Post Wed Jun 14, 2006 11:24 pm

observations on FL Continuous 1.0

some observations on FLContinuous 1.0

The Rogues Bloodhound is now a much beefier ship, in terms of shield and gun output. The Nomad Fighter is only marginally harder to kill than one of these. I wanted to check the spec. on the "Super Bloodhound" so I docked at Rochester base in NY - which I believe is the only place to buy them in NY - but the ones on sale there are just standard Bloodhound with max. 1900 armour and gun class 2/4 optimal/max. Perhaps it would be more consistent to sell the ship that the Rogues are using there - if you don't want ppl using a heavy fighter class ship that early in the game, why not make it more expensive or require a higher level to buy it?

The Starflier is rubbish - unless you can get one of the Xeno ones - the Xeno ones are boosted in armour and guns like the Bloodhound, my Starflier couldn't make any impression on the Xeno ones that appear at Detroit Munitions, so rather than waste a load of batteries and bots I just left them alone.

I checked out the local bad guys in NY but they are almost all too strong for the Starflier. The Rogue Bloodhounds, Outcast Daggers and Xeno Starflier / Startrackers are all above the standard (i.e. un-modded) spec. The Junker CSV appears to be standard though. I took an assass. mission against some CSVs in NY and they looked unchanged from the standard to me - I could kill them with a Starflier.

The Rogues that you encounter on the first couple of missions with King and Juni are all standard ones - which is a good job as you'd not be able to complete the first couple of missions otherwise.

After getting a Defender and maxing it on shields and weaps I can take on a couple of Bloodhounds but more than 2 means that I use up too many batts and bots and as they don't drop any more than standard it is a loss making procedure. They also seem to carry much more powerful missiles than un-modded Bloodhounds, if your c/measure dropper doesn't catch one it can easily take out the Starflier.

I had some problems with "Mission 03 - Respond to Willard" that I described in another thread where the plot seems to get derailed.

I did pick up a Barrager that one of the pirate ships dropped. Not sure which ship dropped it, but this is not a standard weapon. It has a refire rate of 20 and does 15/30 shield/hull damage that amounts to 300/600 damage per/sec - but it uses so much energy that it's no good on the Starflier and even on the Defender it needs to be used carefully as it drains all the power in about 2 secs. No wonder that the pirate ships can blow away the shields on the Defender in a second if you fly in a straight line.

I did start using the Barrager for the "Escape from Manhattan - kill battleship Unity mission" as there are just so many Navy ships to kill and Walker takes about 10 minutes to kill the Unity - the Defender can't touch the Unity and you can't buy torps until you are level 10. It took me a couple of reloads to work out how to beat this lot. In fact the Unity only dies when all the Navy Defenders have been accounted for and that took me a while as Juni and King are pretty U/S as per normal.

Apart from the Willard problem - which I got around after reloading several times - no other problems that I found.

Rgds.