I haven't read all of your other walkthroughs yet. How soon can you get the Humpback? I know it is possible to take the long way around to Rheinland early, but how do you get the level/cash to buy that ship at the point of the Hovis race?

Short answer: no. You need to mod the game in order to acquire the Humpback that early.

The Humpback is the last freighter you gain access to; the game is set up so that nothing with a power class above 6 is available until after the SP game has ended.

Sorry I didn't explain very well. I used a hack to begin the game with a Humpback. I thought it would be fun to take it through the whole single-player campaign. (And ya, it's lots of fun.)

(BTW, that's what I meant when I said that obviously the game wasn't designed to allow the Hovis race in a Humpback: that ship isn't supposed to be available at that point in the game.)

It didn't take me a while to complete the race. I finished it and won on my first time at the race.
I didn't mod or anything, i forget what ship it was in but i still defeated it in one go.
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Below are ships that are pssoible to win the race with:
- Humpback
- Starflier
- Startracker
- Dagger
- Rhino
- Dromedary
- Hammerhead
- Pirinha
- Barracuda
- Cavalier
- Crusader
- Falcon
- Hawk
- Eagle
- Legionaire
- Titan
- Drake
- Komodo Dragon
- Defender
- Wolfhound
- Bloodhound
- Valkyrie

Above are all the ships that i have won a race with Dexter Hovis (Some i lost once and won once and lost twice and won once)
Those ships are possible to beat Dexter Hovis with.

(I only used two mod named: STARTship Mod by Dudeofthed (me) and i started at Mission 6 with the: MStart Choice by Dudeofthed (me) and this was a test run with my mods and they all work fine. I decided to race with Hovis on a mission with 31 PC Ships and i only won with a few)

Those were my results. If you think that those are impossible well they aren't. Believe what you see.

Edited by - dudeofthed on 10/25/2006 10:50:26 PM

I've heard people getting stuck on the Hovis race, but I didn't on the first time through the SP campaign.

I would not say personally that the Hovis race is difficult in general, but certainly winning the race flying a Humpback is extremely difficult indeed, probably the most difficult challenge imaginable in the game. Significantly more difficult than beating the whole game in a Rhino (rather more difficult than the Starflier campaign), or hunting Nomads in the Unknown systems flying a Starflier.

The Humpback is the least maneuverable ship in the game (others being at least *twice* as maneuverable, some being *four times* as maneuverable). It being possible to win the race flying a Humpback, it's clearly possible to win with the other ships.

Beating Hovis in a Dromedary took me a few tries. That's a fun challenge too, and one you can take without modding the game.

anyone tried with a train? i have.

I had to mod the speed to 360 and the train manoeverability bit higher(not much) and i did it!

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dudeofthed, you might want to double-check your mods. Maybe you didn't set the right maneuverability or turn radius, got the speed wrong or something. In any case, I believe you would find that winning with a Humpback is *extremely* difficult, and has a whole lot to do with luck. I would say on average it's *possible* to win 1 in 10 times, if you fly perfectly, and to fly perfectly takes an enormous amount of practice; the necessary maneuvering techniques are not obvious.

It's not a "win once lose once" kind of thing, but a "lose 30 times, finally get the hang of it, lose another 10, even if you fly perfectly, almost win once but make an extremely frustrating error, lose another 20 times, finally win OMG!!" kind of situation.

And I had that kind of trouble ater flying the Humpback continuously for several campaign missions. That another might just hop in and win the race first or second try seems vanishingly unlikely. I'm not saying you can do it, but I am saying you definitely can't do it without a whole lot of patience and practice.