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Rocket Baby Dolls posted:The recording of Omicron Alpha went well... My two favorite worlds coming up! 
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Mar 3, 2022 13:25
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 New Information: https://lpix.org/sslptest/index.php?id=160543 Welcome to the Outcast homeworld. I've tweaked their reputation so they would be nice to me throughout the duration of our stay and I've also included a bit of a history lesson within the new information link. There's potential to hear a lot of backstory in the rumours on Planet Malta but I didn't get any, but I've decided to include them all anyway. Long story short, there was meant to be a fifth empire but tragedy happened before the ship reached its destination. This system holds a couple of surprises, one of them happens early on and I spend a lot of time in this episode trying not to be killed by some old friends. The practice run went a lot better but I walked away with a lot more equipment this time around.
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Mar 4, 2022 00:03
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That above picture really nails home how damaged your ship really was. I can't believe you lost entire weapons, forever, due to the extensive damage. And the model actually reflects the loss of the wing! It doesn't look like it crippled the flight characteristics of your ship, which is nice.
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Mar 4, 2022 07:46
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I recall recovering weapons that were knocked off from my ship with a tractor beam, but in my case the ship portion that held said weapons did not fly away like in the video. I was doing reputation grinding and actually got a bit startled when ship AI out of the blue said something like "countermeasure dropper, lost" for the first time and I saw a piece get knocked off after some criminal shot it off.
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Mar 4, 2022 11:11
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Ha, that reminds me of one of the perennial favourite systems in the Discovery mod (and ultimately one of the reasons it became so newcomer-hostile), Connecticut. Being a 24/7 roleplaying server, Discovery Freelancer had some pretty strict rules about staying in-character. The only systems this wasn't applicable to were Bastille (where the admins would teleport you if you were being naughty) and Connecticut (commonly abbreviated as Conn), which didn't exist in-RP and was for PvP training. There was a neutral station there you could buy ammo and restock nanobots/batteries from, and there were rules of honour about not shooting people who didn't agree to be shot at by you, but other than that it was a lawless realm of pew pew. Not long into Conn's existence did people realize that if they barely won a fight and lost a wing or two (a problem that affected some of the most popular ships in the mod, the Eagle and Sabre, because they were still vanilla ship models with complex multi-part hitboxes) and had expensive fancy class 10 CODENAME weapons on their ship, they would permanently lose them if they docked. So a mod update put a planet next to the neutral station so you could smash yourself into it and respawn at the station with your guns intact. This was super important in Disco because the existence of capital ships and armour upgrades created a highly inflated economy where a single CODENAME weapon could be worth five to ten times as much as the ship hull itself. An Eagle with a full loadout of CODENAME 2.00s and a top-tier fighter armour upgrade had the same credit value as a gunboat with a standard combat armour upgrade, so losing a wing and then docking meant you were out an enormous amount of firepower and an equally enormous amount of money. e: also please let me know if my stupid anecdotes about freelancer mods are unwanted and I'll shut up. or (much less likely) let me know if you want to hear more dumb ramblings about it Kazinsal fucked around with this message at 11:30 on Mar 4, 2022 |
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Mar 4, 2022 11:25
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Kazinsal posted:Ha, that reminds me of one of the perennial favourite systems in the Discovery mod (and ultimately one of the reasons it became so newcomer-hostile), Connecticut. From one reader's standpoint (mine), this is great stuff. Please keep posting.
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Mar 4, 2022 11:42
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Oh no, that is hella interesting because I love stories from other places I may not know off and their oddities and quirks.
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Mar 4, 2022 11:59
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Please continue with the stories, they're very interesting to read. Is the Discovery server still going?
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Mar 4, 2022 13:20
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Rocket Baby Dolls posted:Please continue with the stories, they're very interesting to read. Is the Discovery server still going? I haven't been involved for around a year but yes, it still exists. The head server admin there still PMs me on Discord occasionally to ask for my advice on troubleshooting stuff because professionally I'm a VMware/vCenter/datacenter networking engineer and Disco's server runs on a Windows Server VM on top of a VMware ESXi dedicated host. Dude kept my rear end out of the fire for a few years (something I might write about later) so I feel I'm somewhat obligated to help him out when he runs into issues that stem from the end result of a Chris Roberts grift intersecting with a handful of game developers trying to write a game engine. It's 5am and I'm a good bit intoxicated so sometime later today I'll work out a proper post about the architecture of Freelancer and its server software and the many weird and awful things we've all thrown on top of it to do what we wanted it to.
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Mar 4, 2022 14:23
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Kazinsal posted:e: also please let me know if my stupid anecdotes about freelancer mods are unwanted and I'll shut up. or (much less likely) let me know if you want to hear more dumb ramblings about it from my point of view,  also I absolutely love that the mod solution to "losing a bunch of extremely expensive things sucks" was "here's a planet to yeet yourself into" That is some excellent problem solving Psion fucked around with this message at 20:07 on Mar 4, 2022 |
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Mar 4, 2022 19:58
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The practice run went better but I found the wrecks quicker and faced fewer waves of Nomads. Losing those Level 10 weapons did suck as you can't buy them anywhere, but we're that close to the end of the LP now it doesn't really matter too much. I have at least a dozen or two more guns to replace them and there is still more level 10 guns to find in the other systems. I have thought about exploring the Discovery mod and servers as Kazinsal has piqued my interest but I think once the vanilla Freelancer LP is done I'm going to put the game down for a while. After this LP is over I'm going to do several games that I put on the sideline to start this one, but I do intend to return to space sims at some point. It's too early to even pencil anything in at the moment but I do have some ideas, right now there's a series that I'm itching to play again as well as a couple of stand-alone games all released in the mid to late 90s.
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Mar 4, 2022 23:44
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Aw, you didn't fly through the wreck of the Hispania, IIRC there's a pointless space hole running the length of the ship that you can fit your fighter through. Could be a shuttle bay I suppose. A note about the Hispania, it's the origin of both the Outcasts as well as Corsairs. Outcasts ended up needing Cardamine to live due to the planet they settled on, Corsairs I don't remember. You may want to mount those Nomad weapons on the hull where they won't be able to fall off the ship with the wings. I think all of the weapon mounts on the outcast Very Heavy Fighter were on the hull and incapable of being shot off, so I suppose that's a point in its favour. It might also handle little bit better compared to the Titan.
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Mar 7, 2022 13:50
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Another point in favour of the Sabre, IIRC, is that it's turret faces forwards, for that bit more firepower. The Titan turret is forced to face behind, and I can count on no fingers the times I fired backwards instead of just turning to face the enemy.
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Mar 7, 2022 14:02
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StarFyter posted:A note about the Hispania, it's the origin of both the Outcasts as well as Corsairs. Outcasts ended up needing Cardamine to live due to the planet they settled on, Corsairs I don't remember. The settlers of Malta became dependent on Cardamine completely by accident, because Malta just happened to be covered in the plant during terraforming by the Daam K'vosh, as it was biologically similar to the Slomon K'hara, whereas the Corsairs (the spacefaring arm of the planet Crete) ended up settling on a world that wasn't hosed up by alien terraforming but was merely barely habitable, resulting in centuries of being barely habitable. Even after they rediscovered FTL travel, they had famine issues, resulting in a derogatory assumption that all Cretans were cannibals that persisted well into the 9th century AS. Weird canon rumours that kind of gently caress with the tech level: Someone in the bar on Malta claims that the planet is protected by ICBMs that can target ships in orbit with fission-boosted warheads. From a general Freelancer canon perspective this is an extremely low-tech solution, as cruise engines are FTL and that would require some sort of high-end fusion reactor system (which is implied by the existence of H-fuel, which itself is an aneutronic fusion fuel). The most logical real-world explanation for this is that there were a dozen different people writing the game and that none of them really sat down and hashed out the underlying tech of the Freelancer universe. But in-universe, there's implications that the verse has common (as in, some dumb civilian like Trent can get a hold of) FTL spaceships, ansibles exist, and all of this tech is powered by power plants that are several generations beyond the cutting edge of 2022. I haven't delved too much into the lore of Starlancer (the game that's the predecessor of Freelancer) but from what I understand, fighter-sized antimatter-catalyzed fusion plants are standard issue then, so there's no reason to not assume that the same wouldn't be the case 800 years later. In fact, it's the only way that fighter-scale FTL drives even come close to making sense. Once upon a time for roleplaying reasons (yeah, I know, fuckin nerdy as poo poo) I spent a while doing math for energy input/output and reactor power vs. FTL speeds in the context of Freelancer scaling and the determination was that 400 M/s cruise speed was 5c, or 0.01 AU/s. This just about covers most of the core worlds and distances in them in the game. Some of the edge worlds don't quite fit in this scale, mind you, but in universe we just assumed this was "Nomads doin' Nomad poo poo" and out of universe it was a case of "Digital Anvil doin' Digital Anvil poo poo".
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Mar 7, 2022 15:22
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Kazinsal posted:I haven't delved too much into the lore of Starlancer (the game that's the predecessor of Freelancer) it's WWII (or Cold War, I suppose) In Space, so yea basically imagine every dumb nationalistic stereotype of the 20th century and that's every nation in the Space Future, completely unchanged despite hundreds of years of constant warfare or whatever so uh yeah not exactly worth delving into
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Mar 8, 2022 01:37
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 New Information: https://lpix.org/sslptest/index.php?id=160592 We visited a system in Omicron Beta during the twelfth story mission but it wasn't this system in particular. Either there was a naming issue or this was an oversight after making cuts to the game. I'm going to say that it was the latter as the two jump holes to Omicron Minor and Omicron Major don't exist at all in this system but did in the storyline Omicron Beta. There's not a whole lot to see in this system as there's only one base, two jump holes and three wrecks. The next video is going to be a trade run to the California system with some highly perishable goods.
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Mar 8, 2022 22:10
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 Edit: I uploaded the video as the main update will be sped up - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZSqIpZ67_I Rocket Baby Dolls fucked around with this message at 12:10 on Mar 9, 2022 |
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Mar 9, 2022 12:04
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Ha! I love the bizarre physics in this game. It actually has a pretty solid newtonian physics implementation that just has a bunch of drag slapped on top for arcadey dogfighting reasons. The only problem with it is that it has some overflow and scaling issues with large mass numbers so fighters that bash into transports and capital ships and stuff will bounce off and cause the big ship to flip over wildly (as seen here). At one point we tried to fix it and the best thing we could come up with was trying to detect the hit when it happened, figure out if it was going to make the engine go "OH GOD WHY", then pre-calculate the over-scaled physics impulse as best as we could and... literally just apply the impulse in the opposite direction. It kinda worked.
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Mar 9, 2022 13:48
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 This is a relatively quick trade run with alien organisms to show how profitable they can be if you're fast enough. This probably would have been more useful earlier on but at this point in the game, I wasn't too worried about maximising the profits. Music used: music_bar_generic03 music_bar_generic02 Kazinsal posted:Ha! I love the bizarre physics in this game. I'm not even sure what the freighter was even hit by as I didn't see any ships that close to it unless they went out of range by the time I panned the camera towards it. It was in the middle of a lot of crossfire, friendly fire wouldn't have caused that would it?
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Mar 11, 2022 11:54
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Rocket Baby Dolls posted:I'm not even sure what the freighter was even hit by as I didn't see any ships that close to it unless they went out of range by the time I panned the camera towards it. It was in the middle of a lot of crossfire, friendly fire wouldn't have caused that would it? Beam projectiles don't have mass and also don't use the same physics tick so unlikely. Sometimes the AI does... incorrect things when entering range of a player, like rubberbanding and jumping around as it tries to "replay" a few physics ticks really quickly, so it could be that the engine overcompensated for something and slammed a fighter into that transport in the process. I'm more familiar with the inner workings of FLServer but Freelancer uses a lot of the same code between multiplayer and singleplayer (the majority of the universe engine is in common.dll, which is used by both the client and the server, as well as the client in singleplayer mode) so I can usually make some guesses as to what's happening inside the game from that. I'll write up an effortpost at some point about FLServer and the various modding hooks that people wrote for it because that's where a lot of my Freelancer modding experience lies -- the awful code poo poo no one else wanted to touch -- but if you have any questions about why the game does XYZ the way it does, I'd be happy to do my best to answer them.
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Mar 11, 2022 13:05
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 New Information: https://lpix.org/sslptest/index.php?id=160620 This is a short and uneventful jaunt around Omicron Theta. I know that Gamma should have come next alphabetically but for some reason, Theta is the third one down from the top of the map and Gamma is the fourth. I'll link the complete map of the universe after the next update as there is still one more system to reveal.
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Mar 14, 2022 22:25
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Planet Pygar. Now there is a familiar name if you paid attention to the single player story during Bretonia section. If you didn't or just forgot, that's where Dr. Sinclair found the active alien artifact that Trent had to lug around for most of the game. What's curious is that if you lock onto the planet, it's called "Zoner's Planet" instead. A casualty of end-of-development rushing, I suppose.
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Mar 15, 2022 07:08
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 New Information: https://lpix.org/sslptest/index.php?id=160633 This is the last of the normal systems, there are only two more systems left to explore and they are the two unknown systems. I recorded this quite early in the morning and my brain hadn't woken up properly so I apologise for my brain and speech failing to operate at times throughout the video. The next video will be a somewhat brief overview of piracy in vanilla Freelancer which is going to be a little difficult as even though I know some of the basics, I've never actually tried it before. I know that I can hit freighters\ships for cargo as well as storage containers, I know how to manipulate reputations and about using the jump holes to circumvent the police when it comes to trading illegal goods. Is that it? Piracy in vanilla Freelancer seems kinda tame. If you piss off the wrong people before starting a new story mission are you barred from entering the station that the next mission is on or do they grant you a temporary amnesty? I think that I've finally worked out how I'm going to end this LP.
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Mar 17, 2022 23:39
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Apologies for the delay in recording the next update. I'm currently recovering from COVID-19 and it's made things a little more difficult. I have the next video planned, I just need to execute it at some point which will hopefully be over the weekend. I have attempted a recording today but it ended up with a couple of dozen of restarts and resignation.
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Mar 25, 2022 19:55
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 In this video, I engage in a little pirate activity and talk a bit about the reputation and map system. I've kept things pretty basic and just kept to my own knowledge of things. Which, admittedly, is not a lot.
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Mar 26, 2022 19:32
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 In this penultimate video I pay a little visit to the upper Unknown system and say hello to the people who inhabit it. No idea where they come from but they keep popping up. This system contains only a single star and a lot of radiation.
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Mar 27, 2022 23:11
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Rocket Baby Dolls posted:
My brain keeps telling me that, in real life, debris fields are terrible sources for alien organisms. From a science fiction perspective, alien organisms useful for terraforming would probably be mass produced in a factory on a water planet or something
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Mar 28, 2022 09:17
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Rocket Baby Dolls posted:
it would have been funny if there was a bar and you could talk to the nomads. I would hear some ethereal gasping coming from the nomad and then Trent would say "I'm Trent. Got sny action?" And the bartender would be a robot that says "Not too many humans here. We aren't responsible if a Nomad takes over your body."
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Mar 28, 2022 09:20
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sb hermit posted:it would have been funny if there was a bar and you could talk to the nomads. I would hear some ethereal gasping coming from the nomad and then Trent would say "I'm Trent. Got sny action?" I'd love to see a Nomad bartender wearing a little waistcoat and bow tie.
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Mar 28, 2022 11:51
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 This is the final tour and the finale of this LP. I wasn't sure how I was going to end things but when I got to this point I decided to just give it a natural(ish) conclusion. I was considering letting Trent go down in a blaze of glory but I like the idea of Trent retiring on some distant planet and fading into legend. Thank you, everyone, for being a part of this LP. I had no idea where I was going with this LP originally, I just wanted to play this game again and share my experience with it. I appreciate everyone for watching, for reading, for giving advice, for sharing stories and for just being here. This LP was a big learning curve and really was shaped by everyone here, I've learnt a lot throughout this process and am thankful for it. I do intend to return with another space sim at some point in the future but I'll be concentrating on some smaller games for the moment. I'm going to take a break before I start another LP as I will be spending a lot of days with my children over the next two weeks and I don't want to start anything up until I have more free time. After 409 days and 73 updates, this LP is now concluded. It's been really fun in a lot of ways!
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Mar 28, 2022 22:48
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Thank you so much for LPing this game. I'm not a fan of the fly-by-mouse mechanics but the various systems regarding navigation, trading, reputation, and societies are making me wish I had tried this game in my earlier years. I like to think that the robots of planet Gammu are actually on their day off from their regular bartending jobs elsewhere in the galaxy. It's just that here, in this space, they can drop the robot accents and not have to keep their ears open for juicy information to pass on. The monkey planet? My guess is that it's where Trent spent a year bartending before going to a Freeport, so that's why he knows everyone. It's also why he knows how to be just brash enough to make people take him seriously and still give him information.
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Mar 29, 2022 02:24
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Thanks for the nostalgia ride. It was a good Let's Play!
my dad fucked around with this message at 01:46 on Mar 30, 2022 |
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Mar 29, 2022 12:19
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"Okay I've now officially seen it all and I'm giving up on boron, time to retire" -- trent, 2022 Incredibly in-depth work, thanks for doing this LP! sb hermit posted:Thank you so much for LPing this game. I'm not a fan of the fly-by-mouse mechanics but the various systems regarding navigation, trading, reputation, and societies are making me wish I had tried this game in my earlier years. I think it's definitely an artifact of its time, yeah. I don't think I'd go back to it without some really significant mods, and it'd be a tough sell for a new player. Psion fucked around with this message at 17:50 on Mar 29, 2022 |
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Mar 29, 2022 17:47
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Sometimes you wanna go where every monkey knows your name. Thanks for showing this off. I never knew just how many additional systems there were, and stuff to get, once the main story was finished. (Granted some of that you can get to before it's done, but still, it's a lot). Thanks a lot for the LP!
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Apr 2, 2022 07:29
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Thank you, everyone, for your kind words, I'm glad that I could do this game some service. Someone has disliked the video, I'm guessing not everyone approves of how Trent retired. It was either monkeys, robots or death and I stand by my choice! Here are the model files for the ships which I've converted to .obj files. They should be compatible with 3D viewers and the Underspace game upon release. There were a few models that I was unable to convert (Like the Liberty Battleship) as the model file wasn't the right file type to convert: RAR or ZIP I'll work on the weapons at some point, converting these models is fairly time consuming and I've only got a few days left on the free trial so I'll re-install it again when I have some time to spare.
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Apr 3, 2022 22:30
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Just wanting to add my "thank you" to this. I've always loved Freelancer (took me way, WAY too long to "get" that it's the same universe as Starlancer which I loved as a kid), and it was a treat seeing it again, especially with your treatment. The dyson sphere always made me nauseous. Glad I didn't have to play it myself this time 
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Apr 8, 2022 21:56
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