At a complete loss here..

The CF community is "proud" of havind the some of the most difficult NPCs in the Freelancer-universe.
What you've experienced on SP ( almost instant recovery on shields and hull ) is only a slight tradeoff for their abilities you once might expect playing on the server.
There they are able to move as in Heisenbergs worst nightmares, "tunneling" quantumphysically away from you and your beam-bolts in 45° to 270° zigzag moves just when you think a last hit will finish them off.
Meet the Crossfire NPC pilots master instructor:

@....."Is that balanced?"
Well, Crossfire is made primely for Muiltiplayer-gaming. So it seems that "balancing" against NPCs is not really an issue.

@....."Its not like the combat have gotten more challenging. I barely take any
damage, and only had to use shieldbatteries a couple of times when I got
annoyed and blindly just followed my target with guns blazing on him.
Battles arent harder, just a h... of a lot longer."
That's maybe because you are supposed to get over to Multiplay, which is quite faster ( kind of a general "gentlemen aggreement" NOT to use bots 'n batts in PvP ) and a way to get help against these silly NPCs, like flying in teams, getting the "ueberweapons" to have a chance against them and so on.

@....."So I spend half an hour flying from Manhatten to Trenton, trading diamonds for engineparts,..."
You were lucky on that one. After the next gamerestart with the "selfpatching" of the client ( if you haven't cut off your net-connection ) this profitable trade will be gone. Once a day all trading commodities and their prices will get swapped. It's a substitute for the planned and up to now not properly working dynamic economy.

@....."What am I missing/doing wrong? Do I have to spend more pointless time
flying from Manhattan to Trenton earning MUCH more cash to buy uber
overpowered ships, while still being limited to lowlevel weapons due to
level?"
When playing SP-storyline : YES ! So, in general : you didn't miss anything.

A small tip : Go play on the server, get a defender with "wreck weapon" obtainable in NY, go to huntsville-prison in texas ( when you undock mostly every time you will get pestered by Xeno-Starflier-NPCs ) and when you got pissed off by fighting them ( after 1/2 hour or so ) go back to SP.
Now you will find the NPCs there almost "delightfull".
Oh, and the easiest way ( still ) to make money ( SP as well as serverside ) is killing NPCs and selling the pod at a prison station.

Quote

Ashcroft fight and the mission failed because I couldn't kill off the last 2 enemies fast enough after getting Ashcroft. What am I doing wrong? I clearly have the most powerful weapons and ship from NY intended for these missions. Is it really intended to take so long taking down nabs in starflyers and the like?

You beam the ashcroft and go, leave the other enemies behind. Starflyers are hard to hit cause they are small and agile, most of other ships are bigger and slower.

is it balanced?
yes

is it hard?
depends on your skill (i am actually out of the game but manage to kill 10 fighters in NY in less than 10mins)

are the NPCs in NY hard?
nope - but you didnt fight NPCs in other areas yet

do NPCS use too many bots/bats
actually no - every human player can use bats/bots so why in gods name shouldnt NPCs have the same right?

CF is designed to be challenging

aahm... Sorry. A one question about wreks:
Are they working now?
I was a "liitle" confused that they was not working several weeks ago

they are working and were working

Quote from rhn

What am I missing/doing wrong? Do I have to spend more pointless time flying from Manhattan to Trenton earning MUCH more cash to buy uber overpowered ships, while still being limited to lowlevel weapons due to level?
Please any advice is welcome. I love Freelancer and CF sounds amazing. Well most of it.

Maybe you didn´t sold the Escape Pods at the nearby Prisons. Depending on the level of the captured NPC Pilots you will have a good income and some fun if you don´t like to trade.

Welcome to CF and fly safe pilot.

That becomes "a bit" complicated when you can't leave NY

Wrote this before I saw OPs post... might be not be the most sensible thing to disagree with OP on my first post to the forum but..hey, I wouldn't play CF if I was put off by things like that

Actually I have to agree with rhn. He makes a very valid point about what I think is the worst part of what is a really wonderful mod. This is something I have been meaning to bring up since I started playing crossfire, mainly because it must drive so many people away from crossfire before they get a chance to experience what it can be like.

The first point Id like to make is that you should stick with it. The tediousness of the dogfights starts to dissipate around the Willard research station mission (course the acquisition of a new fighter like a Trident and better weapons helps.. the weapons you can get in the Liberty systems just seem inappropriate). You will not have such a poor experience in any other part of the of the crossfire mod.

And rhn CF can be absolutely amazing , the graphics in the new systems are stunning, the level of work that OP and the team have put into the crossfire mod (and are putting into the next release) is to be seriously admired especially given the limitations they have to work with. This is something I have an idea about as I do a lot of scripting / 3d modelling work in another viritual environment and have developed an decent rep for.

The challenge and the thrill of the Inner Core systems (GMG side) is something you have to experience, though, preferably in MP, SP maybe not so good. I was a bit wary of heading into MP but I have to say Im pretty glad I did. They are decent people here ... err..mostly and the ones who may be a touch awkward simply add colour / interest/ amusement.

OP would have an idea of what the attrition rate with new players is for MP and I would suggest that its probably a lot worse in SP where you cant ask anyone for advise or hear from experienced players that it gets better. SP is how I had my first taste of CF (and I suspect that's the case with most people) though I soon started playing somewhat concurrently with MP. If I hadn't discovered the Custodian gate by chance near Rochester (only because I made a habit of getting a better thruster the first chance I could) CF would of been history .. uninstalled.

The main failing is that the Liberty missions both in SP and MP are just tedious. They are about as thrilling as counting paper clips. They are just not enjoyable in any way. They suck a lot of time for absolutely no reward in either skill building or adrenaline. Worse, as a newbie you don't see what is remarkable about Crossfire in the liberty system. This is terminal for any game. To have them at the start of CF (or anywhere) is I think just odd.

oh ..and one more point , if you see ships teleporting (or jerking wildly as opposed to the smooth but complicated evasion behavoir ) then you have lag, either client ( your system/connection) or server lag ...yeah it happens from time to time but I think of it as being like bad weather .. it will pass.

except you have the liberty jg keys after you got shaun ashcroft (if i remember the plot correctly) @ heaven

Quote from [BC]afGun

aahm... Sorry. A one question about wreks:
Are they working now?
I was a "liitle" confused that they was not working several weeks ago

Most likely the wreck you were after was already plundered by someone else.

After next serverside restart (next day) it will be "filled up" again.

2 NucNuc:
So, I can plunder each of wreks after each restart?
Thanks for informations anyways
2 SWAT_OP-R8R:
Strange...
Somebody tolds me that wreks are exactly "not working" yet... And after some days I have asked this question in system chat again. The ansewr was "not working". May be I just wrong realized something...
Thanks for information too.

@ [BC]afGun

After each SERVER restart.

thats really strange because i have fixed them 2 months ago and got clear confirmation that they are working

They work they are just already looted i wanted a paralyzer yesterday but all the wrecks was a little damaged.......

plz define the way wrecks are supposed to work

It's true in both MP and SP money for next level is increased and NPC's are shithard, mainly coming from the fact which states in the README:

Quote

NPCs use nanobots and shieldbateries

Massive explosion / weapon enhancements.Harder NPCs

So yeah, some people have been asking about the $$$ needed for the next level and its basically Crossfire mod which makes SP more challenging and all.. Although i too had to fight 30 minutes on 1 mission and trading was no fun on SP, so i went back to MP

Quote from Vera

It's true in both MP and SP money for next level is increased and NPC's are shithard, mainly coming from the fact which states in the README:

So yeah, some people have been asking about the $$$ needed for the next level and its basically Crossfire mod which makes SP more challenging and all.. Although i too had to fight 30 minutes on 1 mission and trading was no fun on SP, so i went back to MP

But even harder on the server. (Take some "training" with the server-npc's. When you get pissed of by them, go back to SP : NOW MUCH EASIER ! And NEVER EVER try to fight them on par (aka Starflier against Starflier) )

After you've done the "Ascroft"-mission, SP will be much "faster", since you can trade the only really interesting "good" of CF : rescue-PODs to the prisons in Texas.
Until then, trading - even if a bit dull, if you don't have a good black-market trade in New York (but MUCH less pirates (also MUCH less pirates at all on SP, you have to go to their bases to hunt them down) disturbing you) - is the best way to get the first 250k $ you need for next level.

You also can take some advantage of the fact that ALL gates and jumpholes behind Liberty-space are working on level 2. And Custodian-gate near Rochester IS open all the time.

But the choice - MP or SP - is yours alone.

Doing SP doesn't really "trains" you, for what you have to encounter on the server ( totally freaky npcs, perhaps even freakier RP-pirates and -cops (if you plan to go on pirating or smuggling) )
There IS definitly a surplus-value of going MP (yeah, it's me NucNuc who admits that) in meeting/fighting/co-op-playing with the freaky guys, I've mentioned just above . You will also be better able to follow and understand all of the other discussions and threads here on the forum, what's sometimes even more fun.

Quote from SWAT_OP-R8R

is it balanced?
yes

is it hard?
depends on your skill (i am actually out of the game but manage to kill 10 fighters in NY in less than 10mins)

are the NPCs in NY hard?
nope - but you didnt fight NPCs in other areas yet

do NPCS use too many bots/bats
actually no - every human player can use bats/bots so why in gods name shouldnt NPCs have the same right?

CF is designed to be challenging

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to be honist well said OP i like games like this

I have to say that I'm going to be happier when the mod is balanced for SP.. Currently it seems like it's way too easy to make money trading (in a freighter it's easy to make several 100K per run sometimes between adjacent stations but doing missions it would take weeks to do the same - ridiculous).

Of course it's focussed on multiplayer and I read somewhere that 1.9 would have a healthy focus on the SP campaign etc.. Which would be nice. I don't mind hacking/tweaking the game - but it feels like cheating - but rather at the moment it's necessary just to do some of the missions or to avoid the pain of countless hours and sore wrist/arm shooting at npc's that are just unbalanced

Just wanted to drop in my opinion..