Yesterday installing freelancer for the first time in years I decided to go with this mod. I spent a good 4 hours trying to get the mod to install/play the game. I kept searching on the interwebz for people with the issue that the user can see the server but when you try and connect it yells at ya with "were sorry, but were unable to connect, this might be because server is going offline ectectect" well I found one person that fixed it using this method and as it turns out it worked for me too.
Install game
Install flmm
use quickfix 1.0c
flpatch.exe (maybe not necessary bc it comes with mod but i did it anyway)
Install Mod and have it running.
Then (perhaps the most important part, play single player until the first time you go into the bar and talk to zoa.. i forgot her name.. after you speak with her f1 save game, and at this point i was finally able to connect to server).
Prior to trying this i uninstalled all forms of firewall/antivirus, portfowarding, pings, tracerts, direct connects, command lines with exe shortcuts.. everything.
This was the only way to get it to connect... Oh i also installed and uninstalled like 25 times..
Oh and one more thing, i'm running Vista x64bit ultimate edition. Please post back to bump this if this method works, maybe we can get a sticky if it is a mass solution.