Game issues

[Antonio]

Thank you for the feedback. If any other new player is reading this, I encourage you to use the opportunity to share your feedback, as the new player experience is something we need to improve, and it's often difficult to get it since new players don't use the forums too often.

Regarding the original post: Many of these points stem from a lack of tutorials that would show how to find or solve the issues presented. New players are thrown into the game with minimal guidance, which is why one of our plans is to create several tutorials specifically aimed at new players to increase player retention. For example, if there were a video titled "First 5 Hours - A New Player Guide" starting you from Erie and guiding you through acquiring your first ships and credits, showing you how to mine, trade, and fight NPCs, it would significantly boost the appeal for new or returning players compared to having no such video.

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Addressing your points:

1. Lack of a video PvP tutorial for freighters or a mining video tutorial showing you how to mine in a freighter. I can offer you this video from 2016 regarding the former, and teaching capital ship combat in general, although an updated 2024 version will be coming in the following months. As for earning credits, one of the best ways to do so at the moment is to purchase a Hegemon on Harrisburg Station, which will allow you to mine and trade your first big credits.

2. Starter missions are available on Valley Forge in front of Erie in Pennsylvania. This can also be communicated more clearly via a tutorial, and we should add more beginner-friendly missions across the board. Missions in general are quite limiting to work with because of the code they are written in; unfortunately, we cannot do much about that part.

3. Most wrecks are there for lore or story purposes, and the loot is meant to reflect that story, which often means it won't have high value. Wrecks with high-value loot are the exception, not the norm. There are plenty of wrecks with high-value cargo, such as codename weapons, but it's a matter of experience to know where to find them. You can certainly equip your ship with top-tier guns from wreck hunting and earn cash on the player market. This is a good thing; you don't want all wrecks to be valuable, as that would reduce the value of each individual wreck, especially those meant to be rare and difficult to find.

4. Unfortunately, what you experienced will happen, but I encourage you to believe it's not the norm. This is a subjective topic and can vary a lot with a small sample size. We're all in the same boat, on the same server, with no matchmaking. Some people are desperate for PvP and might not realize they are engaging a new player before they pull the trigger.

5. The only limitations regarding server rules and ship usage are if the ID does not allow a certain class to be flown. For example, a Freelancer ID flying a 5000 cargo ship such as a Stork, or a Corsair Battlecruiser, is rule-breaking. Your Freelancer ID character can fly a Corsair fighter with Corsair guns, which is not breaking any server rules. However, it will be difficult to fight in one due to power core limitations. The reason for this is simple: we want to encourage players to play local factions who are meant to use that technology. Factions in Freelancer are quite protective of their technology, but that shouldn't stop you from trying if you really want a Corsair ship. All it would take is to document some roleplay explaining why the Corsairs would trust your Freelancer with their technology. Ideally, you would do this by interacting with a Corsair member in-game. After that, you request the tech exemption for the ship in question, and you will have 100% power core regeneration on your Freelancer ID Corsair ship. In short, you need to earn the trust of the Corsairs in roleplay before you can use their ship. Otherwise, what's stopping you from using their technology to actively shoot Corsairs?

6. This is mostly a relic of the past when repping via NPCs was reduced. It's something we, developers, need to improve. Bribes are the go-to way of fixing rep nowadays, along with the /resetrep command, which will erase your reputation sheet to the default reputation sheet of your ID for 100k credits. Keep in mind that if you use an ID such as the Liberty Navy, even if you bribe the Xenos, once you undock, they will turn red again. This is because they are inherent enemies in lore, and a simple bribe won't fix that. Xenos are hostile to Liberty Navy regardless of how many Junker NPCs you shoot to try and get Xenos to turn neutral.

7. Freelancer NPC AI is a topic of its own. In short, it is outdated and silly in a lot of scenarios. I remember them shooting tradelanes and stations many years ago; it's not a new thing. The vast majority of NPCs you see when randomly flying around, also known as Ambient NPCs, are there for immersion and roleplay fluff. They ignore players because they would ruin PvP for fighter/snub players only, while capital ship players would ignore them. This would highly discourage players from playing snubs.

8. This will be automatically fixed in an upcoming transport rework. Large ships get stuck primarily because of low mass. If you happen to be stuck in a tradelane, type "/stuck" to automatically align yourself with the center of the lane.

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