It's easy in a *fighter*. My first time through the campaign, I had a Cavalier; I beat him on the first try. It took me five or six attempts to beat him in the Drom, however; frieghters bleed too much velocity in turns, even if you take the inside track. Eventually I won by accidentally ramming Hovis with the strafe keys. Oops.

T-hawk

I'll have to look into that, but intuition tells me you probably have identified my problem. I'm going to have to look into this more. There are definite signs of mouse input lag... if I set the sensitivity setting in Control Panel and in the Game Performance in any combination that allows me to navigate the screens, menus, etc without working my fingers to death (my track ball uses my first two fingers, left click is the thumb and right click and third mouse are pinky and ring fingers respectively, its pretty comfortable and supports my hand well), then I get serious lag on the main menu for example when the game first starts. I'll post back if I can't find RivaTweak. Geez, why can't this stuff ever be simple?

bogsnot:

Yeah, I've been using those some but it seems like its just never enough. I don't doubt that the mission is easy in a fighter or doable in a freighter. It doesn't make any sense that they would design a mission in the game that has to be completed in order to complete the game (frustrated gamers are NOT return customers from a commercial POV if you take my meaning). And since I know from games like HardWar that I'm a pretty good pilot, I don't think its my lack of coordination. That leaves a hardware problem, which is what I've been trying to figure out. T-hawk has given me what may be at the very least an important clue to look into.

BTW, thanks to all those who have tried to offer advice or help.

Edited by - Bardicheart on 05-08-2003 04:39:12

Update:
I did a web search for that utility and although I found a lot of references to it (and learned more about my GeForce 2 MX card than I wanted to know LOL) all the links to download it were broken and the web site of the utility's creator is gone (domain name is up for sale). So looks like I may be SOL unless you have a working link or I upgrade my video card Well, at least I know now why this game seemed so tough.

Edited by - Bardicheart on 05-08-2003 05:19:59

Doh! I got the name wrong, hehe

It's called RivaTuner, and I got it from here:

http://guru3d.com/rivatuner/

The option you want is here: in the Driver Settings box on the first tab, click on the little Customize triangle on the right, and click on the second icon for Direct3D settings. Go to the VSync tab in this menu, and turn the Prerender Limit down to 0. (Also turn synchronization with retrace off or you'll get a terrible performance drop. You'll have to live with "screen tearing" but this is not badly annoying in an open-space game like FL, since most of the background is usually stable from frame to frame.) The utility's documentation warns that Prerender Limit = 0 can be unstable with some games and suggests using 1, but 0 works fine with Freelancer.

I'll wager a Sunslayer against a Javelin that this is indeed your problem. You've got a GeForce 2 MX, same as my system.

One other tweak that you can do: in the Freelancer\EXE directory, edit the file FLConfigDatabase.txt . Search for GeForce in the file, and add the line NoTripleBuffer in the appropriate section (you should be able to figure out how.) This reduced my mouse lag problem somewhat before I found the RivaTuner setting, and it feels like it still makes a slight difference even with the prerendering turned off.

--


Edited by - T-hawk on 05-08-2003 06:09:20

Thank you very much T- Hawk, I appreciate this. Would be nice to finally finish the SP plot. Might start over just to see how much of a difference it makes... considering it was VERY tough on me the first go around to get as far as I did. Course I've discovered I'm actually a pretty good freighter captain I'm getting to where I prefer them to fighters... partly for the cargo and partly for that massive firepower in the turrets (makes me feel like a mini-battleship!).

Now if we could just fix system lag in MP so I don't have to try an track teleporting targets! LOL Okay, so maybe I do want everything.

Downloaded and installed the utility, made the changes as per your instructions. It has made a difference in the performance, not so ****y now and dog fights are ever so much easier! Will re-run the race this weekend when I have time and see if I do better.

Padriag

"A Titan is not a HF... its a friggin well armed freighter pretending to be a fighter!"

Edited by - Bardicheart on 05-08-2003 12:30:54

just buy the ship at battle ship hood. I t can beat him. Also it mite help if you change the cruise to a differnt button other then Shift+W for the rase. Like make it just Shift, then change it back after your done.

Hey thanks everyone! I have been having some real trouble beating Hovis. Hopefully some of the info here will help. Thanks again.

I also had a lot of trouble with this race. I also had mouse lag.

It was not until after I finally won that I found out how to get rid of the mouse lag due to my video card. You can do a search for the "mouse lag" topic if you need it. It was solved by just a quick Windows video setting adjustment.

Before resolving mouse lag, menus were painful to navigate, and engaging cruise engines caused major lag. Now it is all smooth.

Over a year ago I got frustrated and quit playing. The plotline scenarios seemed too difficult, and kept getting harder. I was level 13 as I recall.

I started playing again recently. From this site I resolved the mouse lag and the game was much more playable. I sailed through the final scenarios with few resets. It was actually enjoyable. Not sure if it was lag elimination, or the scenarios got easier. Or I learned to have less target fixation. Or maybe my piloting skills got improved by playing Elite 3, where you really had to work to evade enemy fire. Ah well. Hard to say.




Edited by - Drudj on 9/2/2004 9:54:16 AM

Edited by - Drudj on 9/2/2004 9:54:48 AM

It took me 4 or 5 trys the very first time. I was not perpared for this.My excuse is the older I get the slower the reaction time, and [put your glasses on dummy I guess old farts like me are maybe not as cordinated as all you younins. After that normaly I beat him the first [if I did'nt hit the rings or the second try. Try using the thrusters in a modded game it works.


No bumpin,or shootin or youll make me mad and you won't like me when i'm mad.........Aw He's A Wuss.........................AZAR

lol my only problem is tryin to beat him w/ Wrath of Achilles's Kilngon dreadnaught mod. has no traction. and, if u check the editing forum i have a thread up cuz the dread mod wont work anymore

Don't run from the sniper, you'll just die tired

just press tab first to give u a boost then go into cruise i never lost that way....

hmm lets think, oh yeah, the race, i remember.
well at first, i, uhh, killed him?
well anyway, when i played freelancer for the first time, i couldnt understand, Note:i was very stupid
i never bought a ship, since it was to expensive, and i was hoping to get a massive check from microsoft saying, you win all the cash u had in the game, PS: i beat the race with the starflyer

I only raced him once and beat him easily. All I did was keep my mouse in the center of the rings and flew through perfect each time. Light fighters also make it easier since they turn better. And obviously, make sure you go in cruise asap.

i beet him with a freighter the first time i tried it wasnt easy though.

lol

nobody is perfekt.i am nobody, so therefore i am perferkt

uhh scuse me if i'm wrong but this thread was made over a year ago.the mods don't take lightly to grave digging.