New to Freelancer mods, have some questions and looking for recommendations
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Hey all,
It seems there’s been a serious lack of space sim games lately so I’ve been going back through some of my old games and am trying to find some mods to spice them up.
Anyways, I’m having some trouble sorting through all the mods on various websites because there often isn’t enough documentation to figure out which mods are the sort of thing I’m looking for or what additional software or fixes are needed to make them work.
I guess the first thing to do after I finish installing the game is get the mod manager. Does it work really well or are clean installs necessary with most mods anyways?
Next I need to figure out which mods I want to try first. Basically I’m looking for something that will allow me to play through the original single player campaign; hopefully with some graphics improvements and gameplay tweaks to make it a new experience. Most mods appear to be designed for multiplayer and its difficult to tell which ones work with single player.
The two that I saw that definitely work with SP campaign that I saw were the Before FP7 mod and the Discovery mod. I dont know if either really have any graphics improvements but I imagine I can add some of the generic texture improvements to any mod if I wanted to.
Does anyone have any other recommendations or tips to help me get started?
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There’s a high-def texture pack around, which should work with most things. A simple SP mod is Hostile Universe. Trent the Monkey King adds an extra mission.
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Crossfire, Shattered Worlds and afaik also Itano Circus and 88 Flak are compatible with the singleplayer.
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There is Discovery 4.85, dogfight, Freeworld a star wars TC, the eternal, the only Nightstalker’s univers, and coalition mod from the archived downloads.
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Thanks for the replies all. I discovered moddb has pretty much every mod ever made for the game on it and with lots of information and link for each of them, and that’s helped a lot.
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Very good and interesting singleplayer mod is Another Reality: Trace of Judas, although you have to know russian to understand the texts…
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What’s the story there then Nova, is there a russian freelancer community similar to this one with russian mods etc? Wouldn’t have a hope in hell of understanding any of it if there was, but curious all the same.
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We don’t have communities about FL such as Starport…
The most active and earliest community is Elite Games, but they’re about a lot of games besides FL. Anyway, they’re working of mods and other FL stuff. Some stuff is not public. And they’re… aggressive maybe… to new users joining them… word “elite” describing them as isBesides of EG…
Russian modders and server owners are very close, so we have the contacts (skype/icq) of each other, and if some help required we can ask each other privately.
Some discussions are on the servers sites. Biggest servers are Alliance (was biggest server about 4-5 years ago, you maybe know its story of stolen disco; there’re beta-test of my mod now after 2 years of vanilla FL), Orion, Renaissance (new server with modified disco mod), Millenium (almost dead now), EG Main HQ (Elite Games FL server - vanilla fl with insignificant modifications).And the FL group(forum) in Vkontakte(Facebook clone).
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Nova wrote:
And they’re… aggresive maybe… to new users joining them… word “elite” describing them as is“elite” actually comes from the game called Elite, so the site is about Elite-like and other space sims.
But i see what you mean by ‘aggressive’ there
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Not yet :))
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Well I’ll be darned, I never took any notice of where any of you come from, but looking at your info on the side looks like there’s a few of you that are from russia. Always throws me when everyone is speaking english. I shall pay more attention from now on.
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Alright, well I ended up just playing through the single player campaign with only the texture upgrade. It was only a modest change but I decided that since I hadnt played in so long I might as well play the original game first to get reacquainted with gameplay and stuff. It was good to revisit some of the missions.
Anyways, now that I’ve played through the storyline and gotten reacquainted with the game, I’m willing to try the mods that cant be played with the campaign and possibly make significant changes to gameplay. I am however, still wanting to stick with the same general atmosphere, so I’m not interested in total conversions or major style changes.
I was thinking about giving Discovery, Crossfire, or Shattered Worlds a try. All three seem to be pretty popular and have a lot of support, while not making the original game completely unrecognizable. I’m certainly open to suggestions.
Out of curiosity, do any mods remove the linear progression of missions and equipment of Liberty -> Bretonia -> Kusari -> Rheinland? I always through it was really goofy from an RP/atmosphere perspective. It seems like for multiplayer it would make more sense to make each faction equalish. Just a thought.
If anyone has an comments or ideas, they’re more than welcome. I figure I’ll probably start trying mods more or less one by one anyways, but starting with some focus is always good. I might have to copy my Freelancer installation into a couple different directories so I can try multiple mods simultaneously. How well does that work?
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I was thinking about giving Discovery, Crossfire, or Shattered Worlds a try. All three seem to be pretty popular and have a lot of support, while not making the original game completely unrecognizable. I’m certainly open to suggestions.
I have only played Shattered Worlds from these mods by myself and I can say that it rocks pretty much. Maybe it was the best mod I ever played. Another mod which might be worth your attention is 88Flak. NPC wingmen, total rebalancing, NPC bots with character behaviour (those bots simulate players, afaik), graphic overhowls and so on. I haven’t played it by myself yet, but I hardly found any comments in which users complain about Flak, and most do like it pretty much.
Out of curiosity, do any mods remove the linear progression of missions and equipment of Liberty -> Bretonia -> Kusari -> Rheinland? I always through it was really goofy from an RP/atmosphere perspective. It seems like for multiplayer it would make more sense to make each faction equalish. Just a thought.
AFAIK Flak & Shattered Worlds do, the other two mods you mentioned above maybe as well (though, I cannot say for sure).
If you are looking for a nice, fast-pacing SP mod, give Itano Circus a try. Also, you can additonally use FLHack and FL single player console, which allows you, for isntance, to own more than one ship.
If anyone has an comments or ideas, they’re more than welcome. I figure I’ll probably start trying mods more or less one by one anyways, but starting with some focus is always good. I might have to copy my Freelancer installation into a couple different directories so I can try multiple mods simultaneously. How well does that work?
Well, you don’t need to. Just use FLMM and deactivate and activate the mods before you are starting the game.
If you want to use different directories for mod, I think it is best if you simple activate the mod through FLMM and copy the FL directory then, then deactivate the mod, next one.
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Phoenix mod also does singleplayer, open single player and multiplayer
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This is a repeat:
This server is picking up to 3-4 players a day now so, it’s showing that many are wanting something different to play than just plain old Freelancer and basic modifications. Since no-one above is recommending it, I will again and again. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with the mods previously mentioned and I’ve played them and the servers. At this time, the Underverse doesn’t have SP but, I do believe it’s going to be included in it soon. Too early to tell at this time because I’m not privy to all that’s going on with new ideas and/or things going to be implemented in the coming release.
Here it is again.
HunterKiller wrote:
And let’s not forget the Underverse since one of it’s creators has made a program called TCM-Total Conversion Starter Pack to allow all the be able to create their own mod.Sorry, but I had to add this to the mostly suggested mods above.
Great atmosphere and players. Server up time, 999.99%.(like pure silver) May not have the largest player base but, it’s in the top 3 of the Most Active Servers List 95% of the time.
Very well balanced and much to do there including many Server Events. Those of which are, very well organized.
Check the links above for Mod, times and dates. Many Server Events are even player hosted to add even more excitement and challenge to keep things happening throughout the week so, there’s never a dull moment on the Underverse. You’ll not be disappointed, that’s for sure.
Note: The lower caption, Universal Wars in the picture above, is only a tag for myself and has nothing to do with naming on the Underverse.
I’d like to add that after viewing the Most Active Server List this morning, it’s been in the Top 3 for the past year. So, it goes to show that the with this years average, Underverse is one of the top three mods being payed server-side all year. It continues to gather players from all around on a daily basis and that is something to say for itself.
Here’s just a small view of what you can expect from all the Special Events that take place on the Underverse. These are listed in the General Public Forums so, you don’t have to register to view them. You can link to the download for the mod in the forums portal.
Drop in and say, Hi and if you don’t like what you see, then by all means go. No-one will have any hard feelings about it at all. Just have fun and enjoy the game.
Here’s a small example of one of the Events that takes place on the Underverse. This is how the Fighter Madness is set up and played out to see Who’s the Best Fighter of the Week on the Underverse
A view of the winners for the Guns Only HF/VHFs Event;
(click to enlarge)
This Event is held for all class of ships.More info about the Underverse can be found Here
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JustAWhisper wrote:
Out of curiosity, do any mods remove the linear progression of missions and equipment of Liberty -> Bretonia -> Kusari -> Rheinland? I always through it was really goofy from an RP/atmosphere perspective. It seems like for multiplayer it would make more sense to make each faction equalish. Just a thought.88Flak also does this.
