Oh, and I forgot to mention the Tau-29 fleet battle, in which I registered kills of both the battleship and both cruisers. I've played through the campaign in a Drake before, and it can't come close to matching the overkill power of pretty much any ship that can mount Starkillers.

Not to mention any ship that can mount Starkillers and missile launchers and enough guns to utililze the (stronger) powerplant efficiently ... Yeah, rub it in!

I have been eyeing the Crusader and the Barracuda for this very reason. With a light fighter you can only use mines to supplement your damage output but mines are more difficult to apply than missiles/torpedoes and they are also more expensive.

IIRC you can loot a pair of Catapult launchers and 20 missiles from the Avenger shipwreck in Texas (in the cloud near the jumphole to the NY badlands) but I think the ammo has the same level restrictions as the launchers and 20 missiles don't last long.

Well, one wee problem... I forgot you have to reach level 16 to buy class-6 kit, meaning you can't buy Pyros Type 3 guns before the Tekagi's Transport mission, though thankfully you can before Tekagi's Arch. So, Sherlog, do you happen to remember if there were any ships carrying Pyros Type 3 guns anywhere in your Tau exploits? I know my networth is high enough to get 'em; if you don't know of a source I'll go looking. (I could just go fly Mission 8 with the Pyros Type 2 loadout... nah )

I want the Pyros guns rather than Adv. Tarantulas because the former match the targeting stats of the Borocco shieldbuster. Can't find any wrecks (in Lancerthing) that have the Pyros Type 3, although there is one each in Honshu and Sigma-19 that have pairs of class-6 Corsair Angelito MkII which are pretty good as well and do match the Borocco.

The class 6 Angelitos are your best option, I'm afraid. The class 6 Vultures - from FA Hawks - are decent as well; they have even better efficiency but slightly less range and firing rate (weapon type is not important since you have shield busters).

I have studied the .ini files and it seems that Pyros Type 3 guns do not occur in any ships, only in shops.

OK, the final chapter in this saga <pre><font size=1 face=Courier> </font></pre>

Loaded up my Dragon with two Boroccos, four Pyros Type 3, and Starkiller torpedos for missions 9 and 10.
Took out: a Rheinland battleship and two cruisers in the Sigma-13 fleet battle, raising my total battleship kill count to 7, and also both Rheinland (not Nomad experimental) battleships in the battle off Bruchsal, though they didn't count for battleship kills for whatever reason. It's easy enough to turn off the Boroccos when you don't need them, and the Dragon's powerplant can't sustain even four Pyros-3 indefinitely anyway.
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Bought the Anubis and loaded it with the same loadout as the Dragon for mission 11. Took out all the Liberty ships easily, most with a couple Borroco hits and then a torpedo. On the way back, I killed the Battleship Omaha (right before you dock with the Osiris), although got the timeout screen before I could get over to the Osiris (I'd run out of torpedoes) and didn't feel like trying it again.
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For the last two missions, which are against only Nomads without shields, I swapped the loadout to five Pyros Type 3 and one Catapult missile.
The Reaper guns are more energy efficient, but that doesn't matter - I dropped most of the big Nomad targets before the powerplant even ran all the way down! Meaning the faster damage delivery of the Pyros is better than the Reaver for these. The Anubis can support five Pyros-3s for at least fifteen seconds, which with the Starkillers and Catapults is enough to take out any of the Nomad power generator targets in the various missions.
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I actually didn't put a turret on the Anubis, since none were available with the same 600 m/s velocity as the guns (the Order turrets are 650 and 700 for some reason, and so is the Debilitator turret.)
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Maybe I'll actually start playing multiplayer now...

I'm working my way through the unmodded SP again and I have a Legionarre right now. I think I'll get a Barracuda and mix some Vulture 3's on the lv6 slots and Pyro 2's on the lower slots. Since they have the same speed, it should work pretty good. I wish those Tarantulas had 600 speed, you could get some interesting combos with the Pyros and Vultures.

The 700 m/s speed of the Tarantula kit mixes well with a lot of turrets. Think Anubis + 6 x Adv. Tarantula + Debilitator Turret + Starkillers ...

P.S.: the class 5 slots of the Barracuda and Dragon were meant for Borrocos, just as the class 6 slots want to have Pyros Type 3s in them. Trust T-Hawk and me on this one.

Edited by - Sherlog on 17-07-2003 00:32:30

I did it ur way, but I hunted down corsair around cambridge to get angelitos, they drop alot #5 and some #6 if ur lucky.
Then u'll find angelito turrets in wrecks in london and leeds.
I found the angelitos to work great against rh ships.

Tai-Pan

See, I think it's just me on this, but oh well...

What I don't understand personally is how doing the game in weak ships and killing more people is funner : ~ /.

Yeah, of course it's more of a challenge, but to be honest, it's more of the same... You're doing the same moves, the same strategies, the same allies, using the same weapons, and fighting ships that are the same, every single time.

The thing that puzzles me the most is how doing missions where you kill as many ships as you can is more fun also, killing ships gets redunant after you've killed sooooooooo many of them, you chase them with the mouse and shoot them down, not that different no matter what you're flying or how many how you have to do it to.

Once you get to the point where you're that desperate to squeeze some more replay or fun out of the game, play multi-player, or just lay the game down for a while and find a new one. lol The computer gaming industry is very big now you know, and I'm sure more games then Freelancer will give you fun.

P.S. Oh and one third option of course is always, go out and get a life : ~ )
He he...

Live Long and Prosper.

While taking my Dagger for a spin through Rheinland I noticed that the Unioner Falcons drop Catapult missiles. Remembering T-Hawk's remark about Catapults vs. the dock campers at Sprague in mission 5 I loaded an appropriate savegame, collected 30 of the missiles at Pacifica in Bering (had 20 already from the wrecks) and bought a Crusader before going to the mission. Loadout:

1 x Adv. Stunpulse (toggled per caps lock key as usual)
1 x Pyros Type 1
3 x Pyros Type 2
1 x Catapult launcher
1 x Wasp cruise disruptor (for finishing off enemies with shreds of hull left)

T-Hawk was spot-on and the missiles proved to be extremely effective, almost like torpedos. The fighters needed just one or two seconds of gunfire and a missile each, and the gunboats also went down pretty quickly because the powerplant never ran dry. I had not expected the missiles to make so much of a difference ... When Juni nagged for the second time the 3 gunboats were history and I was just putting the finishing touches on the last of the 5 fighters.

BTW, I used only 17 missiles before reaching Baxter (where it is possible to change loadout) and so the 20 missiles from the wrecks would have been sufficient ...

@MrSpock, what's wrong about having fun with a game? That's what games are for after all. As regards the fun run through the campaign: during my first time through the campaign I found many missions pretty hard, both because I lacked knowledge like how to choose decent equipment (Defender with class 3 shield and Drails in Tau-29, LOL) and because I lacked the skills to use the equipment effectively. I learned most of that later. For example, I did not learn how to torp fighters until T-Hawk mentioned it in this thread but now I understand why he likes heavy fighters that can use torps.

And the fun run is about comparing notes and putting all pieces together (and learning new things by doing that, at least in my case). You can have fun making a plan - to select the best equipment for the missions and to find ways of obtaining that equipment - and then you can have fun executing the plan, and then you can have fun flying the missions with equipment that is much more powerful than the designers intended you to have at that point (class 5 Outcast particle guns at level 8, class 6 Xenos guns at level 10, Ripper mines at level 14).

Thusly armed you can set yourself playful mini-objectives for the missions. Like to find out what happens if you kill the dock campers at Sprague instead of running away from them like you are supposed to (timeout, but can be beaten). Or what happens if you destroy the cruiser blocking the exit out of Leeds before Tobias can tell his friends to take it out. There are plenty of things like that, too many to list them all. The best is probably mission 10 because the timeout for the Sigma-13 battle is just barely long enough to destroy all capital ships of the fleet (4 battleships, 4 cruisers); at the experimental shipyard there seems to be no timeout at all and so you can clean out the stable - several cruisers and at least one battleship IIRC - before blasting one of the prototype battleships to let the story proceed.

Cool. Show those dock campers who's boss. Now if only it were possible to stop them blowing up the docking ring so you could visit the planet again... (no, you can't )

I am pretty sure there's no timeout at all at the experimental shipyard battle. There are 3 Rheinland cruisers and 2 battleships available for destruction there, plus one more battleship over in Hamburg just as the Osiris appears; the timeout is very short but it is killable.

I'm trying to figure out why regular Battleship kills fairly often don't register on the battleship kills count. Cruisers seem to register 95% of the time, but it's about 50-50 as to whether a Battleship kill will count. Do you know anything about this? I suspect it has something to do with exactly how you kill the battleship, and/or what shooting you do while it's exploding but still targetable. Although I've tried sitting on it and shooting until long after it's blown up, but sometimes even then it doesn't register on the kill count.

T-Hawk: I think it has something to do with which battleships are really battleships, or just stations(orbitals) that are pretending to be battleships.

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Why make your own mistakes when someone else has already made them for you?
-Learn from the skeletons floating in the piranha pool: NO SWIMMING!

I think there are two possibilities here.

First, if others are shooting at the same target then your chances of getting the credit are slim even if you did 99.9% of the work, especially if the others are using fast-firing weapons (regardless of how weak they are).

Second, it could be that some of the battleships are created as (mission) solars instead of as ships, especially those that you are supposed to run away from. In the Sigma-13 battle only the cruisers registered but none of the 4 battleships, neither did the two battleships at the experimental shipyard (but the cruisers did).

Hmm. I think that's it, because you're seeing the same objects fail to count as I am. Off the top of my head, battleships that didn't count:

BS Unity as you launch from Manhattan on mission 4
BS that appears by the Tau-whichever trade lane by Holman (you're supposed to run away from it) on the first leg of mission 7
None of the 4 BSes in Sigma-13
Neither of the 2 BSes in the experimental shipyard
BS that appears just before you dock with the Osiris in Hamburg at the end of mission 10
BS Omaha just before you dock with the Osiris at the end of mission 11
Nomad BSes in missions 12 and 13

In fact, I can't think of any battleship that actually counts towards the battleship kills count. Maybe only cruisers ever do?