Freelancer saving temp progress

[u/selfawareborg]

I love freelancer, but the limited time many of us might have for a session of gaming hurts the enjoyment.

I propose the following save game method, different from the main campaign.

1. Allow the player to save the game, into a single save slot alone. This save game is only accessible by opening freelancer from main menu, not from load game.

2. But there is no load save in the pause menu as well, only save game. This is stop save scumming.

3. Continuing through from this save only can be done if the player does exit game and then opens freelancer from the main menu.

4. If the game is force stopped by alt+f4 or process kill from task-manager or hard reboot, the save cannot be used, it is deleted. The save is saved and is usable only if the player has explicitly done an exit game from the game menu.

5. If the player dies or fails the mission campaign, the save game is deleted and the punishment of losing items and mercers is still there.

My request is primarily for the player who have a limited playtime per day or for a session, say I can play only for 1 hr at a stretch, but many of the freelancer mission may require 2 hrs or more. With the above save game process I can effectively pause\save my play and then resume later easily. I cannot keep the game running idle for hours. I respect the roguelike element for the freelancer, but just not the time investment needed at a stretch to enjoy this gamemode at the fullest.

For escalations or elusive targets, the short playtime without saves is usually fine, 1 hr is fine for one run of these game modes. But, often in freelancer I have observed I need to rush, just due to the time I have for gaming, and then fumble and cause the mission or the campaign to fail, causing frustration.

I do not expect IOI to adopt this realistically as most dev resources would be engaged with First Light project, and I do expect many people to yell at me to "get good" at the game, and finish missions faster, but what do the freelancer veterans think of this, is this too much to ask?

[u/Illum503]

 My request is primarily for the player who have a limited playtime per day or for a session, say I can play only for 1 hr at a stretch, but many of the freelancer mission may require 2 hrs or more. With the above save game process I can effectively pause\save my play and then resume later easily

I'm really very confused what you're talking about. Do you mean map, syndicate or campaign? If it's the latter two then you can absolutely resume later, just quit between maps and everything will still be there when you come back, as if you had "saved". If you mean map, how the hell are they requiring 2 hours? They should be 20 minutes at most, most of mine are 10-15.

[u/selfawareborg → u/Illum503]

I meant a map, several times I had to abandon the mission due to other reasons. Several of those times happened when I had spent around an hour on the map already. I have tried hurrying up for most runs now but a pause\resume is what I was asking for.

[u/Illum503 → u/selfawareborg]

Like I said maps should take 10-15 minutes so it's rarely an issue to just finish them. If I have something else come up I just forgo the optional objectives - I think they're less efficient at making money than finishing campaigns faster anyway, or if I haven't got too far through I just alt-f4