ENGINE's Idea

[Agran Harper]

All in all I believe it to be possible to make that happen, from the point of view of a modder. I know for certain, that we could make "impuls engines" upgradable and customizable for that matter, but the question is, if that is a goal to reach. Definitely, you could give each ship type by default a different engine. The different cruise speeds should be possible either.

Now here comes the tricky part; cooling system as in "cruise system needs energy" would be even more of a legerdemain in Freelancer, as you cannot have two thruster counts shown, because basically, the coolant system IS a thruster countdown. If FLHook should be needed to calculate every cruise engine of every player ingame; you got the lagghole, most likely.

The only solution to that would be (IF this works that way, mind you) ; the thruster energy is used for the thruster AND the cruise engine. So that means the thruster you mount would also determine the length you cruise. Perhaps I talk bullcrap and both can be handled seperately, or they cannot be linked with thruster drain at all.

What I am completely uncertain about is the cooldown stuff. The thruster energy gets up instantly as soon as you cease thrusting (or cruising for that manner). So here it goes, I don't know if you could add a cooldown to the cruise engines. If there was such thing, then you have to be advised that it would ALSO kick in everytime you deliberately deactivate the cruise engines.

Lets put it this way:

The game was originally suppose to have a feature where you could upgrade your engines as well as some other equipment, however this was dropped from the final game due to development time or something.
If it was hard for a team of professionals to do it, how hard can it be for a loosely organized group of modders to do it?

You have to view it from a different angle; they did not have the time to do it the way they wanted to. They tinkered so long to create a modular system as we know it to be, and then basically rushed to manifest the actual game around it. So yes, the game presents us with a multitude of functionality, the only thing the Developers lacked, was time on the long run. The tools lie in front of us, but it takes plenty of time to craft, given the nature of the game... because, there is not really much of a "source code" as the majority of the game is written with a script language, that runs ini files.

So, bottom line;
Different base sub-cruise speeds: possible.
Exchangable sub-cruise engines: possible.
Different & exchangable cruise engines: possible.
Cruise Engines running dry: perhaps? I dunno
Cruise Engine reactivation cooldown: rather unlikely but; perhaps?
Ensuring diversity as Hyong Soong presented: seems possible, but;
Suitability in THIS mod: I have not the foggiest?

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To hunt the prey is life,
to lose the prey is death,
to hunt the loss is insane...