the simple reason that you are getting your ship ripped apart is because you arent manuvering enough or your ship isnt powerful enough,

if you have aleady finished the single player story line, its recommended that you go after some of the VHF's like those that can mount c10 weapons, sabre, eagle or titan, then go get the c10 shields from the corsairs, from that time onwards..the only ppl that can prolly ripp your shileds and ship to shreads are probably those flying titans or sabres

But at the point I am at in the game I can't get those high level stuff yet. As for moving around that is what I am doing. I am a huge space sim nut and have beaten all the ones I have played. I have never played any missions in those games this unbalanced. I can kill the nomad fighters just fine. In fact they almost seem a little too easy since they are meant to be really powerful. On the other hand they can kill me so fast it is amazing. It is as if my shields are useless. I have tried the orders shields and another one they had on ship too. They both get ripped apart. I tried a third kind that was a lower level one but the third type of shield and it didn't fair any better. Is there a forth type of shield that can stand up to nomad weapons? I am using the order heavy fighter and the best weapons and equipment they have and the ship can take. I am using the highest level stuff I can at this point in the game. It just seems like I should have better stuff than I have. It gets torn apart at an insane rate!

Sounds to me the problem is with your strategy and you're fighting enemies too strong for your ship. Order fighter isn't strong enough to face nomad weapons. Shield is a backup system. Your goal is not to get hit. Playing chicken with your opponent may work but it's not very smart. Nomad fighters have heavy firepower but you can kill them easily as well. Goal is to kill them before they can shoot at you. They always come in packs of 4 and you should be able to kill two of them on first pass. Remember not to head straight into them. Try using engine kill button to drift and shoot.

Edited by - taz1004 on 17-03-2003 02:30:11

First, Nomads have Nomad Lasers that EAT shields and hull, hull damage on Nomad Lasers is aroud 1400 per shot, and shield half that, i,e around 700. and they have 2 of them, so 2800 hull and 1400 shield damage in 1 salvo, and thats not included their blasters. So yes 1. you need a GOOD shield on a GOOD ship to have a better chance, but even in a Sabre with class 10 shields you will die fast if you dont menaeuver GOOD!

Weapons don't do hull and shield damage at once. They do hull damage only when there's no shield. You never noticed that your blue bar goes first before the red??? And Nomad Cannon's hull damage is little more than 800, not 1400. And their blasters around 700.

Guys, he's still in the SP missions, so it's kinda useless to talk about ships better than the Anubis and the shield he's got is the Order HF Level 6 shield (which is identical to the Adv. Sentry Level 6 Graviton shield). That's the best stuff you can get until SP is over.

One thing to watch out for in the late missions is cap ships. The fighters are bad enough, but cap ship turrets in this game (nomad or otherwise) have really high projectile speeds, so when you're close to a cap ship, it eats you up because it almost never misses. Stay clear. In fact, get out on the edge of the battle area if you can until the fighters are mopped up.

Another particularly annoying thing in the late SP game missions is when they pull a cutscene in the middle of the battle. When you get control of your ship again, you are at a dead stop. This happened to me leaving Area-21. I was cruising along just fine avoiding enemy fire and then... cutscene. I lasted about 3 seconds when I got back to my ship in the middle of a swarm of nomads with my engines off at a dead stop. To fix that after reloading, I took a sharp left after leaving the minefield and put some distance between me and the center of the fight before the cutscene started.

If nothing else works, light up the cruise engines and just fly around the battle like a madman dropping countermeasures whenever they lock you up and hoping the others will finish them off for you.

Short burst with your afterburners are the way to go, but only once you get hit, until that try to hunt, you can destory in the last mission the shild generators real quick, torps will help but are not needed, fast reactions are the key, if you get it INSTANT use your AFTERBURNERS and make a SHARP turn, which means you have to use mouse fly mode and turn the mouse the the edge of your screen (at best one of the corners cause you profit than from moving at two axis at once), if you want to deal at this moment with your attackers first, hit r, do after about half a second afterburning a fast hit of reverse thrust and hit again tab for burners ... your target should be now about in front of you (but only short as it is in the moment of passing you), now change direktion again BEFOR it pass you really, so you have the advantage to start the turn befor the nomad fighter, whichs should be enough to have it about one second later right in your cross for your guns *g* hf shooting it down, do it quick (I guess at max 3-4 seconds), about 50% of your gun fire should hit, if you take again fire, its up to you, if you want to take some dmg on your shilds are prefer to avoid fire first and make the kill later ... so much for the dog fighting ... but in those missions the key is anyway to kill your main target as quick as possible, I used my self to just stand for a few seconds with reverse thrust and short ab bursts (this way you still make not sitting duck like target) near each generator and kill them befor a nomad fighter notice me, than ab/cruise to the next target. This way I was able to kill those shild generators real fast and aswell the nomads were no big problem.

Edited by - Apocalypse on 17-03-2003 03:28:18

I've noticed that ALL enemies stick to a pretty standard attack strategy (well, at least up until where i am in the game), which is they try and get you from behind, fly past you, turn around and come at you from the front. I've found that the best way to take 'em out is let them follow you for a few seconds, drop a heap of mines, head "up" at full 'burner and come down at them from the top when they fly under you, keep them infront of you and they'll try and get away, they might drop some mines along the way but they are pretty easy to get away from. Pretty soon they'll turn around and head straight for you with guns blazing so what you do is unleash a barrage of missiles, 4-6 should do it, slow down and blaze away at them with your guns while strafing left or right (use afterburner if you need a boost of speed now and then), NOT side to side, head in one direction only because if you try and go the other way you'll waltz right into their guns. If you keep going in one direction they will most always miss you and your missiles will run smack bang into them with nice bright flashy bits. Now punch in burner and head past the enemy, still strafing, and drop some more mines if your missiles didn't finish him off already.
I've found that if the enemy is heading straight for you he'll ignore your missiles instead of dodging them like he would if you were chasing him, so the majority of the missiles will hit.

The other annoying thing is that (in SP) they say that stuff from the Weapons Dealer is free, but it is not. Plus there is no opportunity to make any money. This meant that by the time I got into the Dyson Sphere I had had to sell my Torp Launcher just to buy missles.

The Annumis was cheap, as were Ordr Weapons, but consumables are a killer. I tried it without missles and you just lack that finishing punch. Looks like that is the only option though, because my launchers are running dry.

missles IMHO are extremely useless since they do so little damage, better put that free hard point to better use by putting on a gun, that way you can prolly kill at least one on the first pass, hopefully more.

BUt usually the trick to survive is to after burn around pretty much and manuver even harder !

If many of us can finsh the SP, i cant see why you guys cant

Hi, I'm the local new guy (so much for formalities, now to the cheese)

I had a lot of problems with single player as well but I did manage to finish it by using the old "get out of the line of sight and stop trick"
it's cheesy but you can kill pretty much anything with this without too much danger
I finished the last mission with this trick by sitting still between the 2 pilars on top of the (second level) generators, practicly hugging them that is : while I bravely ( what?, I didn't run did I ) shoot all my energy weapons until the damn things went BOOM

--I never do this normaly though but I doing it for the 7th time, I was sooo happy when I finished the missions, finaly some freelancing
-maddog1982

As a matter of fact: The nomad capital ships have a dead angle where their cannons cannot reach you. Plus: if you are there, youre pretty much inside the ship (in a fold) so no fighter will be able to hit you, too. Just sit there and hammer away.

Almost every hard mission on SP has such opportunities: The experimental shipyard, e.g., has a position where those Weapons platforms cannot hit you. It took me 6 attempts on that mission to find it

Yes, the game is hard, but there is always a spot to help you survive.

On combat tactics: drifting will help when fighting small numbers of fighters (so that you have them in your view all the times). With large numbers, you are a sitting duck for those on your six.

Use countermeasures: turn the music down so you can hear "Incoming Missile".. then drop a cm.

Mines are useful to take down stationery targets like W-Platforms: just drop mines as you pass by, they will home in on the station and.. boom

Torp-Launchers are pretty useless. The torps are too expensive to be a real option.

The only mission I ever used missiles in was the "Arc-Attack" to take down the generators. I did it after 10 unsuccessful attempts to complete the mission and it was expensive (50 catapult, 50 moonthingy).

Aiming: get the Advanced Thruster or the Order Thruster. Use your Afterburner to stay within 100m from your target, right on his 6. hammer away and kill his shields and half his armor, then leave him for your wingmen to finish. After you have damaged all enemies, finish those still alive (wont be to many).

Avoiding enemies: Every now and then (exept for the timed mission), take a break. fly some stupid circles and let your shields regen. Use your Afterburner for a few seconds, stop, turn... just be unpredictable. Then return to the fight.

You can also do this in the Faction Missions. Fly away from the waypoint, the enemies will disengage and a countdown will start. You can do this once, as far as I know, but it might save you.

Cheers
Sid

Well I finally got past it and beat the game. I did it by getting really pissed off and was out for blood. Pretty much I wanted everything on the screen dead and who cares about how I am doing. End result is they are all dead and I was kicked to crap but still standing!