Thu Feb 13, 2003 9:57 pm by Aye Capn
As long as somewhere it says something so that old Privateer fans are not misled, I can let it go ...
Now back to Privateer!
After solving it the old fashioned way, I played Privateer under the "Ironman rule": if I died, I started over, even giving the pilot a new name.
I have three pilots whom I played before going "Ironman"; the one I originally solved the game with, who of course died plenty of times, one who I levelled up for a friend of mine and didn't want to delete from the hard drive [never thought about it before, but this pilot never actually "died" on my watch, and one who has died several times in a Quixotic quest to mount a Steltek Gun to a Tarsus.
The second-to-last pilot went "on safari" through Tr'Pakh and Sumn'Kupta to celebrate his triumphant defeat of the Steltek Drone ... but a sudden glitch in his comm system caused him to glance away from the cockpit and he died in a freak collision with a Kamekh. [The phone rang
The last pilot has solved everything, has 20 million in the bank, and is still alive.
The "Ironman" style of play really changes the way you fly; the "sell your radar and fly blind to New Detroit" opening gambit suddenly looks way too risky (even though, as an opening move, you really haven't lost anything -- it's all in the attitude) ... I didn't want to leave Troy without ECM level 3 and a repair droid. You'll find yourself NOT tapping the afterburner to speed through asteroid fields when you get bored, but you WILL steer around them -- or at least I did. It was a whole other game.
When I fire up old Privateer these days I start from the beginning and fly the Tarsus around for kicks ... but honestly it's been a year since I've even done that much. I kind of miss that experience, the thrill of building what you fly and flying what you build wherever and however you want to fly it. Someone's bound to get it right eventually, though, and many are making the effort (Elite 4, X2, 3rdworld) -- it is a myth that lightning does not strike the same place twice!
Oh, here's a Privateer "easter egg": if you hold an ejected pilot for ransom -- I'm assuming when you capture a merc he's got a bank account almost as fat as yours and he buys himself back from you -- anyway, if you tractor in a merc pilot to hold for ransom he won't go into the secret compartment and you get busted by Confed. BUT ... if you eject him back into space then tractor him in again he goes to the secret compartment. Maybe you blindfold him when you bring him in the first time so he won't know where your secret compartment is, then jettison and tractor him into it?
Hmm, a "mercenary code of honor", where instead of just leaving defeated mercs floating in space, the winning mercenary scoops the defeated colleague up and whisks him to safety -- for a price, of course. But how much honor Is there among mercenaries?
