Posts by Avilla

  • Hovis race workaround

    Not sure where this should go, and I tried searching first but got no results.


    Anyway, I just reached the point in the campaign where you have to race this Hovis dude. After a few attempts it became clear luck was involved - sometimes Hovis would hit the side of a checkpoint ring, thus spinning out and giving you some time to catch up then pull ahead. But I noticed I was always screwing up the final approach, specifically the second last checkpoint. From a distance it looks perfectly doable, but when I'm about to reach it I find myself coming at it from the side, making it impossible to go through.


    Now, I could've raced like a few dozen times to find a sweet spot for that last ring. But I'm done with this crap. Worse since the game doesn't have an autosave at the countdown but instead only from before you launched, forcing you to sit through Hovis' introduction every single time.


    Being an enterprising Freelancer, my solution was to open up the game files and give that smug prick Hovis a shitty ass ship. Like a gunboat. All you need is a save file on the battleship Hood, just before launching to the race.


    1. Navigate to "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Games\Freelancer\DATA\MISSIONS\M06", and open up "npcships.ini" in notepad.

    2. The top two "[NPCShipArch]" entries are conveniently the ones you need to edit. We'll be changing values in rows 4, 6, and 7.

    3. Change them:

    row 4: ship_archetype = rh_gunboat

    row 6: state_graph = GUNBOAT

    row 7: npc_class = lawful, GUNBOAT

    4. Save, then load up the game again. Enjoy the "race".


    In a gunboat Hovis still isn't that slow, but it flies like a brick so he won't be making those sharp turns any time soon. Feel free to point and laugh.

  • Greetings all

    Thanks for the tips! I ended up doing a leisurely tour when Juni left on her own to go to New London. It's nice re-exploring the game universe when everyone is neutral towards you, nonchalantly flying through combat zones. "Don't mind me guys, I'm just a tourist!" Sometimes I try to be friendly and use the radio but all I get for my trouble is usually "Don't distract me, I'm in combat!" People are so high strung these days...


    Already seeing much better ships and gear the farther off I go, can't wait until I'm playing around with that kind of money. Once again, great mod, looking forward to all the new stuff :D

  • Greetings all

    Hello everyone, just another old singleplayer Freelancer deciding to play the game again.


    Last I played was years ago, I remember checking out the Discovery mod. It was... okay, though I'm not a fan of its "everything and the kitchen sink" ship design. Also eventually they threw SP balance out the window iirc. Was wondering yet again where to get my space sim fix when someone mentioned this mod. Was really happy to see the mention of an SP campaign, especially since it adds to the vanilla one.


    Things do seem a bit... dialed up? I just did the Willard Station run with Walker, an early campaign mission where you rush in to save the station from a flight of gunboats and then some bombers. I vaguely remember it to be completely doable in vanilla, but in Crossfire it's kinda reminding me of Discovery - at least one friendly cruiser will get blown up even if I somehow manage to not get myself killed drawing as much enemy fire as I can. Tried reloading the mission a whole bunch of times, no bueno. Oh well.


    Another thing, leveling up seems drastically slower. I just hit level 6 after the Willard mission, and I'm supposed to screw around until I level up before the campaign resumes. Thing is, the next level requirement is like $250k away, however I don't think I have that much more firepower than when I started the game. Doing dinky little $12k-$15k missions to collect that much money is going to be quite painful especially since we're still locked into Liberty at this point in the storyline. I guess I should start looking at hauling cargo?


    Nevertheless, from the few screenshot spoilers I allowed myself to look at, there's tons of content later on so I'm definitely not giving up.


    Btw ya'll ever played Rebel Galaxy? I liked the random mission/event generator in that game - seemed quite a bit more dynamic than those in most other similar games.


    Have a nice day!