Privateer 2ever

Privateer2Ever takes you back to the eight planets of the Tri-System. The CIS, gendarmes of the Interplanetary Government, and the Kindred, an enigmatic, brutal criminal syndicate, wage an unending war, while pirate clans prey on ordinary civilians looking to make a profit.

The models and sounds used in this mod are from a development archive provided by Privateer 2 designer Paul Hughes (http://download.wcnews.com/files/p2/P2_Archive.zip). They are taken directly from the game itself, and credit for them goes to the team who produced The Darkening.

INSTALLATION:
Create a clean install of Freelancer. Do NOT install the 1.1 patch; this is provided with the mod and installing it may lead to undesirable effects.

Download and install version 1,31 of the Freelancer Mod Manager. Do NOT download newer versions; they are known to be buggy and may corrupt your install.

Double-clicking on the mod file will then automatically install it. To play, launch Freelancer Mod Manager and activate the mod, then launch the game.

If the game crashes on launch, go into the Tools menu and delete the autosave.

WARNING
64-bit Windows editions have a known bug where rundll32.exe will continue to run after the game is closed. This will lead to errors during mod deactivation. At worst, this will leave mod files in your game folder. This may not have adverse effects - but then again, it might. To be safe, it is recommended to either back up your original installation or run the game from a seperate install.

GAMEPLAY:
Unlike most Freelancer star systems, where planets and objects are aligned on a more-or-less 2D plane, the Tri-System here is modeled in 3D, constructed from numerous screenshots from various angles of The Darkening's 3D starmap. Unfortunately, the vertical nature of the map breaks not only the in-game Freelancer nav map, but the trade lanes from the Hom System (the planets of Hermes, Crius and Anhur) to the rest of the Tri-System.

As a compromise solution, an in-system jumphole is provided, which corresponds to one of the jumpgates of the original game. It may be found approximately 10 km from the entrance of the Anhur-Hermes tradelane, on the Anhur side. Moving up to the entrance of the Anhur -> Hermes trade buoy will show the jump within range on your scanner (It is marked by a number of "System Jump" buoys). This jump will take you to an isolated corner of the map, where a second tradelane will lead you to a second jump hole. This will take you to a point mid-way between the Karatikus and Hades nav route.

Eight major planets of the Tri-System are provided in the mod. They are bare-bones, consisting of a generic hangar and empty bar with no patrons or missions.

Nine flyable ships from the original game are currently available: the Straith, Aurora, Duress, Drakkar, Heretic, Faldari, Karnenan and Icarus. The bases where they can be purchased are shown below:

Anhur: Aurora, Shaman, Karnenan
Bex: Duress. Aurora, Shaman
Crius: Faldari, Aurora, Icarus
Hades: Heretic, Faldari, Icarus
Hephaestus: Straith, Drakkar, Karnenan
Hermes: Straith, Shaman, Duress
Janus IV: Heretic, Faldari, Icarus
Karatikus: Drakkar, Duress, Heretic

Missiles, decoys and mines are currently not implemented, due to the differences between Privateer 2 and Freelancer.

A number of original Privateer 2 commodities, with accurate prices, replace those of Freelancer. They currently exist as flavor more than anything else, as hiring of cargo ships is impossible. Limited trading can be carried out with current ships (which have 20-unit cargo holds).

SPACEFLIGHT AND COMBAT
Thanks to work done with the Freelancer engine, it is now possible to roll in-game. Set the controls from the options menu.

There are no missions. As in Privateer 2, killing pirate ships will net you credits. To compensate for the lack of missions and trading, the credits have been upped to 500, from 50 in the original game. Ships will drop the credits upon destruction (provided most of the damage was done by you), and they may be tractored in using the B key.

No nanobots or shield batteries exist; as in the original game, you must live or die by your ship stats alone.

Afterburners are now finite; they will only recharge upon landing, but will burn for far longer.

KNOWN BUGS:
This mod uses a number of plugins by Jason Hood (http://adoxa.3eeweb.com):

* NoNavMap, to hide the in-game Nav Map and prevent a game-crashing bug;
* StoryFactions, which hides the remnants of the original Freelancer factions;
* FixedMounts, to prevent shields and afterburners from being sold and lost forever; and
* MatchPlayer, which attempts to recreate the leveling system of the original Privateer 2.

The latter, unfortunately, appears to create another bug upon starting a new game, where you may be swarmed by pirates upon launch. If you die, reloading the autosave should fix this.

Nav points (trade lanes) may occasionally roll you 180-degrees or fail unexpectedly. The cause of the latter is unknown, but may be linked to the long distance between nav points compared to the original Freelancer - if a point goes down, it may be because pirates further down the line have attacked it.

NPC ships will occasionally say they are from the "New York System" or comment on things from Freelancer.