I've been playing Single-Player Discovery Freelancer v4.83 and I finished Mission 4 recently. To throw off the Bounty Hunters I need a new ship. However, the bogies are pretty tough around Britania & Tau sectors (no thanks to the Disco improvements) and I'm not impressed by the ships available in Leeds.
Anway, I've been spending hours exploring the Britania and Tau systems, just trying to survive the non-stop, countless attacks by Mollys and Gaians (a bit too frequent in some areas, IMO), merely looking for a better ship.
So, where is a good ship for a level 9 player? And I'm not looking for a Freighter or VHF, either.
I suppose I might have to wait until another level to get something good, though I'd rather not. If there is nothing good for level 9, what would you recommend for level 10? (And where?)
Urm, what's the bretonian LF called? Or the standard Bretonian HF (Try BS York, by that planet in leeds thats miles off the TL toward Tau gate)
Don't know their names, but they're vanilla ships, and I think they'll be availible for your level.
I think I used the Cavalier for Vanilla. Only 2100 armor though, but it's sold on New London.
If the Hussar's in .83, get that. 6400 armor. Sold in Cambridge, at least in .84
Both LFs.
Zealot Wrote:Just go play the game and have fun dammit.
Treewyrm Wrote:all in all the conclusion is that disco doesn't need antagonist factions, it doesn't need phantoms, it doesn't need nomads, it doesn't need coalition and it doesn't need many other things, no AIs, the game is hijacked by morons to confuse the game with their dickwaving generic competition games mixed up with troll-of-the-day.
' Wrote:I think I used the Cavalier for Vanilla. Only 2100 armor though, but it's sold on New London.
Yeah, I've considered both the Cavalier and the Crusader. But compared with the "Kadesh Light Fighter" I arrived in Leeds with, the Cavalier is not a whole lot better. (Mostly the Class 5 weapons, compared with the Kadesh's Class 4). I was really hoping to see a nice new ship (from Discovery) available for level 9 or 10 players (in Campaign mode).
' Wrote:If the Hussar's in .83, get that. 6400 armor. Sold in Cambridge, at least in .84
Both LFs.
Well, I went to every dockable station in the Cambridge system, but I could not find a "Hussar" Light Fighter available. Also, I forgot to mention in my earlier post: I've upgraded from v4.83 to v4.84. So I think it should be there if it's available in multiplayer. (Unless there's something I'm unaware of...)
Perhaps you were thinking of the "Kiith Somtaaw Light Fighter", which is available in Cambridge. I'm even high enough level to purchase it and its stats are almost as high as the Crusader Heavy Fighter. (Same armor and max. weapon class and nearly as high Batteries/NanoBots.)
' Wrote:Hussar won't work, 2 reasons)
1) non-vanilla ships are only availible after storyline (or so I'm told)
2) a lvl 9 can't afford that
Well, I have been playing the storyline in Discovery and I can tell you from experience:
1) Non-vanilla ships do appear during the storyline. At least, I've seen some pretty obvious modded ships already. I found the "Firefly" Freighter from the Firefly TV series (in Cambridge, I believe), the X Experimental Shuttle from the "X-Beyond the Frontier game, as well as a gigantic freighter/cruiser who's design resembles a certain Rebel ship in Star Wars.
That said, these three are much too high in level for my character to purchase. I'm not even certain if I'll be high enough level before the story is finished.
Also, I really doubt the "Kadesh Light Fighter" I've been flying is vanilla. (Isn't the name "Kadesh" from the Stargate: SG-1 series?) I'm not 100% certain, but I think a few of the ships available (i.e., low enough in level) are not vanilla.
2) I'm only lvl 9 in the story mode. However, I've already earned well over 2.1 million credits. As I said in another thread, I'm taking my sweet time finishing the campaign. And if you know what you're doing you can make a lot of credits pretty fast in story mode. That, and in story mode your level is not determined by your net worth. Instead, it depends entirely on how many missions you've completed for Juni. Which is why I'm desperate for a good ship. Some of the Missions are nearly impossible to complete in Discovery because the AI is more advanced and Discovery hasn't been properly balanced yet.
PS: If Discovery ever removes non-vanilla ships from the Story Mode, then I will stop playing Discovery for the Story Mode. (Probably switching to a different mod, such as "Evolutions".) For me, experiencing the new ships, systems, and other added content is the only reason to play Discovery in story mode. Why else would I put up with nearly impossible odds against Missions and computer opponents?
' Wrote:Luckily for you, 4.85 isn't going to be compatible with SP, so you can stop worrying about it...
I'll take that as sarcasm. For the record, I was not worried - merely concerned by Capt. Spirit's suggestion that the new ships might not be available until after the story is finished. But I am sad to hear this:(as it means I'll never get the chance to play Discovery 4.85 in SP with the enormous added content and promised improvements.
Believe it or not, some of us are just now discovering Freelancer and the Discovery mod for the first time. And I'm sure I'm not the only one who would enjoy Discovery in SP or even playing the story mode over again more than once.
However, this attitude does explain a few things. It explains why the story mode in Discovery is still so difficult and unbalanced. And it explains why the majority of new ships and equipment in Discovery is for rediculously high level characters. It must be because a large majority of Discovery players install it for multiplayer and have no intention of trying it in SP.
To each his own, of course. And I'll probably try out Discovery in multiplayer. (Though I'm not sure I will like the strict RP'ing and frequent PK'ing. Not usually my thing.) But I do feel that Discovery had a lot of potential in SP if only some issues were addressed.
Also, I was considering making some ship models, weapon models, and doing some texturing since I'm really starting to get the hang of Blender. But since the SP mode is to be removed from Discovery, I think I lost my motivation. (Perhaps I'll do something for X3 or VegaStrike...)
"There are two primary choices in life: to accept conditions as they exist, or accept the responsibility for changing them." -- Dr. Denis Waitley
last time I played SP with Disco I used the standard bretonian HF for that part of the storyline.
But you have to recognize that while you can run SP with Disco 4.84 (and lower) it is not meant for that! Sooner or later you will get stuck due to SP limitations on your choices while the enemies are all boosted by the Disco improvements.
(I got stuck in the mission fleeing from Alaska in my Anubis fighting a lot of Nomad gunships and fighters...)
What could solve the problem is to hack the ship descriptions to lower the level limit (when you can buy them) so that once you can afford, you could buy any of the nice VHFs or at max bombers.
But I've not checked how to do that yet, nor am I sure what would happen if you connect to the community server with such a patched config.
I just might try hacking the ship descriptions like you suggest. However, I did learn of one other method of getting past some of the impossible odds in the story. It's merely a matter of changing the "Difficulty Scale".
Inside "My Documents / My Games / Freelancer" is "PerfOptions.ini", which contains the game settings. This can be edited to make the game easier by changing this to something less:
DIFFICULTY_SCALE = 1.00
1.00 is the "normal" difficulty and 0.00 makes the player god-like. Something in between would be desired. The catch is that (I think) you have to exit Freelancer and reload for the changes to take effect.
I've played around a bit with it and I found something like 0.75 or 0.65 makes the difficulty more realistic for some missions. The only thing is, the setting would need to be different for each mission. Some (parts of) missions need to have the difficulty reduced while others are just fine as they are. And I also found that this mostly just makes the bogie ships more brittle while making your ship tougher and your weapons more powerful.
I would prefer to somehow limit the enemies directly, like (for certain missions) making them a couple skill levels lower. That, and make them slightly more hesitant to use Batteries and NanoBots.
Also, I really wanted to play around with the high level ships during the story anyway. Besides, the whole "level" system in Freelancer made no sense to me. Why would corporations or cut-throat pirates care what arbitrary "level" my character is at? It's all about making money, isn't it? And it's certainly not in the spirit of roleplaying a character. If I have enough credits to purchase a ship I don't see why I shouldn't be able to! I can't even think of a good reason why the police or military would have such a system.
However, I understand completely why many factions will only sell dangerous stuff to those with a decent rep with them. I would also understand why they might only sell their very best stuff to those who belong to their faction. (But then, that might exclude Trent in the story mode...)
"There are two primary choices in life: to accept conditions as they exist, or accept the responsibility for changing them." -- Dr. Denis Waitley
I feel the same way as you about Discovery. I prefer single player and am pretty bummed out about it not seeing any further improvements. I also seem to be using the same tactics as you for attempting to maintain a high entertainment level in my gameplay, such as changing the difficulty scale as often as needed to keep frustration to a minimum while simultaniously keeping an enjoyable challenge level. I just started playing through .84 recently, and coincidentally, I'm at the same point in the game as you.
Changing the ship level requirements sounds like a tedious job. I wouldn't even know where to start if my goal was to only make limited changes so as to not destroy the balance in the gameplay. (Uh, I wouldn't know where to start anyway:D) It would be nice if this balancing job had already been done by someone else. I would be interested in learning how to make these changes in my own game to suit my own preferences, that is if someone would like to post some guidelines and utilities I might need.
Quote:Besides, the whole "level" system in Freelancer made no sense to me. Why would corporations or cut-throat pirates care what arbitrary "level" my character is at? It's all about making money, isn't it? And it's certainly not in the spirit of roleplaying a character. If I have enough credits to purchase a ship I don't see why I shouldn't be able to! I can't even think of a good reason why the police or military would have such a system.
I think of the level system as an indicator of how your character is perceived by the community in terms of his level of experience and general reputation. Politics. A powerful and valuable ship won't be easy to get your hands on considering there are other more well-known and probably more trustworthy pilots that have earned the expectation from others that they will put the ship to good use.... Or, it could just be an artifical limitation put in place to control the pace of progression. Either one really.