So you have beaten the campaign, explored Sirius, flown Humpy/Titan/Sabre/Eagle and are now getting bored? No problem, even if MP is not your thing: here is an overview of various ways how to have fun with the singleplayer campaign, and I'll try to give links to all important threads where the details are discussed.

First, there is a Plan for a Maximum-Fun Campaign. The theme is overkill - using the finest equipment that can be obtained from shops, ships & wrecks, preferrably stuff that is more powerful than anything that you are allowed to buy at that point. Use the most powerful class 5 guns & missiles before level 10, the best class 6 guns while still in Bretonia, or fetch level 32 mines from one of the hidden worlds when you are level 13 so that you can score a goodish portion of the sixteen battleship/cruiser kills that are possible during the rest of the campaign. Toast the gunboats near Willard before Walker can complain about them (he will probably complain anyway), fry the Magellan Piranhas before the Hackers show up and listen to a comm transmission from a dead Bounty Huntress, or hear Tobias proclaim his intention to destroy a cruiser that is dust already ... So much to do.

You will probably find the story missions ridiculously soft during the fun run, but that is easily remedied: just use a freighter or one of the lesser ships to beat the campaign. This may also teach you a thing or two about combat and proper weapon selection, because it puts you in more extreme situations than if you fly high-level fighters. Related threads and campaign write-ups:
(no thread for beating campaign in a freighter?)
Has anyone beat SP in a light fighter?
Rhino
Starflier
Startracker
Bloodhound
Also recommended but apparently without their own discussion threads so far:
Patriot
Piranha
Defender
Dagger
Mule
Clydesdale
Dromedary
The Dromedary is a lot of fun because it has actually the most firepower of all the ships available before mission 11 (except for the lack of torpedoes) and you can get it at level 10 already, right after the Sprague mission. Of the rest, Dagger and Defender are probably the easiest because they combine adequate agility with good loadout options (shield buster and missiles and a decent set of hull guns, Defender can even use torps). OTOH, a good LF pilot may find Starflier and Patriot easier since these are the most agile ships in the game. Mule and Clydesdale are tough, Rhino insanely hard. But you don't have to beat the campaign all the way in order to have fun - just hop into one of these ships and see how far you can take it. You may surprise yourself.

After learning how to fly & fight you may be ready for a fast run to test your skills: FLDQ. Scores are kept in the main thread Competition: FLDQ - Freelancer Done Quick (separate lists are kept per number of battleships killed). Related topics are:
Battleship kills that do get counted
Freelancer Done Quick - hints and partial walk-through
FLDQ - T-Hawk's $1 million challenge
Level 7

And always heed NukeIt's Survival Laws of Freelancer ...

BTW, you do not have to watch the ground-based cutscenes again unless you want to: T-Hawk as written a mod - Campaign Cutscenes Disabled - that removes these cutscenes. Also, you can fly all story missions back-to-back without wasting time on freelancing if you use the tricks that are discussed in the threads related to FLDQ.

If you think that an important thread is missing, just shout and I'll add it if your arguments are convincing.


Edited by - Sherlog on 31-08-2003 21:23:08