I wanted to ask a quick question of the community in regards to low level missions; is everything working as intended? Particularly concerning NPC loadouts?
As a returning player starting from scratch, I thought I'd keep things interesting for awhile and work my way up on a character through low level missions, but it's quickly becoming unbearable. I began with a Bretonian BIS /restart and managed to buy myself a Paladin HF after a while, but missions are honestly too hit and miss to be enjoyable - with no reliable way to predict that I've found so far. They can turn out to be either a total cakewalk or near insta-death, and no middle ground between, even at very low difficulties. I've found the same with a second character out in the sigmas and against various NPC factions, so I don't think it's just a bug with a particular loadout... right? Am I alone in noticing this? I have never experienced it in previous Disco mod versions.
The subject is missions with a difficulty of 25ish or below, with payouts up to approx. 300k. I get that missions earning 500kish and over can end with you facing a swarm of capital ships and are pretty much impossible for an under-equipped starting player, so I haven't been attempting those.
Sometimes I'll run into a swarm of ships with super-nerfed loadouts (like this), and can pootle around and take it easy without any real danger of my shields ever even dropping. Other times - even within the same mission, sometimes, and certainly within the same difficulty range - enemies will suddenly turn up with what looks like regular guns; and I'll find myself going from 100% hull/shield to dead within a split second if they manage to land a couple of hits. Far faster than I would expect to die, too; even in an un-armour-upgraded ship, 8600 hull and a mid-range shield shouldn't be dropping in the 2 or 3 shots that seem to kill me every time.
(And while I haven't been here in a while, I'm a long-time Freelancer player; I'm not sitting still and letting myself get shot up out of ignorance!)
I do expect missions to be a challenge, but right now it's either nonexistent or wholly unbeatable. With how fast these deaths are, I honestly can't see it being much different even with a fully UAU-equipped ship. Are there any known issues? Is this an intentional 'feature' of the mod in some way?
I wanted to ask a quick question of the community in regards to low level missions; is everything working as intended? Particularly concerning NPC loadouts?
As a returning player starting from scratch, I thought I'd keep things interesting for awhile and work my way up on a character through low level missions, but it's quickly becoming unbearable. I began with a Bretonian BIS /restart and managed to buy myself a Paladin HF after a while, but missions are honestly too hit and miss to be enjoyable - with no reliable way to predict that I've found so far. They can turn out to be either a total cakewalk or near insta-death, and no middle ground between, even at very low difficulties. I've found the same with a second character out in the sigmas and against various NPC factions, so I don't think it's just a bug with a particular loadout... right? Am I alone in noticing this? I have never experienced it in previous Disco mod versions.
The subject is missions with a difficulty of 25ish or below, with payouts up to approx. 300k. I get that missions earning 500kish and over can end with you facing a swarm of capital ships and are pretty much impossible for an under-equipped starting player, so I haven't been attempting those.
Sometimes I'll run into a swarm of ships with super-nerfed loadouts (like this), and can pootle around and take it easy without any real danger of my shields ever even dropping. Other times - even within the same mission, sometimes, and certainly within the same difficulty range - enemies will suddenly turn up with what looks like regular guns; and I'll find myself going from 100% hull/shield to dead within a split second if they manage to land a couple of hits. Far faster than I would expect to die, too; even in an un-armour-upgraded ship, 8600 hull and a mid-range shield shouldn't be dropping in the 2 or 3 shots that seem to kill me every time.
(And while I haven't been here in a while, I'm a long-time Freelancer player; I'm not sitting still and letting myself get shot up out of ignorance!)
I do expect missions to be a challenge, but right now it's either nonexistent or wholly unbeatable. With how fast these deaths are, I honestly can't see it being much different even with a fully UAU-equipped ship. Are there any known issues? Is this an intentional 'feature' of the mod in some way?
the more powerful weapons are the standard weapons in the game, the weak weapons are the ones that were left over from the old game. 300k missions are to hard if your just (re)starting out, ideally you want to be doing 100-150k missions, or mining/trading
300k missions would be the upper limit of doable ones; this consistently occurs on missions in the 80-150k range, too. I enjoy a challenge, but as things are missions just aren't fun, which is a real shame given how large a part they play in Freelancer generally. I guess it's the norm to just trade and mine for money instead, oh well.
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In order to do those "hard" snub missions, you need a fully equipped fighter. That includes an armor upgrade VIII, class 10 shield (or other max. class shields for heavy and light fighters) and 6 class 7/8 guns (usually 2 debilitators and 4 hullbusters). Then, with a right flying pattern (which isn't that hard), those missions become a challenge. Overall, I never found them to be a problem and I do usually lose a portion of my regens so I can see someone less experienced to struggle at the beginning, but you'll pick it up with time. If you don't have a fully set up ship, you kinda are screwed.
(11-27-2016, 12:00 PM)Auzari Wrote: Pretty much what Antonio said.
You probably want to do lower pay though, and keep an eye out on the npc levels, level 19's really hurt a lot, 16's are the docile ones.
Level 19 is where the game starts equipping high-damage guns (Magma hammers, 8.33 laser cannons, etc) so it would be against the good will of players to do those kinds of missions alone (unless you are a real ace like a certain Hessian)
Usually levels 19 through 29 are snubs. The higher the level, the more snubs per 'wave.' After that small capital vessels appear... we can talk about that later.
Gotcha, thanks for the quick feedback guys, I appreciate it. Very interesting to know @ger3mita, thanks!
It's also been pointed out to me that missions aren't meant to be much of a moneymaker, because a person flying solo on missions isn't creating much in the way of roleplay opportunity for other online players - as opposed to mining or trading for money, which does. Although it's a shame to not focus on missions sometimes, that reason does make some sense so this is less of an issue than I'd thought.
The best snub to do missions for new guys is a vhf with torpedo and missile, stay at range and spam both, it will kill most of them leaving only a few to be eliminated with normal guns. It isn't the fastest, but the most effective way for new people, as they have no idea about proper snub pvp techniques, which are helpful in terms of npcs too. It's all about staying behind those npcs, then it isn't that difficult to make it. For now, stick to torp + missile loadout and you can do up to 1,5m missions in vhf (provided that no gunboats spawn).
I'm speaking that from my own experience.
You can also try a dual nova bomber. It works miracles on fighter swarms if you hit the center fighter when the group spawns
If they engage you just fall back to right before you leave the mission area, they will stay at range and wont engage you.
Charge in again and try to get them to follow you in a group
This worked for me
Also, NPCs with the guns we use start spawning at rank 18, just saying. A group of 7 rank 18's is more lethal then a group of 4 rank 19's.
Generally cap missions begin at 1 mill and over reward. My advice is doing 1,5 mill or more million basekill missions where you only have to nuke the base. These are a walk in the park and generate a good sum of money for you.
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