In the campaign I cannot beat the race: I know exactly what to do, I just lack the hand-eye coordination to do it, and I’ve grown frustrated and am unwilling to keep trying.
I’ve used all the standard tactics: use cruise immediately or afterburn for 2 seconds to get a head of steam then switch to cruise, etc. My problem is NOT keeping up with Hovis: I am right on his tail the whole race. My problem is that inevitably I end up having to make a turn I cannot anticipate and missing the next ring. No matter how hard I try, no matter how hard I work at seeing the next ring (after the one I am gunning for) I end up blowing the race. I even switched from Crusader to Cavalier to get a better turning rate. I just don’t have the requisite reflexes: I am not an action gamer and although I love Freelancer I have been playing more like an RPG or strat game than an action game. This race is just too much for me. I have now tried the race 8 times and failed all. I am simply unwilling to watch that frigging cutscene again, much less attempt the race.
How can I bypass it? Are there any cheat codes, work arounds, etc?
I know this isn’t going to sound helpful but…it really isn’t that hard. I’m not exactly eye-hand coordination poster child but I managed to do it twice (won the first time once through and won the second time the next time I tried it - had to backtrack and get a different ship for later on after the race).
The key isn’t messing with afterburners. Just hit cruise right away and turn inside the bugger. He always heads for the middle of each ring. The second time through he started with a head start, I passed him, then he nudged me and pulled ahead, but I still managed to beat him by a nose. Keep half an eye on the ring ahead of the ring you’re aiming at so you’ll know where to turn, and anticipate it, before clearing the ring you’re on.
SHIFT-W right after the blurb box at the beginning of the race. Go to mouse control, and stay there. Don’t do any afterburning. Your opponent will screw up sometime during the race as long as you keep going through the circles.
And second, the 2nd to the last circle is goofy and caught me off guard a couple of times. You have to go through it starting from the LEFT, then go straight through to the last circle.
I don’t mean to sound uber here either, but its really not that hard (unlike, say, the races in the original X-Wing once you got to the higher levels). Keep it in mouse flight, and just watch where the next ring is going to be. Keep it in cruise, and away you go.
It took me about 3 or 4 tries to beat it, and I was ready to hurl my monitor across the room. It just astounds me that after presumably hundreds of hours of QA, it occurred to none of the playtesters that it might work better to put the autosave after the fargin’ cutscene. :evil:
That’s actually one of my biggest beefs with FL. There are a number of long-ish cutscenes that you’re forced to watch multiple times if you have to replay a mission. There should be a “skip cutscent” key.
I was ticked off at that mission too. I got through it after about 8 tries. The key was I stayed close enough to the ship to follow it’s path, so when it swung out to make a turn, I did too, and it helped me hit those rings at a better angle.
I didn’t beat it either, but I got by the mission.
Had to reply that part a couple of times, too. That lengthy cutscene is EXTREMELY annoying. But where I ultimately quit was the attack on the base of the Japanese defector, whatever his name was.
Freelancer employs that stupid old trick where all enemies ignore all your wingmen (which are also utterly incompetent) and head straight for your ship. I couldn’t figure out how to survive that mission, I’m just not that fast with the mouse.
Theoretically Freelancer should allow me to go back and get better equipment to try again… but upgrades are tied to level requirements, and levels are tied to campaign missions. My ship was already a Dragon with maxed equipment so there was nothing else I could do.
Anybody noticed that the game is missing a difficulty selector?
You can edit a file called PerfOptions.ini. In Windows XP, it’s in the My Documents\My Games\Freelancer folder. There’s a paramater called DIFFICULTY_SCALE that’s typically set to 1.00. If you set it LOWER, it makes the game easier. If you set it HIGHER, well…
If you set it to 0, you’re invulnerable.
I’ve actually found that retreating does help much of the time. But some of the later missions (past where you’re at) get insanely difficult.
I think some of the NPC wingmen important to the story are invincible. I recall a beating a couple hard battles by cruising a few K away and flying around in circles. Eventually I’d go back in and there’d be much less ships.
Incidentally I’m wondering if the game scales the difficulty to make it harder to die after a certain point. The final 2 missions, I was getting absolutely demolished at the beginning and used up all my potions in about 3 seconds. Then somehow I managed to stay alive and won each mission on the first try. It was almost as though the enemy guns started doing less damage…
Seriously you guys, a girlfriend beat this mission. She doesn’t even play PS2 games, never mind l33t uber hardcore PC entertainment like Freelancer. She was bored downstairs so I just let her play a bit. Later she wanted to see some cool scenes, I loaded the race and she won.
On her first try.
With an optical mouse that doesn’t track well on my desktop.
Without knowing how to strafe.
Or afterburn.
If I were you, I’d swallow my pride and pretend I passed it. I mean, if you went swimming at a lake while camping and got a leech or wood splinter from the deck, would you bitch and moan about it in front of the other guys?
My point was to highlight the conception that if one is shy of the rather simplistic console games, he (or in this case she) is certainly going to consider a PC game rather hardcore (especially given the complexity of controls.)
/me peering from behind two burly guys with arms like light poles to deliver this complementary and groundbreaking…
LMAO!!!
/me going back to post-“game-gone-Gold” shutdown procedures. My brain is about to explode.
ps: for you bastards running the external ASE browser for games (e.g. FL), if you have the new filters and see BCM Gold and BCG listed, don’t frigging try to connect because you don’t have the damn games yet!!! BCM does not support multiplayer and you need BCM Gold or BCG (Beta Build 1) for that.
I guess you’re well and truly fucked then, aren’t you? That box you’re looking at, is probably the one that hosts your stash because its definitely not my BCM box.
