Help with Freelancer Mechanics

[Charo]

For one of my classes I'm going to write a literary analysis for Freelancer. One thing I'm going to talk about is the mechanics of Freelancer and what it does to help simulate a living universe for the game. A point I'm not sure on is the off screen space, whether it's passive or active. The difference between the two is if something happens in the game while the player is not in the area. I want to think that when you're in a system, it's active for that system (I remember someone talking at some point that lane disruptions are decided when you enter a system), but not for systems that nobody is in. Does anyone know what happens behind closed doors in Freelancer that would be able to help?

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