Discovery Freelancer Website

On other news, the development of Discovery Freelancer 4.86 is speeding up. PvP balancing is largely complete and almost all updated ship models that were planned for 4.86 are in the development build. There are still system changes, bug fixes and submissions to integrate and we hope to complete this soon. Infocard writing is somewhat behind but we are not worrying about this until the system integration is finished.

As of today, we have 83 open tickets out of a total of 198. Many of the open tickets are waiting for integration and QA rather than implementation.

I’ve noticed on the forum that a number of people have said that “discovery will never use stuff from other mods”. This comment is not accurate. What was meant is that our Dev team will never steal content from other mods. We sometimes use content with permission but we prefer to develop content ourselves so that ownership issues do not arise.

As people constantly ask me about these, I can confirm that the following features are actively being worked on or are already finished.
- Player constructed and controlled bases
- Player controlled commodity and equipment dealers
- Player docking on ships
- Cloaking devices
- Jump drives
- Different cruise speeds for ships
- Control of lights on ships, hud colours, shields and group targeting
- Turret zoom

Some of these features are similar to other mods but I think we have a better implementation. I’m not aware of any other mods that allow players to construct their own bases.

Here’s a sample of some of the new commands:

There are a lot of other features we would love to add but we have to focus on getting 4.86 out and so these might have to wait until 4.86 update 1 or 4.87.

Have fun.

We apologize for lack of developer updates recently. Discovery Freelancer 4.86 development is still underway, and the dev team is working hard and is making progress – albeit my own contributions have been limited by various real life issues in the recent months. We are not yet ready to announce release times for 4.86.

This post is dedicated to the events happening in Rheinland in 818 A.S. (prior to the 4.86 release). Previous story posts can be found here:

Discovery 4.86 Storyline: Factions of Gallia
Discovery 4.86 Storyline: Tau Conquest
Discovery 4.86 Storyline: Kusari in 818 A.S.
Discovery 4.86 Storyline: Bretonia in 818 A.S.
Discovery 4.86 Storyline: Liberty in 818 A.S.

The war between Liberty and Rheinland is moving towards its logical conclusion, since both nations are interested in peace. Rheinland ended up in a tough economical situation and cannot allow itself to lose the whole warship fleet needed to defend its boundaries. At the same time, Liberty faces the threat of a future attack from Gallia. To prepare for the war with Gallia which seems to be inevitable, the war with Rheinland has to end, one way or another.

The carefully planned attack against Munster could be one of the final blows of Liberty in this war, and also reveal some of Liberty’s true goals and intentions for the attack against its neighbor…

To access the story post from the forum’s front page or from the website, use the following link:

Discovery 4.86: Rheinland in 818 A.S.

If you are browsing the forum, you should see it already as a second post of this thread (after this introduction). Feel free to say what you think and share your opinions!

We take a break from events that happened in Sirius in 818 A.S., prior to Discovery 4.86 release. This post will be dedicated to the origins and current agenda of varions groups and factions of Gallia. It will continue the series of storyline-related announcements for Discovery Freelancer 4.86 that is still being developed by our Dev Team. Previous story posts can be found here:

Discovery 4.86 Storyline: Tau Conquest
Discovery 4.86 Storyline: Kusari in 818 A.S.
Discovery 4.86 Storyline: Bretonia in 818 A.S.

There are ten major factions responsible for the bulk of space activities in the Core Worlds and Border Worlds of Gallia. Since Discovery 4.86 will include the systems of Gallic Core Worlds, players will get much more information on various groups of Gallia. This particular post features more information on the origins of Gallic Royal Navy, Police, and their arch rival, the Council; tells more about the role and business prospects of Gallic corporations; allows to look into the history of Gallic Brigands, Maquis and Unione Corse. A new faction that was not present in 4.85 – Solar Engineering – is revealed. Solar plays an important role in space trade and station construction in the Core Worlds, and has an agenda of its own that few are aware of (and which will be explained in further detail in future versions of Discovery).

Most dates in the post are in AGS format (After Gallic Settlement). Since New Paris was settled 84 years after Manhattan, A.S. date can be (roughly) derived from AGS by adding 84 years to the latter. Longevity of the year is the same in both chronologies.

To access the story post from the forum’s front page or from the website, use the following link:

Discovery 4.86: Factions of Gallia

If you are browsing the forum, you should see it already as a second post of this thread (after this introduction). Feel free to say what you think and share your opinions!

This post will continue the series of storyline-related announcements for Discovery Freelancer 4.86 that is still being developed by our Dev Team. Previous story posts can be found here:

Discovery 4.86 Storyline: Tau Conquest
Discovery 4.86 Storyline: Kusari in 818 A.S.

As a result of events described in Tau Conquest section, the war with Kusari is now over for Bretonia, but a much more dangerous foe is threatening the war-torn nation. Gallia is going to advance against Bretonia from two or even three sides, which include Leeds, Edinburgh and Newcastle. The numerical superiority of the Royal Navy is overwhelming, and Planet Leeds is being evacuated and converted into a large military outpost, with no way to defend it from space. Many fear that New London is going to fall before Gallia as well, and Bretonian government has to forsee this possibility and prepare escape routes in case the worst happens…

To access the story post from the forum’s front page or from the website, use the following link:

Discovery 4.86: Bretonia in 818 A.S.

You are welcome to comment and give us feedback.

Development of Discovery Freelancer 4.86 is still underway. I must admit that this summer was not the most active for our development team so far, but we are making significant progress, and in a month or so should be able to show you much more of what we actually got.

Meanwhile, we continue to post the storyline parts of 4.86 to inform you of the changes that await in the next mod version. This one is about the events that are going to happen in Kusari in 818 A.S., and about the state of Kusari factions. After getting involved into a brief but devastating conflict with Gallia, there was a coup in New Tokyo which put an end to the former government’s militaristic policy. With its economy in deep crisis and its military power compromised by two wars, Kusari barely had forces to defend its own borders. New Kusari leaders did not only rush signing a truce with Bretonia, but also attempted to establish trade relations with Gallia.

You can find our first storyline announcement (dedicated to Gallia invading the Tau systems) by following this link.

To access the story post on Discovery Gaming Community forums, use this link:

Discovery 4.86: Kusari in 818 A.S.

Feel free to comment and share your opinions!

A lot of time has passed since we last updated you on the progress of Discovery Freelancer 4.86 development. While the process is complex and slow (in fact slower than we anticipated), we start sharing the details on the mod’s storyline and locations, and we start today.

Why The Exiles? The name of the new version mainly refers to the fate of the Council, faction that was responsible for breaking the 700-year long isolation of Gallia from Sirius. Now, when Gallia gathered its forces for a strike that Council had nothing to counter with, the faction has to abandon its bases in Languedoc and flee for the Tau sector of Sirius space. So, first of all, “The Exiles” are hundreds of thousands of Council members and civilians fleeing from Gallic wrath.

“The Exiles” has a number of other meanings as well (like it was with with Reunion): more groups and factions will be forced to abandone their homes and seek refuge elsewhere. But… enough speculations for today.

If you open the forum thread belonging to this news post, you will find the first part of the storyline for Discovery 4.86, dealing exlusively with the new Gallic offensive in Languedoc and in Tau worlds. More details on Gallia, Bretonia, Kusari and all other regions will be presented in a form of separate announcements once they’re ready.

We are now starting to prepare to our final run to get Discovery v4.86 (Discovery Issue 14) complete. The team of developers is almost assembled, but we are seeking for additional help in a number of areas.

First of all, if you know how to model and are aware of graphic design basics, and (even better) have some previous experience with Freelancer modding, you could help us with designing new stations, ships, NPC constumes, and commodity icons for the game. Please note that ships are much lower priority than stations and other stationary space objects (satellites, weapon platforms etc.) right now. We have lots of ships, but have to build stationary objects from the same few components than Vanilla Freelancer had. This is not very good.

Note that we’re looking for people who will not simply model objects and deliver them for other developers to complete, but for those who are willing to learn the complete process of getting their models into the game (texturing, fixing bugs, optimizing textures, creating a hitbox, adding hardpoints). Same applies to icons and NPC costumes, although these are lower priority than models. Also, when submitting a model to us, please remember to contact our more experienced modellers (Gurjiv, Jinx, Doom if he’s available) in order to know specifics about submitting.

Also, I need all system submissions ready before March 20 (2010, yes!), and everyone who is going to submit systems or propose significant changes into systems should contact me within 5 days from now, before March 8. Right now, I have basic submissions of the following systems:
Koeln by Blodo
Tottori by Seth Karlo
Omicron-94 by Seth Karlo
Omicron Mu by equanimitee
Poole by Ktayn and BaconSoda

And I’m aware of the following system editing plans:
Kusari expansions by Dab (awaiting initial submission)
Minor additions to Omicron Lost by Atreides2 and Panzer
Minor additions to Omicron-91 by Seth Karlo
Saar submission by Blodo
Londonderry submission by Linkus
Omicron Minor and other Nomad-related submissions by Treewyrm
Minor additions to Duesseldorf, Stuttgart, Hamburg and Omega-54

About all other system edits and additions: send me a message as soon as possible using the igissmail@gmail.com mail address.

We will release more information on the mod development later. Release dates or time frames will not be available for some time from now, so please don’t request those. Thank you.

The development of Discovery 4.85: Reunion has taken 1,5 years to complete. Now we, the newly formed Discovery Development Team, present to you the result of our work. The wait is over. After months of online beta testing, Discovery Freelancer 4.85: Reunion is released and available for download.

Year is 817 After Settlement (A.S.), 16 years after the single-player campaign of Freelancer, and one year after Discovery 4.84 took place. A Sirius-wide war is on the brink of engulfing the sector. While Kusari pushes its onslaught against Bretonia deep into the Leeds system, Bretonia attempts to surround Kusari forces in Tau-31. Liberty attacks Rheinland in Bremen and Hudson, and Rheinland has to pull back to defend its own borders. As if this was not enough, in late 817 the Independent Miners Guild encountered a large number unknown ships in the Orkney system. The ships belonged to a rebel group formed within the long-lost House of Gallia, the existence of which remained unknown for centuries.

The storyline is just a portion of the progress taking place in the new Discovery version. Increased development time and an increased number of developers allowed us to finalize all the features we were planning to implement, and make 4.85 the largest ever update for Discovery mod. We introduced 110 new ship models, with most new ships receiving custom hitboxes. More than a hundred new weapon and equipment types have been added, many with custom weapon projectile and hit effects. 11 new systems were included, and about 30 previously available systems were updated, all of them following much higher quality standards than in previous versions.

The mod now has a renewed balance system for weapons, equipment and ships, plus a fully revamped economy system that provides profitable routes for all locations and factions. To add depth to the new economy, 46 new commodity types were introduced. The role-playing ID system (used on the official server and most other servers running our mod) has received 53 new IDs. The new version also contains about 7000 new and rewritten infocard texts for various new and old ships, items, and places.

The integrated Discovery automatic updater allows players to download and apply new updates easily without having to re-download and re-install the whole package. The updater does not restrict offline play, and you will still be able to play single-player without an internet connection.

If you prefer online play, you are welcome to join the official Discovery Freelancer RP 24/7 server and a number of other servers running Discovery. Server operators are welcome to run Discovery mod without any restrictions. All servers that have our mod installed are listed in dsupdate.cfg file located in Freelancer\EXE folder to allow quick connect to all of them without using shortcuts or patches. To add another server, simply add its address to dsupdate.cfg.

In January 2007, Discovery mod was chosen to receive the Simulation Genre Award of ModDB.com’s Mod of the Year-2006 contest (MOTY-2006).

You can download the mod from ModDB download page, from the download section of the website or the mod announcement thread on our forums. The file will soon be available at The Starport.