Note: had to cut my article into smaller portions because the forum script kept cr*pping even after I had removed all URLs ...)

Here's the sketch of my 04:32 h run with 6 battleship kills (with T-Hawk's mod):

Mission 1: Starflier with 3 x Justice Mk I; traded 10 pharm from Manhattan to Pittsburgh and 20 boron from Pittsburgh to Manhattan. Levelled up by buying 20 H-fuel on Manhattan and selling again immediately.

Mission 2: Patriot with 2 x Lavablade Mk I, 2 x Lavablade Mk III (with the class 1 graviton shield from the Starflier). Levelled up by buying 25 H-fuel on BS Missouri after the mission but kept the H-fuel for sale on Station Willard.

Mission 3: started with same loadout as previous mission. During first docking with Willard I sold the H-fuel, upgraded the shield to class 3 graviton and the thruster to 'Heavy'. After the mission I docked with Willard to sell the loot and also to buy & equip 1 Slingshot and 1 Razor launcher plus a third Lavablade Mk III because I felt like taking out a cruiser in mission 4; then I went to Manhattan by way of the Balboa wreck (20 cardamine, 2 x Pyros Type 2, plus a turret I didn't need). The cardamine took care of the levelling-up.

Mission 4: my Patriot was already equipped properly so I only needed to top up my Slingshot/Razor ammo plus full nanos/batts (using the cardamine profit). After dispatching the first wing of Defenders I toasted the cruiser LNS Twilight because I wanted a battleship kill and then I continued to fry Defenders until the tradelane to Westpoint was clear. No noteworthy events except for the scene after jumping into Magellan where I tickled the neutral Bounty Hunters with a cruise disruptor (courtesy of Sean Ashcroft IIRC) in order to speed things along. Got 7 of the 8 Piranhas. After landing on Leeds I sold loot and bought a hold full of optronics before going to Tobias; after chatting with Tobias I sold the optronics to level up, bought a Piranha and then filled my hold with optronics again (for sale on Planet Cambridge).

Mission 5: Piranha with 4 x Lavablade Mk III. On Baxter, swapped two of the Lavablades for the class 4 Magma Hammers and upgraded shield to level 4 graviton (that's why I had to buy the Piranha so early). Levelled up by selling hold full of diamonds bought at Cambridge.

Mission 6: Piranha with 2 x Lavablade Mk III and 2 x Magma Hammer. Traded mining machinery from Leeds to Battleship Hood where I bought gold for sale on Planet New Tokyo.

Mission 7: Piranha with 1 x Slingshot, 1 x Lavablade Mk III, 2 x Magma Hammer, Razor mines. Got the cruiser at the exit out of Leeds, and in Tau-29 I toasted the battleship and one cruiser (but got credit only for one of them). Levelled up by selling the Dublin gold on Planet New Tokyo.

Mission 8: Barracuda with 2 x Pyros Type 2, 2 x Magma Hammer, 2 x Lavablade Mk III, plus class 5 graviton shield. Traded light arms from New Tokyo to Kyoto which took care of the levelling-up.

Mission 9: Barracuda from previous mission, plus Starkiller torpedos. Nothing special.

Mission 10: same ship/loadout as before. Traded light arms from Planet New Berlin to Bruchsal Base where I filled hold with H-fuel for sale on Buffalo Base. During the Sigma-13 skirmish I concentrated on the cruisers, because they count as battleship kills. During the wait after blowing up one of the experimental battleships I again concentrated on the cruisers, for the same reason.

Mission 11: Anubis with 2 x Pyros Type 2, 4 x Reaper Mk II, Debilitator Turret, Order shield (i.e. class 6 graviton HF shield but much cheaper). Trading in the Barracuda provided plenty of funds for ammo later on.

Mission 12: found that I was stinking rich so I upgraded the mine launcher to the Driller thingy. Otherwise nothing special.

Mission 13: BTDT. Made screenshot after talking to Orillion in the Manhattan bar.

Here is a time table based on automatic savegames that may be useful for comparison:

<pre><font size=1 face=Courier>time ship worth credits kills battleships savepoint name
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
0:19:03 Starflier 10,327 904 31 - Mission 01: Criminal Base Destroyed
0:22:50 Starflier 14,527 7,504 31 - Mission 02: Manhattan, New York
0:34:25 Patriot 13,540 4,542 41 - Mission 02: Return Ashcroft
0:47:37 Patriot 18,237 4,011 45 - Mission 03: Cal. Minor, California
1:01:22 Patriot 18,710 8,485 52 - Mission 03: Respond to Station Willard
1:15:56 Patriot 45,234 83 64 - Mission 04: Manhattan, New York
1:41:08 Piranha 90,466 32,354 86 1 Mission 05: Cambridge, Cambridge
2:09:03 Piranha 111,097 60,977 103 1 Mission 06: Hood, Dublin
2:22:02 Piranha 118,131 69,011 112 1 Mission 07: Leeds, Leeds
2:38:28 Piranha 110,584 51,969 121 2 Mission 07: Engage the Rheinland Fleet
2:55:37 Barracuda 97,092 6,615 129 3 Mission 08: Shinagawa, New Tokyo
3:09:11 Barracuda 123,525 13,570 134 3 Mission 09: Kyoto, Chugoku
3:22:17 Barracuda 119,175 9,220 144 3 Mission 10: Kyoto Chugoku (sic)
3:33:15 Barracuda 112,380 19,164 153 5 Mission 10: After Meeting Von Claussen
3:43:05 Barracuda 120,501 10,200 160 6 Mission 11: Osiris, Texas
4:05:43 Anubis 126,458 74,734 182 6 Mission 12: Osiris, Omicron Beta
4:16:49 Anubis 106,892 33,069 195 6 Mission 13: Toledo, Omicron Alpha
4:32:53 Anubis 74,050 31,241 204 6 (Manhattan, after talking to Orillion) </font></pre>

This was from my first run with T-Hawk's excellent mod Campaign Cutscenes Disabled, and I did not reload except once during mission 3 (lead transport got blown to bits even though I shredded Outcasts as fast as the Patriot's powerplant could drive the Lavablades). There is quite a bit of room left for improvement. For example, this run shows response to Station Willard at 1:01:22 but in the run I made to prepare the walk-through I was already done with the mission at 0:59:30 and had landed on Willard at 1:00:20.

I'll leave the walk-through for tomorrow since it is already past midnight, but I promise that it will be detailed & with screenshots & all the trimmings ... Have fun!

Wow! Your worth dropped 25% after that last mission

Yes - you can run up quite a tab if you use Drillers and Starkillers liberally. Whenever there was a torping opportunity then a torp left the tube, even against the Patriots in mission 11.

But even so there is way too much money left, which shows that I was not making efficient use of funds. I should have started using Drillers earlier, or perhaps I should have bought the class 6 graviton shield on Kyoto before mission 9, or a Catapult launcher, or a pair of decent guns (New Tokyo) ...

Cool man!
Very good and fast. Im workin on it... cant wait to see the Osiris... .

Very good done.

Lets see If I can beat your time

It shouldn't be too hard to beat that time - I have a Piranha parked in Cambridge that has beat my T6 run by more than 11 minutes already (no battleship kill yet, though). I just tried a couple of things that I had planned to mention in the walk-through and these things worked out very well. No, I won't enter that game into the contest even if I finish it - I mentioned it only to show that there is quite a lot of potential left.

Sorry that I cannot do the partial walk-through today (Saturday looks good, though). So here's three things that I think could be important.

First, practice with missions 1 and 2 until you got the hang of FLDQ and managed to get a clear lead on my T6 run at the end of mission 2 - say, 2 or 3 minutes. Combat under time constraints is quite different from normal combat, and the other things (travel, equipment dealer ...) are no less important for achieving a good time.

Second, getting the $750 bounty for disobeying King's orders during the first leg of mission 1 (after the tradelane disruption) takes only a few seconds extra because you need to kill only 3 of the 'bonus' pirates that appear when the six fighters of the first wave are destroyed. You can take down two of them while King is still chattering and the third can be gotten quickly too, so that you can enter the tradelane just a few seconds after King and the transport have departed. These $750 and any extra loot can be very helpful in the beginning.

Third, consider carefully whether you want to dock with Station Willard after the end of mission 3. You need to do so only if you want to have Slingshot missiles and Razor mines during mission 4 but these ingredients are not very important (Seekers aren't bad either and you can buy a Slingshot launcher on Mactan if you are so inclined, but mines/missiles are not necessary by any means). Docking with Willard will eat quite a bit of time; if you don't want to dock then you can set sail for the Balboa as soon as the last Rheinland fighter has gone up in flames. Even hitting the Balboa isn't strictly necessary (but it is very helpful and takes only a few seconds extra) ...

FLDQ is my favourite mission of Freelancer. I regard the whole story line as the one (and only) mission worth playing for as a single player. I just wish DA and MS make hundreds of mission like this *story line* in one PC game.

Ok, here's some thoughts from my first attempt at this...

I decided to go for all torpedoes, as much as possible, and go for lots of battkeship kills. So I bought a Defender after mission 2, and since you have to go out of your way to get a Crusader during the campaign, I kept the Liberty HF all the way through Bretonia. There isn't any really good gun loadout for a Defender, though, because class 3 and 4 guns combine so badly. Only 500 m/s and 750 m/s guns are available in class-3 on the bases you visit during the storyline, and only 600 m/s and 700 m/s class-4 guns are available. I decided to just load it up with four Lavablade IIIs, plus one Slingshot (purchased on Cal Minor after mission 3) for missions 3-5 and one Adv. Stunpulse for missions 6-7 once the torpedoes were onboard.

The problem I discovered with this plan is that Lavablades really do suck for targeting. The ponderously slow speed and refire makes it often take 20-30 seconds to lock on to a fast fighter long enough to kill it, wasting lots of time.

And my other problem was cash. I skipped the Balboa, and also I decided to take the diamonds from Cambridge on through to New Tokyo instead of selling them on Leeds and buying gold at the Hood. 30 units of Diamonds allows instant leveling-up from 13 to 14 on New Tokyo; 30 units of Gold doesn't have enough of a price difference between nominal and local price to raise your networth by $30k so you have to fly a freelance mission.

And so when I arrived on New Tokyo, I couldn't really afford the Barracuda. Well, I could, but didn't have the money to buy torpedoes for it or to buy Light Arms to ship on to Kyoto. So I tried Tekagi's Transport in the Defender, but I've gotten killed five times so far (mostly by my own torpedoes), and I'm only about three minutes ahead of the pace in your game and won't be able to match your Barracuda pace in a Defender for the next three missions. So I'm going to start over and get enough cash to do it right. I think just getting the Balboa will suffice, and let me still take diamonds to New Tokyo for less total profit but an instant level-up. Also I'm going to try with Justice Mk III guns instead (and one Adv.Stunpulse), and see if I can shoot down fighters faster with that than with the Lavablades.

Stay tuned...

T-Hawk, that is an interesting approach. The Diamonds-to-New-Tokyo thingy is clever, and it can be helpful for other approaches as well - for example, it would allow to buy a Cavalier (30 cargo space) instead of a Piranha after mission 4. I only bought the Piranha because it has 35 cargo space and using Dublin gold to level up after mission 7 requires 32 or 33 units.

The advantages of the Cavalier are better armour/shield, stronger powerplant and better loadout possibilities, especially with an eye towards the Tau-29 battle where the Cavalier should be able to bag two cruisers easily. I found taking out Rheinland cruisers pretty tough in the Piranha (and the Bloodhound which has roughly the same stats). IIRC the cruisers in Tau-29 are covered by fighters + gunboats + battleship, which is quite a lot of heat for a class 4 shield. And the Cavalier would be able to equip the two Pyros Type 2s from the Balboa wreck. Add two class 4 Skyrails and you get a package that is much more deadly than a Piranha with Lavablades and Magma Hammers. The Cavalier could even use Catapults in Tau-29 ...

I agree that equipping a ship with class 3/4 hardpoints is difficult even at the best of times, and the more so during an FLDQ run where you don't want to go out of your way in order to obtain equipment. But the Liberty plasma guns are actually quite decent and the campaign path covers the complete range from class 1 to class 4.

In my first FLDQ run (unmodded) I used only Lavablades and Magma Hammers until I reached the Osiris. The Barracuda was outfitted with 4 x Lavablade Mk III and 2 x Magma Hammer Mk I; two of the Lavablades were loot from mission 4 (where I had used 2 x Lavablade Mk I and 2 x Lavablade Mk III) but if I had not gotten the loot then I would have bought an extra pair of guns for the Barracuda on Baxter during mission 5.

The Liberty laser weapons also cover the range from class 1 to class 4 (along the path of the campaign). They match Stunpulse guns and civilian/Kusari laser weapons perfectly, and they mix well with 700 m/s guns like the Bretonian Rippers or Outcast Dragoons. However, they do pretty little damage and they are energy-inefficient. Just look at the difference between mission 1 with 3 x Justice Mk I on one hand and 3 x Lavablade Mk I on the other; the difference is even more marked in mission 2. The plasma guns are not easy to handle, but they allow you to dispatch enemies quickly if you shoot fast and true. With the laser weapons this is not possible because they take forever to blow up an enemy, even if you hit constantly.

P.S.: one of the wrecks in Sigma-13 is quite close to the New Berlin jumphole and can be raided quickly during mission 10. Could be an easy source of cash for ammo during the later missions (Drillers, Starkillers, Catapults ...)

Edited by - Sherlog on 10-08-2003 14:15:06

Good point - I hadn't realized the class-4 Magma Hammers were available on Baxter. Without that knowledge, getting them during the campaign does require an extra docking; since you can't buy them until mission 3 completes and they aren't available on Manhattan, you have to stop at Willard (or Cal Minor?). That might be worthwhile anyway, to get a Slingshot before mission 4 (also not available on Manhattan - why does the capital of the colonies have such lousy equipment available?)

Still, though, I'm going to try the Defender with the Liberty laser guns:
- I wasted at least 8 minutes in total chasing around after fighters with a sliver of health left. The Justice refire and speed is far better for that.
- I do have Slingshots in missions 4-5 and torpedoes after that to take out big targets like cruisers and gunboats.
- The laser guns match the Adv.Stunpulse so I get instant shield annihilation of anything in the first 8 missions.
- Finally, the Rheinlanders use molecular shields which are strong against plasma weapons.

Can you help figure out the exact math needed to level up at New Tokyo? You need $36,000 to level up. Diamonds provide a networth increase of 1650 - 660 = 990 per unit. Gold provides 1105 - 425 = 680 per unit, and you can buy H-Fuel for 120 although its nominal price is 240 so you get a 120 per unit boost to net-worth. Buying overpriced cargo like luxury food doesn't seem to trigger the same quirk that H-Fuel does back in New York. Yet you say you can level up with 32-33 units of Gold; the math doesn't seem to be working out for me. I want to figure out exactly how many Diamonds you need to take so that you can load up the rest of a 30-cargo ship with gold.

Edited by - T-hawk on 10-08-2003 17:05:20

The H-fuel quirk seems to be a bit quirky - sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. You need to gain or lose at least as much money as was set as the net worth difference for the freelance period, i.e. $36000 for the free time after mission 7. $36000 / $1105 = 32.58, that is why you need to buy or sell 33 gold on Planet New Tokyo. The money must be lost or gained in a single transaction - selling 20 gold and then 13 will not work.

The Slingshots (level 2) can be bought on Willard during mission 3 - it is only level 6 items like Razors and class 4 guns that do not become available before the end of the mission. My earlier remark regarding Slingshots was wrong.

Yes, the repertoire of the Manhattan equipment vendor seems to be conspicuously lousy in certain categories - perhaps the designers wanted to push the player away from the starting location. On the other hand, the class 7/8 Debilitators are only available in Liberty, which forces you to suffer long minutes of utter boredom if you want to equip a class 7+ ship with 700-750 m/s kit ... On several occasions I had to fly missions against Starfliers in a Falcon or Barracuda, in order to improve my standing with Ageira.

The plasma guns are more difficult to use than lasers but they are also more rewarding, and together with the Bundschuh Lugers they are the only high-damage guns that are available along the path of the campaign without rep-fixing. Yes, they are less efficient against molecular shields but they beat even those shields faster than laser weapons, simply because they do almost 50% more damage than a laser of the same class and are much more efficient (4.80 vs. 3.33). Their only major disadvantage is the lack of matching shield buster guns. Of course, if your Freelancer setup is not completely lag-free then the plasma guns are simply not viable because they have such a low refire rate in addition to the super-slow projectiles.

BTW, the Flamecurse that can be bought during mission 10 on New Berlin has the same stats as the Magma Hammer Mk III. The Flamecurse does 632 dmg/s compared to 527 for the Reaper Mk II of the Order, but of course it is much more expensive. On the other hand, if you land on New Berlin with a Barracuda that has 4 x Lavablade Mk III and 2 x Magma Hammer Mk I then you could do a lot worse than replacing the Lavablades with Flamecurses (more than double damage), especially since you encounter a couple of Rheinland cruisers only a few minutes later ...

When I was in that situation I opted to wait for the cheaper Reapers to become available, but that was before you taught me about battleship killing at the experimental shipyard. And during my T6 FLDQ run I did not try to maximize my battleship kills, other than roasting everything that I found by the wayside. Also, you can see that I had quite a bit of money left over in the end, money that should have been used for destructive purposes. Add the Sigma-13 wreck and you are looking at more than 100 grand that could fund a bit of extra battleship killing. The Sigma-13 battle is before the Flamecurses but the shipyard and Zone 21 are after.

P.S.: I have made a list of Battleship kills that do get counted. This could be helpful for planning an FLDQ run of the higher categories. I am mentioning & linking it here to make the thread easy to find when the topics have aged apart.

Edited by - Sherlog on 10-08-2003 22:23:37

Thanks for the level-up quirk info - you're absolutely right. 36000 / 1650 = 21.8, and selling 21 diamonds on New Tokyo does not level up immediately but selling 22 diamonds does. Good info for any 25-cargo (Patriot) or 30-cargo ship.

So, I tried another run with the Defender, using the Justice guns, getting the Balboa, and taking only 23 diamonds to New Tokyo (cashing in the other 7 diamonds on Leeds and taking 7 gold to Kusari.)

The Justice guns really were faster against fighters - remember these are just for mop-up. The heavy damage comes from Slingshots or Starkillers. Even taking the time to get the Balboa, I was about three minutes ahead of my last game coming into Leeds after mission 6.

I got a cruiser kill outside Manhattan with Slingshots, and got the one in Leeds although it was just after Tobias started firing on it. Starkillers are definitely the fastest way through the three mission-6 battles: the enemies always appear in front of you so you can fly directly at them with Stunpulses blazing. Without shields, one torpedo kills each, and the gunboats only take about 3 torpedoes each.

However, the Tau-29 fleet battle gave me plenty of problems. After about five deaths, I decided to give up on this run. So I took things more carefully; for the sake of experimentation I reloaded several times to try a few different things. (My loadout was 2x Vengeance Mk I, 2x Justice Mk III, 1x Adv.Stunpulse, and Starkillers.) I couldn't reliably record ANY cruiser kills if I took care to stay safe.

The Defender _can_ get all three cruiser kills in Tau-29, and faster than going to get a Crusader would be, but you have to be very good or very lucky or very abusive of reloading. And you have to have Lavablade guns which do make missions 3-5 take a minute or two longer. I can get one and sometimes two reliably with the Lavablades, but those would take a few minutes longer to do the missions 3-6 battles. There isn't enough cash to have both a Justice loadout for missions 3-6 and a Lavablade loadout for 7 and buy Starkillers, especially if you want to afford a Barracuda at the end of it all.

So, now I think that the best option for battleship kills is to take the three minutes to go buy a Crusader at Battleship Essex on the way to the Hood. You can buy a Crusader on BS Norfolk before mission 5, but that tradelane would take a minute or two longer, cash may not permit a full load of Diamonds from Cambridge, and the Defender can do mission 5 fine anyway.

The Crusader has many advantages:

- 35 cargo so can take Diamonds profits on Leeds and level up on New Tokyo via gold alone
- Can equip the class-5 Pyros from the Balboa right away
- Can supplement that with good Bretonian Skyrails (too bad Borrocos take forever to go get)
- Class-5 shield and powerplant (natch)
- Cash permitting, can buy four more Pyros Type 2 on Cali for later equipping on the Barracuda and Anubis (the Defender can only buy Pyros 1)

I'm off to try that now. I'll pick up my Defender savegame from the end of mission 5 to do it, since I think I've got the best strategies for battleship kills through that point (the only battle with one is outside Manhattan, but killing either a cruiser or the Unity is very hard in a LF and you pretty much need the Defender.)


Edited by - T-hawk on 10-08-2003 23:59:56

4:40:37, with 9 battleship kills. Full disclosure: I played from a mission 5 save with the Defender after taking the Defender into mission 8 and running into trouble. Other reloads: after three deaths and one "timeout", read on.

As I'd planned, I bought the Crusader at the Essex on the way into Dublin, and loaded it with the two Pyros Type 2s from the Balboa, and bought four Skyrails and a Starkiller launcher. WOW, what a difference did this ship and gun loadout make over the Defender.

I blazed through the Tau-29 battle more than fast enough to make up for the time spent buying the Crusader. All three cruisers died at my hand (I dealt 50% or more damage to each) although I only got credit for two.

Got to Cali, ready to buy more class-5 Pyros, only to discover that you need a better reputation with the Outcasts than the game gives you. Argh. Class-4 Pyros were available though so I bought four of them instead. Despite the "Truth about the optimal weapons class", the class-4 Pyros do serve very well on the Barracuda since its power plant depletes after about 15-20 seconds of firing anywy.

That might've been a good thing, since when I got to New Tokyo and leveled up via gold, I could just barely afford the Barracuda plus a full load (45) of H-Fuel on Shinagawa to take to Kyoto. Unfortunately, this isn't enough to trigger the level-up on Kyoto - you need 40 Light Arms and I could only afford 20 (so bought H-Fuel instead for more total profit.) So I had to fly freelance missions - 3 of them costing 14 minutes total.

After Kyoto, you're home free as far as cash is concerned. The Sigma-13 wreck is worth $50,000-plus depending on how damaged the guns get; that plus trading in for the Anubis gives plenty of cash for ammo from there to the end of the game. BTW, I found a neat trick for extra cash. During mission 11, if you kill a lot of ships, you tractor in a lot of cargo. Usually you can't sell commodities on the Osiris so you don't get to cash them in. But, if you go buy another Anubis , you can transfer the cargo to the dealer for nominal price. I got an extra $10k from a big pile of niobium and H-fuel.

===========

Here were my registered cruiser kills: 1 outside Manhattan, 1 in Leeds, 2 in Tau-29 (though I should've had all three), 2 in Sigma-13 (though again I killed three, plus a battleship), and 3 in the experimental shipyard. Didn't quite nail one of the cruisers with the Omaha before it pulled a Molly. Also, I killed the Musashi at Tekagi's Arch but didn't get credit.

Had one spectacular death and one game screwup at Tekagi's Arch. I was going for the battleship, launching torpedoes... it launched some missiles at me... and my torpedo HIT A MISSILE, blowing both up right in my face and killing me from 50% shield and full armor!

On the reload, I had my most spectacular battle success ever, against the Tekagi patrol. As always, I was cruising from Ryuku far ahead of the NPC ships. I killed all eight fighters, seven with torpedo hits. That went so fast, they were all dead before Ozu even got there ! Unfortunately, that made the game miss some trigger event. When I got to the Arch, Ozu started yelling at me for running away and the game failed due to "fleeing the battle."

==========

Anyways, I think I've settled on the best way to rack up a high battleship kill count quickly. The Defender-Crusader-Barracuda-Anubis ship sequence is unbeatable. Just gotta get up enough cash to afford both the Barracuda and over 40 Light Arms on New Tokyo, meaning about $14,000 more than I had this time. The best way I can think of to do that is to take Boron from Manhattan before mission 4 to ship to Stokes. In a 30-unit ship, that's $17,000 more profit than H-Fuel to Mactan, and should do the trick at the cost of about 3 minutes (much better than spending 14 minutes freelancing!)

T-Hawk, this is amazing. But I knew that we could expect something spectacular from you. And the trick for selling loot on the Osiris or on Planet Toledo for a small 'commission' is pure genius. I am sure it will be helpful for all FLDQers.

I would not have thought that it is possible to make ends meet with a Crusader in Bretonia ... When I did a test run with the Cavalier I could not even afford a full load of Tadpoles for mission 7, let alone a class 5 graviton on Shinkaku. Money must have been very tight, especially as the HFs do not really shine unless you have some explosives to play with (Slingshots, Starkillers) but these put a strain on the finances.

I had considered the Defender for Bretonia because it is pretty perfect for this job, but getting the Defender in Liberty stretches finances to the breaking point. As the biggest advantages of the Defender I saw the ability to use Starkillers and the possibility to save a bit of money on ship and shield (ship is less expensive than any of the other candidates except Patriot, shield can be re-used on the Barracuda later). I think the Starkillers have by far the best ratio of bang/buck among the high-damage explosives, and they are also the most damaging ordnance that can be bought along the path of the campaign.

However, I could not find a Liberty loadout for the Defender that would match the combat value of the Patriot, and the fastest plan for missions 1 and 2 (Lavablades, Patriot) does not fit well with the Defender route since the Defender wants 700 m/s or 750 m/s kit to maximize its potential against enemy fighters (unless you go for an all-plasma loadout). The Defender cannot chose the angle at which it shoots at an enemy as easily as the Patriot, and this makes speed mixes like 500 m/s and 700 or 750 m/s less practicable. The Balboa profit does not become available before touching down on Manhattan shortly before mission 4 and then it is too late to get some of the good kit, although you can still buy ammo of all sorts there.

The patrol skirmish before Tekagi's Arch is pretty dangerous because the script fails you without ado when you get too near to the Arch during this battle (7500 m). Also, during that battle you are tethered to Ozu who has orders to stay at least 14 km away from the Arch, and the 7 enemy fighters have orders to stay within 2 km or so of Ozu. If you run ahead then the battle can move very close to the Arch while Ozu is still very far away, so both the Ozu tether and the Arch range check could spell doom. I am typing this from memory, mind you, and it is possible that I did not get all details right.

Speaking of tethers, the best time for going after Destroyer KNF Hissatsu (not Battleship Musashi, that is a solar!) is probably after destroying the first gennie but before destroying the last one. During that time the tether is 5000 m, which is quite generous. After the last gennie the tether is shorter - 3500 m or less.

Cali/Outcasts: IIRC the script sets the Outcasts neutral when mission 7 has ended, so the Outcasts are still hostile during the mission ... The rep threshold for the Pyros Type 1s is -100% (like Corsair Borrocos) but for the Type 2s it is 0%. Admit it, you would have taken the Type 2s if funds & reputation had allowed it.

P.S.: I am wondering why nobody has tried a T0 run so far. It should be easy to beat my T6 time considerably, even using the same basic plan. A time under 4 hours should be just barely possible ... And you know how it is with things that are just barely possible - sooner or later there will be somebody who just goes and does it.

P.P.S.: I just loaded one of the 'After meeting Van Pelt' automatic savegames because I wanted to check something on the Magellan side, for another post. Since I was there anyway I watched carefully where the 3 cruisers come from. It seems that they are cruising in from the direction of Ithaca (is that why they're called 'cruisers'? ), so disruptors should be useful for separating one of them from the fleet. Without CD there is just barely enough time to toast one of them before the 'Benford blows up' cutscene, so you could bag a battleship kill without working 'overtime'.

Edited by - Sherlog on 12-08-2003 17:26:09