISE DISRUPTOR / TORPEDO", as a ship will never have both a Cruise Disruptor and Torpedo. -- Bugfix: AI are slightly smarter with Torpedo usage, and will try to AVOID launching them point-blank (thus killing themselves). -- Bugfix: Fixed a bug with the Nomad Fighter Lasers MkI-III where no hit effect was called. -- Addition: Added Nomad Gunboat Primary Turret, Defense Turret, and Missile Turret, as well as Nomad Battleship Flak Turret and Missile Turret. -- Addition: Added Anti-Fighter Nomad Gunboat and Nomad Battleship NPC Loadouts, since Nomad Capital Ships now have all weapon types. -- Addition: Added Why485's new Large Capital Ship / Station explosion on death. Added new deaths to Transports, WPs, and Small Capital Ships that are different than the Large Capital / Station deaths. -- Change: Repair Ships are now sold at every Player-Purchasable Base, since the Storage Depot can be purchased at the starting base as soon as you start a new character. -- Addition: There is now a client-side option to toggle off display of Contrails. -- Addition: Death Penalties added. Approximately 6% of your total equipment and ship worth (NOT bank account) is subtracted from your account when you die - if you can't pay your fines, random amounts of equipment will be confiscated from your ship. To put it another way, this is equivilant to paying a full on-base repair bill when you die, in an effort to make retreating from battle more cost-effective than just dieing on the field. -- Change: Countermeasures rebalanced. They now have high cargo volume, low refire rates, and high power usage, so blindly leaving them on automatic in the middle of combat is no longer a good idea. -- Change: Cut the prices of Nanobots and Shield Batteries down by 10x (from 450 to 45), and halved on-base ship repair costs. -- Addition: Police wingmen are hired for free when the "n00b Anti-PvP Token" on n00b ships is equipped. This was added to help newcomers to 88 Flak get started and have a less frustrating time. -- Change: Armored Transport can now only use a Class 5 Fighter Turret, down from Class 6. -- Change: Lowered the Drake Type A to a Class 5 gun from a Class 6 gun (with adjusted damage/refire/power usage/dispersion values), so the Hogosha CSVs can mount their own equipment instead of using Kusari equipment. -- Addition: NPCs now populate Tohoku, and the bases have been set to their correct affiliation. Full wingmen support, NPC patrols, and all the other bells and whistles that come with a traditional FL system. -- Change: AI Wingmen upgrade. They now have much greater survivability between fights, and are more efficient in combat. They are also now given special icons in the contact list so you can better keep track of which ships are under your lead and which are not. -- Misc: Engine Trails are now drawn for other players. Thanks Why485! Apparently this work was mind-numbing. =P -- Misc: AI speech system expanded. Every object, system, or faction now has a spoken name - absolutely no blanks. Nomads, for example, are now called "alien organisms" in speech. -- Change: Nomads now use the Nomad Fighter much more. -- Addition: Nomad systems upgraded a little. Added jumpholes connecting the two systems, and added a dockable Nomad Lair to the central Nomad system, which sells Nomad equipment as well as the usual round of ammo, repairs, etc. Commodities can also be sold here. -- Change: Behavior of shield capacity and shield regen items modified to only draw power when your shield is actively recharging. -- Misc: All rare item descriptions updated to not be as.. Bad. Some of them were just pretty bad. -- Change: Added a free scanner and tractor beam to every ship when purchased, incase you forget to transfer your old one. -- Addition: Added recommended starting loadouts to the n00b ships, so a new player can just launch and play right off the bat. -- Misc: Split the High-LOD Option into two settings - 10x view distance, and unlimited view distance. 10x view distance gives largely the same effect as having unlimited view distances, but is much more efficient. -- Change: Cargo now takes up 1/10 cargo space. Trading is easily the hardest thing to do in 88 Flak, and so the end profit should be more worth it. -- Change: Capital Ships and Mobile Stations now show up much more often, and regular PvE Cap Ship fights should now be considered in your loadouts. -- Addition: New "10x View Distance" option, essentially a highly optimized version of the old "Unlimited View Distance" system. It delivers the same results in visibility with very large framerate gain. Old "Unlimited View Distance" left in for those who want the absolute highest quality when running very high resolutions. -- Misc: Player factions are now shown in the contacts list / radar. -- Misc: HUD animations for base-side NN sped up a little to allow faster manipulation of menus. -- Misc: Optimizations, particularly with effects, for smoother framerates when using High-End FX. -- Change: NPC Capital Ships now use an Anti-Capital Loadout 75% of the time, instead of 50% of the time. -- Addition: New, more visible missile models, thanks to Why485. -- Addition: Increasing the AI difficulty to Hard will double the Credit Chips dropped per kill - both as a reward for fighting harder NPCs, and also to make up for the fact that friendly AI will tag more kills, leaving less CC drops for players. Easy and Very Easy modes are un-affected, and will drop the normal Credit Chip amounts. -- Bugfix: Fixed the stat displays, to an extent. "Fighter / Freighter / Transport Kills", "Capital Ship / Station Kills" are now shown separately. Stats on old characters will be correct, for the record. -- Addition: Nomad AI wingmen are now available to Nomad players, just like all other factions. More information is available on the Nomad Operative token. -- Addition: Sunslayer Torpedo Launchers are now sold at more bases. -- Bugfix: Fixed the bug where all the old random mission commodities, as well as all the option tokens, were listed under the "commodities buying / selling" section of base infocards. -- Misc: Fixed (mostly) the mysterious rumor-spouting voice that played randomly when leading an AI wingmen squad - in other words, no more endless "Hey, don't fall asleep on me, out here you'll get us killed." -- Addition: Open SP Support re-added. It's still not as good as just running a multiplayer server and playing the correct way - advanced features such as cloaks, AI wingmen, etc. will not function - however, it's a start, and the AI Companion Bots (wingmen desinged for solo play) DO work in SP. -- Misc: Replaced the whole mishmash of huge "MOUSE FLIGHT", "TURRET VIEW", "REAR VIEW", etc. text at the bottom of the screen with a small, unobtrusive "Mouse Flight" string when the mouse is active, to clean up the HUD a little. -- Change: Pulse, Plasma, Particle, and Neutron weapons have had their rate-of-fire decreased to balance them with other weapon types. This is the first time normal weapons have been majorly tweaked like this since version 1.24, so please comment. -- Misc: Maximum number of lines in chat history raised to 127, from 32. -- Addition: Added multiplayer support of the singleplayer storyline event system, making it possible to write scripted storyline missions for multiplayer. However, due to a myriad of bugs associated with this, only very simple scripting is being used for now. -- Misc: NPC player-targeting clamp and hostile spawn weighting are now both set to false, thanks to the above change. No more targeting priority nonsense - NPCs will now divide themselves up equally among the targets. -- Change: Alaska has been rebuilt - it now acts as the central PvP hub linking to all the PvP/NPC Arenas, and can now be accessed from any house via purchasing that house's PvP Token. For example, if you have the Kusari PvP Token, you may only enter/exit Alaska via Kusari; Alaska can not be used for travel. -- Misc: "Toranto Depot" is now correctly spelled "Toronto Depot" -- Change: Standard Scanners now have a 10k tracking distance, to assist in keeping track of distant fights. Scanners ramp up 1k tracking distance per scanner. -- Misc: Title screen system re-written via a MultiIntro client hook from M0tah. 12 Title Screens are now picked at random. -- Change: Freighters now support Full-Tilt Camera Steering, similar to Capital Ships. This greatly increases their efficiency in combat. -- Change: Cargo space on Capital Ships have been halved - Small Caps now have 80 cargo; Large Caps now have 100 cargo; Stations now have 100 cargo. WPs have not been changed, as they already had 80 cargo, curiously enough. -- Change: Lowered the additional global firing arc allowance to 22.5*, from 35*. -- Change: Lowered mass on Freighters to that of Heavy Fighters. -- Change: Raised Nanobot and Shield Battery count of Freighters to 45, from 35. -- Misc: w0dk4's Global Server Workaround has been integrated into 88 Flak, to ease up the process of connecting to servers. -- Misc: Optimizations to the 88 Flak, 88 Flak AI Companion, and 88 Flak ST FLMM scripts; this should stop nearly all of the deactivation issues associated with 88 Flak. No more mutiliating your vanilla FL installation! -- Change: Re-added auto-strafe to all ships. This may help formation flight be a bit less stupid. -- Misc: Beta RC builds are now tracked internally by Freelancer. This means you will be unable to join a server not running your current Beta RC (it will be grayed out). For the client, this is displayed as "Version 88.27 Build (xx)" in the lower-right of the title screen; for the server, this is displayed as "Version 88.27 Build (xx)" in the title bar. I realize this will lead to confusion among new people joining with the wrong RC ("why can't I join the server?"), but it's better than them joining and crashing themselves (or the server) out. -- Bugfix: Wingmen squads no longer spawn right at your doorstep, unless you are launching from a base or have just logged into space. -- Change: Shot-attached muzzle flashes are a little smaller to make using cockpit view not as annoying. -- Addition: New Kusari Capital Ship turret effect, because the vanilla one stinks. -- Change: Downsized the Bretonia Destroyer and Kusari Destroyer turret models, which were too large when fitted on smaller capitals like the Kusari Gunboat and covered too much of the ship. -- Addition: New Paladin, Hydra, and Deimos models - http://the-starport.net/index.php?option=com_smf&Itemid=26&topic=1810.0 for more information. -- Change: HF steering rates have been increased by ~10%. -- Change: Freighter steering rates have been increased by 100%. -- Change: Cruise charge-up times on Liners have been doubled (now that of a Capital Ship). -- Change: Starflier (n00b LF) and Starblazer (n00b HF) now have a full armament of 4 and 6 guns, respectively - now, they only lack a Cruise Disruptor / Torpedo Launcher. -- Change: Slightly reduced the global spawning rate of NPCs. Greatly reduced the spawning rate of random battlegroups. -- Misc: FLMM should no longer leave 88 Flak's universe/system files (or any other misc files) laying about once 88 Flak is deactivated. -- Change: Difficulty of the AI has been slightly toned down; they are a little more converative with their firing. AI Wingmen are unchanged, and still furiously attempt to annihilate foes. -- Change: AI Wingmen are a little better at repairing themselves. -- Addition: Changing the AI difficulty level now changes missile and repair usage - AI are quicker with repairs and missiles on hard, and lax on repairs and missiles on easy. -- Change: Bretonia "Reaper" VHF has been renamed to the "Paladin". -- Change: Signifigantly raised chance of random Nanobot / Shield Battery loot off NPCs killed by a player. -- Change: All costs of all items have been doubled - as such, all sell values of all items have been doubled as well. -- Change: Longblade renamed to Stealthblade Mk I; the former Mk I and Mk II are now Mk II and Mk III, respectively. -- Change: Small tweaks done to Homing missiles. Their FOV has been increased from 70* to 90*. -- Change: Small tweaks done to EMP missiles. Their in-flight turning rates and FOV are now in-between Power missiles and Homing missiles. -- Change: In-flight turning rates for Capital Ship Missiles and Torpedoes halved. -- Change: Capital Ship Missile Turrets now rotate twice as quickly. -- Change: Suggested usage roles for a ship class are now displayed in the ship stats. -- Change: VHFs have been re-built from the ground up. A hybrid of the old VHF design and the pending Stealth HF Bomber design, they now function as a Heavy Bomber with stealth capabilities. They now feature a Twin Torpedo, with 3 Turrets (one of which will have full 360* rotation) as support weapons, and the same twin shield setup that they had before - however, they only have 50 Nanobots, and can not carry any Shield Batteries. In addition, cruise charge-up time has been increased to 8 seconds (that of a Capital Ship), and when the cloak is engaged, your shields will be knocked out. They retain the same characteristic slow movement, however turn 75% faster. -- Change: Sniper Turrets are no longer a VHF-exclusive item, and are now dropped as rare items. -- Change: Sniper Turret power usage lowered from 5000 to 4500 per shot, to allow use on a LF at the expense of the LF's entire power supply. -- Bugfix: Fixed issues (again) with Repair Ship dropping items on death, and fixed issues with Kusari Hydra dropping items on death. -- Addition: Houses now have a "security" rating that affects spawns, displayed when you enter the system or launch from a base. Core house systems - New York, New London, etc. are now "Maximum Security", and here you will see a lot of friendly help (provided you're not a pirate). This works all the way down to "Minimum Security," for certain systems like Chugoku, home of the Blood Dragons, or Omicron Alpha, home of the Outcasts, where you will find large pirate battlegroups. For reference, "Low Security" systems behave like systems from previous 88 Flak releases, where you'd get an equal chance for anything to spawn randomly. Fighting in a system with a security rating that is not in your favor will result in more rare item drops, since there won't be as much AI help (as you only get rares from un-assisted kills). All in all, this makes the starting systems (core house systems) much safer, so starting out should no longer be as brutal as before. -- Change: Shields now only ramp up 1.1x per level, with 2500 capacity / 55 regen as a base for light shields and 3000 capacity / 60 regen as a base for heavy shields - this means lower-class shields are far more efficient, while higher-class shields are a little less efficient. Power usage still ramps up 1.4x per level. -- Addition: Rare items are now automatically marked when dropped, to make them easier to see. -- Change: Operative Tokens and Wingmen Licenses are no longer dropped on death, and can no longer be traded. Want to help your friend get easy wingmen? Give them cash for the faction bribe instead. -- Change: Kill Tokens are no longer dropped on death, and can no longer be traded. If you die, you lose your kill streak. -- Change: Arena Tokens are now properly mounted when purchasing a new ship in Alaska. -- Misc: Cleaned up "important information" displayed when installing the mod via FLMM. The afterburner notice in particular is a little more visible now. -- Addition: Roll controls have finally been added, after sitting on the todo list for like a year (oops, sorry Son'a). =P -- Misc: Partial camera swing ("Half-Tilt") can now be selected for Capital Ships. -- Addition: Capital Ships now properly dodge incoming ordinance, including Torpedoes. -- Change: Counter-Measures are now slightly more effective (by 10% each). -- Change: Pulse Gun energy damages have been increased by 1.5x. -- Change: Cruise Disruptor cargo space usage halved. -- Change: Missiles have been rebalanced. While their behavior hasn't changed much, the damage gap between missiles was greatly reduced, using the Catapult as a base - essentially, a Javelin will only do slightly less damage, while a Cannonball will only do slightly more - since the Catapult is the staple of PvP combat, I figured that'd be a good base. From there you can fork out some (lots) of cash for a slight damage increase. Refire rates have not been changed; a Cannonball will still be slower-firing than a Catapult. This change also applies to Homing/EMP missiles, and Normal/EMP mines. -- Change: Missiles now range from Class 1-5, instead of Class 1-9 (a Catapult is now Class 3 instead of 5, Cannonball now Class 5 instead of 9), so that all missiles may be fitted on a LF. -- Bugfix: Fixed an issue where AI would randomly wander off to attack a far-away base during a fight (fine out of combat, but kill stuff near you first!). -- Change: Added 0.1* to all inaccuracy cones. A Class 1 weapon now has a 0.2* (best possible) inaccuracy cone, a Class 3 has a 0.4*, etc. -- Addition: New "Toggle Auto-Level Camera" control, which must be toggled to allow roll maneuvers in chase-cam. It's also for that more space-y feel when dogfighting (why does everything have to be right-side up all the time?). -- Addition: Fighters now have a small window of time (about 4/10 of a second) to utilize Nanobots to recover from an instant-kill attack (such as twin torpedoes, chain-linked power missiles, etc.). -- Addition: Better death effects for fighters (a bit more like oldschool Flak). -- Misc: Added contrails to the lower fins of the Starblazer and Starstinger HFs. -- Addition: Weapon cooldowns (number of seconds until the weapon can be fired again) are now displayed in the Weapons List - http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v521/foxUnit01/88Flak/Other/CooldownTimers.jpg -- Change: Capital / WP / Station weapons renamed to use military hull designations (BB, DD, CA, PG for Battleship, Destroyer, Cruiser, and Gunboat) to save space on the Weapons List due to the inclusion of weapon cooldown stats. -- Change: AI Fighters are no longer untargeted and marked as dead when they enter their death fuses - it now waits for the ship to actually die. This was especially annoying as fighters can now pull themselves out of a death fuse via well-timed Nanobot usage. -- Change: Major rebalances to prices of ammo for missiles/mines. There is much less penalty for using higher class missiles/mines (especially with the new missile/mine balance). -- Change: Both types of torpedoes are a little cheaper. A Starkiller Torpedo is still substantially cheaper than a Sunslayer, however. -- Change: New descriptions for EMP mines. Added IFF warning (or lack thereof) for all mines. -- Change: Cruise Disruptor ammo is now a bit cheaper. -- Change: Nanobots and Shield Batteries now drop at a slightly higher rate than before. -- Change: Ammo drop rates tweaked. -- Addition: Nomad ships (both AI and player-flown) now regenerate very small amounts of armor over time. It will take a Nomad Fighter approximately 4 minutes to regenerate its entire hull; it will take a Nomad Battleship approximately an hour. Mountable items that have more meaningful armor regneration (perhaps at a cost to total armor) will be introduced later. -- Addition: Re-added in the OpenSP support option to allow piloting of ships with cloaks in SP. -- Change: Starting reputations tweaked. You now start out with higher overall reputation. It should also be a little easier to become a pirate. -- Change: Stationary Storage Depots (un-related to the player-flown Storage Depot) are now much weaker and correctly dump all cargo when destroyed. They also carry much more stuff. -- Change: All factions now offer all of their equipment at each of their bases. If you stop by a Rogues base, they will offer you everything in their arsenal; this means that you can now get decent equipment in Liberty, whereas before you could only buy low-class equipment, and could not buy Torpedoes, CDs, etc. This works both ways as well, allowing you to purchase lower-class equipment (like Javelins) in previously high-class only areas, like the Omicrons (this is essential due to the new rebalances). All equipment market data was completely rewritten from the ground up for this change; the old equipment markets file had 28,922 lines of code (1.62MB) - the new equipment markets file has 37,206 lines of code (2.09MB). -- Change: Armored Transport now only totes 6 Class 5 weapons, instead of 9. -- Change: Armored Transport now only carries 300 cargo, instead of 350. -- Change: Corrected some reputation issues with Xenos. On the whole, killing Xenos is now a little rougher on your reputation, with very little gain from it. Don't pick on them unless you're desperate for cash. -- Change: Small tweaks to Bounty Hunters Guild operation. They now attack targets of interest to local police and corporations - basically, if you piss off a corporation, expect the Bounty Hunters to show up at your doorstep looking to collect on a bounty. -- Change: You now get a little more Zoner rep for killing Nomads. -- Change: Capital Ships and AI Bots now have twice the chance to drop a rare item. -- Misc: Upgraded asteroid fields. They no longer look as ugly when you shoot them, and the explosion color now matches the color of the asteroid. Also, the asteroid field in the bottom unknown Nomad system now features previously unused Nomad asteroids. -- Misc: Added a new title screen, and replaced one of the existing repetitive ones. -- Addition: Full anti-spin protection implemented for Battleships and Stations. If enabled, Battleships and Stations will be protected against "spinning", which occurs when another ship collides with you in Multiplayer (Singleplayer does not suffer this bug). However, this solution causes Battleships and Stations to violently "wag" back and forth during autopilot; if this bothers you, there is an option to disable the anti-spin protection. Autopilot will be completely restored, and you will still be partially protected from spinning, however NPCs may still spin you once and a while (even though AI are designed to avoid ramming ships). -- Addition: New Capital Ship explosion effects. -- Change: Decreased the firing delay on the Trajectory Disruptor from 30 seconds to 10, to allow it to be actually viable as a disorientation weapon in PvP. -- Bugfix: Fixed an NPC loadout for the Anubis; one loadout carried a Sunslayer Torpedo Launcher, but Starkiller Torpedo ammo (and was thus unable to attack Capitals). -- Addition: Repair Ship now features automatic self-repair (80 hull/sec). -- Bugfix: Fixed poor weapon placement on the Eagle. Its 360* mount could in reality only turn 120*. -- Change: Nomad Fighter now only carries 10 Nanobots, instead of 40 - it can pull out of a single missile hit, but that's about it. -- Change: Storage Depot now has 3,000,000 health instead of a mere 300,000 - doesn't matter for PvP (as they have an Anti-PvP Token mounted), but this should help stop a single Sunslayer from an NPC sinking your bank. -- Change: Raised Torpedo explosion radius to fix certain exploits. -- Change: Jump Gates and Jump Holes are now much weaker and more susceptible to being shut down. When trading, bringing along an auxiliary Repair Turret may not be the worst idea, in the event the Jump Gate / Jump Hole collapses while you're under attack. -- Misc: Any hull regeneration for a ship is listed under Added / Included Equipment. -- Change: Added a small cone of fire to the Sniper Turrets - this should help them hit hull a bit more. -- Bugfix: Small tweaks and improvements to all death fuses. The timeframe to use a Nanobot as you're dieing (to save yourself) has been slightly lengthened to account for possible server lag. -- Change: System security ratings now have more weight in determining what spawns. -- Bugfix: Fixed "Unlawful Freelance Operative" token not being sold at Player-Purchasable Bases. -- Bugfix: Fixed New York weirdness. If you clicked a commodity and clicked "Trade Routes", NY bases would not show in the list. -- Addition: Major improvements to functionality and stability of MP mission scripting, thanks to M0tah. -- Addition: Currently active server options are now reported to the bottom of the F5 tips screen, so you don't have to make a new character to see which options are enabled. -- Misc: The Player-Carrier stat displayed on ships now displays rather that ship can actually dock on player-carriers or not. -- Change: Power Modulators now grant small amounts of hull regneration (5hp/s and 10hp/s respectively), so that putting a single dent in your ship no longer requires you to use Nanobots or go repair. -- Change: Nomad Fighter weaponry has been buffed. It now deals more damage, and carries a faster firing rate. -- Change: Adjustments made to price of various trade ships. The Large Transport / Train & Heavy Lifter, as well as the two Liners, are all $1,000,000 more (adding $60,000 to their Death Penalties). This was done to make trading in a Small Transport / Train - even though they are inferior traders - more worthwhile and cost-effective to pilot as a low-risk trader. -- Change: The Faction Tag Removal guy has been turned into a "Mysterious Vendor" (sells all Player-Purchasable Bases, as well as some other goodies). -- Change: Player-Purchasable Base offers now list the system where the PBase you're about to purshase resides. -- Change: Challenge systems are now based on a Credit Chip requirement, rather than Kill Tokens. Perhaps everybody's precious cash reserves will actually be useful again. ;) -- Change: Ships are now automatically untargeted when they pass the death-revive threshold. -- Bugfix: Re-organization to the mission script structure. This fixes an issue with the F5 tips screen printing multiple times. -- Addition: Added a Class 5 EMP Missile, the Decimator Missile (Eraser -> Sweeper -> Neutralizer -> Paralyzer -> Decimator). Although the EMP missiles were previously classed as Class 2-5, they were in reality Class 1-4, so the Decimator rounds out the EMP line. -- Change: Missile, CD, Mine, and Torpedo prices have been adjusted to be more reasonable. Previously, a single launcher was sometimes worth upwards of $250,000. -- Change: Doubled damage of all guns, as guns were on the weaker side in general - missiles have not been changed. However, all power usages of guns have been doubled as well. -- Misc: Added option to enable higher effect view distances but not the new effects themselves when using High-End FX. -- Addition: Better Cruise Disruption effects (now colored by engine color). -- Bugfix: The high-end damage effect now correctly only plays when High-End FX is activated. This should result in a large performance gain for those computers that don't use / can't quite handle High-End FX. -- Misc: High-resolution textures are no longer applied if High-End FX is not selected. This should result in a large performance gain for those computers that don't use / can't quite handle High-End FX. -- Change: Major shield power draw rebalances. Shields are now balanced to the rare item formula of 5 Shield Regen = 1 Power Regen, and 100 Shield Capacity = 1 Power Regen. -- Change: Shields have been majorly reworked, with low-class shields having a higher regen:capacity ratio and a low offline time, and high-class shields having a higher capacity:regen ratio and a long offline time - this makes low-class shields best against missile assaults, while high-class shields are best against sustained damage. -- Change: Rare items have been slightly rebalanced. If you're looking to finely tune your shield capacity/regeneration : power draw ratio, it is now much more efficient to do so via use of rare items - to the point where it's worth combining a low-class shield and capacity/regen rares to "make" a high-class shield. Before, if trying to save power, it was always far more efficient to simply drop a shield class. -- Change: The Light / Heavy Power Modulators now grant 200 / 400 added power regen, respectively, decreased from 300 / 600. -- Bugfix: Fixed an issue with AI Companion Bots ignoring your selected engagement settings (they were stuck on always engaging hostile targets, even if you picked "always engage unlawfuls" etc.) -- Addition: The 3D Sound Notice now displays when you launch from the n00b Base, since people seem to miss it in the menu. -- Change: Tweaked behavior of the Wasp / Nomad Cruise Disruptor and the Hornet. The Wasp / NCD is now a very agile, short-range CD missiles (4.5km range), while the Hornet is a slower, long-range CD missile (8.5km range) with a wide area of effect. -- Misc: The debris option is no longer marked as "slightly unstable", as it appears RC128's stability fix did the trick. -- Change: Increased the amount of shielding given from a Shield Battery to 1000, from 750. -- Misc: Lowered the resolution of Why485's High-End FX smoke effect, which should result in a large FPS gain with minimal quality loss when using High-End FX. -- Change: AI weapon usage has been slightly scaled back to ease up the difficulty a little. AI Bots remain unchanged. -- Change: Commodities can no longer be traded in Alaska and subsequently linked systems, to correct trading exploits (and if you eject Commodities in these systems, they will be placed back in your hold). All other item types (normal items, rares, etc.) can all still be traded normally. -- Mics: Added four contrails to the Serafina, since it was lacking 'em entirely. -- Addition: Stations, Weapons Platforms, etc. all affect your reputation when killed - the amount of reputation drop is multiplied by the severity of the attack and the importance of the target - killing common NPCs is worth a fair amount of reputation, killing Players / AI Bots is worth a large amount of reputation, and killing Stations / WPs is worth a huge amount of reputation. If you single-handedly slaugter a Station, you will go from full friendly to nearly hostile for that faction (with relevant reputation changes applied to allies etc. as well) -- Change: Reputation drop is now roughly based off the formula "inflicted damage on target / total damage on target" - meaning, if you only inflict 20% of the damage to a ship, you will only receive 20% of the full rep drop - but if you single-handedly butcher a target, you will receive a full rep drop (roughly 22.5% of the rep bar depending on target). -- Addition: Added 26 AI Bots to the AI Companion roster, increasing the number of selectable AI Companions to 30 unique bots spannning a total of 52 different loadout selections to add to your AI Companion squad. -- Misc: 88 Flak ST music is now handled in a seperate music_st.ini activated by the ST, which will stop "Missing Sound File" errors when the ST is not activated. -- Addition: All 30 unique bots now have individual bot mini-factions and can be seen roaming the universe. -- Misc: Certain AI Bots now occupy their time trading various goods. -- Addition: Player-Purchasable Bases now sell all fighters and transports - there is a new mod option that will allow you to select the ship sold for you at Player-Purchasable Bases. -- Change: AI are now more likely to assist you / other friendlies in a distant fight (before, they'd always ignore fights in progress when far away). -- Change: Bot AI / Hard Mode AI now have slightly slower repair usage times, instead of slightly quicker repair usage times, as delaying before Nanobot or Shield Battery presses is actually more efficient for AI usage. Before, they were using them too quickly and weren't always getting the full benefit per-Nanobot/Battery. -- Addition: Better commodity market data for Ryuku Base and Heaven's Gate (real name of Tekagi's Base) in the Tohoku system. Before, they were treated as misc/rare bases in the commodity market, with all commodities sold for near-nothing. -- Addition: Better explosions for Nomad Fighter, Gunboat, and Battleship. The explosion creates nomad-y trails instead of fire/smoke trails, which suits the ships a little more. The nomad-y trails were given to all Nomad equipment as well. -- Addition: 8-Way Strafe plugin added courtesy of Adoxa. This allows vertical strafing to be used in tandem with horizontal strafing. -- Misc: Reorganized the SourceFiles folder; placed all files in folders by author. -- Change: Player tags are now handled manually; you may set your tag with /tag (faction), for example "/tag Liberty Navy". Purchasing an operative tag with no other tag present will still change your tag as always. -- Misc: Large readme overhauls. -- Change: Price of Trade Ships (Transports, Trains, Liners, etc.), Capital Ships, WPs, and Stations all tripled. Beware, as this also (almost) triples their Death Penalty as well. Clear tactical judgement is now required for use of these vessels, since death with them is a much bigger deal than it was before. -- Change: Price of Nomad Fighter reduced from $6,000,000 to $1,400,000. Its Death Penalty should be much lower. -- Misc: Resorted and easier-to-use options script. -- Addition: Added Honken's work-in-progress post process shader - select "version 2.0" in the post-process option to use it. "Version 1.0" uses the traditional post-process. -- Change: Explosion radius of Capital Ship Missiles doubled. -- Change: Pursuit LFs now have less armor than regular LFs, with 10000 armor (decreased from 12500) and a 20 max Battery / Nanobot limit (decreased from 25). -- Bugfix: Fixed the in-game 3D Sound Notice. -- Bugfix: Adjustments to the AI chase-targets-in-cruise behavior that should help stop some of the random NPC disappearance issues. -- Misc: Improved the general responsiveness of death fuses. Effects now start as soon as the death fuse starts, and while the effect firing remains randomized, there is always an explosion right at the start of the fuse. -- Change: Tweaked spawning rates of AI VHFs - they now only spawn in select positions of assault/defense wings, balancing AI groups a little more. -- Change: All Player-Purchasable Bases are now armed with anti-fighter support Small Capitals. Before, some were armed with support Battleships or even support Mobile Stations, which weren't very effective anti-fighter defense. -- Change: The Storage Depot now only travels at 250m/s when in cruise (1/3 of full cruise speed). -- Bugfix: Fixed a bug where the Bretonia Destroyer had a 4s cruise charge time, instead of 8s like all other capitals. -- Change: VHFs now have a 4s cruise charge time, decreased from 8s. -- Change: Transports and Liners now only regenerate 10% of their power regen while in cruise, similar to Capital Ships. -- Bugfix: Fixed some ugly hardpointing with Sniper Turret weapon models. -- Addition: Added a high-end asteroid fields option that renders more asteroids at greater distances. -- Change: Credit Chips are now always dropped from NPC Capital Ships, regardless of rather players did most of the damage or not. Since you'll usually have AI assistance engaging Capitals, this makes it a little more worth it. -- Bugfix: Random loot (including rares) should now drop from Transports and Capital Ships like it's supposed to. -- Addition: NPC ranks are now organized by ship class, increasing by size / bulk - PLFs are 1, LFs are 2, Freighters are 5, Large Capitals are 8, etc. This should make it much easier to distinguish your target at a moment's glance, especially if you forget which ships are what. -- Addition: NPC rank titles are now based around their task, instead of an arbitrary title of "Rookie," "Veteran," etc. Instead, they now carry more descriptive titles such as "Patroller," "Raider," "Hauler," "Forager," etc. -- Change: AI are now a little sharper with missile evasion. While normal NPCs aren't changed much, AI Bots (or Hard Mode AI) will now only enter drastic evasion if under a swarm of incoming ordinance (before, you could break off their attacks and give yourself breathing room by firing only a single missile). -- Change: Total death fuse time for fighters extended to 4 seconds, extending the pull-out-of-death timeframe (time you can use a Nanobot after 0 health to save yourself) to 2 seconds. -- Misc: Ships now catch fire at 1/2 health, and again at 1/4 health, instead of arbitrary values before. This applies to all ships, including Capital Ships and Liners, which previously only caught fire when near death. -- Bugfix: Random server crashes in damage-handling code (HkCb_AddDmgEntry in FLHook) fixed. -- Bugfix: Server crash related to /rename fixed. -- Bugfix: Fixed a glitch where Challenge Systems could not be entered, even if the correct amount of Credit Chips were held. -- Change: Base shield damage is now 35% of a weapon's hull damage, decreased from 40%. This gives the basic end effect of increased shield capacity / regen (rares included), without needing to raise power demands of shields (as they're very carefully balanced in power usage with rare items). -- Change: Shield resistances are now more important; using a weapon against a shield resistant to that weapon type will now reduce damage by 30% (previously 20%), and using a weapon against a shield weak to that weapon type will increase damage by 50% (previously 20%). -- Change: Pulse weapon resistances / affinities removed - in other words, Graviton Shields are no longer strong against Pulse weapons, and Positron Shields are no longer weak against Pulse weapons. -- Change: Shield Batteries have been toned down; they now only replenish 750 shield per battery (decreased 25% from 1000). -- Change: Slightly decreased the annoying amounts of Molly / IMG empathy. They now share an empathy amount similar to Xenos / IMG. -- Bugfix: Changed the reputation of two Trade Lane Buoy WPs in Sigma-13, as there were GMG buoys next to an ALG / Military outpost that were always fighting (GMG and Rheinland hate eachother). -- Bugfix: Gas Pocket fields are now mineable again. -- Bugfix: The Rogue Drail is now correctly classed as a Class 2 weapon (mistakenly classed as a Class 3 with a price tag to match, despite carrying Class 2 stats). -- Change: All storyline holes have been locked, as there was too much trading abuse. -- Change: Removed faction-join bribes from bartenders. Full reputation must now be earned in merit, not in cash. -- Bugfix: Corrected some minor issues with rare Nomad weaponry (Nomad Prototype, Nomad Energy Cannon, etc.) -- Addition: Major improvements to the AI Wingmen system; AI wingmen will follow more responsively. -- Bugfix: Fixed an issue where you would randomly collide with an invisible object when using AI Wingmen - Wingmen can now be properly used with the Sleeper Ship, most Stations, etc. That object is actually the squad leader for the wingmen, which controls when the wingmen should attack and when they should return to you; it is now always intangible. -- Bugfix: Somewhat fixed the issue where, if you jumped systems, your next AI Wingmen squad would be in a strange formation until you docked at a base. -- Change: The explosion radius for missiles has been slightly reduced; this will have no affect on actual missile performance, but should stop accidentally tagging nearby neutral ships in the explosion (and thus turning them hostile). -- Change: Torpedo tracking rates have been increased (half-way in-between RC129 and RC126 values). -- Addition: Improvements to the Liberty Cruiser and Forward Guns - now, when using the Liberty FG on the Liberty Cruiser, the cruiser's built-in gun is used as a firing point. Any other weapon mounted to that slot will be placed at an actual point. -- Misc: Small optimization to system structure (slightly fewer zones to process; the AI Companion Bot now uses 51 paths instead of 101 - far optimized over the first 204) -- Addition: The Liberty Gunboat, modeled by Why485 and imported with assistance from MegalodonEC, has been added to the game. -- Change: Large ships (Transports, Capital Ships, etc.) now have a small degree of banking to assist in turning, which should help eliminate Capital Ship fights degrading into simply turning down all the time. -- Misc: 10x LOD functionality reworked - it now correctly displays all objects at exactly 10x their vanilla distance without screwing up on single-LOD meshes (Serafina, new Liberty Gunboat, etc.). It also no longer erroneously renders certain objects at 20-100x distance (error in LOD calculation formula). Overall, it looks a little uglier, but is far more efficient. -- Change: Storage Depots are now only sold in Alaska. The Repair Ship is now featured at the starting base. -- Change: Storage Depots can no longer purchase trade commodities (Credit Chips etc. do not apply). -- Change: Slightly increased the amount of loot dropped from minable asteroids. -- Change: Cardamine and Alien Artifacts now take up slightly more cargo space. It may be more profitable to experiment trading with other commodities instead. -- Change: Re-hardpointed the Nomad Fighter with wider firing arc for its weapons, and to be slightly less ugly when shooting. -- Addition: AI Traders now make more intelligent combat decisions. If a large enemy wing approaches that looks too intimidating, they'll immediately attempt to flee the fight. -- Change: Since Nomads are hostile to everything, Nomad AI wingmen squads now come with a few more ships, since the standard wingmen squad will simply get mowed down by the overwhelming number of hostiles. -- Addition: Target marks now play sounds instead of printing "OK" for confirmation. Sounds are also played when another group member group-marks a target. -- Misc: Switched the sounds of the bottom three laser classes. That weaksauce "pew pew!" sound fits Class 1s a lot more than it does Class 2s and 3s. =P -- Change: Lower-class weapons now have a slightly quicker rate of fire; higher-class weapons now have a slightly slower rate of fire. Class 4 weapons have not changed, and were used as a base for the refire curve. To sum it up, the damage gap between classes has narrowed; a Class 1 gives 50% of the output of a Class 4, instead of 25% of the output. -- Addition: Grazing a neutral NPC with a Missile or Torpedo will no longer turn them insta-hostile. Instead, you'll receive friendly fire warnings before they take action. -- Bugfix: Fixed an issue where players could sometimes become permanently hostile to Abandoned objects. -- Misc: Added a blurb in the readme for Windows Vista Service Pack 2 (SP2), which apparently corrects most issues with Freelancer on Vista. -- Change: Halved the fire rate of Sniper Turrets (rare) and Orbital Defense Turrets (used by docking rings etc.) -- Addition: New free-floating gun fixtures added to Docking Rings to give them more coverage. -- Change: Unless repaired manually, Weapons Platforms, Stations, etc. will now take 15 minutes to repair, and will only repair to 20% health. -- Misc: Added a blurb in Torpedo infocards explaining how only direct missile hits will cause early detonation. -- Change: Nomad Fighter Particle Splitter muzzle velocity doubled. -- Change: Power regeneration rates of Capital Ships, Stations / WPs, Transports and Liners have been increased. -- Change: Power usages of all missile launchers decreased; they are now a function of 1/10 their damage output, instead of arbitrary numbers. -- Misc: Added a "Torpedoes Only" selection to the "Draw white boxes around missiles/mines?" option. -- Misc: Corrected rampant misspelling of "torpedoes" as "torpedos." Durp. -- Change: Tweaks made to Torpedoes. Starkillers now have a 4500m range, while Sunslayers have a 6000m range and 10% better tracking. This opens up the tactical possibility of using Sunslayers for long-range single-torpedo bombing, while Starkillers remain good for short-range multi-torpedo bombing. -- Addition: Better hitbox for the Serafina. -- Misc: Optimizations to filesize for sounds played by High-End FX missiles. -- Change: Jump Gates and Jump Holes are now a little harder to disable (2x hitpoints, Jump Gates now have a shield), but will stay disabled for the full 15 minute base repair time unless manually repaired early. This means you can effectively isolate players / NPCs in a system, unless they have a Repair Turret on them. -- Bugfix: The "Launch Mines" control now repeats when held down (you can hold down "Launch Mines" to continuously launch mines, similar to holding down "Launch Missiles" to continuously launch missiles). -- Bugfix: Fixed a bizarre issue with Mines where, when fired from weapon control, could be launched in any direction. -- Addition: Added 4 new Unlawful starting jumpholes, with a corresponding base that automatically sets your reputation to that of a pirate when docked with; no bribes or anything needed. -- Change: Removed reputation requirements for Nanobots and Shield Batteries. -- Change: Decreased reputation requirements for all other items.