gun running

i am a newbie with this game - and with most of this type of game
with the linear storyline i usually have problems.

anyway - i had an e-mail congratulating me on my activities from the
stepsons. they have asked me to steal a couple of pods of new rifles
and gave me the location. on arrival there is a transport - no weapons in the pod - and three cruisers protecting the transport.

this looks like an impossible mission - no matter what i do i get
slaughtered []

the other problem that i am experiencing is : when in free flight
i am continuously spinning. it isn't too much of a problem but it
does hamper dogfighting - i have to use autopilot at lot which i don't
particularly like as my fighting skills are generally up to scratch.

any help will be appreciated

thanks

Ray OK

This in an optional mission, so you can skip it. It is worth doing though, personal weapons are one of the scarcer cargos and a garaunteed pod is worth tangling with a few poxy capaitalist-class cruisers. Dont trade it for radioactives or whatever the guys offering, other factions will give you a better trade later.

It is probably possible with your current ship, but it will be a lot easier with turret fighters (IIRC this mission usualy comes up before those are available) so put it off till then. Then put a pair of decent guns on them (I swear by rapid fire PBCs at this stage, quad-lights also have their advantages but are too short ranged.) Keep your fighters docked, and weave around the cruisers - *never* stop and try and avoid flying directly towards/away from any of them - give their gunners an erraticaly moving target at all times. With luck one of them will break off from the others and you can take it down without to much bother.

Redirect all power to engines - with two fighters on the Tug you only have a standard and a light hardpoint, probably with a twinpack on the standard and a quad-light in the light. Neither is particularly effective on these cruisers, and the extra engine power makes a difference in your survivability.

Failing that, nail the transport and lead the cruisers off, it is possible to get the pod without them getting into weapons range. I also managed to call jafs once, cant remember how I did it but I managed to get the cruisers out of sensor range.

On the spinning, sounds like your stick is miscalibrated. Go into the windows control panel, find the game controlers and rerun the calibration routine.

when i came up to these cruisers i had the smae prob... then i thought about their rear.. it worked if u manage to get in close on their engins they r weak there.... all u do is have u wear them down and they run... but i managed to kill only 1 of them and chase the other 2 away

thanks for the replies.

i had a similar mission after the one i wrote about - fuel pods - and
completed that one ok

the joystick problem is with the twist handle. really i would like
to disable the feature along with the throttle control.

will keep looking

cheers

Ray OK

I would never fly without roll on my Z axis (well, at the moment Im flying keyboard, but when I have a stick at all, roll on Z is essential). But to disable it, go into the configs folder, find default.ini and change the following section:

[icPlayerPilot.Roll]
Joystick1, JoyRZAxis

to read

[icPlayerPilot.Roll]

The throttle control is handles the same way.

It may also be worth changing the deadzone on your Z axis, but how to do that would vary depending on your joysticks software.

thanks for the info

i have solved the problems by editing the ini file.

i was able to get some roll back by assigning the B key

everything else that i changed seems to work OK

my dogfighting is much better now that i have finer control as i
am used to by using keyboard and joystick configured to my likes.

cheers

Ray OK