Well...
In the last installment of Privateer: The Reckoning, even though it reads the same, cruise speed is increased.
Also, if you get a ship like the Stiletto, which can carry 3 Afterburners, you can use them to increase your speed dramatically.
And, believe it, or not, the systems in Reckoning are the smallest I could get them.
As to the tradelanes...
To many Privateer fans didn't want them.
Another, not-so-obvious, problem was that many of the ships were set up wrong.
(Which caused a lot of the crashes in the mod.)
I tried repairing as much as I could, but by the time I was finished, there wasn't much of Privateer left in it.
All of the bases were gone, several ships were gone, it wasn't worth persuing any further.
A few programmer friendly, read:non-modeler, programs came out that have allowed me to modify hardpoints, ships sizes, etcetera, which resulted in the "Wing Commander FL" mods.
(Which, basically, turns Freelancer into Wing Commander.)
One of the reasons I've resisted getting a graphics accellerator, besides the cost, is that Freelancer is one of the few space flight games that us poor folk can still play on our antique computers.
(And I've tried to keep the mods playable by all.)
If the accelerator, which I got and installed today, helps, then the next version of WCFL will have a warning that it's not playable without one.
(As will any later mods.)
I am fairly certain that it will, because several of the new ships are from a highly popular mod, which uses many of the ships in Reckoning, and they crashed my computer without the accellerator.
A side note...
I ran Never Winter Nights to test the accelerator...
It may be a while before I get back to the mods ;P
Hard to believe the improvement!
Also...
I'll be on 6 days/week of 10 hour shifts for at least the next 2 weeks, so my time will be very limited.