The first update for Discovery Freelancer 4.85: Reunion will soon go online. With months of hard work in which a major part of the dev team participated, this update includes significant balance changes, improved mining system and trade routes, as well as changes related to systems, ship models, infocards, and serverside tools. And, of course, hundreds of various bug fixes.
Most players will be able to update automatically via Cannon's Discovery Updater. If you cannot update automatically for some reason, please download the update from the link available in the next posts of this thread, and follow installation instructions on how to apply it.
We encourage other server administrators to update the mod on their servers as soon as possible.
New in Discovery 4.85 Reunion Update 1 (4.85.0):
- Updated mining system. Many asteroid fields have been moved and new fields added. Most fields now drop metal ore as a commodity rather than the original commodity. Several existing ships have been re-tasked as mining ships and a new mining turret have been added.
- New command line options are available when launching Freelancer. These include suppression of new and departing player messages, wide screen support and player chat logging. See below for a description of the available options.
- Support for a server controlled option has been added to disable the ship power plant when the ship enters cruises. The power plant will not start charging again until the ship leaves cruise.
- A anticheat feature has been added to prevent the most common ini file based cheats.
- Trade route system improved significantly, to provide more routes - and better routes - to players.
- Cruising now drains ship energy as a means to avoid abuse of cruise in combat situations.
- Significant balance changes related both to whole ship classes (Bombers, Freighters), and to specific ships. Details on balance changes are available below in this thread, and will be explained further on the forums.
- Multiple improvements for specific ships, equipment, and systems.
- Fixed a large number of bugs related to systems, infocards, equipment, and other areas.
Huge thanks for making this update possible go to:
- Cannon for the command line tools, anticheat, bug fixing, infocard work, update packages, and lots of various stuff;
- Dusty Lens, Blodo and Cannon for the mining update, with contributions from Seth Karlo and NEXUS;
- Mjolnir for creating update packages, leading the balance work, bug fixing, and updating hardpoints on certain models;
- Dusty Lens for huge infocard work and other contributions;
- Jinx for model updates and other contributions;;
- MarvinCZ for NPC accessories code, and balance contributions;
- Jure for balance contributions, and organizing the testing process;
- Xoria for trade routes redesign;
- Blodo, Exile, mwerte, Bluntpencil, MarvinCZ, Dab, Frozen, Lohingren, McNeo, Kuraine, Kress, SevereTrinity, Hyung Soong, Mule for working on balance, code, and testing;
- Markam, Enko, Dart, HotShot, Fletcher and others whom I missed for testing;
- TheMilliers for the new BHG BS hitbox.
- Igiss for fooling around and pretending he's organizing the process;
- Treewyrm for providing additional host for the update.
In the next posts of this thread, you will find a detailed changelog and download link for the update.
- Significantly rebalanced trade routes system by Xoria.
- Mining commodities (Ores) incorporated into the trade system.
- Locations of many Jump Holes altered to eliminate trade shortcuts.
- Cruising now drains ship energy as a means to avoid abuse of cruise in combat situations.
- Modified freighter powerplants, giving them 3x more capacity while keeping same regen.
- Changed transport turrets, solaris, cereb, primaries, pulses.
- BS primaires and Cerbs do 2 times more damage and use 2 times more energy + 5%.
- New icons for nova torp ammo, EMP missile ammo and heavy missile ammo by MarvinCZ.
- Bombers are now unable to use Mini Razor, Inferno, Starkiller, Sunslayer as well as fighter missiles and guns.
- New bomber guns and turrets introduced (1 hullbuster, 1 shieldbuster), courtesy of Kress.
Specific ship/equipment changes:
- Civ. Bomber, Arrow, Sekhmet and Barge models fixed for morphing issues.
- Bhg bc firing arcs improved (2 turrets).
- Modified slipstream to be able to use Phantom guns.
- Bretonian bs primaries range and damage increased.
- Tweaked explosion vulnerability on Bretonia, Kusari and Rheinland GBs.
- Barragers changed to 5.00 refire, simillar damage to before.
- Zoner gunboat got new model, 6 turrets, removed mines.
- BHG BS got new hitbox.
- RH BS impulse speed increased.
- Light Carrier got new model, new engine effect, reduced thruster speed.
- Greyhound shield lowered to class 9.
- Falcata mass increased from 200 to 225 (same level as bhg and gc bombers, lowest of all bombers).
- FA Bomber upwards turning decreased.
- Rheinland Bomber response decreased.
- IMG Bomber turning increased.
- Avenger powerplant upgraded.
- Odin armor increased, powerplant upgraded.
- Wraith turning slightly increased.
- Gc vhf armor and bots increased turning decreased.
- BD "HF" armor increased, turning decreased.
- Barge cargo hold increased.
- Raba cruise recharge time fixed.
- Kusari explorer hardpoints corrected.
- Challenger changed to barghest-like bomber, agility decreased, extra CD slot, freighter shield, more armor, 10% bigger size.
- Backward turret slot (for mining) added on basalt lf.
- Aquillion Carrier model updated.
- Hammerfall energy consumption increased.
- Protectors range increased by 50m.
Command line options:
-dx
Widescreen support, where the screen size is set to the current desktop resolution
-dWxH
Widescreen support, where W = screen width and H = screen height.
-noflighttext
Hide the "Mouse Flight" and associated text on the hud.
-nohud
Disable hud
-logchat
Log chat to My Documents\Freelancer\dsace.log
-logtime
Include the timestamp in chat log
-localtime
Show the timestamp in local time rather than UTC.
-newplayer
Enable new player messages. By default new player messages are disabled
-dptplayer
Enable departing player messages. By default departing player messages are disabled
-lag
Show the lag indicator icon. By default the lag indicator icon is disabled.
Notes on version number and server connectivity:
In most cases, the mod will update itself automatically, and you will not need to interfere in the process.
If you experience trouble, you can download the update as a standalone package and apply it manually, closely following the installation instructions.
Version number of this update remains 4.85, however, you will not be able to connect to server where the update was applied with a game client which was not updated. Servers with different mod version will be grayed out in your server list.
I. If the update is automatical, you do not need to perform any actions. The update will unpack itself into your FLMM mod directory, and into the game folder itself.
II. If the update is manual, do the following:
1. Make sure you have a Freelancer installation with correctly activated Discovery 4.85: Reunion.
2. Download the .zip file from the link above, verify integrity of the archive, and unzip it into your Freelancer game directory, which would normally be
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Freelancer
Make sure that the files from the update overwrite existing game files.
3. Launch the game as usual, and enjoy!
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