I figured a fun way of playing the game kinda differently. Thought it'd be fun to share

In short, the idea is the same as the idea of a 'nuzlocke' in Pokemon. A set of self-imposed rules to create a challenge or just a different experience.

There's two things this idea incorporates - Freelancer and for an enhanced experience, Doghotel's Brainy Bots mod. It works in every mod that incorporates Freelancer (works better with mods that incorporate formations too however), and you can enable Brainy Bots on every mod too. Or you should be able to.

Anyhow what is this, and why is it different from what you usually play? Well for starters, I have dubbed it "Mount & Blade, the poor and realistic(ish) little soldier experience", and the name gives an indication to what you can expect.

It's basically a set of self-imposed rules to make playing in Freelancer seem like a realistic experience. You can almost truly feel like you are a poor little conscript, trapped in a war you'd rather avoid. I have also taken steps to make it as realistic and accurate to history as possible, by even more self-imposed rules. Brainy Bots is a huge plus, because now every enemy is a threat. Normally you can take on pretty high-level units even with shit stuff, but with this mod that is almost impossible. Every single guy you go up against is a threat, and the high-end units are a threat you really want to avoid. It just ups the immersion imo

So what rules are there? I'll list them, and I explain why I have the rules and why, in certain cases, they make the whole thing a lot more realistic.

1. You start off as a poor infantryguy. No horse, sell it if you have one. Join the army as soon as possible, grinding credits and buying good equipment outside of it before joining defeats the purpose.
2. You don't use the equipment given to you. In real life, each person had to buy their own stuff. Being given equipment doesn't make sense, so this style of playing doesn't incorporate it. Just delete the items you're given (don't sell them). Pretend they never existed. All you can use are stuff you get yourself.
3. No tournaments. This rule is both for realism and challenge purposes, although mostly for the challenge. Tournaments are an easy way to make money. Defeats the purpose, thus no tournaments. In real life they were only for high-class people anyway, so you wouldn't have been able to join.
4. Looting is majorly reworked. In real life, not everything you looted could be used, nor were you allowed to loot many things. Looting in an army was very regulated, and the higher your rank the more loot you had a right to. So there's two rules here to make it realistic
   - The armor you loot must "fit" you for you to use them. To determine this, I roll a dice. If it rolls a 5 or 6, the item is in the right size for me to use. If I roll less than 5, the item cannot be used. This doesn't go for weapons of course, only armor. And to make it even more hash, for the very high-end armors only a 6 will suffice.
   - You're only allowed to take a certain amount of loot per battle. I usually go with 3 items at first, and then add 2 items per rank. So if you're a Nord Huscarl for example, you can loot 11 items (3 + 2 + 2 + 2 + 2), since the Huscarl is a rank 5 unit.
5. You don't use a horse. The whole point of this is to be an infantryguy. Playing cav is just so much easier, and it doesn't give the same feeling of helplessness as being stuck as infantry does. So thus, even if you get a rank that is technically a cav, no horses should be used.Playing an archer is fine too. Just no cav.
6. No looting if you managed to get knocked out during the battle. Since looting is your primary way of making money and getting new equipment (because as said, we're not using the equipment given to us), this gives you an incentive to play it safe. And it's also kindof a realism rule - you can't go around and loot the battlefield if you're laying knocked out in a healing tent somewhere.
7. No sheating polearms and two-handed weapons (unless the two-handed weapons are worn on the hip). This is just a realism rule. You can't really just stick your spear behind your back and draw a sword - if you're going to draw your sword your spear needs to be thrown away. No other alternative.This also means that you can't expect to use a bow and then pull out a huge ass poleaxe from your back when you need to fight in melee.
   - No big shields for archers. Irl archers didn't carry big shields as drawing a bow with a big shield on your back is extremely hard. So thus, you're not allowed to carry them. If the mod has small shields (such as bucklers) they can be used. If not, rest in piece I guess.

That is pretty much the rules I play by. More or less, I sometimes make changes and such. Add something or remove something.

I may have forgotten one or two small rules

If you decide to try this out - have fun. I certainly do. Currently playing it in Calradia 1417, and it is a blast.

Submitted February 17, 2019 at 07:54PM by Draugr_the_Greedy http://bit.ly/2DRR4qv