If your rep is good enough to take a mission from them, you can walk right in and buy your Titan (although I have no idea why you would want to). All you have to be is neutral, and just barely neutral at that to buy a ship. You can just randomly kill Hessians to improve your Corsair rep if you like. That way you don't have to commit to a mission and can bail out when it gets too intense.

Ne frustra vixisse videar

Have you tried throwing coconuts at them? Red Hessians are afraid of coconuts...
Seriously, bail out. You can finish 'em later on, when you resupply.
Also, try killing Bounty Hunters, that usually helps...


Careful what you wish... You might just get it.

Aborting a mission makes your rep slightly worse with the faction that gave you this mission. Not a big deal, though. Even if this puts you on the negative side of neutral you can offset this easily by slaying a few Red Hessians on your own time (not for the Bounty Hunters - the Corsairs won't like you flying missions for them and there is no guarantee that you get served enough Red Hessians during the missions to compensate this bad effect).

In your case I can see two options that have merit. First: abort the mission, hop over into Omega-5 and start slaying Red Hessian Stilettos near the Omega-7 jumphole there. You can sell looted commodities at Cadiz and you will get plenty of weapon drops so that you can swap the mismatched gun for one that matches the projectile speed of your other guns. The Red Hessian weapons are cr*p but using mismatched guns can be difficult and the loss of a few damage points compared to the Sunblasts is negligible. Do not leave Omega-5 until you have become good enough so that you do not need to buy shield batteries. A good way to learn this is to start with 5 emergency batts and not to return to base until the batts have been maxed out from loot. Rinse and repeat once or twice.
After that you should be ready for the soft side of Omega-41. The second option is similar: just load an earlier savegame for your flying lesson and afterwards load your current savegame with the 'tough' mission again and show the Red Hessians that a Banshee can whoop their *sses easily even with mismatched guns.

Note: flying missions for the Bounty Hunters or the Corsairs is not very good for the rep sheet (although you could balance this a bit by flying a BH mission for every two missions you do in the employ of the Corsairs). You can also make a bundle by slaying Red Hessian Sabres on your own time, near the Omega-11 jumphole in Omega-41. The Banshee can hold out almost indefinitely there, you only have to resupply countermeasure flares every once in a while (nanos/batts can be looted). But watch your net worth. This is only lucrative if you can get at least class 8 weapon loot drops, so don't try this at level 20 or below. It's a pity, though, because otherwise it would be the perfect place to get rich quickly with a Barracuda or Anubis (they have to use torps but you can make several hundred thousand credits before running out of ammo).

P.S.: the Banshee has nothing to fear except swarms (8 or more) of lvl 18/19 enemies since in the wild these tend to drop only very few batts and nanos, if at all. But it takes quite a while to take out these enemies because they have armour scale 1.9 or so (e.g. more than 20000 hitpoints for a Titan) and there are no decent class 7 guns in the game. The class 6/7 kit of the Corsairs and the GMG is mediocre and the Xeno/Outcast particle gun series end at class 6 (one could use Adv. Sunrails or Angelito Mk III for the class 7 slot, though). The Banshee would really rock with a class 6 pulse gun and the rest class 6/7 particle guns of Xeno/Outcast quality ... And it would be an absolute dream if it could mount a torpedo launcher. I can understand why a small ship like the Drake is not allowed to use torpedoes but a big bruiser like the Banshee?

The Falcon is a good alternative, though. It is very agile, you can get plenty of decent kit and it can use torpedos.

Edited by - Sherlog on 13-07-2003 13:11:26

if you are afraid of loosing too much rep, you can always bribe the bartender on any Corsair Base to hack yer rep.

its how I have both the BHG, and Corsairs in the green

KILL THE HESSIANS!

Sounds to me like I should be able to do this mission in the Banshee. Just need to work it a little harder.

Could there be a problem with my technique? I guess flying strait at the opponant isn't a good idea.

Seriously, I try to make use of cutting engines, changing direction then thrust out etc. But every so often I can't help but get the crosshairs lined up and just keep blasting. This is probably where I take on the most damage.

I have 1 each of level 7 Partical, Molecular and Gravitron shields, which is the best to use in this case?

Sherlog, you made some great suggestions. I really don't want to change my ship right now. I am kind of likeing the Banshee. Do miss the torps though. I might go hang out around Omega 11 jump hole.

BTW, is the whole area radio active? This is a real pain when you do get low on bots and bats and are real far from a base.

The Red Hessians have laser weapons, so put on your Graviton shield. Yes, all of Omega-41 is radioactive, and the radiation gets really strong near the neutron star. Watch your hull strength during battles; I usually apply nanos when it drops below two thirds, or whenever there are nanos floating in space that I cannot tractor because storage capacity is full.

The best way to learn flying a light fighter is to take a Starflier with class 2 Graviton shield and then patrol the Silverton Asteroid Field in Colorado for an hour or two (make sure the Xenos are hostile or this won't work). You'll encounter patrols of 3 to 8 Starfliers/Startrackers, and since they have excellent guns you'll notice quickly when and where your dodging technique is lacking.

BTW, I am not fond of the cut-engine technique, especially in asteroid/mine fields. I prefer the greater control of flying with engines under power, especially when flying fighters that are several weapon classes below that of the enemies (which I usually do because it is no fun otherwise; the highest ship I fly against the computer is the Falcon).

As for Banshee training, a good sequence is Omega-5 (low to medium level Stilettos, rarely more than 4 at a time and often fewer), Omega-11 (medium to high level Stilettos) and then the area around the Omega-11 jumphole in Omega-41 (low to medium level Sabres). Careful when jumping in - the reception committees are often wings of 8 fighters. Tau-37 is also very nice for hunting Sabres if the Outcasts are hostile. Of course, the final step would be to jump into a hostile Omicron Alpha/Gamma.

I have already started "training" in Omega 5. Nice thing is that the missions are still enough to earn some good credits while working out.

Now if I could only figure out what to do with the neubium and Silver that is filling up my hold...

When you are based in Omega-11 then you can hop into Dresden and sell the Niobium in Leipzig ($1600 apiece). Otherwise, sell for whatever price you get and next time be more selective in what you tractor. Cadiz pays top credits for engine components (about $1200) and I think H-fuel is also nice ($600). Other good places for mining Niobium are the Omega-11 jumphole and the Frankfurt jumphole in Dresden, and also the Frankfurt side of the latter. Perfect for the Anubis - one hold full of Niobium fetches $112,000.

The Banshee and the Stiletto have very small holds, though, and so the commodity loot is just a pfennig on the side. A class 7 weapon fetches $7k, a class 8 one $16k, and ammo like Lancer missiles, Swatter mines and Hornet missiles (you get one of each for each killed Sabre) also get a good price.

Yesterday I lurked near the Omega-11 jumphole in Omega-41 until I ran out of torpedos (was flying a Stiletto this time) and I made about $50,000 in Lancer/Hornet/Swatter ammo and about $350,000 in weapon loot, for a total of over $500,000. The best commodity was pharmaceuticals ($719 at Leon) but even if I had found engine components the value would have been only $54000 (at Cadiz), about one tenth of the other stuff. The problem with this is that you have to be rich enough already to get class 8 weapon drops, probably level 30 or higher. Some of the Stilettos in Omega-5 and Omega-11 also drop class 8 Natterturns, BTW.

P.S.: I think the Banshee and the Stiletto are very nice for hunting Sabres because of the class 7 shield. The Sabres drop plenty of Swatter mines and they also fire an occasional Lancer missile, and a class 5 or class 6 shield (Crusader, Barracuda) cannot absorb more than one or two in addition to the incoming gun fire. After a good battle there can be dozens of the yellow Swatters floating about in search for targets ... I think the Drake is the only class 6 ship that can fight bundles of Sabres easily, since it can evade mines and missiles.

Edited by - Sherlog on 14-07-2003 13:05:50