... I'm hoping turns out to be just as awesome as Freelancer.  Freelancer is how I got my start in online gaming.  I played some Age of Empires in the MSN Gaming Zone before that, but it was nothing serious.  Freelancer is where it all started.

I'd like to share a little story....  Probably the best single online multiplayer experience I've ever had.

I used to fly around with 3 other guys.  We were freelancers.  We didnt join another clan or outfit.  We did whatever we felt like doing that day.  I wouldnt necessarily have called us pirates, but we did some pirating.  We'd constantly interrupt the trade lanes and tax people.... cuz.  The money we taxed them wasnt even all that much. It was the principle of the matter!

We used every technique possible.  We found a way to exploit the Kusari Capital ships to break the speed limit on the server.  Essentially you fly into an NPC's rear engines and kill you engine.  Your ship gets tangled up and it eventually spits out about 3 or 4 times faster than the max speed.  We used this technique to escape from baddies all the time.  Every once in awhile it would shoot you into a planet, or base and you'd die.  It wasnt very often, but it was funny too.

One night at Freeport 10 in the beautiful Tau-37 system:



We taxed someone from the AWC clan.  AWC was just one of those large clans filled with anyone and anybody who wanted to join.  They really had no standards.  As a result it was completely filled will new players.  Things escalated quickly after we taxed the two players at Freeport 10.  There were AWC's in neighboring systems who came to their rescue.  Two AWC's turned into 4, which turned into 8, which eventually turned into 20 or so AWC's.  We were outnumbered 5 to 1. 

But you see... as Freelancers who stuck together we had teamwork and stratedgy on our sides.  We were in Vent and always targeted the same player allowing us to take them our fairly quickly.  We'd also sometimes use one of us to draw a player out.  We'd then circle back in towards a teammate and as we passed they'd light up the guy on my tail with a  missile. 

We had even one more extremely shady technique.  There was a weapon called the Tizona Del Cid.  This gun did 0 hull damage but decimated shields.  What was unique about this weapons is that even though it did no hull damage it still did damage to other parts of the ship.... like the wings.  You could shoot at a ship all day long until there was literally nothing left but their hull.  When you lose a wing in battle you also lose the guns that were attached to it when you respawn. 

During out AWC battle I had the ship outfitted with 4 Tizona Del Cid's.  It wasnt long until all 20 of our enemies are forced to buy whatever crappy guns were offered at Freeport 10 when they respawned.  Making it easier and easier for us to kill these guys as time went on. 

The coolest part about the whole night was that there was a guy who ran a sort of newspaper on server events and reported them in the forums.  He got wind of the massive battle and started "reporting" on it.  We captured the main headline on the forum that week but most importantly he was keeping score.  I dont remember the final score but we ended up losing. Not by much though. Being out numbered 5:1 is tough for anyone.  But thanks to the Tizona we quickly started coming back.  They ended up retreating as the score started to even. 

After that night we became a permanent enemy of the AWC clan and were fired at on site.   It made my remaining time on the server interesting to say the least. 

I lost touch with my 3 wingmen shortly after the server shutdown.  I kept in touch with one briefly and even played some Bad Company 2 with him for a short while afterwards some years later. 

If Star Citizen turns out to be even half the experience Freelancer was I'll be happy.  Its good to know that its expected to be 10x the experience Freelancer was.  I'm seriously giddy as a school girl for this game!