Posts by Switchblade

I stand astounded that you can take a Patriot outside of Liberty and expect to survive for very long. I take it you are neutral with everybody? ---------------------------------- "preacher, don´t the bible have some pretty specific things to say about killing?" "Very specific. But it gets fuzzy in the area of kneecaps..."

my point is, what´s thee point in even HAVING battleships if a heavy fighter can take them out? okay, so it doesn´t take as long for a battleship to take out another battleship, but if a powerful VHF can slap a Dreadnought around what´s the point in their existing anyway, except as a mobile base for fighter wings? ---------------------------------- "preacher, don´t the bible have some pretty specific things to say about killing?" "Very specific. But it gets fuzzy in the area of kneecaps..."

there´s another Jumphole you haven´t mentioned just to the south of Buffalo base, which is an intra-system jumphole that zaps you across to the other side of the New York system about 10K from the battlship Missouri and more or less directly in front of the gap in the zone 21 mine field. the storyline forces you to use this jumphole, and also takes you through the Alaska gate.

the same things happens in the final missions on the Osiris, and Toledo. I think it has something to do with the fact that you essentially belong to those factions at those points in the storyine.

right, checked it out. the sad history of the hispania: A coalition saboteur on board detonated an explosive device that crippled the ship about four years before it reached Sirius. the colonists were awoken prematurely, and schismed. half of them abandoned ship in the hopes of finding a nearby habitable world. they eventually arrived in Omicron Gamma and became the Corsairs. the other half stayed aboard, and eventually drifted into Omicron Alpha, where they landed on Malta, which looked like a nice place to live. sadly, it turned out that the orange grass that covered the planet´s surface contained a complicated organic narcotic dubbed "Cardamine" that caused extreme genetic changes, dropping the fertility rate, but increasing the lifespan among the colonists (the oldest ever Outcast died at the age of 244). Cardamine withdrawal is fatal, and so the Outcasts (as they begun to call themselves) were trapped on Malta, only able to foray out into the other sirian worlds with the aid of cardamine breathing masks that keep them sufficiently dosed up to survive. eventually, they became bitter, and decided to take over the human colonies elsewhere in Sirius by getting the human population hooked on Cardamine, allowing them to rule Sirius by having a monopoly on the crucial addictive requirement of all the population. as for the corsairs: I´ve always been hostile with them, so beyond what I learned on Malta, I couldn´t say anything. incidentally, I´ve found that the Hispania´s wreck is an excellent place to hid during a firefight if your shields get too low. ---------------------------------- "preacher, don´t the bible have some pretty specific things to say about killing?" "Very specific. But it gets fuzzy in the area of kneecaps..."

admittedly, kitting out a Sabre with a ****load of JMk.1´s and going up against the rogues could be kinda funny. for one thing, mucho shots, zero power drain. excellent! ---------------------------------- "preacher, don´t the bible have some pretty specific things to say about killing?" "Very specific. But it gets fuzzy in the area of kneecaps..."

right, but what I´ve been doing is moving my pre-existing save games around the place a lot, and I seem to have entirely lost my best game so far, although It was, I should point out, apparently saved in a combination Epsilon 2 and Battleship encounters folder, which I may have overwritten. dammit, If I try digging up the earliest unmodded savegame, I´ll probably wind up back on the Alaska mission, which will be a serious dissapointment, not to mention a waste of about three days of diamond runs from Dresden to New Tokyo... *grumble*

hmm, I probably defected about five minutes before that started happening to me. Although there do seem to be more outcasts about the place nowadays...

hah! I activated that. it just puts a big spinny swirly thing centred in the Detroit debris field with a black orb in the middle that you can fly straight through as if it isn´t there. it doesn´t even look especially cool. now the Neutron Star in Omega-41, THAT´S cool.

certain items are considered Contraband, namely alien artifacts, and Cardamine. if you have any of either of these in your cargo hold when you are scanned by the police or navy, they will order you to drop it. if you do so, you will suffer a small drop in reputation with the law forces, but won´t have to fight. if you fail to jettison, or jettison and then reclaim or destroy the cargo, then they will turn hostile and fight you. you can avoid cargo scans by staying away from navy and police patrol routes. Avoid trade lanes and go cross-country. If I´m smuggling contraband, I tend to sneak around the edges of a system, or go "over the top". It takes ages to go anywhere, but you are almost certain not to be caught, and if you are, you can kill the patrol that uncovered you without having the whole system turn hostile. you might also consider using gas clouds and asteroid fields with a scanner damping effect (such as the Badlands in New York) the alternative is to power straight through and damn the pigs. use the trade lanes to your advantage. you have a pretty huge grace period between the cops scanning you, and them turning hostile, so use that time to get to the nearest trade lane and get the hell out of range before they attack you. its risky, but faster. at the start of the game, the only smuggling you can perform is to carry Cardamine from the various outlaw bases in liberty to Manhattan. seeing as the only sourec of Cardamine in Liberty is the Rogues, you need to be friendly, or at least neutral with the Liberty Rogues in order to get to Buffalo Base, in the Badlands. later on, you can pick up Artifacts and Cardamine from further afield in the border worlds for cheaper, but of course, the distance you have to travel to make any kind of a respectable profit will make it harder to carry your wares undetected. hope that helps, dude.

in those situations, I tend to load up with some really good mines (Rippers, for preference) if I wind up being chased by too much to handle, I just aim in a single direction, kill engines, hit the afterburners and then coast on out of there in turret mode, dropping the mines to discourage them from following, and flares to ward off the missiles. I have done things your way though, and it did help me win a pretty tough fight near Malta, but I think it´s too much of a risk to attempt on too regular a basis. you might also consider using solar coronas in a similar way, although its harder to tell which bit you need to avoid, and it takes longer for a ship to die in a solar corona thatn from hitting a planet.

I´m going to fill in the blank in the arguments for and against the big three. Most people think of the Sabre as being number 2 over all, as it is less heavily armoured than the Titan, and slower than the eagle, but it makes up for that by being more heavily armoured by the Eagle, and faster than the titan, not to mention packing more guns than either. let´s look at it like this: each ship has a speed value, an armour value, and a firepower value, rated in three easy steps; low(1), medium (2), and high (3). these values are compared against the other ships in the "Big Three". it works out as follows Eagle: Speed: high (3) Firepower: medium (2) Armour: Low (1) total: 6 points Titan: Speed: low (1) Firepower: Medium (2) Armour: high (3) total: 6 points Sabre: Speed: medium (2) Firepower: high (3) Armour: medium (2) total: 7 points purely on the numbers, a sabre works out as the best ship, which is why I use it. admittedly, the success or failure of a ship will depend on your ability to fly it. if you´re a very skilled pilot, then agility is going to be more important to you as a survival tool than armour. if, on the other hand, you think dodging is for wimps, then the Titan is your beast. My personal philosophy is that the best defence is a strong attack. after all, destroyed ships can´t shoot back. in all, I guess the best argument is that the best ship is whichever one you think is best. I´m a staunch defender of the Sabre, but that´s mostly preference (plus the fact that I think it looks damn cool). ---------------------------------- "preacher, don´t the bible have some pretty specific things to say about killing?" "Very specific. But it gets fuzzy in the area of kneecaps..."

delayed reaction, as has been ssaid. NPC´s enter a queue of conversation, stockpiling each line of dialogue until the previous one is finished. whole conversations load at once in order, and so subsequent events wai until afterwards to be said, at which point, you may already have activated your cruise engines. it´s just a minor flaw in the AI, no biggy. "give more power to the engines" means activating your cruise engines, in case you hadn´t worked it out. ---------------------------------- "preacher, don´t the bible have some pretty specific things to say about killing?" "Very specific. But it gets fuzzy in the area of kneecaps..."

my understanding was that you are a freelancer, and therefore had no dedicated ties to anyone. if you check the "formation members" list when you are in formation with something then your name will appear as "Trent" in SP or as your character name in MP. I wasn´t aware of a "faction" function. ---------------------------------- "preacher, don´t the bible have some pretty specific things to say about killing?" "Very specific. But it gets fuzzy in the area of kneecaps..."

take my advice and ignore the cops and Liberty companies entirely. you can become entirely friendly with the junkers without having to turn every liberty corporation base against you. just kill every bounty hunter you come across. the BH´s are listed as being allied with the house police and military factins, but in reality, killing them won´t damage your house reputation, but it will boost your outlaw reputation by a massive amount. (which, in turn, brings your house reputation down, but that´s unavoidable) start killing cops, and all hell breaks loose for you.

try binding the "Tractor all" key to something fairly close to where you keep your hand on the keyboard (mine´s bound to the "=" key, as I use BACKSPACE for my afterburners and "O" for missiles) so that you can hit it the moment you kill somebody. considering the range of most energy weapons, you´ll easily be in range to pick up any nanobots and shield batteries they drop, meaning that you should manage to keep a replenished supply going throughout the fight. further tactics: try hiding yourself behind something indestructible, like an asteroid, station, jump gate, etc, and using it as a shield against incoming fire. remember that it may be better to stay out of the line of fire and pick off the weakened stragglers rather than get stuck in. concentrate on avoiding death, and let your AI comrades get on with the dirty work. more specific tactics may depend on which mission it is you´re having trouble with.

Skyblast B gets my vote. I regret having sold mine, as not only do they do awesome damage, but they make a really cool sound, too. regarding the nomad weaponry: hey, if its legal, then what´s to stop everybody using it? what it means is that the true vets will have earned it, and it´s give the newbies something to aspire towards. besides, all it does is even the playing fields: it´ll bring the veteran pilots on an even playing field (more or less), and any stupid newbie who wants to take on a sabre with a patriot deserves the half-second lifespan, imo. ---------------------------------- "preacher, don´t the bible have some pretty specific things to say about killing?" "Very specific. But it gets fuzzy in the area of kneecaps..."

This is why I love nomad energy blasters. where else are you going to find a refire rate of 4.00, a high damage profile, and 0 energy consumption? you can keep firing forever with those things. the only drain on my power come from the two Buckshots, and the debilitator turret on my sabre, and sometimes I replace the buckshots with twin cannonball missile launchers. that combination wil ltake down a battleship with no fuss at all. ---------------------------------- "preacher, don´t the bible have some pretty specific things to say about killing?" "Very specific. But it gets fuzzy in the area of kneecaps..."

I did that myself, once. you get an excellent profit margin, but nowadays I prefer flying missions for the outcasts: more money, doesn´t take as long, plus you get bountiful prizes. only problem is I´ve done it so much that I now have to spend a few hours killing corsairs if I want to venture back into house space, or else I get stomped by bounty hunters and house police/navy.

you may accidentally have reassigned the hail function to another key, or assigned another function to the "P" key. to hail somebody, you need to select them, then either press the shortcut key, or click on the picture of a radio dish in the lower left hand corner of your HUD, just above the objects list.