In SotSS the vanilla 'capital ship' system is being altered to make an ACE/Elite Pilot system.
After all, in Freelancer it makes more sense for ACE pilots to be gaining exp and new abilities/techniques than capital ships.
Each faction will have it's own requirements, costs and ways of recruiting their most Elite pilots.
The one thing they all have in common is these ACE pilots are better than a standard fighter even at level 1.
With experience they will tweak and upgrade their ships, improving their offensive and defensive capabilities, while also being able to learn new 'tricks' or equip new hardware.
All ACE/Elite pilots will have 4 potential abilities, all of which can be upgraded to level 4.
There are two main types of abilities: Hardware and 'Techniques'
Hardware abilities are obviously equipment upgrades and can be in the form of special weapons like cruise disruptors or support gear like afterburners and shield batteries.
'Techniques' are combat maneuvers, rogue's luck or refined experience that can provide different benefits like avoiding damage, turning faster or fighting for a few more seconds before death.
'Ultimate' abilities are now abilities that have reached the 4 level boosting their effectiveness by far more than prior levels. This means with a total of 10 points at level 10 a Pilot could max out two abilities and have the other two fairly weak, or they could spread the points around. This means even two of the same style ACE may have slightly different capabilities.
Liberty will have 3 ACE pilots available from the start, (The Starfire Patriot , Valiant Defender and the Command Rhino) with two LSF Ace's (LSF Enforcer and LSF Partisan-) being unlocked with appropriate research.
Finally I would like to introduce two ACE pilots that will be in the game under Liberty Naval Forces:
The Starfire Patriot is a heavily modified Patriot LF armed with 3 Plasma Cannons.
It's proposed abilities are as follows:
No Mercy: Gives a brief increase to max speed and acceleration, as well as a damage boost. Fairly short cooldown.
Redline: Gives a small increase to max speed and shield mitigation (passive)
Targeting Link: Gives a nearby friendly fighter increased range and chance to hit for a moderate length of time.
Energetic Plasma: Plasma weapons have a small chance of decreasing enemy weapon damage for a short time. (passive)
Next up is the LSF Partisan:
[The LSF Partisan is a model from Shattered Worlds: War Torn and used with permission]
The Partisan was intended as a replacement for the aging Patriot but it proved too costly for the Liberty Navy to field. The LSF bought up all the produced models and the designs to use on their operatives.
It's armed with 4 auto-cannons and two laser cannons
Proposed abilities:
Hellfire Munitions: Auto-cannon slugs are superheated becoming almost molten, doing extra damage and reducing the targets armor (passive)
Rapid Intercept: A low energy burst from the Cruise Drive allows the ship to rapidly close the distance to it's target
Roll with the Impact: LSF Pilots are trained to roll their ship as enemy fire hits to reduce the impact. (passive)
Nano-Bots: Capsules of Nano-Bots are located within the hull, and can be activated to regenerate the hull for a short period of time.
These Ace pilots will feature in the upcoming Alpha test but probably wont have all (if any) of their intended abilities just yet.
:Quick Addition:
ACE Pilots will draw from a pool of random names consisting of an Initial and surname that is faction appropriate. So for example a Liberty ACE might be "J. Smith" while a Kusari ACE could be " U. Adachi" and so on.
Non-race based factions will have a mix so a Bounty Hunter ACE might could be either of the above or even "H. Brauer " etc.
This sounds like a really cool idea. Will Juni and King make an appearance this way? :P
Nope, ACE Pilots have random names assigned same as Capital ships do in Sins, only difference is instead of "TDN Khronis" it'll be something like "M. Hawkes".
The only way I could properly make specific Freelancer characters would be to make it a unique unit (non leveling) you start with and can't build. This is something I may do in the future for 'scenario' maps.
Ah I knew this, meant if you were throwing them into the random generator is all. Still, really unique idea. Never got the reason why Sins did it this way in the first place and I'm glad that this mod won't have some ridiculous supercarrier type stuff trying to fill a role that isn't needed.
Keep up the good work man, Freelancer is like one of my favorite universes.
I love this idea, the Freelancer storyline should have been extended in the first place... Silly Microsoft!