I guess the 05:52 h thingy deserves a bit of explanation (I wanted to post these remarks as a P.S. as soon as I had time but now there's a new post already).
During my earlier runs through the campaign I discovered a couple of tricks that could be used to fly all campaign missions back-to-back, without freelancing/pirating/trading/looting to earn money between the Juni missions (see the thread
Level 7 in the Spoiler Forum for some details). These tricks are very nice if you want to go through the campaign again in order to beat it with a certain ship (say, the
Starflier) without wasting time on non-story missions. Later I thought that the money from the tricks and from the campaign missions should be just barely enough to go through the campaign quickly, with careful planning. So I just went and did it, to see how fast this could be.
However, going through the campaign in under six hours requires that you know the missions already, and that you have enough skill to beat the missions quickly using only mediocre equipment (class 6 ship with class 4 shield and class 3/4 weapons at level 16
). There is no way you can have that knowledge and that skill during the first time through the campaign, and trying to go as fast as possible is the worst thing you can do. First, you have no chance in hell of beating the record the first time through. Second, you would deprive yourself of lots of fun because there is only one first time.
There is only one time where you can buy a big bad*ss fighter for $12260 in the New York system or veritable gunboat with punishing firepower for only $9170. The second time through the campaign the ships are still there but you'll probably regard them as something that a level-19 ship turns to dust in mere fractions of a second. So take your time, explore, get to know your ship thoroughly before you ditch it for another one, and learn to fight well with it before heading into the story missions. The story missions are more fun if you fly a decent ship that you can handle well, and Juni will wait forever if need be. So let her wait.
Also, it is a good idea to be rich the first time through the campaign. This allows you to experiment with other weapons that you see in the shop window, and it allows you to experiment with powerful missiles/mines/torpedos even though they might have a steepish price tag. Moreover, enemies are more likely to drop high-level weapons and lots of valuable commodities if you are rich already (this stinks, but that's how it is). Sometimes the enemies drop really powerful weapons of higher level than you are allowed to buy at that point. So, go and get rich. Juni will wait.
Summary: reserve attempts to break the time record for later runs through the campaign and have some fun instead the first time around.
(EDIT - forgot to enter the price for the über-fighter and the gunboat
)
P.S.:
@ DragonBreath Which ship and which equipment did you use for mission 8/9/10?
Edited by - Sherlog on 04-08-2003 18:32:09