Privateer Mission Series Gap Explained! (June 5, 2023)

Bandit LOAF

Bandit LOAF

Long Live the Confederation!
Did you ever wonder why Privateer's missions go from series 5 to 7 in the game's internal numerical sequencing? Series 6 was cut pretty late in the process... but now we've found an earlier version of the game's script that includes them! After finding the derelict, you take the gun to the ship dealer on New Detroit...






There a man named WILMER tells you that he can't install the gun because you need to talk to Roman Lynch again. Roman Lynch is the mob boss you last saw earlier in the game after he sent his henchman Miggs to murder you and steal your artifact.





Incidentally, this finally explains why there is a never used closeup background stored in the game for a conversation with the ship dealer!





Lynch runs this town and you can only get the gun installed if you fly a series of missions for him. The missions are especially immoral, attacking business rivals and civilians...





... and one of them is an attack on a luxury liner! I am better that this is what the final Drayman asset was initially designed to be (since we know there was a WC1-style Drayman in earlier concept art).





The series ends with you pulling one over on Lynch: he forces you to give up the artifact... but this time you give it away willingly, revealing in the process that it's only half a map and that you already looted the treasure. Now you've got your Steltek gun!





The final series is also longer in this version! You go to help Reismann but his fleet is wiped out by the drone. You jump out and find... Kuhl (art reused in RF) with a Kilrathi fleet, which is also wiped out! One more jump and you meet the scout and dogfight the drone 1v1.





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Original update published on June 5, 2023
 
I think this post needs fixing...

Bandit LOAF said:
Roman Lynch is the Miggs...
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The link in the original post is malformed, and also contains a typo 'earier'.

Bandit LOAF said:
I am better that this is what the final Drayman asset was initially designed to be...
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I'm not sure what this is trying to say.

But overall this is an interesting story. I remember on my very first play-through, I already felt a bit uncomfortable doing missions for Tayla and Lynch the first time around because of their illicit nature, so having to do all that for Lynch a second time would have put me off a bit, I think. The extension to the final showdown kinda makes sense - aside from the conversation with the Steltek scout I recall the mission itself was fairly brief.
 
I'm not sure what this is trying to say.
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English is not my first language, but hey, I'll take a guess. One of the possible definitions for the word "better" is "someone who bets", so I'm willing to guess that this is just a literary way of saying "I bet that this is what the final Drayman asset was initially designed to be".

I already felt a bit uncomfortable doing missions for Tayla and Lynch the first time around because of their illicit nature
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You certainly weren't the only one... I felt that way too at first. Then when I decided to do a full Tarsus playthrough, I went "oh, screw this" and blew up a few Paradigms to make the Kilrathi friendly. 😅

The final series is also longer in this version! You go to help Reismann but his fleet is wiped out by the drone. You jump out and find... Kuhl (art reused in RF) with a Kilrathi fleet, which is also wiped out! One more jump and you meet the scout and dogfight the drone 1v1.
Click to expand...

I think that could have been really neat to see if they'd managed to show the destruction of the fleets with the game engine.
 
Sharpshooter said:
One of the possible definitions for the word "better" is "someone who bets", so I'm willing to guess that this is just a literary way of saying "I bet that this is what the final Drayman asset was initially designed to be".
Click to expand...
Interesting perspective! The meaning you mentioned is usually phrased as 'gambler' in English. The word 'better' is most commonly used to mean 'more good' than something else. But I think you've got it, as 'I am betting that this is what the final Drayman asset was initially designed to be...' makes sense.

I didn't recall that piracy made Kilrathi friendly! I thought it was mainly pirates that became friendly on attacking merchants and to get Kilrathi on side it's usually Confederation pilots. But I can imagine attacking merchants will give a small boost to your reputation with the Kilrathi.

Perhaps that's partly why it was cut - I'm not sure if that kind of destruction was possible to show in-game.
 
You guys are overthinking "better". It's just a typo that was supposed to be "betting".
 
What a find!

It would have been cool if there was a scene where Kuhl stuck out his paw to get you to agree!
 
I'm wondering if there were other missions or storylines which didn't make it into the final game? Maybe even a cancelled add on (Righteous Fire 2)?
 
Apologies for the typos; this is one of those things I just kind of casually posted to Twitter in real time and then Chris converted it into an update.

There was, at least on paper, a second Privateer addon (and a second Tactical Operations)... but I don't believe either ever got close to production. There were a lot of ideas that never made it to screen on Privateer, though, it had a lenghty preproduction period in 1992 and there were a bunch of more complex outlines for the story and setting (you can find some of that in our archive section!). In fact, for a long time the Privateer story was to focus on the retros with the Steltek stuff being intended for the first mission disk.
 
The Drayman model originally being a cruise ship makes sense, though after thirty years I can't see it as anything other than a Drayman now.
 
Wow, what an interesting fund. What a pity that they didn't include it in the final game. I don't think the game data would have grown too much to sell the game on floppy disks. Damn it. I really would have liked to fly these missions, although they tend to ruin your standing with the good fractions. I'm curious if there's any way to mod the game to include these missions again.
And while we are at it... I still haven't found the other hidden jump point. But I also don't have very much time at the moment.
 
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