I've been playing Disco Freelancer for about a year now, I live in the USA, and I love the entire idea of Freelancer.
But once I started getting deeply into the game, I found problems.
For instance, a blatant disregard for the first rule:
Quote:0.0 Be excellent to one another. Consider the people around you. Keep fair play in mind. It's a game and nothing is gained, or lost, save the experience. Credits can be re-earned. Ammunition replenished. If you become infuriated step away. If you make a mistake apologize. If you wish to remain in system after you die, or after someone has moved away, simply ask.
I have tried to obey this rule as much as I can. But it seems little to nobody else cares about it.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I want playing Freelancer to be fun, but I don't know how to do it anymore.
-Payne
P.S.
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.
It doesn't have one. The Nova torp *does* have a very large blast radius, but because the SNAC is a gun, not a torpedo, it doesn't have a blast radius.
Example 3 is rather common place, and I've come to expect it due to lolcaps prefer to be in Liberty space instead of Rheinland.
If you can, get several pirate bombers and perform hit and runs while someone huals illicit cargo to Manhattan, by being a distraction you are also helping others. Its all give and take.