Posts by Balefire

Welcome!

Happy birthday, Ajay! I didn't realize until i saw the others' greetings, but better late than never, hmm?

Long ago on my 25th birthday, my secretary at the time greeted me with "So how does it feel to be a quarter of a century old?"

Best wishes for a wonderful birthday and a great year to come!

Cool!

As ever, thanks for all of the hard work and time you put into it!

Here are a couple of screenshots. Sorry about the delay.

screen2.BMP

screen5.BMP

I can't take a screenshot at the moment; I'll try to get one later.

Note that the map is correct; only the lexicon ship name needs changing.

System = Oasis

Obsolete name = Isomoto

Correct, in-game name = Scharnhorst

Quote from wombat1940

Is that a statement of fact, or something I said and now forgotten about?

It's a statement of fact, or at least of my considered opinion.

There's a link below my sentence which, if clicked, leads to a discussion thread from when I had the problem i mentioned here earlier. The choice of mission numbers is part of the discussion.

Martind suggested Mission #24, which ordinarily would be ideal; that didn't work for me for some arcane reason, so I dug up a save of one of the last of the original FL campaign missions.

I believe that, if you don't want to redo the original campaign using one of the ships/saves provided by Ilyan, you might be best served by using the CF save of your choice from him, which IIRC is just a couple of missions before the #24 "accept/decline" mission.

I'm sorry if this is too vague: my memory for details isn't what it used to be.

This discussion may be of use to you, Wombat:

SP: After Lost Fleet, no Juni and King scene

When you are in Order HQ with Juni and King, you are offered a choice of taking a mission or declining and coming back later.

You should be able to decline, do the Lost Fleet story, and then eventually return to Order HQ where--unless you are very unlucky--when you walk into the bar you should have Juni and King reappear and offer you the choice again. Accepting of course allows you to continue with the campaign.

I recommend keeping a save from a bit earlier than that, just in case. for whatever reason the first time I returned from my little side voyage, my old friends didn't reappear, so I had to redo from an earlier save. It worked fine the next time.

Well conceived idea and well done!

This should be of great help to many, whether new players or old-timers who want to do a run-through again with better ships and gear. It's helpful for some folks who are about to start the Lost Fleet story, too.

I think I'll do another (I finished a new new run-through of the Crossfire Campaign with one of the ships I haven't tried out yet, since your hard work and dedication have made it easily possible.

Thanks for putting all of the time and effort into this!

Quote from Ajay

Are you two reading my mind? I was going to propose the name "Scharnhorst" or "Gneisenau" to that wreck.

Somebody read it some time ago, apparently.

The wreck itself is named with such a good Rheinlander name, but in the lexicon it is named Isomoto. I presume that the lexicon is an older edition of the name, and that although the description on the actual wreck and on the map was changed to make it sound more German, the lexicon hasn't been updated to match.

That's only speculation on my part, of course.

Actually, it might be better to replace it the other way (i.e., Scharmhorst instead of Isomoto) , because it was a battle between a Kusari ship and a Rheinland ship, but Isomoto sounds like a Kusari name.

I'm not sure if it's Martind or Wombat (or both?) who would be concerned, but in some recent exploring I noticed that one of the wrecks has been renamed, and the renaming is not yet reflected in the Lexicon. The change is to a more Rhineland-appropriate ship name, from this one:

Please note that I'm not complaining; I'm attempting in my small way to be helpful.

Quote from wombat1940

Happy Birthday to your wife and sister.

Akemshite omedeto gozaimasu! Japanese?

Sing ken ken. No problem in Balinese.

Thank you for the birthday wishes!

Yes, that's the pretty standard Japanese New Year greeting. It's a little abbreviated in common use. What you see literally means "congratulations on the opening"; more formally it would have "Shin nen" (meaning "new year") at the beginning of the phrase, so "Congratulations on the opening of the new year".

Thanks for the Balinese lesson; I'm always pleased to learn something new.

Happy New Year to everyone!

Akemshite omedeto gozaimasu!

May the Year of the Rat be a great one for all of us, a better year than any that have gone before.

The new year comes early for me, and it's a busy day for me: it's my wife's birthday and--because of the date/time difference--also the birthday of my sister, who lives on the US West Coast. So there's lots to celebrate.

Thanks for the insights and the thought-provoking analysis!

I'm sure that someone more knowledgeable will correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that after the first time that updating is in aid of the dynamic market for commodities. Thus you can decline the update if you don't care about having commodity prices/markets updated.

I'm not 100% sure I've got that right; there's an explanation around here somewhere.

Personally, I let it update every time, since it only takes a few moments.

Thanks for the greeting, and best wishes for you to have a great Christmas and a very happy New Year.

Let's hope that the coming year is, for all of us, better than any that have gone before!

Thanks for the information and advice, Iliyan!

Even though I was indeed originally interested in opinions about SP (and thus PvE) exploration vessel choices, I am also very interested in PvP, in which I hope to become involved at some not-so-distant future date. So your take on it is in fact very valuable to me, as are the opinions of the others.

I find that neither my reaction time nor my own agility are what they used to be back in the days that I used to play, say, the Wing Commander series, or even when Freelancer first came out. Currently I'm also temporarily unable to use my desktop PC--or my desk, for that matter--so I have to use a laptop that's starting to show its age. What I'm attempting to do now is to improve my piloting skills in SP to make it at least possible to attempt a debut on the server without making a fool of myself.

Thus the PvP oriented advice/opinions are also valuable to me.

BTW...I wonder if anyone else misses the days when space flight simulators were played with joysticks rather than mice.

Thanks for the advice, Martind; I'll check it out. Certainly the name isn't intimidating, but the ship does look pretty sharp.

Iliyan, I believe that's good advice about IC exploration ships.

I haven't tried the Cayman, although I gather that it's liked for its speed and agility, so when I finally attempt MP (and thus PvP), maybe I'll give it a try.

I'm curious about what leads you--or anybody who's reading and would like to jump in with an opinion--to prefer the Saracen to the Chimera. The Saracen has more cargo space, armor, and bats/bots; the Chimera has a sleeker, less utilitarian look, but they handle very similarly IIRC. Is there anything other than aesthetics that would sell the Chimera over the Saracen? Presumably a preference for the Saracen is a ;logical/analytical choice? I'm probably not a good enough pilot to recognize a subtle difference in handling, although a significant one is a different story.

That Shroud is a good-looking ship, and I'll give it a try one of these days. It reminds me somewhat of the Dralthi, the Kilrathi medium fighter from

wing Commander and Privateer. The Shroud is designed more sensibly, though, IMO: the Dralthi looked cool but those distinctive wings were flat rather than down-curved like the Shroud's, giving the Dralthi an unusual near-saucer shape...but obscuring the pilot's side vision pretty severely.

Thanks for the advice about the missiles and torpedoes, too. I own at least two each of the Nemesis, Cataclysm, and Sunslayer launchers, but have been using one each of the missile types for no special reason, since their damage is similar. The numbers for refilling missiles and torpedoes do seem a bit odd when you have two of the same launcher equipped, so I'll have to experiment a bit to see whether I should replace one of the Sunslayers with a Starkiller, despite a rather large damage difference (quite a difference in ammo price, too, IIRC).

As for replenishing ammo in the core, I don't recall because I haven't hung around in there for very long so far. I do know that, for whatever reason, you need to go to Sirius (and maybe Sol?) to buy Nemesis or Cataclysm missile reloads, at least if you're in Coalition space where neither are sold.

I'll have to check for missile reload availability the next time I'm in Renaissance space, too.