Hey there boys and girls. I've been excited to announce this for a long time. Me and @Impyness, and a collection of other developers, have been working on a new mod for Freelancer for some time. This mod is called Aftermath, and we're here to tell you a little about it. You can ask questions on our forums or join our Discord.
What is "Aftermath"?
Aftermath is a mod, and community, for Freelancer currently in active development. Drawing inspiration from Freelancer and its long lineage of mods, including Discovery, Aftermath is focused on delivering a new and improved experience in a multiplayer roleplay setting, with plans for many new high-quality features alongside a laundry list of quality-of life improvements, all the while maintaining the combat and setting that made Freelancer the game we know and love.
What's the setting of Aftermath?
Aftermath is set in 815 AS, fourteen years after the close of the Nomad War. In the wake of the coverup orchestrated principally by the Republic of Liberty and Rheinland, the Houses are in a permanent state of uneasiness - internally, those in the know fear for a second attack from the Nomads, despite the victory of the Order at quelling such a threat. More broadly, however, there are fears that the great Rheinland invasions - defeats that have left the house broken and rebuilding - are but a warning of things to come. Eight hundred years of near-bloodless, unparalleled growth and expansion has finally reached its limits, as habitable planets and exploitable resources become rarer, and draw ever closer to political boundaries. Conflict appears ever closer on the horizon, and it is here our players begin to make their mark on Sirius.
What does Aftermath change, besides the story?
We are planning a series of innovative features to reinvigorate the aging Freelancer engine and breathe new life into the game. Immersion and intuitive, fun gameplay are high on the list of necessities for our project, and as such we've already laid the groundwork for numerous new features - not the least of which being a fully working custom UI system, which allows us to integrate many of the addons and plugins necessary directly into the game, thereby improving quality of life tremendously. In the video below, you can see a small demonstration of our intended TLAGSNET feature.
The video below is a proof of concept only.
With this, we hope to develop a set of features that brings Freelancer in-line with some of its competing, modern-day equivalents; things like in-game bounty boards, trade-lane and gate monitoring, casino games, in-game player ship sales, unique mining methods, smuggling, House laws, and passenger hauling are just some of the features we hope to integrate directly into Aftermath seamlessly alongside our custom interface.
If this mod sounds like something that interests you, you can head over to our discord at https://discord.gg/HH5Fagp
As this mod is very similar to Discovery, do you think this could potentially, if you finish it, divide the Discovery playerbase and further reduce it in size? I'm not against making new mods, creativity is a nice trait, but I am curious if this thought has ever crossed the minds of the creators and if they have devised ways to mitigate the possible effect.
As impressive and ambitious as this sounds, I can't see that this won't go the way of all the other Freelancer/Discovery mods. I'd hate to see you guys pour effort into something and see no fruits of your labor.
@Thunderer We've put a lot of work into our server infrastructure and we are very focused on pulling in new players, instead of relying on on Discovery. If we did that, and had any amount of success, we'd end up with two dead mods. From our research though, there are a lot of people that still recognise and feel nostalgia for Freelancer, ones that never even thought of modding their game. We're hopeful.
@Lythrilux It's certainly possible as with every mod or project that it turns out to be a failure, either before or after release. For a lot of us though, this is a product of passion and learning as much as it is a desire to put out a quality product, so I don't think any of us will see it as totally wasted effort if it goes belly-up.
If i got right, it should give to players strong vanilla vibes, but with deep core infused goodies with mechanics?
Just if i right, dont think there will be any competition, there would be points to play both, but probably quality comparsion of different decisions will give healthy comparsion for players, what is only for good.
![[Image: 396AUfe.png]](https://i.imgur.com/396AUfe.png)
![[Image: Lythrilux.gif]](https://sig.grumpybumpers.com/host/Lythrilux.gif)
