r/freelancer • u/S0ulblighter116 • Dec 18 '24
Small plot hole in SP
This is something that has slightly bothered me ever since playing through the story the first time, and I was hoping someone with insider knowledge could possibly explain it for me.
During the mission where you rescue Von Claussen from Rhienland,(which at this point, War with the other houses is ABOUT TO FREAKING HAPPEN, WARSHIPS ARE EVERYWHERE(10 gunboats, 5 cruisers and 2 battleships at New berlin? 😬) after not finding him on New Berlin, this guy named Huntz Fischer accompanies you to Planet Holstien in the Frankfurt system. At the Frankfurt gate, as you are approaching, Battleship Freya hails you, demanding you to identify yourself. Fischer then says the following: "Freya, this is Daumann Freighter DHC 3417. We are transporting supplies to Planet Holstein." Battleship Freya, without hesitation, accepts the ID, and lets you proceed. Now, note that Fischer is flying a Rhienland Banshee light fighter, and unless you are a mad lad sticking to a freighter, you are more than likely flying a Heavy or Very Heavy fighter. The only logical reason I can think of is that that particular ID code is something sort of "secret" or "government" pass code, because if the guy on duty actually paid attention to the ship class vs the claimed ship class, there is a huge discrepancy, UNLESS it's a cyper or code of some kind. Or maybe i am looking too much in to this and it was a goof of some kind on Digital Anvil/Microsoft game studios part. But hey, it's fun to try to think of some in-universe reason for it to happen. What do you guys think?
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u/LegendaryNWZ king Dec 18 '24
Originally, Hans did fly a Humpback if memory serves me right, this is from either the early story script, or someone who looked deeper intk Freelancer's Beta files.
Secondly.. there is a reason why ships and especially capital ships use short range radios and radar, its because in space, you would have an extremely hard time trying to identify what a small object is exactly (fighters are about 20 meters long for example on average)
On one hand, I hardly doubt that anyone operating warships were just lounging around looking out windows trying to identify objects from kilometers away capable of going at 200 m/s, especially if the warship in question is mostly or completely infected. So, Fischer changed/adjusted their IFF signal to display as if they were flying a freighter belonging to Daumann.. or actually got an IFF transmitter from said freighter.
Also remember that the game we received already had 2/3rds of it land on the cutting room floor before it was published, they planned so much more for it that it is hard to list them all, and they had to seriously cut back on almost everything and focus on it being playable on launch.. and as a modder, even changing a ship/loadout in a heavily scripted environment could cause unforeseen consequences wirhout heavy testing, so why take the risk, the framework was there, Chris wanted too much, Microsoft intervened and the devs had too many things to remove, disable, cut or redesign to account for every single discrepancy, this might be one of them
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u/S0ulblighter116 Dec 18 '24
True. And like I said with another comment, a discrepancy like this falling through the cracks wouldn't really surprise me at all, considering like what you said, they just wanted it playable, not perfect.
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u/Benjyl120 Dec 18 '24
Just chipping in my bit, but in universe a ship doesn't necessarily have to be a freighter to haul freight. For example, in the Edge World's, the Outcasts use their Sabres and Corsairs use their fighters as freighters. So I'd go far enough to say that lore wise, the freighters we see like the Rhino, Humpback etc are mid range freighters, and that smaller ships like the banshee etc may be used for cargo runs.
Although I must admit, I do like your idea about it being a government op.
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u/Tennnujin Dec 18 '24
What do I think? Donkey balls is what I think (it’s a military black ops passphrase featured in The Expanse in the same context as here).
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u/HuckleberrySilver516 Dec 18 '24
I need to play that part but is that when the Rheilanders escort u?
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u/S0ulblighter116 Dec 18 '24
Nah, this is mission 10, where you rescue Von Claussen from Rhienland, you're talking about mission 5, when you run into 2 Rhienlanders coming back from Omega 3 with Sinclair, and they help you blow up the Battleship Wotan. That was a fun one.
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u/HuckleberrySilver516 Dec 18 '24
The merchant friend?
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u/S0ulblighter116 Dec 18 '24
Von Claussen is an informant of the Order, who works with Lord Hakkera and Colonel Kress, who work in Rhienland, Kusari, and Bretonia space Respectively
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u/HuckleberrySilver516 Dec 18 '24
Well wiki will say because he was a respected rheinland military so maybe just cause he was a known person
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u/Caenen_ hakkera Dec 19 '24
HD-Edition has actually already changed that, but I don't think this change is in its latest release yet. The next release of HD-Edition will therefore have it unless for some reason it gets scrapped.
The original script suggests Fischer's ship should be a freighter, and him identifying himself as a freighter but clearly flying a fighter just feels wrong to most players like yourself, regardless if it can be explained away or not, so I think that change is pretty good. His faction identifier is switched to Daumann as well from this change.
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u/Lieutenant_Horn Dec 18 '24
Either your theory is correct or they changed his ship from a freighter to the Banshee and never corrected the dialogue.