Why not to try to make mod to Space Empires 4 (or 5, if someone is able to take models from the game, yet I prefer SE4 because of the square system, not hexagonal one), which is set in vanillia Freelancer times OR even better - pre-Gallic Discovery?
It is possible to try remaking original maps into this. It's just matter of sprites of course for some original systems, like that pinky Unknown.
"The tension between all four houses has become less peaceful. Since The Nomads were driven back from the Sirius, the peace is fragile. The Nomad War was surely to unite the humanity, but it became the opposite. The Liberty and Rheinland blame each other about the political situation, Kusari struggles with the Bretonia about the claim onto Tau systems. Even the pirates built up the strong fleets and made two opposite minor alliances - The Corsairs and The Outcasts. And the Nomads haven't been swept from the board as many would hope..."
Thing is simple: players rules of one of seven factions: The Liberty, The Kusari, The Bretonia, The Rheinland, The Outcasts Alliance and The Corsair Empire. This number may have change, since someone would like to incorporate Gallia as well, or just put some minor factions as well (even if those are just NPC) to make all the things more interesting.
Making the maps wouldn't be hard at all, but TL would be no more (since there's no option to putting them, making the whole game more 88Flak like). The colonisation of the worlds also would be disabled a bit, or just we could remake some planet sprites into bases and made them colonisable and capturable (battleship Hood anyone?)
We could even try to play with convention and make something unsual, like a board game based onto same rules. The four houses, two pirate alliances and the Nomads). The systems would be connected like it was in the game, but making connections by JG more profitable than JH, like double movement or something like that - to make some tactical addition into board game.
In fact, the mod-thing sounds more possible for bunch of fans, trying to remake ships into sprites and so on - yet there should not be option of the generic map but playing onto preset map. I believe I could do something like that for the normal game without any sprites. Yet the problem would be there are no jumpgates, just warp points in SE4.
Do you think those ideas would be possible OR they are just silly?
But seriously?
You're going to want the Nomads and Pirates mod for this idea if you want to realize it.
Because that's how quite a few of the FL stuff works. Off-planet.
Edit:
Nomads and Pirates or Pirates and Nomads or whatever basically substitutes planets with ships/bases for certain empires.
Meaning instead of just shipyard ships/bases, you can have something like freeports being responsible for research/intel/stuff.
And put more stock into asteroid mining and the like.
One of these days, there will be a clever, stylish and/or funny signature here.
This is still not that day, however.
It is rather the realisation of my dream: take lead of Kusari (or Rheinland) and literally conquer the sector...
DarkOrbit... I haven't played it in ages AND YET, this is one of the good ideas... yet, unusable because it would only contain houses as factions. This is also the flaw of 4X version of the Freelancer, since there's too many minor factions to choose from. Yet I'm still suprised that no one has made mod with Freelancer ships and design into strategy game.
Edit: Playing the houses would offer other tactics. Houses would prefer casual fleet and colony management plus strong point on the diplomacy, while Nomads would go for Scorched Earth tactics, destroying everything and anything it comes into their way. Pirates would have faster ships and small bases in nearly all systems across all Sirius, yet would be capable of having their ships nearly invisible for rest of the houses.
Being rather bored, I've did something like this. It's not 100% accurate AND it rather covers vanillia universe. Note this is not a full and not finished map.
Edit:
I thought that this thing may be used not in pure strategy game, but why not to try to play something like unplugged board version of Freelancer, of course simplified for a n00b players.
![[Image: 7d2f9697b15a73c87e157c8a2fc1e04b.jpg.jpg]](http://www.download.net.pl/upload/files/gallery/old/f2/f/2/7d2f9697b15a73c87e157c8a2fc1e04b.jpg.jpg)
![[Image: fbg_by_torisjamesgray-d6rv4mi.png]](http://fc09.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2013/301/8/5/fbg_by_torisjamesgray-d6rv4mi.png)