Go to the battleship...at Norfolk Shipyards....for the main map areas, i.e Kusari, Liberty etc...you will find the Very Heavy fighters on the battleships..

Freelancer starr , there are several ships for sale in the New York system. Do yourself a favour and try them all. Experiment, make note of strengths and weaknesses. There are also several types of weapons that you can buy; they have their strengths and weaknesses too. Find the type that suits your style best: the fast-firing guns that make targetting easy but do less damage than the others and exhaust your powerplant quickly, or the slow-firing ones that require more skill to use but produce much more satisfying results if you do manage to hit the enemy. Just remember that mixing guns with different projectile speeds requires considerable skill because the targetting is much more difficult (since different projectile speeds require different leading angles); in the beginning it is better to avoid such a setup.

One ship that you should try is the Patriot; it cannot mount as many guns as your Defender but it has the same powerplant (!), can mount the same strength shield and it is much more agile. I beat the campaign in a Patriot but I don't think I am skilled enough to do the same in a Defender.

You definitely want the Defender ship equipped with the Scorpian weapons. You can buy these Scorpians at a Xeno base if you have the rep, or you can tractor them after destroying Xenos. I don't remember if your rep with the Xenos is nuetral at the beginning or not. If it is, get to a Xeno base to load up on Scorpians and Advanced Scorpians (hard to find weapon). You'll make mincemeat out of your enemies.

Spacedrive, I agree regarding the Scorpions but I heartily disagree regarding your choice of ship. A light fighter like the Patriot equipped with Scorpions can take on enemies that are a lot of classes higher; the Defender cannot despite having one more gun/missile hardpoint and a turret mount, because it moves so slowly. It cannot track enemies well, and it cannot evade enemy fire effectively.

I did use the Defender the first time through the campaign (like many others, I guess) but only because I did not know better. Well, the first time through I also used a certain heavy fighter to fly the final missions instead of a light fighter (and I think many others did the same) just because I did not know better.

From looking at the info sheet the Patriot doesn't look too exciting but it beats the Defender every which way. You just have to try it.

I might go replay the Liberty system with the Patriot, at that point in the game any ship outfitted with Scorpians is going to dominate. Usually I could almost take out an attacker in one "joust" pass with a fully loaded Defender. Some of it depends on playing style, I think a lot of beginning players would tend towards brute force as opposed to the Patriot's nimble fighter capabilities. Either way, a loaded fighter with Scorpians will not dissapoint.

Yes, any fighter equipped with those Xenos guns is a force to be reckoned with. All the more so if it is a light one.

The main advantage of the light fighters is simple: it does not matter whether a projectile that misses you would have barely dented your shield or whether it would have taken out your shield and put a big dent in your armour, as long as it does miss you. Light fighters can evade enemy fire pretty effectively but heavy fighters and freighters cannot, and so everything that is not a light fighter will get hammered constantly. As a result, you can stick your neck out much farther in a light fighter as long as you don't make any mistakes.

Also, heavy fighters have more difficulty applying their superiour firepower to an enemy because they cannot track them as well as light fighters. For this reason I think a light fighter can do more absolute damage to an enemy fighter than a heavy fighter can in the same time, unless the enemy is very dumb and stays still or flies straight at you.

he said he wasn't a good dogfighter.....so a heavier one would be better for him....

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I know what you're thinking. Did he fire six shots, or only five? Tell you the truth, in all the excitement I kind of lost track myself. Being as this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful hand gun in the world, it'll take your head clean off. So you gotta ask yourself one question - do I feel lucky? Well......do ya? Punk?

very simple hint. from a lousy figther to another

hey..I can even hit a planet..

when buying a weapon, look for those with 4.00 or higher refire rate.
also look for projectile speed of more than 700ms. You have to make sure that your weapons are all f the same speed, else it wil mess up the targetting reticle.

it's ok to have a bunch of weak weapons with high refire rate that you could just spray your enemy with for a constant 5 minute without draining your energy.

..and your aiming will improve further while doing that.

also, another hint, when buying a ship, it tells what weapon class it is optimum at, so only use that class of weapon

Hey, I started the hard way, I bought myself a Rhino though I never noticed its less manoverability before I tried the Patriot but I considered it fair enough.
That thing mounts serous firepower 5 turrets and 3 guns.
Getting Rouge Drail, Scorpion (Xeno minigun looking weapon) And some stolen turrets, I tell ya, you will be what the description of the ship says, sure this is an expensive solution, but it works pretty well.
You can, once you get the hang of it fly head on with Rouges and destroy 2 in 1 pass.
That is true power for you, and it don't stop there, with enemies on your tail you can turn very much firepower backwards and make them pray.
Rhino is my only ship choice in the demo, I wouldn't choose anything else since I got it, but that is something you must decide.