@Coin, that's nice variant, however personally I think about something that differs from Vanilla for maximum of 10%. It's my point, but keep the post in case we'll be brainstorming in that way or people will like the idea.
I have been brainstorming too a bit. I'm not sure about 10% from original, but completely different story from disco that involves almost all factions. I think it's waste to delete gallia and it's ships, since already to much work peoples spend to do it, so in my story I intend to keep them.
Story starts 20 years after nomad war in 820, but lets' start from balance of powers:
Liberty - 250 not superhouse that can crush anyone even on several fronts.
Rheinland - 200 Militaristic house as always was.
Gallia - Big part of their forces in Sirius(soon you will know why only 200)
Kusari - 180 Great fleet that can wage war slighlty smaller than neightbours conterparts since it relly on speed.
Bretonia - 160 It was like that in original disco that bretonian fleet was smaller, so I decided it to keep like that.
Main reasons of all wars, colonisation or anexation of space.
Rheinland finally decided to annex omega-7 after mining out dresden, IMG was banned from Rheinland and now it's more closely working with Bretonia. Also Rheinland view 2 new planets for clonisation, as planet in Hudson and planet in omega-3, They broke treaty with liberty about neutral zone in hudson and started colonization making liberty cautious and putting trade embargo on Rheinland. In omega-3 it was bretonians who first set claim on planet and started it's colonization and that's how war between Rheinland and Bretonia starts... for claim of sprague.
Bretonia now almost allied to IMG defending omega-3, but also started colonization of planet in omega-49, but that went not unnoticed by coalition and they started to raid it from their outpost in omega 49 and bases in omega-50.
Liberty were gathering forces in texas when sudden strike from Kusari came, right now they have created defence line near planet in colorado and Ageira station preparing to kick kusari out of Colorado.
Kusari being ally to Rheinland also were embargoed by several products from Liberty making relations most complicated and with discovery of some new rare ore in galileo anomaly nebulas even more tensions rised.
While liberty were massing forces in Texas for possible war with Rheinland, Kusari decided to do bold move make first strike and secure resources in Galileo.
Kusari and Bretonia relations were somewhat cold, but they both realised that they cannot wage wars on 2 fronts so they made tau treaty that gave tau-31 to bretonia, tau-29 to kusari and split resources in tau-23.
Also Kusari finished JG to Chugoku and moved hokkaido BS there.
Now to Gallia, They were massing forces to start invasion, but maquis with council made devastating blow in gallia, they blow up all gates from core worlds to borders, cutting off core worlds from rest of the world. Gallic forces en mass but with devasted systems and no planets to live(or one that was affected by radioation after gate destruction, so they decided to conquer closest planets to them, that was Harris in tau-31 and Malta in Alpha, tho they plan sucsseded with Hariss in surprusing declaration of war on bretonia and conquer of Tau-31, Outcasts showed hard resistance and stopped Gallia advance on their home planet. Also tensions rise between Kusari and Gallia due to their heavy presence in tau region on Kusari border and declaration that tau-23 now belongs to them.
Gallia with only 3 system and large part of fleet to conquer sirius.. hehehe.
Now outcasts, before gallia advance they managed to capture IMG base in tau-37 making it even more secured for their patrols. They also advanced into sigma-13 and new link to kusari system oita was discovered there, making another route to kusari.
Corsairs were massing forces in order to grab another planet fo them too and with Rheinland in war with bretonia and lamost with lbierty they decided to strike on frankfurt, their forces slowly moving to sigma-13 where they also established forward outpost to strike rheinland.
Omicrons might stay as they current are: Order were kicked from minro and Nomads gathering more forces to strike on warmongering houses.
So, Wars: Kusari-Liberty, Rheinland-Bretonia, Gallia-Bretonia, Outcasts-Gallia, with several more in next update Rheinland-Liberty, Corsairs-Rheinland and Kusari-Gallia.
We all know the Developers have spent a lot of their time in to making Discovery what it is today, but it isn't good (No offense, you guys did great work.) or anywhere near what we expected. Removing Gallia wont fix the problem, I know, or will it raise server activity, but at this point in time I don't think anything can.
I'd rather revert to 4.85 than play the newer mods, simply because Balance was better, trading was better, and everything was just in general fun. Now, it's just constant PewPew, Go To Gallia, they're OP, we made them OP so you'd play them, go to Gallia. Gallia is cool, Gallia is fighting Bretonia, we nerfed Bretonia, Gallia is still OP.
As I mentioned before, people play Gallia for their OP Ships, and they also go there to trade. Why? Barely any pirates. Gallia is empty. It's a useless filler that little to no one uses. Hence why no one played in the Kusari-Gallia war in 4.85, because Rheinland vs Liberty was better. Hence why, when you take away the war or just move it somewhere less accessible, you're trying to draw attention away from the Vanilla Freelancer storyline which Discovery was supposed to expand on.
The same goes for the Removal of the Eta-Theta hole. That pretty much killed the Corsairs. People loved nothing better than raiding each other to keep the Diplomacy RP hostile. Now they're just avoiding each other because they're too far away.
4.85, it was Gold. It was perfect. Nothing needed to be changed, just some updates for new Mechanics like the New Mortar effects, the POBs, adding those, etc. Keeping Balance the same as it was then, etc. Discovery would be all around better. I appreciate the Dev's hard work on 4.86 and 4.87, but it will never compare to 4.85. The 4.85 Gameplay was better than after the balance and economy became broken. Bring it back.
interesting points Vendetta. Gallia is more functionall now and easeir to acess. There is point to haul stuff from gallia to Sirius . But zea server activity is not like it was in 4.85. Could administrators make some skype database of all freelancer players to reinvite them to play again ?
I think we should all think on plausible stories on how Galia loses contact with the main systems. They get to keep the advancing navy and the council also keeps Roussilion. This way we can revert back to the 4.85 map and a normal economy.
The idea with the Maquis is interesting, how can we work with that?
I gone through your first post (7 pages is a bit too much, sorry); basically, you toss an idea of "making solo play interesting" which i like, but later you propose all the stuff that would ruin even current state of solo-playing.
For example, the transport unloading will make newcomers angry and dissappointed - some metagamers' group make awful lot of cash, while he barely gets money for BnB and pirate buyouts in his, say, Drom.
Caps: there'll be, like, 4-6 capships throughout the cluster if current SRP rules AND activity will stay the same. If it won't - everyone will have SRP and fly his preschuss Arbiter.
You can join dev team if you wish (even if all you have now is idea), but please make up your mind first.
[11:20:20] aerelm: its not fl dev work if you dont have to power through the whole thing on your own
[11:20:32] aerelm: help is for pussy devs like in dota