Comments - Blacknsilver

Nope.

Nope.

Tens of hours of mandatory grind before you can start playing the actual game is not "challenge".

I didn't like Floris. It adds a lot of over-complication, ridiculous reskins (white and blue striped-camo? what?) and an absurd number of units/items with impossible to remember or understand names.

I don't see why any of the changes were necessary and would much rather play the original game.

PS: Trade has also been gutted.
Before: Had a great sense of progression as you were constantly moving from system to system, trading 1 type of cargo for another.
After: Go back and forth from Manhattan to the nearest space station, trading VIP's for 600$ per cargo spot. That's it- nothing else even comes close so there's no point in trading other commodities or going anywhere else.

This mod has been a massive step down from the original game so far.
Highlights:
The game had a clear progression system as far as ships, weapons etc.- you go from system to system with earlier ships being cheaper and weaker. For some reason, this has been scrapped and a lot of the earlier systems have absurdly overpriced ships (I'm talking 1000x+ what you can afford).

The original game only forced you to do a couple bounties here and there between story missions. With crossfire though? Let me give an example: Before you can start the Tekagi's Arch Mission, you need more than 1 million credits (regardless of how much you had beforehand). Every nearby system is hostile, thus trade is utterly impossible. The only way to collect this staggering sum is by completing the same bounty mission for ~40k each, over and over.
Again, there is NO other way you can continue the story and you are FORCED to grind this same little sequence out for 4-5 hours (if each bounty takes about 20min).

The combat has been changed drastically and quite clearly for the worse. Enemy ships will use batteries and nanobots (to heal their ships) so you sometimes end up in a ridiculous situation where you're shooting at the same ship for 3+min and their shields are STILL not going down. Hilariously enough, this makes battleships EASIER to destroy than the tiny fighters. Even worse, the game has clearly not been balanced around these changes, making some of the early missions nigh-on impossible to complete (this is coming from a freelancer veteran).

I haven't noticed any other "improvements" but judging by what I've seen so far, I'm not missing out on much.

I have no idea how this mod has gotten such an absurdly high score, but there you go- you have been warned.

If I may give a suggestion for the next FCR mod, find a better way to communicate just how difficult the "high" (or whatever) difficulty is. For instance, if I was the one writing the manual, this is how I would have done it:

Difficulties, in order of least to most.

Vanilla easy
Cool story, huh?
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Vanilla medium
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Vanilla hard
3rd or fourth playthrough and looking for more of a challenge?
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FCR easy
Enjoy the improved combat system without having to sacrifice much in the way of enjoyment!
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FCR medium
You gotta admit, that is one sexy loading screen.
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FCR hard
Still can't get enough of the loading screens, huh?
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-
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FCR high
These were just made as a dare/ for testing purposes, you should probably avoid installing them.
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FCR hardcore
Decided to make this after a tester managed to kill the 4 barghests at the start on high once...
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FCR witcher
You die in 1 hit, all enemies are immortal.

The main problem with the "run around until health/mana regens"-strategy is the natural hp regen of some enemies :)

Meaning, they regen as you're regenning, usually faster than you :/

I love the idea behind the mod, however I have one massive, glaring problem with it. Let me quote the description for my chosen difficulty from the manual: "A vast array of alchemical means is required, although a hefty supply of HP makes a relatively stress-free fight possible."
Sounds like the setting is somewhere between easy and medium, right? NOPE.

I've already faced at least several fights that were flat out impossible without cheating (The one against the 4 barghests at the start, the spectre dog boss, another against several ghouls in a crypt in Chp2 and lastly, 2 ghosts in a house, also in ch 2). For the record, I've used every appropriate weapon oil, potion and the best possible weapon and armor for each scenario- despite this, the afforementioned fights are flat out impossible. Another dozen or more fights are incredibly difficult to the point that I had to reload and reload and hope i get lucky with RNG.

So, if you're deciding on a difficulty, I would rate the 4th difficulty setting(the one I'm currently dying on) as somewhere between "very hard" and "impossible", despite the description in the manual.