I suggest opening fire on him. Makes ya feel better.

What ship are you flying? Look it is not supposed to make you loose all of your hair and sanity ok?!

Try this trick, when he says go hit THRUSTERS not cruise engines toward the first gate as you approach hit kill engine (Z) ,then hit your cruise engines (~) you will be ahead of him at this point and your ship will maintain it's speed (remember no atmosphere = no friction to slow you down). I assume you make it to about the halfway point and then have trouble. You need to swing out a little on the gates before the end to get a better angle for the finish line as they tend to tighten up a little down there. Look at your system map in the enlarged view it actually shows the course and how it is laid out.

I also tended to stay a little higher up in the gates as it gave me a kind of run down hill to maintain control and beat him.

I suppose now would not be a good time to tell you I beat him in a freighter a Dromedary to be exact!

If you absolutely can not beat this level there is a mod available on the mod site to by pass the race. Hope it helps good luck!

Just some thoughts from the edge of space.

I'm always amazed at how much the Hovis race polarises the gaming populace.

For my part, I adopted a slightly different tactic to that above. Basically, as soon as the race started I hit the Cruise Engines. Now, this does indeed mean that Hovis was leading for most of the race. However, if you just fly through the hoops as best you can, you'll find Hovis does this blatantly scripted 'I've fluffed the corner and gone wide' thing that puts you in the lead. Just after that, he'll tell the hoops to shoot at you, but just ignore all that, it matters not.

Pressgod, could you point me in the dirction of this Hovis bypass. That's the only thing holding me back at the moment. Any pointers to this mod would be appreciated, regards TheGog

Here you will find a simple way to fool the game into thinking you have won the race.

Obviously i would advise trying your best to complete it, try emptying your cargo hold, going to chase cam etc. If you use the hack you will never get a good nights sleep again Yeah right. I know how infuriating games are when you get totally stuck so skip it and enjoy the rest.

Dunno what ur going to do about the Dom Kavash race on mission 12 tho...

If it gives you problems, I would also advise turning your graphics settings all the way down- it makes life a LOT easier, because the game runs more smoothly. Thus, you're less likely to miss the gates.

Some people do it in freighters, but if the mission gives you trouble, stick with a fighter, preferrably a light one(for example, the Cavalier that seems to be sold at the Hood for that very reason).

Reaper: $200,000,000.
Rockets: $100,000
The look on that pilot's face when you launch a full pod of screamers up his tailpipe: priceless

The race actually is one of the easiest missions of the whole game (i won it with the first try). So if you already have trouble here, you're really gonna hate some of the later missions.

In the race all you have to do is pressing SHIFT+W to engage the Cruise Engines and fly through the curves by staying as close as possible at the inner side of these curves, preferably while strafing into the direction your are going. Doing this you will overtake Hovis about halfway through the course and when he starts to cheat and fires rockets at you, you only have to release a bunch of countermeasures and cross the finishing line. Piece of cake, and i really don't get why so many people do have so much trouble with the race.

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"Do not kill. Do not rape. Do not steal. These are principles
which every man of every faith can embrace. " - Murphy MacManus

Lev:

I don't know if anyone has ever mentioned it to you, but it is really very rude and mean to make fun of someone who is having difficulty with something you have found easy. It understand it makes you feel better about yourself, but it does so at the cost of other peoples feelings. Constructive advise on how you accomplished it is useful, the rest is not.

Captain Flint

I'm sorry, but Lev Arris is right. It really shouldn't be that hard. Maybe you're just trying too hard; who knows? I honestly can't see how someone could try as as much as 25 times without winning once. But enough lowering of one's self-esteem. The best advice I can give, is to use a maneuverable fighter, and calmly maneuver through all the gates. Since Hovis is programed to mess up on one of the gates, you will gain the lead eventually.

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Now that I have slept and have taken many deep breaths, here we go.

OK, to answer some of the questions:

I am flying an empty Cavalier. I have tried free flight, mouse flight, and combos of the two. I actually do better with mouse flight, because I tend to lose control in free flight. I am not at all interested in a mod or a hack tobeat this. It is a pride thing now. LIke I said up top, I needed to vent. Screaming in the house at 11 PM wakes the baby and my wife, neither of which is good for my long term health.

Press, you are right, at the halfway point, I usually lose it trying to make the turn. Many thanks for the system map tip, I never thought to scope the track. I will give the inertia suggestion a shot next.

I have enough power to run the game, the old girl nary hiccups so I am not inclined to turn down settings. But I may play with mouse sensitivity to fine tune my control.

In closing, let me say thanks for all for the tips. I'll let you know how I make out.

The next time someone asks if you're a god, say YES!

Good Luck! I have also found that turning down the video a bit helped with some of the internal lag and let me line up on the next ring easier. I guess there are times when having a system barely able to run the game kinda bites. The Hovis race seems to be one of them.

LOL I'm with you GNDN
I spent a week on that stupid race and never won.
I could get very very close but would always end up spinning out of control making a gate.
I'm not a big flight or race sim fan but should have been able to complete the race, I'm not completly tarded.
Everyone else can say what they want but until they come over and run the race on My computer, they know where they can stick the "It was so easy" comments.

In the spoilers section I think their is a post describing how to mod the race so Hovis thinks you beat him if you fail the race the first try.

The Only difference between Me and a Madman is I'm not Mad.

Upon slightly sober reflection I think that if there is not an actual bug, the 2 main problems with this( and I spent 3 maddening late-night hours trying everything I could think of and all the available ships) are using "goto" instead of cruise, or system speed. When I finally used cruise, I won the second time in a Crusader. I have since won in a Dromedary, mod A-wing, and FLREBALANCE9C Corellian Cruiser. I'm good, but I'm not God.

Try turning down the graphics, no matter WHAT system you're using, and be damn sure you are not in GOTO.

BTW, I really hate Hovis too. Rochambeau him for me.

You're no match for m----

My tip would be to try the course a couple of times before entering the race. There's no one else to distract you, you can take your time and figure out what the tricky turns are. Once you manage to go through it at cruise speed, it's just a matter of entering the race, ignoring Hovis and fly your own race.