It's no secret that many of Freelancer's vanilla assets are showing their age, perhaps none more so than the ubiquitous jump gate. Unless you play exclusively in the Omicrons, this old, clunky model with its low res textures is something everyone sees every time they log in.
I've been playing around with the idea of giving it a high-poly makeover to bring it up to a more modern standard, along with other generic assets such as trade lanes, docking rings, mooring fixtures, and perhaps even base components. As the saying goes, "do it when the spirit moves you", and its been moving me lately.
The trouble is, people have been asking for house specific gates and even lanes for many years. This comes with a myriad of problems such as an increased workload, some fundamental lore questions, and where to set the limit on the uniqueness of a model.
Should these solars, manufactured exclusively by Ageira and DSE, have differing appearances? Would Ageira and DSE cater to the various houses they do business in? If so, how different? Would the change in appearance be strictly cosmetic, ie; differing textures, slightly altered details. Or should they be radically different designs, each with their own unique animation?
It also opens up the problem of where to draw the line. If jump gates have unique models, should trade lanes? Or perhaps lanes should have unique models but not gates. And then, what of docking rings and mooring fixtures? Lastly, what about the solars of the independent and border worlds? Should every one of them be using a house specific model? Should an upgraded version of the current gate remain as a generic, should house specific gates become a thing?
I'm asking these questions in hopes of providing something that at least some of us can agree upon, as I'm aware that the development team currently has a pretty bad track record of not taking community input to heart. I'm very interested in hearing your opinions and hope to receive some enlightening feedback on what's obviously a complex and somewhat convoluted situation.
