ModDB - Updates and Votes

[Cannon]

ModDB

Finally, after almost a year our ModDB page has been updated and a 4.86 download added to the site. Some of you may remember that we won the simulation genre award of MOTY-2006. Help us get a nomination for the top-100 so that we can make it to the next stage.

Go to our ModDB page and nominate us: http://www.moddb.com/mods/discovery-freelancer

Forum Updates

As you can see, we've updated the forum theme yet again. This is the last time for a long while, I promise. We have a number of issues to fix and will work to resolve these as quickly as possible. We know there's an issue in Firefox and I'll be fixing this shortly. There should be no broken icons but if you see some, please post and let us know.

The reason we've moved to a single theme, rather than offering several alternatives is that posts that worked on one theme wouldn't work on others. A single theme resolves this issue.

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Proud member of "the most paranoid group of people in the community"

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[Junes]

Seems like a step forward. I already voted some days ago.

What I really like about the new theme is that there's now links to important sites such as the rules, the wiki etc on the right side. Makes it all a little simpler, especially for newcomers. Maybe add the tech nerf chart as well, people often ask me about it and I always struggle to dig up the link.

Thank you for the awesome work Cannon!

[Cannon]

The techchart! Good idea. Anybody know where's the link to the automatically generated one is? I can't find it.

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Proud member of "the most paranoid group of people in the community"

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[Veygaar]

http://discoverygc.com/wiki/techcompat_table.php

...and voted and DL'd the game again

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Veygaar for Admin Moderator 2013!!!

[[FC]Flox]

Why are we not in the TOP 6???? WHY?

@_@

People need to vote.

VOTE VOTE VOTE!!!!

On another note, i cant believe FL Disoc is still alive, i am glad i discovered Discovery :')

We need to win. Oh yeah!!!

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[ThatPirateGuy]

Why are we not in the TOP 6???? WHY?

@_@

People need to vote.

VOTE VOTE VOTE!!!!

On another note, i cant believe FL Disoc is still alive, i am glad i discovered Discovery :')

We need to win. Oh yeah!!!

I honestly don't think Disco needs mod of the year. There has been little to no creation of anything aside from some systems and ships for a long time. There haven't been any new features added, aside from docking and turret zoom. And docking and hyperdrives have been in a lot of things for a while now. The only significant thing about this mod being that it is forced RP at all times on the server. Not much else. Not trying to be a jerk or anything, but this mod hasn't done anything at all to deserve the place.

[Cannon]

Only docking, jumpdrives, cloaking devices, real time creation and destruction of player owned bases, player controlled economy for the bases manufacturing (admittedly limited), player ship infocards, 15000 updated and unique infocards and rumors, an extensive and balanced static economy model, many many new ships and good hitboxes, many unique base models, a few unique room models, oh and pimpship. Several of these features were considered impossible to do in Freelancer.

Most of the things above didn't exist in 4.85. We'd rather like to win mod of the year based on the 4.86 development as it stands today not what's happened in the last 12 months.

Do we deserve it? I don't know but I think we've done enough to be worthly of consideration.

The only significant thing about this mod being that it is forced RP at all times on the server

This is a role play server. Don't like it here? Go somewhere else. This mod is used by a whole bunch of servers, some with stricter RP, some with less or none.

Also, thanks to all of those who nominated the mod. Hopefully we'll make the top 100 and go through to the next stage.

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Proud member of "the most paranoid group of people in the community"

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[Ursurper]

First of all, I voted for disco and gave a good rating (higher than it was in average, and in truth also a bit higher than I think it really deserves it). Main reason for it is because devs have realized some of the mistakes and are in the process of correcting them in 4.87. I think Cannon did great with all his efforts with the flhook programming. But there could definately be improvement in trade, system design, infocard (with that I mean rumors, IDs, and overall lore feeling to the mod), openness to all players of certain aspects of the mod, and user friendliness. The the latter I mean especially noob-friendliness. Because thats what decides whether the mod will stay alive and vibrant with new ideas and people, or be an endless repetition of same old people doing same old things in same old or slightly different ways.
The majority of the comments with negative feedback of the comments may sound like rage-aholics, but they do bring up some valid points. Yeh you can use /stuck to unstuck yourself, but is it really that hard to put the launchpoints far enough from a station so you dont get stuck in the first place? Or to only put mooring fixtures and thereby docking capability to certain stations, thereby also adding a whole new aspect to trading, cap ship use, and use of small cargo ships? Or to give a more elaborate help ingame than the /help command which just lists commands? Or to change the systematics of npc populations so they seem slightly less mentally challenged? It may seem irrelevant to people who know all the little bugs and their workarounds, but for people who get a first impression of the mod and decide if they like it or not, this stuff is VERY important.
The all-near-identical guard systems gives a meh-feeling to the number of systems. Some systems are very nicely designed, but in truth most of the new systems, especially the guard ones (not all) are kinda unremarkable, and not very much fun to explore, since they don't give any interesting content like RP lore and depth, just another shipyard with another bunch of guns that you wont be able to buy, and most of the time you just think... wtf is this place suposed to be?
Also I don't feel its right to advertise that many new factions since most of them are simply guard versions of vanilla factions.
I understand that fixing these things are boring jobs, but the overall quality of the mod would greatly improve if those were finally taken care of.
For some of the community-related comments, can't say I totally disagree with them either, even if the presentaton of the people putting them forward is bad. Both disco community and the mod could really benefit if people started listening to each other more, instead of trying to forum-annihilate voices that aren't in one's personal friends list. Fro mthe admin side, sanctions should be handed out as criticism of behavior, not as criticisms of people. Yet some (not all) admins or former admins handed them out as judgements over the character of players. If you hand out sanctions as declarations that "you're crap" or "someone did the same but he's not crap so he doesnt get a sanction thread for it", you really shouldnt be surprised if you get some of the comments you see on the modDB page, in particular about the community.
But before one can judge these things, one should probably take a look at other mods and communities. Gonna check out Crossfire, their graphics looks like they put a lot of effort into those kinds of details.

[Cannon]

Ursurper, you are absolutely right or at least I agree with most of what you say.

To reflect on a few specific things:

Most guard systems are something of a curse and have never been properly integrated into the mod. They were specifically prohibited from having any rumors of consequence and excluded from the storyline for many years. We were going to delete them in 4.87 completely but for backwards compatibility reasons this is not going to happen.

Mooring support is on the list for 4.87. How hard? Turns out it's moderately hard because the mooring modifications conflict with other modifications and a lot of nasty reverse engineering is needed to make it all work.

Sure, I did a bunch of FLHook things but this underplays the massive effort the infocard team did (15,000 infocards didn't come from no where), the modellers, the system editing and economy. I'm absolutely certain that without people like Aeternus, Blodo, Mjolnir, Jinx, Xoria and lots of others, 4.86 would have never come out.

Many of the things you recommend are pretty hard to do as we've pushed this old engine well past it's limits and the cracks are showing. We do try though.

I do recommend Crossfire. In many, if not most respects it is technically better than Discovery with a high production quality.

'noob-friendliness' is probably my biggest concern and I don't have great answers for how to achieve this. Suggestions are welcome.

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Proud member of "the most paranoid group of people in the community"

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[SnakThree]

'noob-friendliness' is probably my biggest concern and I don't have great answers for how to achieve this. Suggestions are welcome.

Well, I think changing the default starting equipment without /restart to a better one ( as in possible to do missions easilly) could be a good start, if that's possible.

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