indicated by pointers at the screen's edges. Targeting, communications, and navigation data are displayed in information boxes that can be minimized. After the pilot docks with a space station or lands on a planet, the screen and its interface change to a rendition of the area he is visiting. The player moves the pilot to different locations and interacts with certain objects, such as reading a bulletin board and talking to other characters, by clicking on their graphical representations. Freelancers economy consists of buying and selling spacecraft, their armaments and components, and commodities. Certain goods are considered contraband in some systems, and they have to be smuggled past police patrols to their buyers. Computer-controlled characters (non-player characters or NPCs) in certain locations on the planets or stations offer quests and jobs. Freelancer features a multiplayer mode, allowing up to 128 players to play together in a game. Multiplayer games are hosted on game servers; personal computers that meet the requirements for the game can act as a server. Gameplay is similar to the single-player mode, but is absent of story-driven quests. The server keeps individual records of the players' progress, and they can resume their game on their next log on to this server. A persistent virtual galaxy is thus maintained for them. Plot and setting The events in Freelancer take place 800 years after those in the video game Starlancer (2000). The Solar System was engulfed in a civil war, fought between the Western Alliance and the Eastern Coalition. Facing defeat, the Alliance placed its people in stasis and sent them to the Sirius system, where they settled and transformed the surrounding space (the Sirius sector) into a region of political intrigue and opportunity. The rule of the sector is mostly split among four houses, each named after the sleeper ship that brought them to the system. Each house exhibits the culture of its terrestrial ancestor: Liberty of 1920s United States, Bretonia of Victorian era United Kingdom, Kusari of Shogunate era Japan, and Rheinland of Second Industrial Revolution Germany. The fifth sleeper ship, Hispania, suffered a malfunction en route and was abandoned in deep space (in the Omicron Alpha system). The descendants of its crew became pirates. Freelancers planetary bodies and space stations lie close to a single plane in each system, although some are above or below this plane and ships can travel out of the plane. There