try shooting some cruise-missles......
or accelerate with TAB
try something like that.....

TAB doesn't work while you're in cruise mode

Just hit ctrl+W when the race begins and fly manually through the gates.. don't use the autopilot.
Hovis will be in front of you in the beginning, but half way the course he makes an mistake and then you can take over the race
Watch out for those shooting gates at the end..

Shift + W . Don't want to get confused now

LOL.. you're right.

Shift+W I meant ofcourse

Hey m,aybe you have the wrong ship? While I had my Bretonia freighter I tried to beat this bast*** for almost 2 hours but as soon as I had bought a Fighter on Battleship Essex (same system) he didn't stay a chance anymore

ST Armada was great, Freelancer ROCKS [![![!

There's a big discussion of this in the Spoiler forum. Hovis is beatable if you steer good.

Let's get those missiles ready to destroy the universe!!

Hes really easy to beat you just wack your cruise engines on asap and use mouse flight, and when your almost finished the race hes usually still winning but he stops to turn on the wepon platforms so you just go straight past him and keep goin and make sure you dont miss a gate =)

I've had a lot of trouble with this race as well. I just can't seem to maneuver well enough to make the last half of the course. I'm using a trackball instead of a mouse and I have a lot of problems with the sensitivity... its over sensitve and I often over compensate and drift off the course. (Getting hit by an asteroid didn't help any either). I have learned that I can get an early lead on him and hold it if I hit Shift+W right as the race begins (hope tht helps someone). But as I said, half way through I over compensate on the turns and loose it. I tried going out and just practicing (running the course slowly to see how it is all laid out), but those damn corsairs kept after me.

Interestingly, first time I tried it i was in my Clydesdale and did fairly well. Thinking I needed a faster ship, I traded it in for a Cavalier and did WORSE! Oh well... if I can't beat this soon I may just give up on SP. I'm an old HardWar fan and I much prefer trading and mucking about on my own than following a plot anyway.

As a side note I fine the whole race a bit silly. What kind of ship you have doesn't make a whole lot of difference as all of them have the same cruise speed... not much of a race, its really just a test of maneuvering. Now if they had ruled out cruise speed and made you depend on your ships speed and afterburners, that might have been more interesing IMHO.

I like the game though, just picked it up Friday (August 1st, 2003) and am having quite a bit of fun with it.

Padriag

bwahahahahahaha i didnt think it was possible to lose!!! well you have proved me wrong! how can u lose against him!?!?!? he is NOT difficult. Just activate cruise and go through each waypoint, every time u get closer and bang, u win. if too difficult, use a light fighter.

may the force be with you... always... oh, and advance australia fair

set to single button like '~' for easy & easy

Crosshair Alliance

i at first used the bretonian frieghter and i had real problems. The Bretonia heavy fighters is the best for the track (well i think anyway).
as for the cruise warm up time, when the instruction box comes up, get ready to hit ctrl+w quick. when racing hug the corners (i love need for speed).

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"Make it so" - Captain Pickard

Thanks Blaze... but setting cruise speed isn't my problem, maybe I wasn't clear. Actually I usually beat Hovis off the line and take the early lead in the first quarter of the track. I can manage to hold that lead, even in my Clydesdale freighter until the half way point. Its shortly after here that I loose it.

My problem is that my trackball wasn't made for this kind of thing and I don't guess the game creators figured on people who use trackballs instead of a mouse. My trackball is great for most things, but it just doesn't seem to work well for this game and I don't have a mouse I can switch too (I won't even mention joysticks since that seems to be a no no around here). Its odd though, I've used my trackball with games like BattleZone and done just fine. For whatever reason Freelancer seems very fussy about it.

However, I did some experimenting this afternoon with the sensitivity settings and have improved my situation a bit (made it almost 3 quarters this time before Hovis finally passed me and I lost control again). For anyone who might be having similar problems, that is your mouse/trackball seems too sensitive and you end up over compensating all the time, here's some things I discovered that might help you out.

First, go into Control Panel and turn off Pointer Acceleration... set it to None. If this is on the more you move the mouse the faster your pointer accelerates. I had this on originally and when I turned it off I noticed my ability to maneuver my ship without over maneuvering immediately improved.

Try adjusting your mouse/trackball sensitivity settings in Control Panel. This DOES affect the game. I originally had mine set very high for two reasons, first, high sensitivity with a track ball makes the track ball easier to use (you only need small finger movements to move the pointer across the screen), second, my monitor resolution is very high so there is more pixel space to move across. Unfortunately this high sensitivity meant that when playing I often over maneuvered my ship without meaning too, making those tight turns really tough. I am still working out what settings are best, you have to work out a balance between the game sensitivity setting and your control panel setting which is damned annoying.

Third, use your retro's to help make tight turns. Just a short tap on the X key can help you make a really tight turn through the gates. It costs you speed, but if Hovis stops to turn on the weapons platforms you can catch up (although he's never stopped in any race I've run so far, not even when I was in the lead).

Hope all that helps somebody. My weekend is about over so its shortly back to work and school for me (two careers and classes don't leave me much free time to figure a game out).

Padriag

One other thing to consider - is your system experiencing mouse or input lag? As in, go to one of the menu screens in the game (the performance or controls menu usually works), and see if your mouse pointer seems to lag behind your physical movements.

This is a common issue with GeForce cards. I actually upgraded my system from a TNT to a GeForce 2 for Freelancer, but the latter had terrible mouse and input lag that drove me nuts and almost made me give up on the Rhino campaign. I tried everything - different driver versions, performance settings, manually editing the Freelancer video card config file to disable triple buffering for the GeForce... until I solved it thanks to a little utility called RivaTweak that showed my card was set to always render 3 frames ahead and let me change that. If you think you might be experiencing this issue, search for RivaTweak or post back and I'll find the link for it again.

It's pretty easy. Personnaly i would switch cruise engines to one key like A is what i use.