Its rather odd this race, some do it in one pass, others seem unable to do it at all. I find giving him a slight nudge as you your hit ur cruise engines the best way. I admit i had trouble till i worked out the course layout, all that moving around, annoying.

i got it my first time...i dont see the trouble....just keep cruising all the way through. when u get to the end he stops and shoots you...just keep going in cruise and finish

The first time, I did it with a bounty hunter ship and I got it on the second try. The second time I did it with a Klingon cruser and got it on the first try. And the third time I tried it with the Enterprise and couldn't do it.

So, I just hacked my saved game.

Life: No one gets out alive.

If the cruise engines are via the 'Go To' command (F2 key) instead of normally (SHIFT-W is the original key binding IIRC) then steering becomes laggish and unpredictable, and the cruise engines tend to cut out at inopportune moments. The fix is easy, of course - just fire up the cruise engines directly, without GoTo. Also, by far the easiest method of steering is to steer manually in mouse flight mode; not doing this is another common error.

However, on old computers with very weak CPU and very weak graphics card the game can be awfully laggish, especially if the graphics driver is set to render several frames ahead. On such computer the race against Hovis is difficult because a heavy fighter steers worse on it than a freighter does on a normal system.

Turn your graphics down. I found that after I turned my graphics aaaaalll the way down for mission 6, I could beat Hovis in any ship available at that point. The lower the graphics, the faster your ship responds.

----------------------------------------
"Although I do not consider myself a member of the Bounty Hunters' Guild, I find that their goals and mine often follow the same path. I will aid them when I can...if they give me a percentage of the salvage from whatever they frag along the way. Hell, they were even so kind as to sell me a ship after one of my jobs with them, and I've been flying her ever since. But god help them if someone puts a bounty on THEIR heads, for I don't care who I hunt for, as long as their live capture(or untimely death) can get me enough credits to buy a decent sized mug of my favorite drink."- A Freelance Bounty Hunter.

And NukeIt's and SherLog's responses were fairly accurate, I was surprised that this game would run at all on my poor old Celeron with built in graphics (8Mb).

I've got to admit I never thought of dumbing down the graphics any further than how it set itself on install.

This is probably where I had an advantage in the rest of the game - when there were lots of those green rienlander photons coming my way the frame rate would slow down enough for me to aim more accurately. The more that were shooting at me simultaneously the easier it was.

But Hovis had me stuffed, and after reading through a few forums I noticed a lot of other people having similar problems so if they want to use my cheat they're welcome to it.

RILMS, I did'nt find a decent tool for decrypting the save files before I found one for the ini's. I would have hacked the save file too but the tools I found worked, you can beat Hovis now without the cruise engine, just give a few spurts on the thrusters here and there and you're guaranteed to win.

Overall I found that race very frustrating, I thought it was a bit unfair to have it as a crucial part of the game, maybe if it was optional but provided a shiny new ship I would have been happier. I wouldn't have got the shiny new ship but I also wouldn't have spent three days of frustration before having to cheat.

I didn't use cruise at all the 2nd through the game, I edited my thruster to 520 and using only 1% of power, this way I could slow down, turn to next hoop then thrust through it. Now the first time through the game, I looked for help and found the music edit way here on TLR. Yep, Just could beat Hovis without help.



Stay frosty out there!!! "Check"-Trent

Dude I don't get what the deal is with this rce. I know some people can't get it but I got it on the first try and ws seriously disappointed. I was hoping for more of a challenge. All you have to do is put on your cruise engines and stay inside the lines. I wonder if there is some sort of a glitch that makes him faster sometimes or something.

i think the problem is people arnet using mouse flight.

at first I couldnt beat the race. i was so frustrated. then i tried practicing the race with mouse flight and discoverd i could easily complete it using mouse flight. so to anyone havin troble with the race, use mouse flight. if all else fails, cheat.

___________________________
dummest newbie questions
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i beat it second time around. I never use mouse flight, I like to be in control at all times.

Hover over your F2 button til the race starts and try to get a head start on hovis. Stay tight to the corners and just keep going, if it helps ignore hovis entirely by turning down your sound. He says nothing useful apart from trying to distract you. If you're ahead of him he usually has a problem catching up.

Best bet is to keep practicing your start, get ahead and stay ahead.

To make the race easier.

Increase screen size (resolution). There are a couple places where at lower resolutions Hovis or the next gate are off the screen and it is hard to figure out where to go. With more stuff on the screen, it becomes much, much easier to find the next gate in those places.

Turn off all the extras (go to the performance option and tune it down to zero -- disable everything). A little ugly, but your frame rate goes up when you do that and it gets much easier to actually be where you think you are.

Hit the inside lines. That is, from where you are to the gate, go straight to the inside corner of the next turn. You turn so well you don't need any help or banking.

If you have cargo, sell it. You fly better without cargo.

Start with your finger on the tab button and then hit ShiftW.

It is possible, with a good start, to beat Hovis to the first gate and lead all the way through. You don't need to push your luck though, Hovis will bobble where the gates get just a little squirly (about half way through) and you can pass him there and keep the lead.

The AI takes all the turns wide, though it hits the accelleration perfectly.

Stick in "mouse flight" and do not use "go to" or similar modes, dont try flying formation with Hovis (the code won't take you through the gates correctly) or try other shortcuts.

The problem with the race is that there are lots of background items being rendered and handled by the game engine during the race. It is incredible to look at (if you aren't being distracted by little things, like racing), but that fills up the visual field, kilsl your frame rate and otherwise makes the race much harder.

On a fast system, with a fast video card it isn't as noticiable, but on mine, which is about 2gigaherz, 500mb ram, ATI Radeon card, I had to detune the game in order to get a framerate that made the race change from very hard to very easy. I also had to change up the screen size, so that I could see the next turns at all the turns.



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@Temp

I just used the save editor that you can get from the download site here. I posted instructions on how to skip it here: http://lancersreactor.com/t/forum/topic ... lse&S=True

Life: No one gets out alive.

I used this file yesterday. Cooooooooooooooool. You still have to race Hovis, but the next gate now gets highlighted by a waypoint. So my Dromedary eeked it out.

The trouble I had is I use a track ball and at the lowest setting the ship steering is too touching for the tighter turns. I'd have to really focus on each gate and lose track of where to turn for the next one when it was off screen. This file adds waypoints to the next get so I can see where to steer too. Kudos to temp for this as I prefer still having to do the race.