[quote="cmdrsaman";p="204243"]Let me weigh in on this, even though I'm not playing FL active anymore (though, as you can see, I did come to check out what happened on Apr. 1. Pretty much what I expected, though :/), because I've tried Disco out earlier. Just my two cents - in a wall of text, probably (@ReverendDel, for the most part.)
Is it better than the Void? No, it isn't. Is it worse than the Void? No, it isn't. It's, in one word, different.
Unless by "better", you mean "has more players online", because yes, it does have. As far as I know, the main Disco RP server is the only server that has more than a hundred players online, well, pretty much ever. And more players means more new players, too. You know: after a certain point, activity increases activity. But you're right that you don't constantly have 198 players online: that would be a bad case, because it'd mean that connecting to the server would be quite hard, all the time. (If only MS made the FL server multi-threaded...)
Is the mod itself better? Well, I have to say that yes, it is. But not by far. There are more new systems, and I'm not counting the Void's 3D systems into this, because while they are an excellent concept, in reality they're just a bunch of random planets and clouds splattered all over a system, with all too large distances between them. I would love to have five "real" 3D systems on the Void - it would be a lot more exciting than 10 2D systems on Disco, or 50 of the current ones here. Let's not forget that a fair number of your new systems are "guard" systems too, aka accessible only to members of that faction. And while the Void doesn't have that many new 2D systems, they are, on the average, larger than the ones in Disco, in my opinion.
There are also considerably more ships on Disco, and while I haven't played that long there (bit over a month, maybe), in my opinion, they are less balanced. If you didn't have strict rules enforcing which players can use which ships, everyone would be using only a handful of them. All the others would become redundant, then. There's only one seriously unbalanced ship here, the Eagle, and even that one's only a killer if outfitted with nomad lasers (aka unbalanced weapons) - and a good pilot
Weapons, however, are more balanced on Disco. Pretty much all of them. But that's no wonder, since most of the system has been reworked from vanilla Freelancer, while here, custom weapons are pretty much added on top of them. Here, players seem to use only about half a dozen weapons, with Nomad lasers coming out on top, because they're overpowered compared to the others. (There's a thread discussing this, with the majority of players agreeing on that.) There, you see a wider variety of weapons used, even more so on capital ships. (But let's not forget that there're restrictions in place for weapons, on who can use what.)
There are also a lot more new things happening on Disco: war between the Houses, and such. But you need the community to play them for them to matter, and your draconian measure about RP do come in very handy here. Events are quite rare here, true, but there are no events on Disco, either. If anything is organised here, it is always available to new players (even if they usually get creamed in the tourneys), but any mass events on Disco are tied strictly to RP, and as such, newcomers to the mod aren't allowed in. If we had more events AND more event participants, I would say the Void is the clear winner in this regard. I also have to admit that it's a bit of my fault, too: while I tried organising a ranked pvp championship with Maverick, it didn't really take off, as we almost never were online at the same time - and no other players offered to help host the stuff. There's an Event team, but I don't really know how active it is now. Even if they aren't, the point is that you, and any new players, will see events from time to time, and everybody can take part.
Then there is the dynamic economy. Which, in my opinion, is a huge plus for the Void. It makes trading more interesting, and more lively. Forgive me for saying this, but trading on Disco is just plain boring. There are a lot more trading ships, and more routes (because smugglers are actively policed, and because there're a lot larger trading ships), but in the end, you settle on one route, and pretty much all you do is farm money. (Then an update comes out, which prolly nerfs your route :/) Because you need a LOT of money for high-end stuff, like buying capital ships. And then you find that two-three bombers, which are incredibly cheaper than your new capship, can take you down quite easily. And if we had 100+ players online here too, the dynamic economy would mean that trading would be a LOT more interesting than it is either here, now - or than what's over on Disco.
Then there's pvp. For all the more balanced weapons, combat on Discovery is more boring, especially when we consider that there are a lot more players online there. Yet if mass pvp events (wars) happen here, they're on the same scale as over there: because systems are better connected here (which is why we love Alexandria), and players are less spread out over the entire server. And I have to say that on the average, the pvp skills of the Void players are noticably better than those I've met on Disco. I don't consider myself as a particularly good fighter, as I can't really snipe, and there are quite a bunch of veteran players who can kick my a** while I can barely dent their hull, but even I was surprised at how many players I could either kill or evade in combat there. (Well, you don't kill a cruiser and a gunship in a Sabre, now do you?) In my opinion, if we made a Void all stars team, and kitted them out on Disco, they could kick pretty much everybody's asses
But that's just my opinion, and to see whether it's true or not would require a server war. Why don't those happen lately btw? :/ (At least, I heard that they did at least once, in the past.) In my opinion, it would be a good way to increase activity here. I would recommend inviting the Disco server for one - but to be honest, seeing how many people play there, I'm afraid that they'd zerg the whole server
The problem with pvp here, however, is that it mostly happens in Sparta - a place where even the few RP we have is pretty much suspended, and a place where certain people with grudges flame people who would respond in kind. And since most new players never enter Sparta (they have little reason to do so, if they don't know the trade routes leading from/to the Abandoned city) all the combat they see happening on the server is in the form of the death messages. When I was playing here, I tried to lure people out from there, into Alexandria, NB, or some other places - and I have to say, it felt good when some new traders passed us and went "Whoa, Demos/Barsine/etc is a warzone!" And that will probably mean that they will stay, because they can see that even if there are only 30 people online, the server is not dead. There are things happening here, and fights happening. (And what's even better, you can get to know all the people on the server!) During the time I was on Disco, I recall seeing only one fight in which more than 8 people were involved. If y'all got your [s]as[/s]... behinds out of Sparta, everyone could see that such fights are a lot more frequent here. But please, leave the lags, spams and flames behind!
Lastly, there's the community. I have to say that RP is several notches better there than here. I've gotta hand it to you, you guys know your stuff and do that the best. I also have to say that new players find a lot warmer welcome here than there. And I'm not just talking about the forums, but also about in-game. Here, we have a team of volunteers dedicated to helping out the fresh blood - and if you're one, you'll find that most players are helpful towards you. (Unless you regen in combat, that is, because you'll probably be receiving waves of hate then from some players
) On Disco, nobody approached me to help out with anything, but they ARE watching: watching if you break even the smallest of rules, in which case they're immediately there for you. (Pun intended
) I'm not saying that draconianism is bad - on the contrary, I'm all for enforcing the rules all the time. What I'm saying is that the players there are considerably more unfriendly towards new people. But hey, since your server is full, you can afford that - while if everyone hated on new players who regen, or go in any way against the rules, the server would become dead a lot faster.
To be honest, I think the majority of new players here stay only because of the friendly welcome here, and because of the stuff to explore - and the fights. I'm not going to say that there are no flames and no hate in the community here, because there are - but if you stay out of the business of veteran players, and if you stay out of past grudges, you'll get a considerably more pleasant experience here than on Disco, or HC (didn't really try that place out, though). And odds are that if you come online in NY for the first time, you'll have someone greeting you. At least, I did here on the Void, but never have over on Disco. (Do five characters count, in this aspect?)
Then there's one last thing, about mods and updates. True, we haven't seen an update in a long time. True, Disco has a huge new update coming out, and experiences a surge of new players because of that. Notice that I didn't say that a new mod came out, but that it's in the process of being released. Because it's in beta - and we don't get betas here. Yes, there has been no update on the Void since November. That's half a year. But don't forget that there's been no update before the beta for Disco for a whole year - and even then, it's not a stable release. There IS a very impressive amount of changes and new things in it, but your main server is running on beta, and as such, is unstable. The Void mod has only one server running it, but when a new release comes out, it's been tested and is stable. When I saw that on Disco beta, the whole server crashes if anyone takes a Gallia mission, I was pretty much turned off from the whole thing. Not only because that's a game-breaking bug for almost two hundred people, but also because that was a known bug, and went unfixed for quite a long time. (If it were me, I would've disabled the missions on the same day this became known - not just set a random announcement in-game for it.) And the server went down several times a day(!), which can be very frustrating. You know, I'd rather wait three more months for a new mod update than to have a beta commence right now. I agree with Geromix that an update would help this server a lot with activity, but I don't think that trying to rush Strail would help.
In my opinion, if we have a new release before Discovery goes stable and live, we should be good to go. (Set in bold because Gero did that too
) And while you guys have a larger development team, you also have a lot more to work on. But I have to say that your work so far has been excellent, keep it up, and good luck with it in the future!
Modwise, I have to say that the Discovery mod is better by some. If we're talking about servers, my earlier point still stands: neither the Void nor the main Discovery RP server is better or worse than the other. They're different. Thank you for pointing out valid points about our server, and I mean this sincerely. I welcome your comments when their intent is to help us out. But please don't say that the server is dead - or, to be precise, don't imply that. I, on the other hand, can't point out the good points of the Void without pointing out not just the good, but the bad points of Disco too. I have to say that all my negative comments about Disco were for the sake of comparison - you won't see me coming online on the Discovery RP forums, saying that I came from the Void, and posting them
I wrote this to say my opinion about the Void, even if I'm inactive now, because reading your post prompted me to do so. Still, you do have some valid points there, so thanks for sharing those with us! (Ah, and thanks for the timing
)
(Oh, and after I re-read my post, you might say that it looked like I was attacking Disco in what I wrote, but even if it did come off that way, well, I won't lose any sleep over that
)
One last thing, though. (...darn, I wrote that one already!) You wrote in your sig, for everyone to see, to "feel free to PM with questions". Let me ask you a question here, then: if you came here to post this, then why did you write that there? We all know what private messages are for
Or does that mean you'll hang around for a bit?[/quote]
Damn...good post. =D> =D>
I am out of time now,but i will comment soon.
You should be in Dev Team for the mod,see my topic,i hope there are reforms!!
Yes before Disco stabilizes,if we release mod we get the players.
? 
Voidserver.com