<i>Here´s the rest of the article; had to cut this off because the server kept dying when I tried posting the full text. </i> If you subtract one minute for the lane-hacking and the pileup, and another two minutes for my bad performance during the missions (especially mission 2) then you get a time that is on par with the fastest T0 run, but with a lot more cash and two good guns extra. So the Rhino route is not only good for a Tmax run - somebody who is good with Rhinos and missiles (I am neither) could even use this path to go for the T0 top slot ... The extra cash means that you can fire Starkillers in Bretonia whenever you feel like it, and it also pays for a Catapult launcher + ammo for missions 6 and 7. Also, for a T0 run the Defender won´t have to be re-equipped until it is sold (Essex or New Tokyo) except for mounting the Pyros turret from the Balboa on Manhattan or Mactan and the upgrade to the class 4 shield. P.S.: I used T-Hawk´s mod <A href=´http://www.dos486.com/freelancer/CampaignCutScenesDisabled.zip´ Target=_Blank>Campaign Cutscenes Disabled</a>; the times would be quite a bit higher in the unmodded game with all the cutscenes.
Using the Rhino for missions 1 + 2 and getting rich on the way
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Hmm, this is a delecate process indeed, as it is somewhat random as well. Anyways, great easy 50K, good job T-Hawk and Sherlog! I thought when you looted one of those Depots, the police go completely in-the-red with you... ____________ Server: "Battleship Wars (TNG 1.59 Req.)" Required Files: <A href=´http://www.planetirg.net/modules.php?name=Downloads&d_op=getit&lid=22´ Target=_Blank>TNG 1.59 Mod</a>, <A href=´http://www.lancersreactor.org/t/download/download.asp?id=399´ Target=_Blank>FLMM 1.2</a> E-Mail me at "ilovedarkcorners@hotmail.com" for any questions or suggestions. <img src=smilies/icon_smile.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle> Edited by - Freelancer Jockey on 24-08-2003 00:09:54
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Yes, when you loot the depots and there are Police Patriots around then this feels a lot like mission 11. <img src=smilies/icon_smile_big.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle> But the great discovery that T-Hawk has made is this: normally, when you try to loot a depot during a mission you´ll get failed for attacking a neutral or friendly object. But if the depot is <b>hostile </b> already - because you have looted it just a few minutes ago without reloading in between - then you can loot it again with impunity, even during a mission. And since the depots seem to be repaired & refilled whenever you dock with a base or jumpgate/jumphole you can loot the same depot more than once even in the same mission. <img src=smilies/icon_smile_big.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle> <img src=smilies/icon_smile_big.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle> <img src=smilies/icon_smile_big.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle>
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Heh. I suspected you were up to something, when I mentioned the Rhino in the FLDQ discussion thread and you didn´t say anything about it there... <img src=smilies/icon_smile.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle> How about I just stick to being the idea man, and let you put them into practice. <img src=smilies/icon_smile_big.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle> For a Tmax run, I´d still suggest keeping the Rhino on Missouri, and looting the H-Fuel again on the way through to Manhattan. And H-Fuel price on Cal Minor is higher than in New York; the Rhino gets to loot 34*420 = $14,280 more than the Defender. How did you get the $52,183 figure for class-4 loot, and what would be the thresholds for classes 5 and 6? To use missiles with the Rhino, you need to remember that its acceleration is ver bad and it takes a good 3-4 seconds of thrusting to reach 200 speed. If you make sure you get up to 200 speed before firing the missiles, 2x Javelins will kill Bloodhounds. But the real story is that I found another place where you can do the same thing. Outside Planet New London, there are TWO four-container storage depots full of H-Fuel. It´s the two depots that look the same as each other; the third one that looks different contains Food Rations. You can get these twice - on the way to Planet Cambridge for mission 5 (only a few seconds longer than going through New London via the Kensington tradelanes) and on the way to Dublin for mission 6. The way to get maximum cash from these is the same as in the early game: buy a freighter. And this time we don´t even have to use the freighter to fly any missions! Buy a Clydesdale on Leeds each time, loot 125 H-Fuel in New London, and trade that ship in for a Cavalier on Cambridge and a Crusader on Essex. The price for H-Fuel on both these bases is $389. Total jackpot: <b>$97,250. </b> <img src=smilies/icon_smile_big.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle> Time cost each run: 15 seconds to buy Clydesdale, 30 seconds to reach and loot depots, 30 seconds to buy and equip new ship. <img src=smilies/icon_smile.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle> That seems to be all the opportunities for looting depots, though. There aren´t any depots on the way from Kyushu to Shinegawa. There are some at Yukawa Shipyard during mission 8, but I can´t figure out how to get them hostile at the right time, and anyways they only hold toxic waste and scrap metal. There may be some depots in Rheinland as you fly around during mission 10, but again I don´t know how to get them hostile when you need. Edited by - T-hawk on 24-08-2003 06:54:41
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Hehe! Your New London find is even better than Baltimore Shipyard. <img src=smilies/icon_smile.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle> Could finance plenty of Catapults/Starkillers/Tadpoles for mission 7, and Catapults/Drillers in addition to the usual Starkillers for Tohoku and Sigma-13, not to mention the finest shields available and whatever guns strike your fancy ... Yes, the long time to get the Rhino to missile-launch speed is the reason why I wrote "... not enough to dispatch a Bloodhound <b>reliably </b> ..." With the damage bonus, 2 Javelins are enough. Without the bonus, even 3 won´t cut it. I preferred an additional hull gun over a third launcher, since most bogies would have to be destroyed in a furball. A Javelin pair will still do good damage even if not launched at top afterburn speed but the guns of the gunboat have to do part of the work (besides helping beat down the shield). $52,183 threshold: this is the next higher loot threshold after the nominal value for Raphaels - just something that I was trying out. LootProps.ini gives $25,396 (== level 5) as threshold for Raphaels but it also gives $646,965 (== level 28) as threshold for Nomad guns and we all know that level 32..34 is more like it. I have killed 40 Nomads at level 29 without getting a single drop. I do not know what the numeric model for loot drop chance is, but either the chance gets higher the higher you are above the threshold in the .ini file, or the game engine fudges the levels/thresholds a bit. It is also possible that the threshold value refers to a subset of net worth, like only cash, or only worth of ship+equipment. But in the latter case the Rhino would not have gotten Raphaels in mission 2, and Patriot/Defender would not get class 4 drops during missions 3+4 (from Outcasts, Liberty Navy, and Bounty Hunters). BTW, I have no intention of doing any more FLDQ runs. I may diddle with some interesting problems, like Sigma-13 and Zone 21, and I may even fly the odd mission again and write it up if I think that I have found something new that could be helpful for aspiring FLDQers. Things would be different if somebody were to propose an interesting new mode of contest, other than fastest time and number of battleship kills.
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Hmm. Here´s the entry in question for the Raphael: [mLootProps nickname = fc_lr_gun01_mark03 drop_properties = 8, 25396, 25396, 0, 2, 1 I wonder what that 2 is? Could it just be a multiplier? Applying this to the Nomad gun: [mLootProps nickname = special_nomad_gun01 drop_properties = 10, 646965, 646965, 0, 2, 1 646,965 * 2 = 1,293,930 - which is level 32 (just below level 33) and the commonly known threshold for the Nomad guns. If this is correct, the threshold for the Raphael would be 50792. Maybe I´ll test some more later... ========== Anyway, I discovered one problem with the plan of flying a Rhino with H-Fuel to Cal Minor, buying a Patriot for mission 3, then buying a Defender at BS Yukon for mission 4. The Defender only comes with the class-2 shield, and none of the bases on the way back to Manhattan (Yukon, Los Angeles and West Point) sells a class-3 shield. Having only a level-2 shield makes a serious dent (pun) in mission 4 survivability when killing cruisers. So the other way to do that would be to go directly to the Yukon with the Rhino before mission 3, buy the Defender there, and hit the Balboa on the way from there to Cal Minor. Takes just as much time as flying the Willard-Balboa-Los Angeles route the other way after the mission, and the Cardamine and Pyros guns raise your networth (loot chance) for mission 3 even more. Of course, you could just do the simple thing and buy the Defender on the Missouri as you did, especially if you´re going to loot some Bretonian H-Fuel later. <img src=smilies/icon_smile_big.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle> ========== BTW, I do have another idea for a competition. "Goodbye Million Credits - the FLDQ Challenge." Fastest time to complete the campaign and have $1,000,000 in the bank. This would let us tie together all these cash-generating tricks, plus more like going over to Ainu Depot before mission 10 to buy Cardamine to sell on New Berlin. How fast can we rack up a million either during the campaign or by flying freelance afterwards? Interested? -- <img src=´http://www.dos486.com/freelancer/starflier.gif ´>
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Mhmm, sounds interesting. However, this will focus attention on the early campaign. Traders will go for Rhino, Mule, Clydesdale or Dromedary (Drom is the latest at level 10), others may opt for copious wreck-looting after mission 4 where you get the run of the whole Sirius sector. The Patriot can certainly raid any known wreck except for those that require long travel through strong radiation (Omega-11, Omega-41, Omicron Alpha/Gamma). Got a Dagger to $2 million cash before mission 5 that way, so this is certainly a possibility. Basically, this will be roughly T0ish until Leeds and then opinions/strategies will start to diverge. Pity that I´ve already removed the Rhino savegames - after all those hits on the DSE H-fuel depot the Corsairs should be almost neutral ... <img src=smilies/icon_smile_big.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle> Make a topic for this (include ´FLDQ´ in the title) and I´ll race you. Won´t be able to play much during the next week (the monthly Billing Time falls on Saturday/Sunday and I´ll have to work pretty much around the clock) but things will wind down during the week after that. <i>Memo to self: 90 boron to Stokes ... </i> <img src=smilies/icon_smile_big.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle> P.S.: requiring the campaign to be completed certainly adds a twist and makes planning a tad more complicated, but I am not sure that it will make the race more appealing ... Think about it. Edited by - Sherlog on 24-08-2003 21:45:33
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<i>Pity that I´ve already removed the Rhino savegames </i> I might suggest dumping all the savegames into a .zip file after each run through the campaign. Also, I have a VB program that I wrote that opens up all the .fl files (must be decrypted) and renames them (manual saves only) according to the savefile description, making it easier to manage them from Explorer. I won´t be able to play much more this week either, and I still want to do a Tmax run myself (after I work out all the Rhino strategy). Will start a thread after that sometime. <i>Memo to self: 80 boron to Stokes ... </i> Is that really worth being stuck with a Rhino for mission 4? <img src=smilies/icon_smile_big.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle> Decisions, decisions... <i>P.S.: requiring the campaign to be completed certainly adds a twist and makes planning a tad more complicated, but I am not sure that it will make the race more appealing ... Think about it. </i> I did think about it. Without completing the campaign, there´s a pretty limited set of options. Finish mission 5 with $200k after all the H-Fuel looting and Tobias´s cash, buy a Dromedary, cart gold to Tripoli for $300k, pick up artifacts at Freeport 9, tour all the Sigma-13 wrecks for $400k, and sell the artifacts somewhere like New Tokyo. The particulars on exactly what to do might vary, but the fastest way in general is surely to buy a Clyde or Drom ASAP and run cargo in some way that involves Sigma-13. -- <img src=´http://www.dos486.com/freelancer/starflier.gif ´>
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Memo to self: 90 boron to Stokes ... Look closely, I´ve painted this herring a little redder while you were replying. <img src=smilies/icon_smile_wink.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle> The Rhino is perfectly capable of flying mission 4 quickly since you don´t have to do anything except help Walker fry the Unity before you reach Magellan; there you only have to toast 8 Piranhas and help the Hackers with the 4 Valkyries. You get 50 or 55 more units of cargo space in exchange for a few lost seconds. Whether this is worth it depends on Leeds where the Clyde will want a hefty chunk of seed money for getting started with trading. If you reload a savegame during mission 3 then Fort Bush will be willing to sell optronics before mission 4 - two tradelanes more in Liberty but two less in Bretonia, compared to the boron option. P.S.: Of course, if you keep Ft. Bush nicely hostile you get another 60 H-fuel for free and boron remains an option. P.P.S.: Of course, the P.S. was a complete and utter brain fart - it is only during story missions where depots must be hostile in order to be raidable. Also, the hold of the Rhino will probably be full of Rheinland gunboat H-fuel already (in addition to the Balboa cardamine) ... Edited by - Sherlog on 25-08-2003 16:40:47
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Hey <b>T-Hawk, </b> what about your $1 million challenge? If you throw the gauntlet I am ready to rumble. I have a Drom sitting on Honshu that is worth $450k already after dropping off a load of tenderloin, and if all goes well then I will be able to retire even before Shinagawa and buy myself a shiny Ferrari for the rest of the way. Well, a BMW actually (´cuda) because the Ferrari (Drake) cannot hold enough cargo. So far I have switched ships after every mission except mission 6, and I´m going to switch again when I reach Texas because I want the powerful SUV that is sold on the Osiris. <img src=smilies/icon_smile_big.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle>
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Been busy this week, and I´m about to leave for the holiday weekend here in the US. Maybe Tuesday or so. You can start a thread yourself, if you like. <img src=smilies/icon_smile_wink.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle>