Freelancer MMO Review - Star Citizen's Origin?

[Avalanche]

Update: Final version released on the weekend. Enjoy and give it a like to help the algorithm!

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What should I include in a Freelancer review video? It'll be focused on the Discovery Freelancer/MMO experience but vanilla items are good to include too.

I'm hoping some of you can help me flesh this video out. I want to include as much fun info as I can to attract people. Below is the current script:

Introduction


Freelancer was the brainchild of Chris Roberts and encompasses many of the aspects of Star Citizen's appeal today.

• Open world.
  
• Roleplay.
  
• And forging your own path in a large living and breathing universe.
  

Chris Robert's biggest ambition with Freelancer was a massive multiplayer online experience. Players working their way up the ranks to unlock larger and more powerful ships and flying alongside others, fulfilling all kinds of fun roles.

Roles such as Freelancer, Pirate, Police, Military, Bounty Hunter, Trader, Miner and many many more.

Today the community - Discovery Freelancer - embodies that vision.

Discovery Freelancer has players across the world role playing as pilots in a story driven universe. And it has a lot more gameplay possibilities over the original game released in 2003. I'll share more about some of them soon.

Discovery Freelancer's storyline continues beyond the single player campaign, where you played as Edison Trent, a freelancer who helped save the universe from a mysterious threat.

And even to this day, it's growing development team is releasing new large story development patches and gameplay improvements.

Freelancer takes place in our timeline but Earth is a long lost memory. After losing a war over 800 years ago, several countries fled Earth and arrived to the Sirius sector.

Different regions of the Sirius Sector are based on Earth culture, depending on which fleeing country settled there. Thanks to this, each region feels familiar and engaging and some will start to feel more like home to you than others.

Let's go through them and take note of the changing space music for each:

• The house of Liberty settled in systems which have a dark blue tone and the Stars and Stripes are everywhere. As you probably guessed, Liberty's descendants came from America.
  
• Bretonia settled in systems with a dark red and blue tone, and it's ships have a sort of fish design. Britain.
  
• Kusari settled in systems with a light blue tone, and it's ships are inspired by Japanese architecture.
  
• Rheinland settled in mostly dark green systems, and it's ships have a strong militaristic look. Germany.
  
• The Corsairs and Outcasts, who originally arrived on one ship, split up have feuded ever since. Their heritage is Hispanic.
  
• And lastly the house of Gallia, which is new to Discovery Freelancer. Has a blue and purple tone. France.

Each region also is home to its own lawful and unlawful factions. For example in the house of Bretonia, the Bretonian Armed Forces are constantly battling with the pirate faction, the Mollys, whose lore is inspired by old British miners - - You get the idea.

One of my favourite things about Freelancer's world building is NPC ships and stations talking on the radio, to each other, and to you, which creates the feeling that you're just a small part in a living universe.


Gameplay

Simply put, when you create your first character in Discovery Freelancer, you will be a Freelancer. A fairly neutral pilot who can travel to most systems and visit most bases, but not all.

You will have a wide but shallow range of possibilities. To purchase better weapons, haul special cargo or fly more desirable ships, you will choose to fly for a faction. Whether lawful or unlawful.

Every action you take in the Sirius Sector will affect your reputation with other factions. Destroy a pirate? Your favourability with the police will go up. Get it high enough and you could buy more powerful police weapons for example.

You can do all of this and much more, either alone or with other players. Groups of players can form their own Factions, with their own identifier in their name and fly together to fulfil their factions primary aims.


Roleplay

Roleplay helps maintain the immersion of being a pilot in the Sirius Sector and it is done by typing.

In Discovery Freelancer, it is as simple as only typing as a pilot would - Basically no smiley faces, lol, or referencing say the forum. If you want to talk out of character, just give it two slashes // before your message.

And secondly, flying your ship in the way your faction does. It isn't a good look when police start shooting other police for example. You can find more about your faction in the faction ID card in your inventory.

These roleplay foundations have helped build a lore rich universe with players banding together for common goals.

• Defending against bands of pirates
  
• Becoming the richest corporation
  
• Assaulting a base or strategic area alongside a military fleet and much more.
  

You can easily enjoy Discovery Freelancer flying solo, and not typing much at all to anyone, instead simply enjoying what the Sirius Sector has to offer.

But for the best experience, I recommend you talk to those around you on your radar - You will meet a lot of interesting characters and may just get invited to join their group and then a whole new world of fun gameplay experiences opens up to you.

Thanks to so many new faction specific ships, weapons and equipment being released by the Discovery Freelancer team, it is also a feature to only fly using technology your faction uses.

It's fairly straight forwarded, for example if you're a military cruiser, you won't want to be equipping a pirate cruiser turret. If you did, you'll get a energy out penalty due to incompatibility. I'll put a link to the tech list in the description box.


Features

Discovery Freelancer has expanded upon Freelancer not only in story, but in gameplay and features.

There is a wide range of new ships for you to fly. From freighters, transports, light fighters, heavy fighters, bombers, support ships, gunboats, cruisers, battleships and carriers which even other players can dock into.

Each class of ship now has a wide range of unique weapons and equipment. Giving you countless possible loadouts.

There are some quality of life improvements, such as typed commands. These allow characters to share money, rename themselves, restart their starting location and much more.

Restart commands enable you to begin your new character in certain part of the Sirius Sector for a certain faction immediately.

These restart commands can be more useful than launching from the new player system of Pennsylvania and then travelling to your desired region yourself and having to build faction reputation up yourself.

Just be careful starting in a region which has it's NPCs set to higher difficulty. You could find taking missions from the bar which involve shooting those more challenging NPCs beyond your starting ships capabilities!

For advice on restart commands as a new player to Discovery Freelancer, chat to players in the community Discord.

Some of the more notable gameplay features players work towards include

• Jump drives that allow you to create your own temporary jump hole from one system to another. Perfect to move around unnoticed.
  
• Cloaking devices that allow you to turn your ship invisible. Perfect for sneak attacks.
  
• Player Owned Bases which are semi-permanent structures built by players. They can be upgraded to operate as a commodity shop, storage, refinery and shipyard to build new ships and equipment.
  

Player Owned Bases have a daily two hour window which is when they can be attacked by other players. To siege a Player Owned Base, you must declare it with advanced notice on the forum so the defenders can organise. Sieges result in massive battles which are a lot of fun.


Community

Most of the daily conversation happens on Discord which I'll link below. And long form conversations and all roleplay takes place on the forums. Both are great places to ask questions and find out more to get started in Discovery Freelancer today.

This year, the rules and roleplay expectations of players have been simplified and cut down, making it easier than ever to join as a new player.

And there is a major push to host regular large scale community events for everyone to take part in. Resulting in some really fun moments.

Also a new tool called DarkStat allows you to easily understand all game information such as weapon stats, ship locations, base locations, commodity prices and more.

Special thanks to community member Darkwind for that one! I'll link below the latest version of the interactive navigation map and the new wikipedia which has a thorough new player guide.

Discovery Freelancer's MMO experience is open to everyone. Almost any computer can play it today, and it only takes minutes to download for free. I'll put a link to the instructional video below too.

And that's it for now! Discovery Freelancer has a lot to offer Star Citizen MMO fans and I hope this video has been a good overview of the basics. There's a lot I haven't touched on but they are for you to go out and Discover after all.

We look forward to seeing you out in the Sector! [/font]

[Avalanche]

Done the first introduction bit I think.

[Seapanda]

Setting

- Parts of the Sirius sector are based on countries we know today (Liberty USA) making them feel familiar and engaging.
- Different factions have different ship designs, often based on their origin, making them recognisable and interesting.
- Systems are colourful and unique making them interesting to fly in. Blue, red, orange etc.
- NPCs make the game feel alive with background chatter and interact with each other.
- Trade lanes allow you to fast travel and create a focal point for activity for traders and pirates.
- There are dark and dangerous parts of space that are home to factions that shoot most unknown ships.

Gameplay

- Can fly alone, making your own decisions or fly in a group and support each other.
- Wide range of weapons to suit your play style. Anti shield, anti hull, torpedo's, mines, fast firing low damage or slow firing high damage.
- Capital ships are flyable by players and can be docked by other players to rearm their ships.
- Wide range of ships. Fighters, bombers, gunboats, transports. freighters, cruisers, battleships
- New equipment such as jump drives that allow you to create your own temporary jump hole from one system to another. Perfect to move around unnoticed.
- New equipment such as cloaking devices that allow you to turn your ship invisible. Perfect for sneak attacks.

Roleplay & Community

- Darkstat giving you info to all game data to help you make decisons.
- Interactive Nav map on the forum.
- New wikipedia
- Summary of how Disco works

What should I include in a Freelancer review video? It'll be focused on the Discovery Freelancer/MMO experience but vanilla items are good to include too.
That's a rough list to get this thread started. I'm hoping some of you can help me flesh this video out. I want to include as much fun info as I can to attract people.

I think the above snips, put in a video, would show a pretty decent display of what Freelancer is, what Discovery is, and what they can do. It shows the most interesting parts of Freelancer and the uniqueness of Discovery. The rest that is more detailed can be left out for the player to explore on their own. That's just my 2 cents

[Avalanche]

I think the above snips, put in a video, would show a pretty decent display of what Freelancer is, what Discovery is, and what they can do. It shows the most interesting parts of Freelancer and the uniqueness of Discovery. The rest that is more detailed can be left out for the player to explore on their own. That's just my 2 cents

Thank you for the perspective. Hoping to ride on the recent Star Citizen hype online and so I included the more in-depth items, to try and capture some of that audience's attention. Really sell the gameplay experience to them.

I'll consider cutting back some items and leaving it with a general "but you should find that out for yourself" vibe.

[jammi]

Some additional things that spring to mind:

-Tech compatibility helps guide people towards roleplay friendly choices for ships and equipment. Equipping an ID means you have joined that faction, and will receive power core penalties when using equipment that faction wouldn't be able to operate or maintain - for example, an Outcast using a Corsair Titan would have 10% power regeneration because of the incompatible technology.
-There's a wide range of server commands that help you chat, manage characters and move cash (renames, account moves, givecash).
-Police ships give you access to TLAGSNET, a powerful scanning tool that tells you about the traffic passing through your House's trade lanes, and what cargo they're carrying.
-Discovery has introduced many entirely new mechanics that were not possible in the base game, for example weapons using burstfire, weapons using multiple projectiles (double/triple barrel weapons and shotguns), or ammo clips that need to be reloaded.

POBs:
-Player Owned Bases are semi-permanent structures that are built by players, but can be destroyed. They require commodities to construct, upgrade and maintain. They allow players to operate their own shop and storage, setting their own prices.
-POBs are customisable by fitting them with internal modules that all have different functions, from storage tanks and goods factories, to weapons platforms and shipyards. The owner can pay in-game credits to change the exterior appearance of the base to one of many customisation options.
-Discovery has implemented split buy and sell prices for goods, meaning POBs can profit from refining player-mined ores and selling the processed goods.
-POB modules unlock recipes that allow for the refining of ores, the production of goods and equipment, and the construction and sale of ships to other players.
-Shipyard modules produce valuable ship components, which are used to assemble rare, prototype ships that can't be obtained through other means - such as the Bulwark Heavy Frigate, or Consul Command Battlecruiser.
-There are synergies between many of the modules to allow you to create supply chains to help sustain your base. For example, a refinery produces Toxic Waste as an output, that can be processed back into a nuclear fuel called MOX with a MOX Breeder Plant, allowing you to reduce the amount of new fuel required to run your refinery.
-POBs have a daily two hour "vulnerability" window which is set by the owner, which is the only period where they can be damaged. People who want to start a siege must declare this with advance notice on the Discovery forums so the defenders can organise. Sieges often result in massive battles with 20+ players on each side

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News article library, feedback and content requests.

[Avalanche]

I think the above snips, put in a video, would show a pretty decent display of what Freelancer is, what Discovery is, and what they can do. It shows the most interesting parts of Freelancer and the uniqueness of Discovery. The rest that is more detailed can be left out for the player to explore on their own. That's just my 2 cents

I did just this in the final version! Thank you Seapanda for the advice and thank you Jammi for the info on POBs. I've included the published video in the OP.