@CommanderArgelo Yeah, I thought it had worked in the past. I’ll have to test spacepop for ships in space when I get a chance, maybe I’m just getting old and mad lol.

Disregard that, I don’t think basepop changes that at all, at least not from a quick test.

@Beagle Have you tried approaching the problem from the missile end instead of the cm? Making missiles slower and dummer until you do get a good cm effect?

@CommanderArgelo Have a look at EXE/freelancer.ini and you’ll find these entries. I think from memory some of them shouldn’t be messed with, but I think spacepop and basepop might work, I’ve definitely played with them in the past. Try changing basepop to one of these BELOW_NORMAL, NORMAL, ABOVE_NORMAL, same with spacepop

[Initial SP DLLs]
path = …\dlls\bin
DLL = Content.dll, GameSupport, HIGHEST
; required to operate gates and docks
; required to create ships in space
DLL = Content.dll, SpaceSupport, NORMAL
DLL = Content.dll, BaseSupport, NORMAL

DLL = Content.dll, StoryLauncher, BELOW_NORMAL ;story/static missions
DLL = Content.dll, SpacePop, LOWEST ;populator
DLL = Content.dll, AISandbox, BELOW_NORMAL
DLL = Content.dll, TestAutomation, BELOW_NORMAL
DLL = Content.dll, BasePop, LOWEST

@CommanderArgelo I might try again if I find spare time, I just wasn’t expecting to encounter other problems along the way. Hope you get to the bottom of it one way or another.

@Gold_Sear It’s weird mate, he gave me a download link for the mod, it won’t even launch for me, so there’s not much point trying to replicate what he has. There’s lots of mods to shields, loadouts, equipment, you won’t replicate it by plugins and hacks alone.

Just revert to an earlier save, it makes plenty of them along the way, you won’t lose out on much in the way of time. It’s not worth the hassle.

Yeah, it would be nice to clear this up. I know he’s made changes to shields, but placing the equivalent player shield on cosmo doesn’t cause any problems. He does return to a fully charged shield state after he gives up as opposed to about 5% with an npc shield, I don’t know why that is though seeing as there’s no time for the recharge rate to take effect.

He’s told me he’s using the HD mod as his base, so assume that any changes made in the HD mod are present.

Upload the file somewhere and I’ll have a look at it if you like. You broke something, you’ve just given up looking for what it is. I personally think it’s always best to bury dead bodies rather than leave them rotting in the street, causes disease later on and more dead bodies.

Okay, so the npc shield does regen very slowly anyway, even though it only has a value of 1. When I try it his shield goes to 0, hull takes damage, he gives up and it restores a very small amount of shield which then regens slowly.

Have you tried starting a new game with a new save file in case the save is broken?

But you said his shield regenerates…

In equipment/st_equip.ini

NPC shield

[ShieldGenerator]
nickname = npc_shield01_mark03
regeneration_rate = 1
max_capacity = 1124

Player shield

[ShieldGenerator]
nickname = shield01_mark03_lf
regeneration_rate = 25
max_capacity = 1124

Cosmo is not supposed to die is he from memory, It’s messing up the triggers and fuses somehow, it’s supposed to light a burning fuse, and he whines a lot. If you kill him it fails.

Didn’t you say something about putting player shields on NPC’s a while ago, and I said at the time things can get complicated if you’re making a single player mod. NPC’s shields don’t regen, so it would suggest you might have somehow changed his shield type.

Missions/mission02/npcships.ini

[NPCShipArch]
nickname = MSN02_Cosmo
loadout = MSN02_Cosmo

Ships/loadouts.ini

[Loadout]
nickname = MSN02_Cosmo
equip = npc_shield01_mark03, HpShield01

That would be the first thing to check, if that’s good then have you edited the values of npc shields to regen?

This is what happens when we’re watching a David Attenborough show and also obsessed with Freelancer.

Okay thanks. It would have to be a vanilla issue if that were the case. I’m pretty sure I know what was doing it.

It’s my own personal mod so I am using some FX from the Disco mod, specifically a particle FX that they attach to some tradelane rings in nebulas. It replaces the lights with a particle FX, so 16 of them per ring. I added them to the first and last ring in each lane, and also added 12 of them to planetary docking rings.

I think what was happening, and why it was crashing at planets, is that with sometimes 3 tradelanes and a docking ring in that area, it was adding up to 50 or so of these particle FX and the game just can’t cope with it.

I thought it was fine when I used it in the past, but perhaps I was wrong about that, could have been one of the last things I was playing around with before I stopped a couple of years back.

NPC shields don’t recharge, player shields do. You’re going to have to think about the balance effect of them having rechargeable shields and not being able to fire all of their guns flat out if you change out power plants, because they will still keep firing a single gun rather than stop and recharge unless they’re evading.

Hey bud, Glock sent me a message a couple of years ago on the old starport site. We abused each other in the usual manner, as is custom, and that was the last I spoke to him.

He was still running Asylum51 a few years ago, but it wasn’t FL related. I think it was a forum for batshit crazies to voice their concerns about socialist trouser weasels, he was off his meds at that time I suspect.

I like to believe he and Deacon rode off into the sunset together on their bikes whistling Dixie, and lived happily ever after. The status of Lewis and the other horsemen is unknown.

Yeah cool, I’m wondering how the job board plugin works, is that something that only triggers when you open the job board itself, or would it cause something to happen on dock. The only other thing I have in mind, because it’s planets I’ve been seeing it on, is the scripts from this https://www.moddb.com/games/freelancer/addons/planetscapes-fixed-for-169-resolutions.

They’re all landing pad scripts, and it crashes as that would be loaded. That has a lot of downloads though and no mention of it.

That is what I’ve been doing so our thinking is aligned. I’m running around on base jflp and it seems to be fine, without a 1.1 patch. I’m testing now with just Adoxa’s plugins I’ve mentioned on 1.0, so I’ll see how that goes. It might just be a case of ditching my old files, no big deal.

I don’t expect a game of this age to be flawless on windows 11 and newer hardware anyway, 10th gen intel and a 4060ti, an odd crash here and there will happen.

I’ve been flying a loop of planets, Manhattan to New Tokyo, to New London, to New Berlin and back to Manhattan. If it crashes on a dock with one of those planets, the autosave has me back to the system jumpgate entry, and then it docks fine at said planet. So it doesn’t seem to be related to the planet itself, which is what makes it hard to fathom. FLSpew has nothing other than system exit for the dock crash.

How to pin it down.

I’m actually only using jflp.dll, hudshift.dll, mp3codec.dll, and the stuff you very kindly made for me, matchjob.dll, poststorydiff.dll, and if I’m not using the last one I use matchplayer.dll instead.

I can remember when you made matchplayer I said it doesn’t work, and you said are you using 1.0, which I was, so you changed it to work with 1.0, being the saint that you are! So am I in a pickle here with using a mix of some things that should be 1.0 and some that should be 1.1, and what should I do about that, move to 1.1 do you think.

I am using the difficulty modifiers on the HD mod as well if that might cause an issue.