Single Player troubles

[agressiv]

Hi -

I fired up freelancer after a few years and decided to go through the Single Player Campaign Storyline with Discovery.

Its definitely much harder (enemies actually use nanobots and shield batteries, fights last much longer) but in general I've been able to deal with it - its a welcome challenge.

All until we're in TAU-29 with Quintaine and Kress joins the fight in the mission titled "Engage the Rheinland Fleet"

Wow, its insane. I don't see how anyone would be able to clear this legitimately. With the normal single player, its tough, but do-able, but with Discovery, I'd say its safe to say impossible. You just aren't eligible for a powerful enough ship to deal with this.

The Gunboats, Cruisers, and Battleship can take you out in about 6 hits even against a fully loaded heavy fighter with their upgraded damage output, and boy, can the Gunboats take the hits. One missile from a gunboat gets your shields in one shot.

I had to enable the godmode cheat on this mission, and it seemed the Cruisers died about 3x faster than the Gunboats. Even the battleship fell faster than a gunship with 5 people firing on it. Doesn't seem right.

Anyways, I'll turn the godmode off after I can save, but perhaps something could be tweaked? :)

agressiv

[Virus]

I'm sure Igiss could change those ships weapon load-outs to a much weaker version of them. Though, this should probably be posted in the bugs thread in case Igiss misses it here.

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Into the Maelstrom - A Measure of Salvation - Reaver Company Database

[Dab]

Were you using 4.79 or 4.80 on that mission? Because its possible on 4.79 but probably not on 4.80. Though even the 4.79 version takes ALOT of skill, and time, since you gotta fly in and out of the fleet taking potshots, not doing much damage each pass. But with the upgraded capships in 4.80 it might very well be impossible (or you can sit on the sideline for an hour and a half and wait for Juni and Razor One to take them all out.

Now for Dab's simple process of elimination.

Best idea is to have fighters follow you, then once they are all dead fly in and target the battleship's turrets. Blow them off one by one, OR just the back firing turrets. Once those are dead you can sit behind it and blast away till its dead. Torpedoes come in very handy on this part, since you can only shoot certain amount in a certain time, you add torpedoes to your runs and you can do twice the damage in a run (run - one sweep in at the BS dodging as you come, then go back out of range again). If you have a turret selected the torpedo aims in on that spot. Once the BS is dead the cruisers and gunboats will begin more free movement. Which is why I suggested blowing all the turrets off instead of destroying it. That way the cruisers stay in the same place. Once it is dead or disabled go after the cruisers. Just destroy them, unless they are using their missile turrets, then take those out THEN take out the cruiser itself. Don't disable them. Not worth trying to. After those are dead you'll find the gunboats to be easy pickings.

BS - Disable or destroy, but disable some guns in the engine section so you can destroy it.
Cruiser - Take out missile turrets, then go after hull, use torpedoes as much as you want/can.
Gunboat - Just stay behind the engine and you'll be fine.
Fighter - Take these out first. The might not seem to be the main threat in the battle, but since they can get behind you and fire at you, they are more dangerous than you would think. If possible get as many as you can on your tail and bait them away from the battleship.

See? Simple.

If ya need help on the arch mission PM me. And for those nomad missions.. Well, your on your own there. :P Only piloting skill gets you through those, best advice is to just finish the objective as quickly as possible instead of taking on the hordes of fighters.


I should make a story mode guide. :laugh:


EDIT: Since Virus posted as I was writing this; Virus, the loadouts they use are the loadouts of the multiplayer ships as well. So when your on server and see a Liberty patrol going near Manhattan, the NPCs in missions use those same weapons. Only thing that could fix that is a single player add-on to Disco that makes the guns weaker, and the armor lighter.

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[Zieen]

Actually I beat 'Engage the Rheinland Fleet' without cheating (kind of). I just enganged cruise engines and flew around dodging and weaving. It took about half an hour, but a battered Kress and Juni took everything out on their own.

It wasn't until after that I started godmoding. It is impossible to do the last mission without cheating, as far as I'm concerned. Anyone managed it?

[agressiv]

Actually I beat 'Engage the Rheinland Fleet' without cheating (kind of).  I just enganged cruise engines and flew around dodging and weaving.  It took about half an hour, but a battered Kress and Juni took everything out on their own.

Yeah, not my idea of fun. It still took me 15-20 minutes even in god mode because those gunboats take such a beating.

I couldnt lure away the fighters - only the gunboats, and they would get missiles on me all the time. I survived a while, but ultimately I barely made a dent before I took a missile hit followed by a few shots from another gunboat for insta-death.

BTW, I'm using 4.80. I've beaten this mission unmodded at least 2-3 times in the past, but I've never tried it with 4.79 or any other mod. I do remember it being tough, but nowhere as hard as say, the Alaska missions. I can't imagine how hard those will be. :)

agressiv

[Virus]

Oh....
Just wait 'til you get to the Nomad missions... Nomad swarms are hard. Even for a VHF...

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Into the Maelstrom - A Measure of Salvation - Reaver Company Database

[CeeJay.dk]

I'm in the exact same situation as agressiv.
His first post could have been mine as everything fits.

And I agree .. it's simply not fun.

Does someone how to undo the changes to the NPC ship .. in particular the capitalships , so I could play with discovery content vs the enemies from the vanilla version ?

In the future it would be nice if you could choose this as an option in the Freelancer Mod Manager.

[Dab]

It wasn't until after that I started godmoding.  It is impossible to do the last mission without cheating, as far as I'm concerned.  Anyone managed it?

[snapback]30426[/snapback]

*raises hand.* I can do it at full difficulty (2.00 difficulty) and in 4.79 at 1.25 difficulty. And likely 1.00 or 1.80 on 4.80. Nomads are easy enough if you get the right equipment and use everything you have.

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[CeeJay.dk]

I have been looking at the Freelancer files to find out if I could do this change myself.

I have never modded Freelancer before , but I believe the ship stats are in the SHIPS/shiparch.ini file and the original is in .flmmbak version of that file.

Looking in this file I see that Rheinland Cruisers (called rh_cruiser in the file) have been upped from 43300 hitpoint to 160000 hitpoints and Rheinland Battleships (rh_battleship) have been upped from 69300 to 400000 hitpoints.

No wonder they are harder to kill.

The biggest challenge though come from their upgraded weapons.
Now I looked at loadouts_special.ini and I think this is the file that determines what weapons the special ships (like the Rheinland Battleship) carry.
However there are no changes here from the original file to dicovery's files which leads me to believe that it's not the type of weapons the ships carry that have been changed but the stats of the weapons themselves.

I have yet to figure out what file holds the weapon stats , but I'm still looking.

[Igiss]

You are right.

I'll put armor downgrades on SP ships, as for weapons, I guess they'd better stay as they are. It really adds challenge.

By the way, since 4.80 Rheinland gunboats from SP have one missile turret instead of two.