Impossible in the beginning of the game

Throw plasma cannons away. Use guns with more fast projectile

Go to Detroit Munitions (NY) and buy some stuff. Buy guns with same projectile speed.
Have fun and fly safe.

Hello osvald,

welcome and pls try look here: PvP Video Training

... you rly need only more practice and you will be OK with SP. If you can, join us on MP and ask around. You for sure will find ppl who will help you learn how to be better and fight more effective.

Quote from osvaldsz

SPOILERS

So I began playing the story mode, but I came upon a bug or unbalance of the fighting system (whatever you call it)

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In the beginning of the game, where you had to take down a smuggler. Basically I started to fire at him, but the bastard is too damn fast, almost impossible to hit it (at least I can't) and every 2-3 seconds he uses a shield restorer, so he's invincible! I even acquired a werewolf ship (through some questionable means), still no luck trying to get that son of a gun.

Please help, or fix that cursed thing.

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Im having similar problems here.

If im not mistaken the ship hitboxes were altered and "accuriced" thus guns no longer hit anything unless you have perfect accuracy and even if so, "ace pilots" still change course at a speed no human can follow. When i turned off the mod i could hit ships normaly. With the mod turned on, i cant hit anything smaller then a gunship. Also since AI has "auto-aim" im taking a beating... Also even starter-pirates use HUGE amounts of bots and batteries making it very hard to down even a single one. I left one alive from a group of 3 and tested, OVER 30 times he used hull-repair bots...

So, GZ, your mod destroyed the single-player balance.

Suggestion:
Mod setting to enable original hit-boxes FOR SP ONLY for those of us who prefer SP. Im sure in PVP the more accurate hitboxes are lot more fun.

the hit boxes are perfectly working and we did no changes on the original ones

Try To buy Some Good Guns and it will be easy

Practice, practice, practice...i know it may sound like a cliché...but that's the way you do it!

I am actually playing SP at the moment, and NO opponent uses bats/nanos more than a few times. It's scaled perfectly, just like if they were other people.
As for accuracy, I haven't had trouble getting to Mission11 or so (where I am now.. There aren't any problems with it either, I've just stopped playing for a while. )
And as for the smuggler, I don't think he even used any advanced moves.. If I remember correctly. Try to get some faster guns, and use that trick to make you fire your guns at different times. This one

Actually tried the mission again, i have manual save there so i cant test things.

CROSSFIRE:
No matter what guns i have, and i pretty much tried EVERY gun i have acces to at such early stage and all the typical ships i can afford. Even if i had PERFECT accuracy, i could not down the smuggler, its like my guns just miss all the time. Every time i do hit him, he jumps to different direction, also he WILL USE BATTERIES AND BOTS. Once his hull is at certain level, he will use bots after a certain time. If i could damage him further i could down him before he hits the bots.
Also even if i had perfect accuracy, the ships i would have acces to normaly would run out of weapon-energy long before i could down the target. Theres a 3mil mega-ship i have yet to try.

Best result has been with the Rhino / freighter as it has most guns, large'ish energy-pool and set of L1 high-rof lasers. Even so, i run out of energy and he does not run out of bots. Better guns run out of juice too fast. Lowbie guns have better energy to damage -ratio in this case.

VANILLA: (mods off)
A comparison, i really did play untill this same spot to compare. It was quite slow, in CF i can make millions in minutes... Anyway. Basic pirates are easy pickings, they use bots maybe twice if lucky, i can down 5-6 with the starter-tub EASY and i can down the smuggler after a while. He does dodge when hit, uses bots rarely.

I remember playing Freelancer back in the day, i used the Rhino / freighter for quite long and same with the lowbie guns it mounts, it was a bit too easy imo but the difficulty ramped up nicely after that.

Sadly i dont have the weapon-power ficures here nor would it mean much since i dont know whats been done to the smuggler or his ship by the mod but OVERALL the sheer difficulty is brutal, far from what one would call fun. I dont want to buy some super-ship and hunt down over-leveled guns within the first ten missions.

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So, to put it simple, the mod seems to have upped the starting-difficulty quite a lot making it very hard and very fun. While quite funny, i dont really want to abuse game-mechanics to make my guns shoot faster. I finished vanilla Freelancer without cheats or such tricks, i do believe i should be able to do the same with CF installed, i was looking a "different playing experience" not brutaly hard.

It may have been another mod that changed hitboxes, i was looking thru many mods in moddb, since it seems rather hard to hit targets in CF compared to vanilla i thought it would be the case... Odd. I do want some extra in Freelancer so im hoping to see what im doing wrong.

Quote from "swatii"

It may have been another mod that changed hitboxes, i was looking thru many mods in moddb, since it seems rather hard to hit targets in CF compared to vanilla i thought it would be the case... Odd. I do want some extra in Freelancer so im hoping to see what im doing wrong.

Heh, there's your problem there. CF doesnt work well with other mods. It's weird that it works at all! CF mods freelancer to such extent, that it isn't compatible with other mods afterwards.
So I suggest a clean FL + FLMM + CF 1.9 install. And ALL your problems should be resolved. I hope this helps.

No other mods running.

It seems i spoke too soon about the difficulty. By chance i changed my tactics a little and finaly made it... Finding out the BS missouri sells a neat ship certainly helped a lot along with a load of toys it came loaded with.

Still seems a bit on the hard side but that i kinda like, vanilla FL was too easy.

But have you installed CF on a clean Freelancer game? Or have you had other mods in FLMM, but you turned them off so you could turn CF on?
And have you deleted ALL save games before starting CF? I'm kinda curious since for me CF didn't have that big of a difficulty difference to vanilla. I mean, Starflier was enough for me.. Although I MIGHT have used a Defender. I'm not sure. But it still was pretty much like Rogues from the first mission.

swatti: hehe nice, I was about to write you tip about look for available ships in Colorado. Btw

Running random missions i came upon a rather nasty issue. Enemies exploding, unless im fully shielded i take HUGE dmg, flying a defender atm, even killed me once when a bounty-target went pop.

Intended? Range aint far but the dmg is nasty.

EDIT: it says in the lexicon theres a mk1 power gen in the planet Manhattan, but it aint there. Detroit munitions does have one, but its 7mil...

As far as I have seen, it usually drains your shields completely. I am not sure what does the explosion do if you're unshielded. But I think it's meant to unshield you. I know for a fact that anytime something explodes in point-blank range of my ship, no matter how much shield I have left, makes me lose my shield. So even if I had 100% or 20% of shields, I'd take the same amount of damage.
Umm, your and my version can't be that different. Again, I did however install CF on a completely clean FL+FLMM install. So that might be the root of your "troubles". (Can I even say troubles? It seems it's pretty fun for you. )

Clean install of all parts.

If im not shielded it kills me. Not fun. Bug? Kinda cheaty if its a static dmg %

Power Gen mk1 by lexicon is supposed to be in planet Manhattan, it aint. Det.munitions has bigger one for 7mil.

Heh.. Well I found it cool that you have to be shielded for a hit like that. But still, the only other thing I can say is don't let yourself be shieldless when near an exploding ship.