Its not even fun anymore

[maximus995]

If i get it right this are your main 3 problems and ill give ye a solution with em as well:

1: problem: your being ganked alot
cause: some factions like the sails/reavers/LNS (these are but a few) are filled with people that arent that good in combat, thats why they use group tactics (which is smart on there part but less honourable, still life > honour i suppose)
Solution: either avoid em or make sure you got enough friends to gank back

2: pirated on your first run?
ever watched a pirate movie? or a documentary about blackbeard? or jsut raed a book about hem? if you have was there but a single one of those three things that mentioned sometihng about pirates caring about there victims? we pirates get alot of exuses, no money, speak only russian, first run and so on and even if you were speaking the truth, i mean like: amigo, were pirates for a reason, cause we take stuff that we didnt work for. pirates arent traders, they dont give one **** about if your making profit or not, be happy you were atleast allowed to keep a part of your cargo:D

and 3: shieldrunning/snac problems?
well lets just say this, id love to duel you sometimes, but apply your own logics senor, when your shields are down, dont run, be so kind to sit right in the range of my guns, or better yet why not sit right in front of my guns? makes it even easier to kill ye. yes running is fo rthe cowards but as i mentioned before life is more important than honour for some people

as for the snac: you snacced her, you aimed, you shot, you hit her, maybe it was luck but i guess you still aimed? that means that you rightfully won, with all due respect to senorita anna you were supposed to win not she,

when the fraze: he was supposed to win applies? -> in situations that the player cant help about (npc's joining in, lag, keyboard malfunction, other players joining in) THAT is when you can use that senor:)

but yea i get your point, sometimes nobility and such is far to search

---

A Psalm out of the outcast history books.
The dons are our shepherds; I shall not want. They make us live with a cause; They lead us trough the still vasts of space. They restore our souls; They lead us in the paths of righteousness For The Orange Dream. Yai, though we fly through the valley of the shadow of death, we will fear no evil; For the Spirits are with us; Your leadership and Your cardamine, they comfort us. You prepare a safe home for us in the presence of our enemies; Surely goodness and mercy shall follow us All the days of our life; And we will dwell in the house of the outcasts Forever

[Swallow]

if you wanna survive, buy a LF

thats

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FL MOD(EL)MAKING: TOOLS, RESOURCES, TUTORIALS AND MY SHIPS (OLD)

I am on discord: Roal-Yr#5994, I don't log on forum more than a few times a year.

I am not making ships for FL anymore, I am making my own space game instead:
https://github.com/roalyr/GDTLancer
https://roal-yr.itch.io/gdtlancer
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5HQB...cdH45LZgjj

[Jeremy Hunter]

Two Osirises, three legates, a Praefact.

When THAT comes to kill four or so bombers...

We know how you feel.

But dont gank back.

Train hard, so when THEY gank, YOU can pwn them while outnumbered.

---

May you ever walk in the Light, Shizune.

[hribek]

Please, logical discussion only. No trolling saying that I'm just Q_Qing, or that I just need to play longer, tell me why I am wrong, and give you reason for that.

I will attempt to explain everything at length. However, your post truly is a complaint for the most part. It's a fact. I could say that one of the reasons you are wrong is exactly that - perhaps asking yourself and others about how to solve the problem is better than just complaining about it. No big deal, just for future reference. Now on to the content.


Problem #1 with 3 examples:

Lets look at example number 1:
I started my money making in Dublin, and eventually I started a few chars and joined the mollys. I love the mollys, its fun, interesting, and relatively enjoyable.
Until certain factions come in. Corsairs, who just sent in 12 fighters this afternoon, SCRA who frequently send in groups of 5 fighters, BAF who can call about 5 fighters on if one of them says something like "I'm getting attacked in Dublin, please help". And there are other groups as well.
The point is that the Mollys get ganked a lot. Its not even fun to play a molly anymore because you have to sneak around to find the occasional miner, then haul home before the BAF catch you. However, since the mining nerf the number of miners has gone down drastically. So the mollys don't even have THAT to do anymore.

So instead, we mine, then ship, and mine, and ship.

It seems to me that the problem here is lack of organization on the Molly side. There has been a mess in their leadership for months, if not years. Regardless, if you can't put together something that allows a direct confrontation, you just have to avoid it - run and hide - like the rest. Either way, don't let them catch you with your pants down if you know what's coming - or what can come.

"Its not even fun to play a molly anymore because you have to sneak around to find the occasional miner, then haul home before the BAF catch you."
The faction I have co-founded few years ago is composed of members that find this exact type of activity enjoyable. I am unsure how else you expect it to work.

Perhaps you should not confine yourself only to Dublin, but take advantage of other systems. Mollys can pirate in Cambridge, New London and Manchester. Which means you might get to do something like what was done to you in Example 2.

(edit: forgot about Edinburgh, Newcastle, Poole, Salisbury and perhaps others)

Example 2:
We had 2 molly miners on, one pirate transport, and I was on my BWT, so I buy the gold ore, and I go through California. On the last trade lane, Paco Pistols and his buddy, who's name I can't remember, say they want 6 million at first, then they said they wanted 1,600 ore. I told them that taking that much would cause me to lose money, but they didn't care. I dropped the ore, and lost a total of 500,000 credits on that run.
This is the first time I have played a lawful trader in about 4 months. The first time, and I get robbed.

I cannot comment on this particular case because faction guidelines (LH) prohibit me from doing so. But if I omit the details and look at it as a general example (very crude approximation):

Pirates cause traders to lose property. Very simple, really.

If pirates start caring about that their victims are losing money (to clarify: caring as in regrets) - then they would have to stop pirating, making them pirates no longer. So if the trader loses money, it is a job well done for the pirate.

Possible solutions can be split into two categories. One is to avoid getting caught. The second is to have a means to minimize losses when you do (other than begging the pirates which as you said doesn't work). I will leave the latter to your imagination.

Or is it the "molly miners" part that is the problem?

Example 3:
I was on my indy RM about a week ago, and I go with a bunch of Rheinland caps to go have some fun in
Texas and New York.
But what happens? We get ganked. We had 2 fighters, 3 battleships, and 2 cruisers. They send out a carrier, 3 dreds, 2 LABC's, 2 cruisers, 3 gunboats, and 4 fighters to kill us.
Not even fun.

You mounted an invasion into a hostile territory. I suggest that you contact the other party in advance if you want the fight to be organized.
Otherwise, there is a multitude of ways to explain that the neither side was at fault here, I'll just pick this one: They perhaps misjudged how good you were so they sent a force which they thought was appropriate. There is no objective way to tell if the judgement was right or wrong until a rather late stage of the combat. In most cases, anyway.
And as I'll explain further below, fun is subjective. Somebody else in your position might say that it's not fun at all if the amount of hurt sent at you is not high enough.

Whats the point of spending all that time making money if you can't even do anything with it?
I buy a GEB, I get ganked by Black Navy Guard
I buy a Molly Gunboat, I get ganked by 5 fighters
I buy a Rheiland fighter, and my group gets ganked by a gigantic number of caps.

There is none. Perhaps you should spend less time getting credits if it doesn't have the desired effect. Focus your attention elsewhere, instead.

The second problem that I found was the severe gap between how good a capital ship is, and how good a fighter is.

Example:
I was playing around on my Molly scylla when the SCRA came into town. 5 fighters. We had 2 cruisers and a couple fighters. They engaged, and ended up killing everyone. Why? Was it because all the mollys were bad shots? Was it because the SCRA just dodged really well?
It was partly both, I would get their shields down in my Scylla, then they would run. They'd shield run, leaving me no chance to kill them. They zip away, in their tiny, fast ships that I can't hit and wait for the shields to regenerate.
This led to everyone dying.

"a capital ship" is about as vague as you can get in desccribing a problem. If you want logic, you should realize that all 3 capital ship classes all have their strengths and weaknesses, which can be put to an advantage if pilot ability and odds allow for it. To dumb it down, a solo cruiser can get killed by 3 fighters, too. Sometimes a fighter can solo a gunboat. Sometimes one gunboat can "GAN-GRAPE(sour)-K" 3 bombers.

It is awfully complicated and tiring to give a general advice here. Perhaps ask some of the players who were shooting you - they were there and might provide you with some more useful info on how not to lose. There are many ways to do it, you just have to find some aand pick the one you like best.

But you will still lose sometimes. The only true loss is if you can't get over it. That is not something others can do for you, it is a mindset problem. Rules or development changes will not be able to change it.

The third problem frustrates me to no end. Its that of shields regenerating in 6-12 seconds.
In the same fight with the SCRA, I hit 3 of their ships with mortars when they swung by. I hit them while they were about 500m away, got their shields down, and then they would swing past me so that I couldn't open fire. I mortared 3 of them. Not kidding, I shot 3 of them with my light mortar. But every single time, the shield had just regenerated. So, no damage was done, except to their shields.
I think this needs to be fixed to somewhere around 15-25 seconds to regenerate a shield.

Hard luck. Tough for you, but life goes on. I don't think it needs to be fixed. Perhaps try the same situation, just with reversed roles. I can get introduce you to some cruiser pilots who can show you that there are other things that might need fixing. PM me if you are interested.

The fourth problem that I have seen is a simple thing. The SNAC's blast radius.

Example:
I was on my Mafic in Dublin sparring against Anna.McCarthy, I had a bomber, she had a fighter. She took down every single last one of my nanos, and all of my sb's, and yet at the very end, I shot a snac into her hull, and she died instantly. While I took no damage from being within 30m of the blast.
She should have won that fight, she should have killed me, but she didn't because I got lucky and hit her with my SNAC.
While I am no physicist, I do know that for every action, there is always an opposite and equal reaction. That is one of the reasons why there are blast radius's. But the SNAC doesn't seem to have one, or if it does, its so small that it doesn't really count.

First of all, guns have no blast radius in Freelancer. Use Nova torps instead if you desire the effect you described.
Secondly, you cannot apply real world (Newton, #3) laws of physics to Freelancer. Well, you might, if you accept the existence of invisible drag on all ships, some funny speed caps and collisions that well, uh, I'm not going to go into that at all. I recommend following the linkn in my signature and experiencing a good spaceflight simulator firsthand, if realism is what you're looking for.
(for the record, I don't really see the connection between the law you quoted and a proposed blast that should blow up your ship)

Fifth problem that I have found is that of the battle razor.
You send out this gigantic ball of white energy towards a target, and you'd think that if that gigantic white ball hit the target, it would do damage, right? No, instead you have a dot about the size of a regular gun shot that has to hit the target.

Perhaps you could study how collision detection computations work and weigh the impact on performance.

I want playing Freelancer to be fun, but I don't know how to do it anymore.

The best way to change the world is to change yourself. I don't see any of the problems you described as ones that can be solved by altering everyone's behavior, server rules, or game mechanics. The only way I see viable, if you want gaming here to be entertaining, is to change yourself, the way you do things, and the way you think about it.

The alternative is to quit. It is not necessarily a bad one. Online gaming is not the only fun source available.

[The.Outlaw.Star]

Try not to fly alone, find a wing man than will help with some of the Ganks. Thats all the advice i can give ya buddy. Don't leave us tho please it really is a great place!

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[Ntei]

you tax miners 5 millions, you deserve to be ganked

[ryoken]

Wait what? It's no fun? Go play BMM then.
Ooh, that would cause you to lose money. Pah. They asked what, half the cargo? They were very nice.

Then the example 3 - gather more forces, duh. And anyway, if fighters are so better then caps, why didn't you win or just fly away from solaris dredies? But wait, if those were solaris dredies, they'd die to RM BSes. Something is wrong here.

Then again, you buy some gb and then you complain about fighters killing you. Well, deal with it, fighterswarm kills caps up to non-solaris battleship. Hint: if you see enemy in gb, take gb. If you see enemy in figter(s), get a fighter. Here, problem solved.

Why am i even writing it?

Troll much?

I don't recall a Discovery without cap ships.

Discovery has always had caps. I love when new players say: I remember when....AND LIE!


Discovery over the years has gone down hill. Almost every vet will say so.(VET=2 plus years) But it still has it's goods. Just harder to find.
When Mining try to stay above/below plane,or well in back of fields,that makes it harder to get pirated for ore. Also they say dump it? do it,and blow it up so they do not get it. You did what was asked,if they kill you? report them. Rule states after you meet their demand,they cannot kill you.Screen it,and lol.(did this awhile back,and pirate was sanctioned).
As for lack of RP? I have sat my Dread infront of Manhattin,and tested RP a few times. Their is none. I had 3 fighters shoot my dread for 15 minutes without me saying a word,or firing back after 1 said " look navy,lets kill him" pew pew. Then they yelled gank when 8 fighters,4 GB's,and 3 dreads i contacted showed up at once,and crushed them.
Also i have had a number of pirates say "screw you" "bugger off" and so on when i demand they leave/drop pilots,and so on. I hit 2 mortors 1,2 and boom then they yell " i report you,you no say you were going to shoot".

To sum things up? 90% of players here suck! you just need to find the other 10%. Or find a nice place to vent,and gank the gankers back.
Nothing like killing everything in site in Alaska when your really pissed. transports/freighters? so what. Kill em with a dread,it's allowed there.:crazy:

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[Vladimir]

Troll much?

Stating facts much.

When Mining try to stay above/below plane,or well in back of fields,that makes it harder to get pirated for ore. Also they say dump it? do it,and blow it up so they do not get it. You did what was asked,if they kill you? report them. Rule states after you meet their demand,they cannot kill you.Screen it,and lol.(did this awhile back,and pirate was sanctioned).

I find that hardly doubtful. If someone was sanctioned in such situation, that was probably due to some cursing or other unrelated rule.

First of all, they can kill you after you meet their demands, they cannot kill you only before they state the demand. So no, dropping and destroying the ore or just annoying pirate somehow and flying away with a coolface won't work, neither threatening with sanctions or reporting will, stop lying to newer players, that sort of nitpicking without reading the rules themselves or with competent advisor might get them in trouble, i've met a lot of people yelling at me about some non-existant rules and have seen even more of them in sanctions section, the funniest one in last month being that guy yelling RP ADMIN FAIL. Then also they can just make another demand and blow you up if they want to be on the safe side. Yes, they could still be sanctioned on 1.2 basis, but it's clear who's trying to harm the gameplay in this situation you provided, and it's not pirates.

Regarding some retarded lines about killing everyone, especially fighters and freighters in dred, which is not possible unless it's afk or type kill, "in site" in alaska when "your" something is really pissed i won't even comment except for the fact that it's not exactly what you should do if you want to have a really good fun from disco. On the other hand, people are different, and 90% of them could totally have this kind of attitude as their primary activity here.

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[Levi Payne]

All right, thank you all for your responses. I really appreciate it.
My address to people who make accusations at me:
Get your facts straight. Please.

To sum things up? 90% of players here suck! you just need to find the other 10%. Or find a nice place to vent,and gank the gankers back.

That seems to consist of what 60% of responses are. A lot of people say to gank the gankers, to fight fire with fire. And I'll think about that, but I'm not sure that we should do that. I think it would lead to a downward spiral.
As for finding the good players, I've been working on that. I've found a good amount of people who actually care about the game.
However, for those of us in tiny factions, or those of us who can't seem to find people to help us. I was thinking about starting something.
The wingman program.
Make a thread, have people post on that thread with their Skype ID's and then add them to a group chat on skype where people can say "Hey, I'm on my bounty hunter, and I really want to fly around with someone so that I don't die."
Then if somebody is on, they'll be like "Oh, ok. I'll be on in a second, my chars name is _____"
I don't know if this would work, but tell me if it's worth a shot.

[jxie93]

It happens and you can't do anything about it, apart from leaving. I really hope that pressure from ganking doesn't force you to leave, because the last thing we need is honest and good players leaving the server due to certain jerks.

A typical way of resolving this would be the good ol' "an eye for an eye", you gank them right back. But it's not what we need and in fact it'll only worsen the situation. Remember, if you rage and gank them back then you're no better than they are.

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