How to Save Discovery Freelancer

[Greylock]

dumb question
but could tradelanes be set to go faster and cruise speeds buffed across the board?

Trade Lanes, probably, I'm not too sure how to do that one. Cruise speed, yes, it's doable. Vanilla cruise speed was 300, if you remember. Nowadays it's minimum 350 (not counting the barge).

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[Karlotta]

dumb question
but could tradelanes be set to go faster and cruise speeds buffed across the board?

It's not a dumb question, and yes, it's possible to make lane speed faster.

When I suggested it to devs when they asked for ideas on how to make the lane network better, they said something like "we dont talk about that now".

Buffing lane speed to 130%-180% would concentrate more trade routes on the lanes, making player meetings and interactions more likely, and doing pirates an additional favor by making it harder for traders to drop of the lane and do a u turn as soon as they see a red on scanner.

It would also make trade more profitable compared the the OP pve zone / mission money making.

And make getting from A to B faster, also making finding interaction easier.

But hey... when "we dont talk about it" we dont talk about it.

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User was banned for: https://discoverygc.com/forums/showthrea...tid=200950
Time left: (Permanent)

[Czechmate]

So like..Why not? Faster Thruster works too @Squad tested some in the LF race. Just faster way to get to places

I already don't even bother moving BC+ without a JD really more than one system

[Lusitano]

dumb question
but could tradelanes be set to go faster and cruise speeds buffed across the board?

it is not dumb. about the trade lanes i don't know, but before coming to discovery, i was once in a mod that the cruise speed was, if i'm not mistaken, 900.

[Piombo65]

(not only vanilla, consider the Olympia wreck in Omega-3)

Just wanna point out that the Olympia having a Jump Drive was retconned. Want to make sure that's understood, and that Jump Drives are not canon.

...and the new excuse about get stuck IN THE MIDDLE of an asteroid field is...?

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{AC}= Auxilia Coalition - Recruitment - Register your mercenary company

[Czechmate]

dumb question
but could tradelanes be set to go faster and cruise speeds buffed across the board?

It's not a dumb question, and yes, it's possible.

When I suggested it to devs when they asked for ideas on how to make the lane network better, they said something like "we dont talk about that now".

Buffing lane speed to 130%-180% would concentrate more trade routes on the lanes, making player meetings and interactions more likely, and doing pirates an additional favor by making it harder for traders to drop of the lane and do a u turn as soon as they see a red on scanner.

It would also make trade more profitable compared the the OP pve zone / mission money making.

And make getting from A to B faster, also making finding interaction easier.

But hey... when "we dont talk about it" we dont talk about it.

I mean you'd nerf profits, PvE Zones are already kinda lasered. But

1) Traders would have to come through my pirating bottlenecks more often
2) People can join fights faster.
3) Experienced traders and traders that pay attention would get more pronounced gains vs others as you'd have to hit tradelanes more often.
=>Also more momentum, see more sights faster. Why not make shippos go zoom instead of ever shrinking and deleting systems

[Major.]

If you allow JD4 jump trading again, you can expect the DHC Barge every 10 Minutes in New York at Planet Manhattan.

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[Deluxe]

In my opinion:

1.
For the playerbase the Map is far to big. The interactions with players are the main source of fun in this game (wether it is PvP or RP driven). Within the current Map you need about 150+ Players for a good amount of player interactions
That is ecspecially important on Disco in contrast to most other Servers because: On most Server nearly all players gathered together in like 4-5 Systems even when Freelancer was at his peek, so the Map wasnt that relevant. But on Disco everthing is based to the RP-Faction system what mean all players are scattered all over sirius. With the current playerbase with like 50 sometimes 60 players in the prime time you need to cut of like half (yes I mean it!) the systems and of cause you have to erase plenty of ingame factions.

The server have more then enough talented/dedicated wirters, to find a neat RP-based story behind that.

2.
Rework the offical Factionsystem. Currently there is not a single (sorry if anyone feel offendet by this) near to active offical faction, beside Phoenix not a single managed to get over 10 days playtime last month - that means not even 10 players with 1 day per month playtime! (And the time already include afk ideling for activty points). Im not 100% sure what there need to be done, but playing in Clans (factions on Disco) are the main reason for long term motivation.
Some ideas:
With smaler Map/less ingame factions there is first automatically more concentration of playerbase.
Extend the ingame relevance of factions.
The two mechanics I would suggest (and I am realy surprised it isnt already part of Disco, because of your RP setting) would be
1. Offical Factions able to conquer Systems - maby even wipe out some (example: Maby Rheinland overtake Liberty ->huge posibilities for RP - role of Liberty factions would change completly)
2. In adapting to 1. give Faction more rights to change their reputation to ingame factions -that also should count for normal IDs (dynamic ID System) -> (example if rheinland take over liberty, it would probably be an option to work together with criminals ...)

I have to say, this would need a lot of work and hard to say if anyone wants to do it/ can do it for that amount of players. (But keep in mind with smaler map, everything gets more easy to implement.) And there will be a lot to consider, like is it still allowed to participate in high roles in more than one faction? Should there be a reset mechanism after some time, to reset Reputaion/Stations and Systems belonging to wich factions - so if your favorite faction dies, you can play it after some time again? (maby if for example red hessian dies fast in first period, they get some love in the next one )

3. Dynamic economy (already working FL-Hook based implementations exist -ask w0dk4 form HHC, he would probably give it to you) - best improvement for traders possible, HHC was on of the most liked servers for traders in spite of the biggest Ship had 450 cargo, normal FL prices and nearly nothing to buy with credits.

4. Make Snub PvP-mechanics more vanilla, especially the mechanics how missles/torps work. The substitution for their role in PvP with remoding the mines, was a huge downgrade of fighting mechanics ->you would get a bunch of players here who still wanna play but their servers died. They would normally come here automatically cause of the highest playerbase but get repelled by the fighting mechanics here.

5. Just for my personal feeling, implement a scaner option within only real players are displayed. Nothing more annoying that having like 30 red targets under important and not beeing able to see if there is another player.

[Binski]

At what point will you realize that your wildly outlandish suggestion posts are incompatible with the game we're trying to play?

See, if this were somebody else, I might be inclined to give actual feedback, but since it's you, I know that your only response to feedback is to call everybody wrong, toxic, misinformed, or any combination thereof. Just stop.

I see this as nothing but negative posturing out of personal bias to protect something you'd rather deny of me to save for yourself. But why should you win over me? Please provide better reason than what I already provided to the contrary. Think about how all of the changes and direction the mod has gone over years has only yielded the same result: shink, and unhappy players. How have you not realized that clinging to the same old line of thinking is exactly what is killing this place, not the contrary. I dare the Devs to trial my changes and see what happens. You have nothing, but the subconscious fear you reveal you have by even commenting.

For the love of all stop signs in the galaxy. Please just cease and desist. I mean allow multiboxing? What a great idea... how about we allow modifying ini files and disable anti cheat while we're at it?

Will you please stop using the term cease and desist, everyone just stop. You're not cops, you're certainly not server cops. And yes, when the majority of the week there are only 30 players online, how could bumping that number to 40, or 50, be that bad, when its just going to be someone flying an extra transport, that can be pirated. Pirate a ship for 3 mil, pirate 2 carrying the same amount of cargo for 6. 1 pilot between 2 ships can't fight or fly with both, one will go down very easy. Most will accept the additional danger and be prepared to pay for their ships passage. How is that hard math to figure out?

Binski when you think of an idea, think about how you'd use it. And then think about when your opponent/someone you hate uses it.

For example: You see a bunch of Mollys in Dublin, cool. You try to find them, but you can't because they were off plane JD4ing off to trade elsewhere.

My solution is to not limit it completely, and at the very least you can make it so when a JD is charging it gives away its general position with the same notice it gives when its opening a hyperspace breach in the first place. Make that a server wide notice instead of just local. Really again with 30-50 people online on average, how many pirate attempts are we losing out on? Its just killing activity to have limits to appease an IRRATIONAL FEAR by the community and its old line of thinking. You are all only addressing the shrink, you only treat the symptoms of the disease, but don't go for the root cause. Its time to think differently, just try allowing these freedoms and they will prove their own worth. There are many ways to compensate, if they need help with ideas I'm obviously willing to help with that.

I only read through it very quickly so forgive me if I misunderstood some of what you said.

- Allow JD4's to jump transports

This would cripple piracy even worse than it already is crippled now. I would however give freighters (which can be jumped atm) a little more cargo space to make jump trading / jump mining with a large group of people in freighters somewhat viable.

Here's how it seems to me. Instead of forcing people to trade the long way, it just drives people away in general. It also renders the value of the JD4 to a fraction of what it was and could be. I think it was well balanced. It takes hundreds of millions to get a ship able to use a JD4, able to use a hyperspace scanner, all of those cost hundreds of millions as well, not including jump batteries, fuel for scans, etc.

On top of that, it does allow players to build up to and earn a way to alleviate a great deal of logistical challenge that helps save time and effort. It doesn't totally remove activity though, it just frees up time doing certain things to do others. So, I'm not opposed to limits and ways to balance things out. We could have an anti-JD countermeasure added so anyone can interrupt a charging jump from anywhere in a system, and use it to 'ping' the ship to track it. I'd rather them think along the lines of giving another earnable technology to offset it instead of keeping it cut. You're talking to one of the biggest pirates that ever flew here, and it still doesn't scare me, it can be dealt with in other ways.

- Allow [limited] Multiboxing

Personally I think that allowing multiboxing for certain activities could be beneficial, but there is potential for abuse of some things.

Beneficial Multiboxing:
- Having several transports trading separately from each other. This raises chances for pirates to intercept your transports, also because its harder for a multiboxer to check the playerlist for all systems they have their transports moving through.

- having a [Help] tagged char in one "box" who will answer questions from noobs, while trading on other chars

- having a recruitment-char in a "box". Can be named such as: [Recruiter]-Br-Corp-Gateway|

Abuse of Multiboxing:
- sending a neutral snub to scout ahead of your traders/smugglers/hostile combat ships

- trading in a multiboxed convoy where 1 transport flies ahead and the others only follow from far if its clear

- [u] Mining for your own transports (makes the existence of the current co op mining system pointless)

Not sure how I feel about this use:
- Docking one or more snubs on your own carrier This may be abusable somehow (not sure if its abuse or legit use of things you payed for with credits) but it can also make the game very, very interesting and fun. For example you dock a repair ship, a bomber, and a vhf on your carrier and jump it all to where you want to go. I guess existing pvp rules will prevent abuse such as docking your snub in combat and then shooting with the carrier, because when ur pvp dead on the snub you are on the carrier too.

As for enabling the permitted uses and making the non permitted impossible/punishable, I guess there could be rules for tagging requirements of multiboxed ships. Maybe some coding in launcher of flhook too.

The [Helper] and [Recruiter] thing could very easily made legal and be encouraged by simply announcing the rule and letting people who have the gear use a PC and a Laptop at the same time.

Ahh well I'm not saying there may be no drawbacks, but we have drawbacks with the way it is now as well. My argument remains that its better to deal with that stuff as it may come and take our chances that it will actually still create more to do in the end than not.

As far as the carrier idea goes, to me, if a player can use their carrier to jump around, and use as their own mobile base, all the power to them. I'd love to try to escape back to my own carrier. Its not going to be easy, some will pull stuff like that off, some won't. We have a tendency here to not allow anything over these minute possibilities of abuses that always turned out to be a lesser threat than perceived. Especially over the last 3 years or so as population reached its current state.

-Void the oorp rules around enforcing roleplay consequences only while uncloaked

This makes it easy for people who want to screw other players over and stalk them to find dirt on them. Too abusable. There are already too many toxic "roLePlAy cOnSeQunCeS" being enforced that just screw players over.

Ahh but to me that's the very thing I want allowed now. Unless you can do that, people have a free invisibility shield themselves that is OP. I hate to say it but that's the name of the game. More often than not, you can't prove someone's up to something unless you observe them while cloaked. No one will talk out in the open or actually go to a base and dock on it where they could be seen supplying somewhere they'd otherwise deny. We need to start letting that stuff happen again, sorry but it kills this place just to spare some players inconvenience when they could just be more sure. The name of the game is trying to catch them unaware. It doesn't bother me if police catch a smuggler cloaked and fine them later on, or if a pirate catches someone supplying a corporate base after they denied it and caught them via spying, and puts a bounty on them. That's just reality.

I would only agree to "player driven changes" and POB challenges if all the parties affected agree to enter the challenge, and the consequences dont affect anyone that doesnt want to be a part of it. A challenge system with altered POB mechanics and rules (best to separate destructible and indestuctible POBs entirely through game mechanics, rules, and laws) that takes place only in locations where uninvolved players wont be affected could make things interesting.

But that defeats the entire purpose of the new system and FR in my eyes. The point will be that the game will go one without opponents. It becomes a game of principle. You could let factions gain quite easily, or not so easily. But stations that are out in the open, whether they have an active faction or not, should be fair game. They are just sitting there otherwise. This is an easy way for us to keep the universe changing in small ways, fight our small wars, and have ongoing conflicts/activity drivers using what we already have. Many factions would undoubtedly like to try to instigate against their enemies, try big moves of some kind. If we limit this to consent only, it goes nowhere instantly. If we limit it to only OF vs OF, it can be avoided. The main principle is that real things will be at risk of change, and to do something about it, you can get in game and get involved.

For the challenge system, I predict that for the first year it would be most active, and factions would have a few little wars to try to gain the places they have always eyed. Some will succeed, others won't. Eventually things will plataeu based on player population still, and all of the potential moves will have been made. So, some places will see the odd successful 'permanent' changes. Personally I don't think anything will stay all that permanent. Once a station in border zone falls to one faction, another can come along to challenge them as well. I forsee slow change, and that's the point. It would unfold in almost real time, and anyone could form a faction, if not already active, to try something. Otherwise the most popular ideas will have something decent to offer people.

Cut the server into 3 major sections.

I dont see how this would have any positive effects. It would make players more isolated and lonely, and they would be forced to make lots of chars instead of getting to use their favorite chars more. Creating more bottlenecks is good, but you dont have to separate the map into 3 pieces for that.

-Clarify what is/can be cannon or not, and acceptable RP
-New Community Attitude and enforcement from the staff-

Yes. Players need better lore, laws, rules, and game mechanic explanations, and faction leaders + staff need better guidance through codes of conduct. How ever "better" doesnt always mean "more". The rules, laws, and tutorials need to be condensed and simplified instead of making the hay stack even bigger for people who are trying to find the needle they are looking for. And disco staff have a habit of making things worse instead of better with their moderation style (just telling people to shut up and not resolve their differences, locking discussions because a few people trolled instead of stopping the trolls, threatening and handing out bans as if thats the only tool they have, double standards when allowing certain people to hold trial by discord and then banning people who defend themselves against provably wrong accusations). We dont need more of the same style, we need better style.

I'm not determined to see the map changes but I did want to put the idea out there as an option. Yes it would leave some inconsitencies, but to me at this point its worth it to on the other end create a situation that is more interesting and more enticing. But think of it this way, players will mostly start based on the restarts confined to one of the three zones. Which means each zone is like a shrunken server, it should be easier to get interactions within each zone if it has local trade routes from one end to the other across it. So instead of cutting systems, shrinking or altering routes, we just cut the map into zones that are each their own little world. Keeping players confined except by JD means ships in each zone are 'cornered' and confined. Each zone would then develop its own new route system with major routes of local traffic. Think of it another way, its like dividing the server into 3 'floors'.

I've never seen these "jump convoys" and I started to play at 2012/2013. In any case the rest of the paragraph after the first 3 sentences can be completely cut off by the suggestion title. They will have probably removed them because once someone had a jump drive in a transport, his probability to make 1 bilion/minute per session reached the 100% and as you could see, this saturated the economy of the game making everyone rich and finding the risk to continue to trade useless (since there's also no purposes if not money and some event).

Its just not true. People were using these to supply bases more so than jump trade for profit. People ruined jump trading for the same reason the Junker Congress jump convoys were ruined, feelings of jealous and inadequacy. Its not right. No one was missing out on that much. I knew because I was a pirate going with them. I knew they were spending most of the time before the jump slowly congregating, easily attackable by those who'd been willing to try. No one was, instead it was seen as impossible, and we were punished to appease the paranoid. They ruined the server with these decisions. These pirates that think they're missing out just need to actually try. But again, I support just making the jump notice visible to anyone on the server, so they will have a few minutes heads up a ship is planning to jump, and go looking. Will it work every time? No, but eventually they'll get it. Or you watch to see where they're going to and from, next time you can be waiting, etc. There are ways, I'm tired of seeing the place kept a skeleton to keep those players happy. All it did was drive people to do less in general, they already probably weren't contributing to the pirateable population.

This is not EVE Online. The Multiboxing is useless especially in this game, classified as "Space-Sim". The idea of using 2 ship, "one for a Carrier and one for a fighter" or "one for the miner and one for the transport" could also be good but it's like I fear that can be exploited in some way. Think what happens if, indeed, using your example Carrier/Fighter, you go to RP with someone as a Fighter and someone "Buttcloak/Shadowfight" your Carrier. You didn't have also the react time and you notice that only seeing the blue text at the system since you probably were in another place of the system and since there's the "2 lines prior pvp" rule, how can you respond to someone who you don't even know it was there? The multiboxing shouldn't be used not because "Breaks the rules" but because is disadvantageous and useless.

Yes you may have to sacrifice the normal guarantees you get from flying one ship. You get good advantages a lot but it can also drag you down. If you're flying a carrier on one side and your snub or miner on the other, and your carrier gets attacked, you can ignore your small ship to try and fight with the carrier. If your snub gets attacked? Well you must choose one, but thats the balancing factor. That's why its not so bad. If no one ever expects population to significantly climb back up, why would you bother care if people are multboxing? For it would mean this place is dead already. So yes there are ways to abuse, ways it can go wrong, but none of it matters. The advantages certainly now outweigh the disadvantages. And hey if population miraculously shot back up, this one's easy to reverse. But TBH I should always be able to fly a carrier ship and a snub, and take my chances. As long as we follow the rules, we're fine. Yes there may be circumstances we can't forsee, and that's the fun of playing with new freedoms.

I didn't understand this story of "Cloaks and JD out of RolePlay" when there are CANON facts (not only vanilla, consider the Olympia wreck in Omega-3) that used this equipment. This is one of the weirdest topics about RP management of this community; espionage and intelligence corporations can't exist if you avoid this kind of RP and if this would be decently allowed, people would also stop to FailRP in places where you shouldn't be talking certain arguments. I'd clarify/summarize this idea with a simple phrase: "Is it in the game and in InRP systems? that's RP."

Yeah that was a strange thing that happened with Omega-3. I'm not sure why it matters. When they needed it for plot armor, it was whipped out. Then suddenly ruled out. Personally I feel that whole situation was a disaster that went to waste. Well its fine if they are kept out of cannon I suppose, but not roleplay in general.

There's a Discord server where there are all OF 1ic/2ic players and storydev team which they discuss everything about the next changes of the mod universe. Sadly, as I also told in another thread, changing ownership of a base/system is difficult since looks like RP hostilities and OORP hostilities coincide themselves.

Well this underscores my main point to the entire thread and the OF challenge system. This is also why things take so long, and too much oorp consideration is made in limiting activities. We need an in-game driven system so we can turn the game back into the common medium we all use to determine some story. Large scale story can always be determined that way, but most story at this point, if allowed, would be just factions attacking each other, unlawfuls attacking lawful bases or planets, etc, as well as routes in between. That system would literally allow the factions to have some open ended chances for purpose, and write many other little stories in between. In fact if there are no plans for any more large wars, the OF challenge system is exactly what we need. Its years overdue in truth!

I already responded you in that but better if I clarify this:
Giving complete freedom to players to change the course of history is as good as bad: It can transform the entire Sirius sector in a Free-For-All where only the stronger triumph. Consider there could be absurd stuff like "Unlawful bunch of pirates, since its leader is OORP awesome, is supported by 99% of the community and will start to conquest the entire lawful CAPITAL system, then the entire house, and then THE ENTIRE SIRIUS, FORMING A NEW MANKIND EMPIRE AND... *Insert other Warhammer 40.000K memes here*!!!!". This is illogical, every faction has its limits in terms of resources, policy, numbers and ideology and that's why what I could also call "Anarchy RP" is highly not recommended. What I proposed in that thread, in fact, is giving this possibility only to "Non-canon" factions and in wild systems like Omicrons, Omegas, Taus and Sigmas. The canon ones should be "Protected" to maintain the "civilized" part of the mankind who decided InRP to live in peace or handling their own business without being threatened by the casual cringy pirate.

Ah but this is why I suggest it be an Official Faction right. And its limited to ID. So if there are two factions for the same ID, and they disagree on certain actions, I say let it be sorted out inrp. Existing factions will find if they do what they should be doing, they'll have no problems. People will want to join the faction thats doing stuff, where they might have a future growing, moving up the line.

The majority of this will all be unlawfuls attacking lawful locations to try and add them to their 'empire', or maybe they might want to give control to one of their sub entities like an unlawful corporation, etc. Why not allow for it all and see what happens? This is the exact change we need to foster new growth. Its not anarchy, we'll figure it out, just like we figured out how to play the game as it is over the last 10 years. So to me I'd rather see factions have 1 or 2 bases be designated as 'core' bases (not the Core) that are untouchable. The rest are a bonus, and technically they could lose them to other unlawfuls/quasi lawfuls, lawfuls, or be the ones adding to their faction/control.

How could people be happier with slow barely moving story progression, instead of one regularly moving along. You find out who's doing what, who's working on what surprises, by the headlines on the forum as they go. To me that sounds beautiful. And with limits, factions can only expand so far and stay that way. It will only be a matter of time before a faction that stole several bases may have them stolen back, or taken by another competitor. I'd love to preserve the mod as it is forever and not have to do any of that, but it will only die otherwise. We could be having a lot of fun with it, we just need a team who will work the gears for us!

I hope you don't mean "BS Included"; If they can CD too it's the end of everything. From the Freighter point of view I don't know what to say, there are transports with CDs too, why shouldn't those freighters have them? I abstain.

BS having them wouldn't be necessary, but it doesn't scare me. To me, why would they not have a CD? You'd think they could mount them, and need them. They are slower moving, you do move out of a BS's range easier on most ships other than transports, so yeah, I'm ok with battleships being able to interdict transports on their own.

If you allow JD4 jump trading again, you can expect the DHC Barge every 10 Minutes in New York at Planet Manhattan.

Well they can still disallow the barge, that's not all that important. The point is to get some more value out of the things, more use out of what we have. At the moment, with no other changes, if they allowed jump trading again you'd simply see the numbers go up a bit over time, and people would be cut a bit of break. With the other changes it will all combine.

The moral of the story is folks: There are problems either way. My argument is, its actually better to endure the problems of everyone having more freedoms than taking them away to suit the few. It always means there will be more ways of dealing with problems in-game, and we should always have a policy of finding a way to deal with imbalances in-game first, before making stats changes or rule changes to remove abilities. Allow all of those suggestions (the map one is another issue) and you'll find that it won't end RP or disco, you'll find more people online trying stuff out and having fun with stuff, which is where activity on disco starts.

[The_Godslayer]

Dear God almighty.

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- Allow JD4's to jump transports - There were whole companies that had to cease to exist when they cut this. As far as I'm concerned, with the population we have on average the argument jump convoys were cutting into the flow of trade didn't hold up with me. There are undoubtedly ways to offset any potential negative impact that doesn't involve removing the ability completely. This also will pay off if we implement some long term changes around use of POB's and a faction 'challenge system'. I see people arguing that it takes too long to get around to find action, or that its too difficult to do this or that (if we got more complex here), but that can all be solved by using what we already have. We should not be afraid to let people branch out, build secret bases, form companies to offer special supply services, etc. (On the long term, a JD countermeasure could be devised, or a way to detect ships charging for a jump to help those hunting them, etc).

Ah, yes, allowing already silent traders to 1) Farm their money with no time constraint and 2) avoid all forms of consequences for both not caring about RP and for basic rule of nature like taking a paper thin transport loaded with valuables through deep space. As if the infinite capspam from the money farmers wasn't bad enough, lets just completely throw out the entire economy as it is. OR, nerf money rates to the point where the ONLY way to make a profit is to jumptrade. Very nice. A huge burst of activity, followed by the permanent death of all forms of trading as the player economy becomes saturated to the points of hundreds of billions of credits. Completely disregarding the server hardware and software impact that PoB spam has, the very first issue will be people spamming 5 or 10 weapon platforms on top of every sellpoint in order to play Starcraft in a spacesim. The same goes for your faction challenge thing. You're just playing a real-time-strategy at that point, and at that point get off of freelancer and go play Starcraft or Age of Empires or literally anything else. Second, and more importantly, and something you still refuse to address, is that your proposed system only benefits people who have no life, and have 150 hours per week to throw at this game. The only people who would have a modicum of a chance would be people who live in the timezone of whatever dominant friend group of no-lifers there is. Anyone not living in your own country will have no way to do anything but fuck off the server permanently as their faction gets deleted because they have school, a job, a sleep schedule, and a life. You refused to address this in the faction challenge thread, and I'm sure you'll do it again, because you know I have you cornered on that one. You just want a way for you and your little circle of friends to win at everything because you don't have anything worthwhile to do.

- Allow [limited] Multiboxing - This is a stopgap measure in a way, since population is not what it was in 2012 when I first hit this place, we really don't have much to lose anymore. 'Limited' means within reason even still, we could set a limit of 2 ships per players. Especially for the purposes of using Docking Modules, players could use a larger ship as a base ship for their own snub or mining freighter, as well as for others. You could fill your own transport, etc. Do pirates really mind coming across 2 ships in an ore field with only one pilot between them? Its more likely you can easily claim demands for all ships. At this point in the server's life I really can't see how towing one extra ship for trade or supply will be that bad. I would say until population is brought back up significantly, we could stand to allow limited multiboxing. In my case, I always wanted to fly a carrier as a base ship that I could just leave sit in space, and a freighter or snub to launch from, go out and interact, etc. With JD's, that's even cooler since you can jump from region to region and do that. If you get attacked? Choose which ship to fly and hope for the best for the other one.

Not only does this ignore what it would do to the economy, you also ignore the fact that people have setups varying from yours. Guess what? Anyone with multiple monitors and enough patience to learn dual-inputs suddenly owns every capship fight. Now someone can fly a BCR and a BS and you can do nothing to stop them because you're CDd and a cerbdread is cruising on you. Now PvP is broken, and people are leaving the server even more. Now doesn't that seem counter productive? Do you even care?

And that's completely overlooking the curb-stomp this would deliver to the economy, not to mention the surge of RPless powertraders who now don't even have to ask for help to openly display how little they care about the universe that's been built here.

-Void the oorp rules around enforcing roleplay consequences only while uncloaked - Lets face it, if you come across somebody doing something interesting while you're cloaked, you wouldn't drop your cloak to be able to count what you see. The odds may not be in your favor, you may want to keep your knowledge a secret for the time being. It would generate a lot more RP for law enforcement especially to let them go out and if they see something they can't tackle right then and there, simply file a report and send out a charge across the Neural Net like everything else The same goes for espionage, in making it unequivocally clear that if you observe other players' activities while cloaked, you can RP around the consequnces of that (EX: Observing certain individuals or organizations supplying bases in secret, which you can really only catch if you follow them cloaked). It could be a cop following a Freelancer to a hidden illegal base, or a pirate following a Freelancer to a corporate base.

First and foremost, ever since this post went unanswered, the roleplay consequences while cloaked thing only applies to House Military, Police, and Intelligence factions. Why? Because Houses have a lot more roleplay strength than any other group. This rule is made to prevent some intel from parking a cloaked fighter 10K from Malta, waiting for a Junker to fly by, then yeeting away and making a sirius wide comm, permanently removing Junkers from all houses, then dropping all their RP assets on top of every Junker base and deleting them from the mod. Now, either this is exactly what you want, and you're just looking for cheep excuses to make your faction win, and every other faction lose because you have the mentality of a 4 year old, OR you did exactly zero research into your opinion or WHY the rules are the way they are, and you just don't care enough about others to put the effort in.

Also *consequences

-Cut the ship/tech/ID compat system almost entirely - Allow for a lot more weapons and ship/ID combos to spice things up for a while, let people try some new things, and yeah, let the RP consequences play out. So there will be a great deal of temptation to use a lot of illegal 'lucrative' weapons and ships, which will all work fine, but be a great cause for law enforcement woes and hurt pride of such factions for some time to come. Not to mention, has anyone in the last 10 years tried running the server without that plugin even running to see if it makes a difference on performance?

So just completely ignore that other factions would build things differently. Just throw the little bit of necessary realism for the fiction to even feel worth it out the window. Has no one ever told you "only reality is stranger than fiction"? Do you know the fundamentals for worldbuilding? For any good fictional world to work, it must feel possible, and then you add a few exceptions. A good world would have people saying "If we had faster than light travel, and this alien tech that optimizes mass-to-energy conversion, this world could work". The more you throw out, the further it gets from reality, the worse the story gets, the less involved people can get in it, and ultimately you'll just kill the community, which was exactly the point you said you were trying to make. A Lane Hacker gun will have different wiring than a Kusari gun, and unless Lane Hackers know how to make an adapter for the Kusari gun, they wouldn't be able to use it. This is a logical conclusion for technological advancements that spent nearly the first 100 years of their existence (until 96 A.S.) COMPLETELY INDEPENDANT of each other. Another important point is that groups capable of developing their own tech would want severely to not let others access it. That's why patents exist in real life. Throwing out the realism of the world will just throw the story into the trash, which will in turn throw the RP into the trash, which will inevitably kill the community you say you're trying to save.

-Form Sub-Team to implement regular patches that facilitate player driven changes - We need the Admins/GMs/Devs to sort out who can make it happen. That is, in conjunction with my next suggestion, to make changes happen on a more regular basis to reflect player driven outcomes. Once that is done, if a new system is put in place, the most of it can be handled forum-side by anyone able to process requests, to hand it over to those who can make the desired changes (based on what players are doing under the system) and put them into effect.

I'm 90% sure that Widow's already made a post on this, but in the event that she didn't, let me spell it out for you: Staff Structure Optimization is already happening. Pay attention. Stop running your mouth. As for player driven changes, you're currently the shining example of why that cannot and will not happen.

-Implement OF Right to Challenge for bases/territory - In relation to this thread Official Faction Challenge System, once members of the team are sorted out (or added to fill that void) and we allow for the new right to take effect, there will be a whole new avenue available for player activity. This should give a great incentive to players to bolster existing or form new OF's with the hopes of making territorial gains. No guarantees, just a hope, that is exactly what will turn this place into a new open ended game. The system will ensure the rate of change and how much player effort is needed to do what. That can all be adjusted as needed separately. Yet just allowing the right creates a new situation that will allow for a new degree of immersion to return to the server. Factions will actually be able to form plans to expand, and in this system, go to work either accumulating SciData for investing in big moves, or building up the money to buy it from those that do deal in the commodity. This should create a regular industry for players to attempt to earn chances to make serious gains, while generating events that allow for everyone to get involved on one side or another.

Ah yes, let the no-lifers instantly delete every faction they don't like. As has been clarified in that thread: No. Just stop.

Also, curb your self-importance. "Implement my thing because everything I say is right, and will save Discovery Freelancer" is a great way to piss everyone off and guarantee that no one will listen to you. Sit down, be humble. You're not the Messiah, you're not some blessed individual who's intellect is above all, and just like everyone else to attempt to claim that title, you're not the Jesus of the poor people. Go read through your own thread and actually address the problems with something that doesn't amount to overly-verbose "it won't because I say it won't", because the number of holes in this theory alone could grate wheels of parmesan in one pass.

-Add CD's to all ships - This one is pretty straight forwards. It was good back in the day when Tau-23 was packed for hours a day. It barely matters anymore. Ships like the Democritus, Camara, and Salvager could all use CD's, and it would totally change each ship, basically creating new ships for people to actually get use out of. People want the option to use those ships for more than just chillin. If they could be converted for mercs or pirates, that would add some new variety to what we see out there, and just might get some people out give them a try. All sorts of new things arise from this simple change, which also requires nothing all that major.

Well, from what I read in your NEMP thread, it became very clear that you don't PvP with snubs. However, reading this has also convinced me that you clearly don't PvP with caps either, and I hope for your continued semblance of acumen you don't mean this to enable serious PvP with 5kers. Do you even PvP? Do you even care about PvP? Do you realize that there's other players in this game other than your tiny circle of friends, and that they have thoughts as well? Do you know how long Capitol Ship PvP has been tweaked and rebalanced? Do you know how long Battleships have gone without CDs, and how long no one has ever felt the need to change this in any way, shape, or form? Please actually put effort into the thoughts that form these paragraphs. For the sake of other people's time, question the thoughts that go through your mind once or twice before throwing them into the forums.

-Make radical changes to the server systems layout - Allow me to be the first to make the craziest suggestion yet to the route problem... (this one is the most optional)

Cut the server into 3 major sections. Divide the Server at 2 major points. The first would be, with what's gone on with Gallia and the Houses of Sirius, its time for some good old fashioned xenophobic 'Galliaism' to take effect, and for them to go full 'isolationist' for a while. That means sever the connections from Gallia to Sirius. Totally, no jumpholes or jumpgates. There will be restarts that start in Gallia, and basically for all 'segments' of the map, create an internal trade route. Make Gallia a mini server that can only be accessed by jump drive. I know that sounds crazy, but dividing the map up instead of twisting routes, changing connections that are years old and familiar, we create 3 small areas that will become easier to get interaction within. People will be purposely stuck trading in their area unless the get a jump to the new area and resume. For inter-segment trade, you'll need to bump up to a JD. (This will also make it easier to add new systems, which you'd probably expect to be attached on to Gallia somewhere, or out in the Omicrons).

The other places I'd cut off are then the Omegas/Omicrons from the Houses. Perhaps a surprise act of joint terrorism by the Hessians and the Order or something could sabotage all of the jump gates along the omegas/sigmas, basically turning the Taus, 4 Houses and Sigmas into a large zone, and then the Omegas/Omicrons into a large zone. Then all we need to do is make sure there are internal trade routes for each segment, and big ones for jump trading (ores).

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Basically cut all the jump gates along the Omega/Omicrons line, and render the jumpholes inert, say it was the Nomads, a natural phenomena, or a potential new secret weapon, etc.

I've already gone over what making Jump Drives necessary for the economy would do. Also, any radical map changes would be better left in any hands but yours. To be fully honest, I read "Make Gallia a mini server that can only be accessed by jump drive" and completely lost all interest in finishing reading this piece. No doubt I would have been even more disappointed if I had.

-Add new consumable commodity for POB Weapons Platforms - In theory, if we put an OF Challenge System into effect, factions would need to look at their territory and figure out what places might wind up at risk from being sieged by their enemies. Many places already have POB's. House governments and other factions similarly could ask those with bases to build weapons platforms to add to the area's security, or perhaps lower the monthly fees for those bases willing to chip in on defense (especially for those near planets). In other places it might be prudent for navies/police to build a base to add WP's to secure an area, or contract it out to a third party.

Yet for those who would say WP's are already too hard to deal with, I suggested making them only work with a consumable commodity: Munitions or Armaments. My suggestion was to set so that each defense module would require 100 units of either commodity to respawn after being destroyed. So even a base with 6 weapons platforms, would only be able to keep them in space, if they kept ammo stores (like shield fuel). So, to replace 6 WP's, you'd need 600 units of one of those commodities. This way, an attacking force could focus on taking out the WP's of a base first, trying to deplete it of ammo to neutralize its defenses first. This would also create a new valuable practical commodity that players could trade, buy/pirate/confiscate that could be taken and still used. It having a practical value also makes it more valuable sometimes than just the credits they're worth. The ammo might be cheap but a base under siege might pay big for ammo! All around this balances POB's force projection ability, and creates a new commodity for player trade. Bring on the arms runners!

If you're actually proposing to code this, then go ahead and present it. Specifically the part where PoB platforms can still be tied to the base without issues, including the IFF bits, and not screw the base's HP at the same time. There's a reason why they're invincible. Also, the old bug with weapon platform abuse that got people permabanned would come back in full swing, so you'd have to engineer a fix for that too. Enjoy coding that.

-Clarify what is/can be cannon or not, and acceptable RP - Just as an example, when they removed JD's from cannon, I saw people basically acting like JD's should no longer exist in mention at all. So what's the deal? We could use a review of what's acceptable or not. As in, JD's might not be able to be used in cannon stories, but we can still RP them right? This is the type of thing I see screwing the place up a bit, it causes some confusion, and I'll bet its not the only issue where people are not on the same page. We could use some clarifying statements from the Devs on what we can still do or not, what's ok or not. Maybe a new FAQ 'ask me anything' with some Devs could be done to help with that, and everyone could submit some questions.

Roleplay Canonization Requests and Faction Canonization Requests exist. Maybe find a respectable way to make JDs canon again. Ever since a huge price was added to RCRs, I've seen most people decide to just cease anything to do with them, even after the price was reduced a bit. I don't know if this is fully the case, because I don't have administration privileges, so maybe people do make canonization requests, but from what I can gather from interpersonal communication, people collectively stopped caring what was canon, because they could step back on all mistakes made because they aren't canon. They could do whatever they wanted, and not have consequences because it didn't actually happen. Once again, do your research before you run off at the mouth, and take a moment to consider the possibility that you might just be objectively incorrect.

-Have a new drive to advertise the mod - This one is the big one. Not only should we see from the staff side of things an active drive to promote the mod, staff should give the OK for players to go on the recruiting drive as well. If players know its ok to go to another community or forum to drop a link to the mod and mention we need players, everyone here could start going to work on making little drops here and there.

Don't know if anyone has told you, but there is a very specific reason as to why this doesn't happen, and it's called Microsoft's Legal Team. If you want to go head to head with Bill Gates over a 2002 space sim, go ahead. See how far you get. I'll be laughing at you from the sidelines. Or, and this is more likely, you didn't read the EULA when you got your first copy of Freelancer, and don't know what a game modification of this level actually entails. There really isn't more to say on this. To put it shortly, when you buy this game, you don't own the game. You own a license to play the game. Huge difference.

-New Community Attitude and enforcement from the staff- Everyone needs a new outlook on Discovery Freelancer. Its time to let go of all of the old ways of thinking. They served the place well for many years, but to keep going we need a bit more. We also need to ditch this 'unwritten' rules situation of pier pressure to get what you want. I have only ever seen the staff appease the very players that complain first only to use oorp means to manipulate the game in their favor. After years, it all added up. Each little press on the brake peddle has lead to this place being locked down! On top of the staff making sure players only treat each other with maturity, the entire community needs to embrace one simple principle that start to solve our problems here, and that is the embracing of FREEDOM. As in freedom of action, and more freedom of actions for players, will only ever lead to solutions being made in-game, not in discord. So yes, the answer is that now that we're down to where we are, opening things up and allowing for a lot more freedom will entice some new growth, new experience to be had here again. To the players, stop worrying about trivial things and start caring about the big picture.

Every time we pull something to help one faction, we hurt another. Add for both, let equal opportunity sort it out in-game. From here on in we should only be adding new freedoms for players, not taking them away or staying locked. Only if we make some changes finally will we see that the mod that's here and its playerbase are now the backbone to what could be a very interesting game here over the next 10 years. We have something good to start with if we use what we have in the right way.

And last but not least, "You shouldn't be allowed to not like what I say", followed by "making my word into law will be the salvation of everyone", and to cap it all off "I am altruistic and definitely in it for the good of everyone". I'm perfectly down to overlook the "disagreeing is bad" ideal, most people here have it. I'm even down to turn a blind eye to the delusions of grandeur, I myself throw those around. However, I can't just ignore the blatant lie that you surmised this joke with. I've made the mistake of not only associating with, but even trusting people who run with the "I am the Buddha of Disco", and I'm not going to make it again. Curb your ego, pay attention to what's actually happening, not just your miniscule worldview, and put research into your arguments. Yeah, I am famous for being a troll, but at this point you're just becoming a meme.

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And the next time you have an uninformed essay to post about how you think you've been sent by God to save us all, post it in flood. Stop wasting people's time.

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I'll do something about my superiority complex when I cease to be superior.

"Whatever happened to catchin' a good old-fashioned passionate ass-whoopin and gettin' your shoes, coat, and your hat tooken?"