Discovery Freelancer 4.85: Reunion Released

[Igiss]

The development of Discovery 4.85: Reunion has taken 1,5 years to complete. Now we, the newly formed Discovery Development Team, present to you the result of our work. The wait is over. After months of online beta testing, Discovery Freelancer 4.85: Reunion is released and available for download.

Year is 817 After Settlement (A.S.), 16 years after the single-player campaign of Freelancer, and one year after Discovery 4.84 took place. A Sirius-wide war is on the brink of engulfing the sector. While Kusari pushes its onslaught against Bretonia deep into the Leeds system, Bretonia attempts to surround Kusari forces in Tau-31. Liberty attacks Rheinland in Bremen and Hudson, and Rheinland has to pull back to defend its own borders. As if this was not enough, in late 817 the Independent Miners Guild encountered a large number unknown ships in the Orkney system. The ships belonged to a rebel group formed within the long-lost House of Gallia, the existence of which remained unknown for centuries.

The storyline is just a portion of the progress taking place in the new Discovery version. Increased development time and an increased number of developers allowed us to finalize all the features we were planning to implement, and make 4.85 the largest ever update for Discovery mod. We introduced 110 new ship models, with most new ships receiving custom hitboxes. More than a hundred new weapon and equipment types have been added, many with custom weapon projectile and hit effects. 11 new systems were included, and about 30 previously available systems were updated, all of them following much higher quality standards than in previous versions.

The mod now has a renewed balance system for weapons, equipment and ships, plus a fully revamped economy system that provides profitable routes for all locations and factions. To add depth to the new economy, 46 new commodity types were introduced. The role-playing ID system (used on the official server and most other servers running our mod) has received 53 new IDs. The new version also contains about 7000 new and rewritten infocard texts for various new and old ships, items, and places.

The integrated Discovery automatic updater allows players to download and apply new updates easily without having to re-download and re-install the whole package. The updater does not restrict offline play, and you will still be able to play single-player without an internet connection.

If you prefer online play, you are welcome to join the official Discovery Freelancer RP 24/7 server and a number of other servers running Discovery. Server operators are welcome to run Discovery mod without any restrictions. All servers that have our mod installed are listed in dsupdate.cfg file located in Freelancer\EXE folder to allow quick connect to all of them without using shortcuts or patches. To add another server, simply add its address to dsupdate.cfg.

In January 2007, Discovery mod was chosen to receive the Simulation Genre Award of ModDB.com's Mod of the Year-2006 contest (MOTY-2006).

You can download the full version of the mod from ModDB download page and from mod announcement thread on our forums. The file will soon be available at The Starport.