Buy that repair component. It’ll fix most of the issues that get damaged during an unstable jump (if there’s any damage at all - it’s not absolute).
I’ve had components get completely destroyed by those unstable gates. I’m assuming the repair drone can’t fix those.
You assume correctly. Red gates are the worst. The time saved isn’t worth the potential headache.
It shows you a waypoint on both gates. A red one and a blue one. You just pick which one you want to fly through.
It doesn’t seem to always do that for me. If I pick up a mission in a system where both the scenic route and the shortcut exist, then yes - it does this. But if I make a jump or three first, then come across the system w/ the two paths, I don’t see the double waypoint.
Or I wasn’t. Haven’t checked in the last day or so. Restarted w/ a new game, so haven’t really gotten that far as of yet.
So I never really played Freelancer. How much does this game “play itself” with the flight assist? Do you still fast-travel between systems in Old School Mode?
If the route goes through a system with both choices it does that yes. But often if the route involves a branching path where one could go a couple of systems one direction to catch a red gate directly to the destination vs another path where one could take just blue gates for eight systems, then the blue choice will be the only one that is displayed as a nav waypoint. The workaround on that is to manually navigate to the system with the red gate and then pick up the game-highlighted mission-specific route again. Since that involves faffing around with manual navigation it pretty much renders red gates pointless. I just accepted that I’d always take blue gates and I’d do a lot of the Autopilot->Jump->Autopilot->Outrun the Pirates->Autopilot->Jump dance. Later in the game that tedious little exercise seemed to be what I’d spend 50%+ of my play time doing.
It’s complicated. The flight assist is a moment to moment helper. I don’t know if you played Freespace and Freespace 2, but in those games you could press ALT-U or something and you’d always match speed with your target. So if the enemy ship slowed down, you’d slow down to match speed so as not to overshoot them. This helped you stay behind them and keep shooting them. The Flight Assist button in Outlaw is basically a more advanced version of this. It helps you stick behind the enemy ship.
However, there’s still the other ships who are also trying to get behind you and shoot you while you’re doing that. So the button is not doing all that much, and the game is still really hard when you’re weak (which I still am).
I haven’t tried Old School mode, but I assume you still have the same choice of either autopilot or subspace. Autopilot is shows you traveling and gets you there instantly if there’s no interruptions. Subspace lets you travel at really fast speeds and get there slower (but again, you can be interrupted). I don’t think that Old School affects that.
You know what - I’ll bet this is what I was seeing, not what I described above.
One other thing to note - when you’re looking at the mission log, the number of jumps is always the shortest required - including shortcuts.
stusser
2954
With the autoaim feature, you can get by just targeting nearest hostile then holding down the right and left triggers until it eventually dies. However, you will be much more effective if you also aim at the target lead reticule.
jpinard
2955
I went tthough three red jump gates the other day and took zero damage each time. I was like, “Whaaaaaa?! Yea!”
A million times this. Auto-aim sucks compared to an average player, and I assume that’s by design.
stusser
2957
Actually my impression is the autoaim is 100% accurate, “cheating” your shots towards the leading reticule, but the auto-pursuit doesn’t always get your crosshair close enough to the reticule for autoaim to do its thing.
Ah, I see what you mean. Yeah, makes sense.
stusser
2959
Yep. It really is a different experience from what I remember in Tie-fighter and Freespace, where my shots would often miss by just a tiny bit. To compensate for that of course the enemies are bullet sponges. But that’s much more satisfying than constantly missing.
jpinard
2960
Does the repair droid always draw power? Maybe it would be better to go without it, so one could use more lasery weapons or dump power to shields more often?
stusser
2961
Yes it does, unfortunately. It also repairs really slowly. I don’t think it’s worthwhile.
rei
2962
Stupid question: how do you clear your wanted level?
KevinC
2963
Loading screen tip said if you avoided patrols for a while, it will decrease.
jpinard
2964
Go to a distress beacon and help out.
