The Cavalier may look a little strange but it is actually the finest ship that you can buy in Bretonia, as far as beating the campaign is concerned. It will serve you well until you get to Kusari space; you could take it further than that but the Kusari sell the Drake which is even better than the Cavalier and simply too good to pass up.

The main advantage of the true light fighters (Patriot, Cavalier, Drake ...) is this: they can evade the fire of enemy fighters pretty effectively but no enemy fighter can evade them. The heavier/slower fighters have the same strength shields but they have to eat much more of the enemy fire, so that you may even be forced to use shield batteries or nanobots. In a light fighter you can go through most of the campaign without ever having to use nanos or batts, except mission 10 where you need a couple of nanos for repairing radiation damage.

Light fighters may have only 2/3 of the fire power that the heavier fighters have but in a light fighter you can get on the six of an enemy and stay there, firing your guns up their tailpipe until they explode. Heavy fighters have much more difficulty tracking a target and so they cannot shoot most of the time (or do fire at empty space, as the case may be). In other words, light fighters realize much more of their damage potential and can do more absolute damage in the same time as a heavy fighter, except against stationary targets or extremely dumb ones.

Try to use the best shield that you are allowed to buy; graviton ones are the best for the campaign but the positron thingies serve equally well against Rhinelanders and other folk that use neutron/tachyon weapons.

In Bretonia good shields are a bit difficult to get but you pass a few places during the campaign. Mission 5: class 4 graviton at Baxter, before mission 6: class 5 positron at Battleship Essex (?) not far from the Hood, mission 7: class 5 graviton at Shinkaku. There are other places as well.

If you find that the enemy hits you more often than your Cavalier can take then you can rest assured that a heavier ship (Defender, Crusader ...) would have already exploded much earlier.

Edited by - Sherlog on 30-05-2003 00:55:14

Do a scan of the ships you are facing. See what weapons they are using and get the best shield for it. You can usually aquire the best shields at the criminal bases. Goto an earlier save game and make a lot of cash, get the three different shields(positron,graviton,molecular) and carry them around. You can adjust your shields depending on what weapons you are facing at any point.Also scan what sheilds they are using and see what weapons are most effective against them.Get the good stuff at an outlaw base you're friendly with and get the three different weapons types.(positron,graviton,photon) Don't worry about dying when you scan them, the objective is to determine their sheild and weapon weaknesses then reload at an earlier point and make some money so you can reconfigure your ship for the upcoming fight. Once you get your ship configured, yuo'll notice the difference. They'll pop like bubbles when you hit them and they'll pound your ship for awhile without having much effect on your shields.

Spacedrive , this would be true if the graviton shields were not over-powered or if the weapon/shield type effectiveness factors were higher than 0.8/1.0/1.2.

The graviton shields have the same capacity as the other shields one class higher and consequently they are best against all weapon types except plasma/particle where they are on par with the second best. But nemir is already past the point where enemies with plasma/particle guns are encountered (Xenos); there are no others during the singleplayer campaign.

try finishing the game with a freithger, particularly, the dromedary.

they are slow, carries lots of stuff, lots of turrets

Spend some cash on a good missile. Might give ya the edge.

well if u wanna cheat go 2 freelancer in my documents an where it sez
difficulty scale 1:00 change it 2
difficulty scale 0:00 this enables god mode
after the mission save it quit freelancer go back 2 my documents and put it back 2 1:00 2 make it back 2 normal . . . or leave tha god mode on and u will be invulnrable ....


Note: i hav watched this be done
NO I AINT CHEATED ON THIS GAME B4 U ASK

Try thrusters to avoid incoming fire or to get away from an enemy.

press tab-key for thrusters.

oh yeah and one more thing. Single player game is ALL about YOU making it alive! Ignore all the info your pals are sending during fights. Miraculously they always make it alive if you do.

Only fight those fights which are necessary to win. Especially during those escort missions. You run to the waypoint (use thrusters to get away first hand and then engage cruise flight) and you win the missions even without a first shot fired! Don't bother about your pals. Pretty stupid, eh?

Why is that when ever you stumble upon a fight were the other party is your enemy they leave the current fight and come straight after you? It makes no sense. They usually target me no matter what...

i've actually tried to kill some of my friends on missions before. like on the mission where you get into the dyson sphere and you have to take out the generators, i just sat there shooting von clausson for a long time and his shields stopped at a certain point. it was kinda odd. oh well

"dead women don't say 'no' "

One thing you may want to try (this doesn't help you NOW) is running tradegoods when doing the campaign missions. You ALSO can ignore Juni when she tells you to meet her in the bar on planet Blah and keep doing a couple of trade runs. You can even decline a mission and come back and pick it up later if you prefer.

This means that you can advance at your own pace rather than that of the campaign which can feel a bit rushed a times.

This requires a good knowledge of the Freelancer Universe or one of those nifty trade tools.

But....by doing this you can (1) make more money
and (2) escape some of those pesky waits.

I'm going through the game on my 2nd pass and by doing this I've been able to keep a fairly nice bank balance most of the way through the game.

Another small tip is that despite both being at the same price, Nano's are better than shields. If you get your shields hammered flat, go ahead and do evasive for 20-30 seconds and your shields usually reset.

also, until you start getting into the "dangerous" missions, never max out your nanos and bots. That way you can sell the ones you collect off of your kills.

If you don't have a Heavy Thruster by the time you have a Cavalier, get one. It is one of the most critical components you can possibly buy, more important than shields and firepower combined. Few enemies can hit you while strafing with your thruster on full burn.

Aside from that...strafe. Don't take enemies head on in SP; that will only get you killed, since they almost always have superior gear.

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

When I was in the bretonia system, I was friendly with the corsairs and hessians and outcasts because I went back to liberty and shot everything :p then I just went around the Omega and Sigma systems looting wrecks and my level went up so fast, lol. It was funny I just collected 1 wreck after completing a mission and i'd hear juni on the ship radio. Then selling all the class 9 weapons I got(I like to keep all the class 10) was good for getting money quickly and I could fit weapons to my ship which I couldnt buy because I wasnt high enough level. Made everything really easy.

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WARNING: THIS POST MAY CONTAIN TRACES OF PEANUT