Getting the Rogues/ Outlaw Ships

Tue Mar 13, 2007 8:07 am by njagent020

OK in order to get to level 3 to buy the first Pirate Ship at Buffalo Base,
you must complete some story missions.

In order to complete these missions, you must kill a ton of Pirates, Liberty Rogues, etc.

In order to balance out the utter hatred the Rogues have for you....

Do I have to kill a ton of Police, Innocent shippers, etc?
Is there somewhere to go in the New York System to pay a bribe to get friendly with the Rogues so I can land on there base?

Is there a way to realistically make $150,000 fairly quickly so I am not playing all week to earn credits for my first ship upgrade?

This will be my THIRD time trying this game and each time I start it hoping for the "OPEN-ENDED"experience, but each time I feel I get caught in ONE BIG CATCH-22.

1) To buy better ships you must advance levels
2) To advance levels you MUST complete story missions
3) To complete story missions you MUST KILL pirates, rogues, other "bad guys"
4) In order to buy the "Pirate ships" which have better stats and look cooler, you must be friendly with Rogues , Pirates and bad guys
5) To become friendly with Pirates you must pay bribe
6) To pay for bribe quickly you must take missions
7) To complete missions you must kill bad guys...WHERE IS THE OPEN-ENDEDNESS????

Now some people will say you can trade goods to make cash quicker...First, then I would have to buy a cargo ship....which is more than the pirate ship i really want.
Then I have to do I million cargo runs which is BORING AND NOT FUN...
Then I get attacked by pirates, who I have to kill and risk being less friendly.

Its a shame that Freelancer is the best Deep Space Flight Sim to come out in years...I already beat Darkstar One, and the old classics wont run on my machine....so will give Freelancer another chance....

I appreciate any help to avoic the frustrating cycle described above!

Tue Mar 13, 2007 2:52 pm by runtman

Theres trading. I found a place or two in the game (Can't remember where...Bretonia somewheres) where a commodity was worth 1000 more on a planet than on a base in its orbit... I would buy a crapload of them in the station, dock at the planet, sell, back and forth. I made a lot of money very fast...

Tue Mar 13, 2007 4:56 pm by Rankor

There is one thing that will help you advance to the next level mission even faster.
You don't have to shoot anyone, you don't have to take missions to do it, you don't even have to go "mining" for junk to sell at the nearest base.

Look for the wrecks and loot them. BINGO! Sometimes you'll have to fight to survive...but chances are likely that you'll survive and not harm your reputation too much.
There are wrecks EVERYWHERE...almost always in debris fields and nebulas.
They have weapons and commodities.

The "open endedness" is when you've made it all the way through the story line to the end at Dyson City. At that point, you've only explored a part of Sirius. There are many ways to choose once you are set back on Manhattan at the end and informed to "find a job" . Then, Sirius is yours to explore and exploit.
Your reputaion is dynamic and changes with the missions you take, the bribes you pay, the npc's you kill and the depots you destroy to get loot from.

Chances are unlikely that you'll be able to land on Buffalo Base until the story line brings you into Mission 10. There is only one ship for sale there and it's the dagger, but you have to be level 4 to buy that. By the time you reach level 4 in the story line..all of liberty will be hostile to you...so, in theory..you'll be able to land there long before Mission 10. But..you're going to have to use most of the jump holes to get back to Buffalo by then.

I hope this helps and gives you hope.

Edited by - Rankor on 3/13/2007 5:01:56 PM

Edited by - Rankor on 3/13/2007 5:06:08 PM

Wed Mar 14, 2007 4:15 pm by druid

5) To become friendly with Pirates you must pay bribe

Not true. By killing the enemy of the Rogues you befirend the Rogues.

No brobe, no mission. You do not need to be green to land on a Rogues base, you just need to be white.

Thu Mar 15, 2007 4:55 am by njagent020

Thanks for your advice, Someone on Gamefaqs mentioned killing the Xenos in new Detroit would also ally me with the Rogues. Xenos have no aliies and therefore would not get the Police or Militia all over me for killing them....

That plus doing some salvage work, may just be the ticket to circumvent the game design.

But something in your post describes the exact problem.......I have to be at Level 10, to buy a level 4 ship....Once I get to level 10, why would I even want the dagger when better ships are available universally....Thats not open ended, thats poor design.

If I want the Dagger because its weapons layout, shields/armor and bots are superior to the other level 4 ships commercially available anywhere(plus it just looks cooler to me) I should be able to buy it when I need it.

Its like not being able to get the Long Sword in an RPG until you beat the game, 40 hours later when you already have a Giant, Vorpal, Elf, Bad-ass Ogre Killing Sword. It seems pointless.....

Thu Mar 15, 2007 6:31 am by Puke Barwalker

The Junkers sell pirate ships. Have you tried the Junker base above Manhattan? You are neutral with the Junkers in the early part of the game.

Thu Mar 15, 2007 6:53 am by njagent020

according to my information, the only place to buy the Dagger is on Buffalo Base...which requires alliance, or Nuetrality at least, with the Liberty Rogues gang.

Its only 17,000, and its the only ship in the game with FIVE weapon slots....its got 15 bots/ batteries and excellent speed.

Its BY FAR the best ship to have for the first third of the game, and it has been impossible to get in my last two attempts at playing through the game...Its like the game designers knew which ships we would choose if we could pick any of them and made those specific ships a pain in the ass to get;for what purpose, Spite?

Thu Mar 15, 2007 9:39 am by Rankor

Xenos are not entirely without connections though.
Be careful about how many of them you kill to adjust your reputation.
There are two factions who are affected by their deaths
and they are the IMG and Zoners.
If you kill too many Xenos..the zoners will become hostile to you.
They are the last faction you want to go hostile on you
since they control many of the bribes in Sirius.

Now, regarding buying the dagger once you reach mission 10...a word of caution.
For that mission as well as the remaining missions..the dagger is way too underpowered to be of any use against enemies who are equipped with class 7 nomad prototypes...and the nomads themselves. The dagger will simply be cut to shreads in a few shots. Also, when you are required to go retreive the nomad power cell, the radiation will kill you if the nomads don't kill you first.

You CAN however edit the market_ships.ini to change the level and reputation at which you purchase the Dagger. (But you must limit this to strictly your own personal use or risk being kicked for cheating on MP servers)

Edited by - Rankor on 3/15/2007 9:46:40 AM

Thu Mar 15, 2007 9:42 am by njagent020

Good Tip on that one.
Question..if you tick off the guys asking for bribes, are they asking for more $$ or they just disappear and you wont be allowed to bribe certain factions.

Thu Mar 15, 2007 9:50 am by Rankor

You can refuse to pay a bribe without affecting your reputation with the one offering it.
Even if you don't pay a bribe, the bribe will still be there. Maybe not the next time you land, but it will still show up since one person CAN actually offer many different bribes. (that's why they're there)
Paying a bribe requires some creative thinking with some common sense because some bribes offered will actually hurt your reputation worse by the way they affect the enemies or allies of the faction you're getting a bribe for.

One other thing..
A way to enable buying the dagger to suit your needs is to create a simple mod script that you activate through the FLMM. I'm not exactly sure how to do the script (but the one for the nomad fighter would be a good example to go by).
This way, the main files remain unchanged and you can run your "ship mod" to get your dagger. Just simply deactivate the mod and restore backups when you're ready to move onto something else such as Multiplayer.

Edited by - Rankor on 3/15/2007 10:01:41 AM

Thu Mar 15, 2007 10:31 pm by Puke Barwalker

Strangest offer I ever got was on a Zoner base where the bartender said he would fix my rep for zero credits! I couldn't refuse an offer like that.

I suspect it was a bug in the program.

When I replay the SP game, I like to get a Bloodhound as soon as I can. Most powerful ship you can buy early in the game.

Thu Mar 15, 2007 10:35 pm by Puke Barwalker

p.s. Stupidest offer I ever got was a guy on a base who offered to sell me all the information on the base I was at for 600 credits! I said no, and Trent's comment was something like, "Do you think I'm an idiot?"

Fri Mar 16, 2007 4:19 am by Rankor

One of the funniest retorts I heard from "Trent" on turning down a bribe so far was this one: "WHAT? You trying to cheat me?" (It was a cheap bribe too)
One the zero credit bribe...I've seen that too. I guess the person offering the bribe sort of liked you. It isn't a bug.

Tue Mar 27, 2007 12:41 pm by breslin

> WHERE IS THE OPEN-ENDEDNESS????

It's a good question -- where's the open-endedness? Indeed, that's the question of the game. Your play is your answer to the question. The player has to struggle within the bounds set by the game. The bounds are not too tight -- you can learn how to loosen them, or you can go mining

-- and they're not too loose either: the game will always offer a challenge, even once you get really good at pushing the boundaries.

Wed Mar 28, 2007 3:43 am by njagent020

I haven't started my 3rd go-around on this game, but I have made 2 serious attempts at the game and both times I came to the conclusion....the game would be much more open if you could advance levels without playing story missions....As it is the story missions do box you in and give you little latitude.

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