This game spits you in the face and the nkicks you in the nuts

[Uniq]

Well just finished the damn alienpart, was freaking hard in some of the fights, my team is quite weak as I sitll have the mastiff and no awesome shiledupgrade and only 3rd generation fighters. Well I finally get out I think but what happens then? A freaking berserk aramada is outside. Sure the aliens come the only ******* problem is that they come too late, my mastiff that has about 600 shield and no armor what so ever as I have been badly dmg, goes down in notime. I have been through som hard fights but always found a way to win, this is just retarded in every way, I can in no way avoid the billion of lasers and missiles coming at me at close range, what the **** do I do? I don't feel like replaying the whole shit to be honest :confused: The only thing I see is that I replay it a millio ntimes and hope that I'm lucky that every alien misses his laser.......yeah right. I read that there was some godmode but the debugmdoe isnt working for me, dont know if it because I am on an european comp or something but it doesnt work.

[Groundtotem]

I agree that this game can be brutal, specially if it's your first run (it is for me).

But that's also what i like about this game, but i agree some battles are really brutally hard!

[Uniq]

Hard is fine, I like hard, what I don't like is a scripted event that owns you and there is nothing you can do about it but replay the whole shit or cheat. You must have full armor and shields and probably better armor and shield so you must do the shitstorm of hard ifghts flawlessly to be able to overcome a scripted event..........

[Avane]

Bahhh....

There is a whole Berseck armada after the alien portal in precursor system???

SH*T!!!! I thougt the aliens were my major problem....:mad:

No way...im reloading before get Herectic to rearm and better train my pilots....:mad::mad:

And with luck, find the Star Wolve Mothership...

[Killer]

Well, I do not want to sound harsh, but what are you complaining about? That you have not upgraded your MS, your fighters and have not trained your pilots so the game is hard? So why have not you upgraded then? The mission to get a new MS is quite soon in the game. Far before the Precursor portal one...

to Avane: The third MS depends on which route you chose. Besides it is not the best MS in the game :) And you get your third MS pretty late in the game, usually just before the end.

[Ruinous]

You must have a repair system on any mothership. If it gets banged up set the gamespeed to x8 and wait for it to heal up before going further. Use the MIRVs, there is a reason for having missile boats in the game ;)
I know it is tempting to save up perk points for the really big perks, but the only one you really need is the ace pilot to fly the 5th gen fighters... and even then you could probably get by quite easily without, point being get those points spent as it makes a huge difference. Oh yeh, pimp out that mothership or you really don't have a chance!

[Avane]

Ha....

Went through the aliens and bersekers...

The key word is TORPEDOS!!!

i reloaded before the precursor portal and got about 5 torpedos doing 2k damage each...they cost about 10k each.

And 9 missiles with 10 warheads each... the price is about 32k each.

Use the torpedos in Aliens cruisers an bersek chimeras...

Use missiles in the large amount of aliens and berseker smaller ships, they do a hellu´va punch...heheheheh

[BuilderX]

Just passed the whole event in "hard" mode and i understand how it could be frustrated for Uniq...

But it's true that i already had the Astarte, and also just before i went in the X220, i accidentally took a wrong turn and fell in a Xsector with 2 pirate bases...

One of them was also a smuggling base and i was surprised to see the KALI shield system for an expensive "pirate" price of 900.000...

And it also happened i had saved a lot of money lol...

This wrong turn and so KALI just "saved" my life at the end of the Alien Event :grin:

[Wiaf]

I found the alien thing hard as well, untill I reloaded sold some stuff beforehand and bought 2x hvy capital projectile turrets for 150k each. (I got lvl3sys in my ms and 3 3rd gen pulse laser turrets, also 40% laser dmg reduction, 1500hp 2hp/s shield and 1hp/s armor rep)

For Fighters I got 2 Panther, 1 Tiger, 1 3rd level missile boat forgot the name. and i bought myself 4 mercs @5900 per jump.

After that it was a piece of cake.

[Nanaki]

I played Star Wolves 1 and 2... the pain with Star Wolves 3 is not so much the difficulty, its the fact that the game is not as generous regarding skill point rewards as it was in the previous incarnations (I could get to the final mission and still have most of my higher tier skills unaccessible), and this is with doing every optional mission I could find. Star Wolves 2 also gave you the opportunity to do randomly generated missions for experiance, loot, and cash, which you cannot do in Star Wolves 3 and thus you have to grind random spawns which is increadibly slow and tedious work (I just went on a massive raid in Inoco space, and by the time I got back I only got about 150 skill points...).

[Groundtotem]

I am getting more and more frustrated with this game. I have just completed the alien part and the berserker attack when you leave the aliens "space". But now im really stuck at the ambush in X297... I only have heretic in a ship since i lost all the other ships in the alien part... So it looks like im gonna have to reload a earlier save and get more ships and stuff like it..

But what's make me mad about this game is that i goes from "easy" to "insane" just in a blink of an eye.... Sucks that im not given a chance to re-arm since i have already taken out 3-4 HARD packs of aliens and berserkers, i mean one would hope that there would be some point where you could re arm before the ambush, but nope.

[Nanaki]

Getting good equipment is no problem, all you have to do is take some time off from the story mode, farm pirates, loot their stuff, and sell it on the market (this is not even counting the fact you can just go to the hidden caches thread, find some caches, and become an instant millionaire). Every once in awile you should visit a patrol station to offload the pirate escape pods which gives you more cash and a little bit of experiance.

The problem is skill points. The game is really skimpy on them, and this is on normal. I could kill thousands of pirates and still only get about a hundred or two skill points, barely enough for one high-tier skill. It especially sucks since skill points and the skills they provide are the only thing seperating you from the average enemy fighter, since enemy fighters are typically very well equipped.

[Uniq]

Nwo I can tank the normal alienships with no probs after some cachhunting. Got 2x3000 shields on my ship but the problem is those damn missiles that goes past the shields, they eat my ships in a sec and my MS can't handle much more. on the MS I got the smog/fog(The better of the 2) anti missile but it doesnt help much. So how to counter the shieldignoring missiles?

[Groundtotem]

Stoped by a smuggler base in cadi and geared up. I am also going the the alien mission manually so i can stop by stations and load up on good missile's and figthers! So i think i should be fine this time around.

But i guess i will always need to keep a good amount of missile's and fighters with me!

[Nanaki]

Here is what my mothership has....

2x Falconet Major Calibre Guns
4x Rage Turrets (thinking about replacing with particle accellerators... they are only slightly weaker than lasers but they do not have the massive disadvantage of being weak to antilaser system equipped ships, which are freaking everywhere)
1x Tungsten Repair System (This is extremely important, as your mothership cannot repair itself without it)
1x Kali Shield System
1x Smog Antimissile System
1x Emerald Antilaser system

With a Systems MK3 AI piloting my Mothership, the Systems MK3 AI is very important, as it increases hull repair and shield recovery by a whopping 250%... that means it turns my 10 HP/sec Tungsten system into a 25 HP/sec... It also makes your mothership near-immune to the alien missiles as they simply cannot get past your antimissile system

This is my Lion Cruiser, though, my Astarte had all of the same minus the Emerald Antilaser system and minus one Rage turret... and it was able to tank aliens indefinately.

[Groundtotem]

I have a repair system but it's not very good...

Im still in the Mastiff, haven't found a new MS in ages..

Anyways i re did the alien part and this time it was a breeze compared to the last time, loaded up with heavy missiles.

[valky]

4x Rage Turrets (thinking about replacing with particle accellerators... they are only slightly weaker than lasers but they do not have the massive disadvantage of being weak to antilaser system equipped ships, which are freaking everywhere)

The particle beam counts as laser weap too (Laser weapon proficiency) and according the description of the Diamond (50% ship laser reduction) it also states that it is able to do so.

And I don't think they are weaker, if a part beam hits it is usually very very devastating. Only the ROF is slightly weaker (particle: every 4 second / laz0r: every 3 second both without any modification to change the ROF, if ROF == shoots p/minute)

[Nanaki]

The particle beam counts as laser weap too (Laser weapon proficiency) and according the description of the Diamond (50% ship laser reduction) it also states that it is able to do so.


Well, that just kills whatever excitement I had for the particle beam weapons... Back to Pulse lasers than, I guess.

[ladious]

Help, i am about to give up on the game =( been playing for 16hours now.. just got Mastiff.. getting clear of the Automated Turret towards Elio took me 4hours =X

trying to find Matt Hander now, but every single red ships i encounter blasts me to hell..

I feel that this shouldn't be the case..

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

[Killer]

Yet again I wonder why are people complaining. The mission to get a new MS is soon after the beginning. If you chose not to get the Astarte and are now complaining about how hard is the game in Mastiff, then why have you chosen not to go for the new MS?

Regarding alien missiles, I have never had a problem. Just buy anitmissile systems for your ships. And for MS get a good repair system (Thungsten), shiled (Kali) + system firmware Mk.3

From my side, I have not used missiles at all. It is usless imho as 90% of them are shot down and there are much more usefull skills to put points to. Just using good cannons and puting points to accuracy have won me all battles on normal (finished the game 4 times now).

Regarding particle wepons, I will try them more in a new game. But I agree with Valky, their advantage is that they make the damage in one shot, while pulse lasers do it in 3 or 4 shots.

As for equipping the last MS, I used antilaser (+80% defense) only for the last mission of Alex campaign (the hardest one in the game) - so it was 2 Kali, 1 Thungsten and 1 antilaser. In all other endings, I replace the antilaser with the antimissile module.

[Killer]

Help, i am about to give up on the game =( been playing for 16hours now.. just got Mastiff.. getting clear of the Automated Turret towards Elio took me 4hours =X

trying to find Matt Hander now, but every single red ships i encounter blasts me to hell..

I feel that this shouldn't be the case..

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

What? 4 hours? It can be done in 15 - 20 minutes. The first line of turrets you just fly through, the second line you just kill those two turrets blocking your way, then you kill those scavangers and head to the portal. You can also visit the local smuggler's base to buy some nice equipment.

Regarding redships killing you I am affraid there is not much to help. Try easier difficulty or equip your ships properly.

[ladious]

What? 4 hours? It can be done in 15 - 20 minutes. The first line of turrets you just fly through, the second line you just kill those two turrets blocking your way, then you kill those scavangers and head to the portal. You can also visit the local smuggler's base to buy some nice equipment.

Regarding redships killing you I am affraid there is not much to help. Try easier difficulty or equip your ships properly.

kk i got past that part =) i have no idea why but once i switch Ternie to control Mastiff and my hero(pilot perk) to control fighter, it worked.

currently trying to get past the 3 groups of guards guarding a mothership(think its Astarte). 8th attempt now. I have to follow the borders of the map and crawl my way towards it but i can't avoid the 3 groups of guards. I equip my ship with the "best" i can find.

I am doing the storyline quests only, don't know how to find the "mini quests".

[Killer]

kk i got past that part =) i have no idea why but once i switch Ternie to control Mastiff and my hero(pilot perk) to control fighter, it worked.

currently trying to get past the 3 groups of guards guarding a mothership(think its Astarte). 8th attempt now. I have to follow the borders of the map and crawl my way towards it but i can't avoid the 3 groups of guards. I equip my ship with the "best" i can find.

I am doing the storyline quests only, don't know how to find the "mini quests".

Well by now you should have three pilots. Put all of them to a fighter. Putting anyone to MS is a total waste of resources. Try to get all of them at least 3rd generation fighter. Last time I did it I had two 3rd gen (Jaguar and Tiger) and one 4th gen fighter (Panther).
Put a Kali and a Thungsten to your MS together with a system firmware Mk.3 and use it as a tank.

[ladious]

yeah i have 2 fighters now. only second gen, Raptor and Stormcrow. And yeah i gave up trying to get past the 3 groups of guards, will try to get that setup u mentioned.

So my MS will have no pilot. and i should try to get 3x 3rd gen fighters.

I checked out the Kali and Thunsten, they are costly.. and the firmware costs about 300k too. Where should i be making money?


ps: Decided to go for it 1 more try =p i managed to get into the docking facilities and got some mercenaries. hehe! won the astarte woohoo! but still.. how do i make money to afford those 3rd gen and above ships..?

[Killer]

Except of missions, there is only one way to make money. From loot. Search every sector and kill as many pirates as possible. It is also good to check those hidden cashes, there are really nice drops there.
I do not use mercenaries as they take away valuable XP which would my pilots get.

[Nanaki]

Yeah, one of the biggest dissapointments is the mercenary system. For a rediculous sum of money you get an utterly useless squad of mercs (who, in my experiance, usually get themselves killed at the very beginning of the mission) and generally their only purpose seems to be leeching your experiance and hard-earned cash.

The only time I ever used mercs was the final mission, when you need every last ounce of firepower and it is not like money will have any use to you after the final mission.

[malkuth]

Yes I agree I guess I should of read about this game more and how hard the missions are. All the missions are is hey, lets throw 5 to 1 odds against the Player and call it hard. Thats not hard thats early 1990s garbage ai. Its that simple.

This game is not hard, its stupid. Hard is when you are forced to use your head.

In this game its nothing more then reload, reload hope get lucky this time. Reload maybe this time. Reload oh finally.

Now onto the next gate.. Reload. Reload Reload Reload Reload. Oh finally yeah Next gate. Reload reload.

Dumb. Sorry SW3 sucks.

[hansebee]

well yeah... it's really a pity, one would think they would take *every single* good point of SW2 and carry it over to SW3 - but no. No side missions to speak of. Almost unreachable higher XP perks. And worst of it all: gorgeous graphics (the planet backgrounds simply wow) in an interesting universe (just read all the star chart system descriptions, interesting universe, would have made for a novel!) but it feels void. Even the side missions of X3 seem appealing compared to this.

Yet I like the game. But it is not finished if you ask me. Unbalanced. No gameplay progress compared to parts 1 + 2.

[hansebee]

So my MS will have no pilot. and i should try to get 3x 3rd gen fighters.

I checked out the Kali and Thunsten, they are costly.. and the firmware costs about 300k too. Where should i be making money?


ps: Decided to go for it 1 more try =p i managed to get into the docking facilities and got some mercenaries. hehe! won the astarte woohoo! but still.. how do i make money to afford those 3rd gen and above ships..?

as was already said before: between storyline missions - go - hunt - for - treasure ! :-D
Do not refrain from taking advice from this Board (see "hidden chache" thread), as there are some nice things several 100k worth per find. I got two lvl4 and one lvl5 fighters that way and *all* the gun equipment on my freshly repainted Mastiff. Now I hunt for pirate bases - not just their fleets of fighters. And the likes of "Get the Astarte" mission or similar are almost too easy - you can eradicate every last fighter in the X system easily, I did not even have repair systems and faced down all mercenaries guarding my new baby. Equipment and fighters is everything, you will wipe out Debris system in no time - I just wish there were more side missions for XP.

[Trucidation]

I enjoyed the first game, so I sorta knew what I was in for. Still, I admit it could use quite a bit more polish, like the free time missions actually *giving* you free time instead of triggering the next storyline mission the second you jump into a new sector.

Yes I agree I guess I should of read about this game more and how hard the missions are. All the missions are is hey, lets throw 5 to 1 odds against the Player and call it hard. Thats not hard thats early 1990s garbage ai. Its that simple.
They're supposed to be cannon fodder. Plus, the game doesn't do this right off the bat, it only picks up after you've traded your mothership for that Mastiff. Yes, it ramps up quite a bit suddenly there but there IS some preparation time available, unless you followed the script without taking a break, and I do admit the script doesn't make it clear you don't have to go go go now now now.

If even these throwaway guys are giving you trouble that should have signalled to you that you need a break to skill up and get better gear.


This game is not hard, its stupid. Hard is when you are forced to use your head.

Nope, stupid is like those racing games where it takes like 10 laps just to overtake each AI car, and the moment you make one mistake everybody overtakes you instantly and it takes forever to regain your previous spot. Plus there's nothing you can do to get around it, you either win the race or repeat it. THAT is stupid.

SW3 doesn't gimp you like that. You should fly around and explore a bit instead of rushing through the story. And pay attention to the pilot skills, they are skill trees for a reason, instead of automatically giving you skill X when you reach level Y. (I.e. use your head).

There's no pass/die unless you're right in the middle of a mission arc - which you can back out of with an earlier save. With what you've learned, take the time out to get better gear and improve your pilots.


In this game its nothing more then reload, reload hope get lucky this time. Reload maybe this time. Reload oh finally.

Whenever I need to start reloading a bunch of times in any game, that right there is a red flag telling me I need to start doing things differently. Why didn't it occur to you to change your ships' loadouts? Or take a break and stop following the mission script for a while? Or, hell, just admit you probably screwed up and reload earlier and try a different choice?

If occasionally someone gets blown up but everybody else is unscratched, that's bad luck - one reload and it shouldn't happen again. But if you're constantly reloading, pay some freaking attention to your team. Sometimes you've simply just gone ahead too far, so man up and admit you made a mistake, go load an earlier save. That way you learn something instead of blindly reloading until you pass through sheer luck.

Again I repeat the game script is rather unforgiving and does not make it clear at all you do NOT have to do things right away. Yes, that is a design issue they need to address. But it's not like there aren't workarounds. It's not a linear game which doesn't let you deviate from the mission script.

I got creamed in Dionysus the first time I played. Loaded an earlier save, changed my ships setups, and I got through it. Gives you a sense of pride in your team, unlike all the pussy games out there nowadays which are piss easy and finishable in like 10 hours. Bah.

From the title you'd think this was NES Ninja Gaiden grade hard. Far from it.

[Hal2003]

The most important thing is get Intuition perk, it will give you sometimes more options to chose answer. As in Dionius without this perk are 3 options to answer with this perk 4. Adf if you choose the 4. answer it is easy to drive pirates out with NESF support.

[Trucidation]

Thanks Hal2003, I forgot about intuition. But it would really help us know that the skill is being used if they coloured the additional choice differently, like the dialog choices in the game Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines. (In that game there are skills to charm and intimidate people: charm decisions are coloured pink and intimidation in dark blue, so you know what each dialog choice is supposed to do. It was quite a fun game.)

[grinningsphinx]

Getting good equipment is no problem, all you have to do is take some time off from the story mode, farm pirates, loot their stuff, and sell it on the market (this is not even counting the fact you can just go to the hidden caches thread, find some caches, and become an instant millionaire). Every once in awile you should visit a patrol station to offload the pirate escape pods which gives you more cash and a little bit of experiance.

The problem is skill points. The game is really skimpy on them, and this is on normal. I could kill thousands of pirates and still only get about a hundred or two skill points, barely enough for one high-tier skill. It especially sucks since skill points and the skills they provide are the only thing seperating you from the average enemy fighter, since enemy fighters are typically very well equipped.



Is there a value that you can change to alter the rate of skill point gain?

[Goblin Wizard]

Check here (http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=14694)

[StarShatter]

It's funny how he complained about it being hard, and his mother ship being weak. Yet it's his fault for not having a better mother ship.
I don't really like posting in "gaem is hardd" topics cause the poster is usually bad, wrong or a troll. Do not want pay the troll toll.

I died to the aliens when they first came at me. No I didn't have the good shield, or repair for my mother ship (1500 shield and +2hp/s). My Systems Spec Hero died instantly.

All I did was move my guys away from the alien spawn, so the mother ship took the bulk of the damage (it only had the standard firmware). Then flew my guys in. Hero set to missile defense, and later repairs. As sure as death, they died. This was on normal mode, first time through the game as well. Hardest part was fighting the Greys, 2 fighters, 1 support, no laser damage reduction, got creamed. Gained laser reduction. Bang, done. Used the hacker ability on the messenger that runs back to base. And with a radar on Greyhairs ship I managed to navigate to the important zones while evading most of the Greys. Even the final mission came down to just using hacker attack on the "boss", and I attacked him with all my ships. Didn't seem like the climax the final fight usually has. :( Maybe next time I'll oppose the non-robotic side.

Now playing hard mode, with a Missile Spec Hero. It's EASIER than normal mode o_o. Sure you get less money, but if you know what you want/need that doesn't matter. Fire a LRM or two into the crowd to even the odds from 1:3 to 2:3-1:1 and you'll have zero trouble. If you're really in a pickle just assassinate everyone with a missile snipe. Might require more than 1 missile expert though.

It's all about your strategy and battle tactics.
Plan your attack, and even better, your defense.

...stupid is like those racing games where it takes like 10 laps just to overtake each AI car, and the moment you make one mistake everybody overtakes you instantly and it takes forever to regain your previous spot....

Codemaster's racing games solve that with a rewind option. I love those games. Most games like Gran Turismo/Need For Speed if you crash you can usually EASILY get first place back, since your car is often superior and you can gun it harder through everything. DiRT1/2 Rally stages are the best.

And there something you can do about it. Only be aggressive when you have the room to overtake, use low risk maneuvers/locations... that way you don't crash :D.

[grinningsphinx]

Goblin, what program are you using to open and edit the script files? When i use notepad i am having trouble with the notepad wanting to save it as a txt file.

Thanks in advance:)>>>

[Goblin Wizard]

notepad2 mainly and TotalCommander with bunch of plugins (called Total CMA Pack).

[Terry_Lentz]

I just went on a massive raid in Inoco space, and by the time I got back I only got about 150 skill points

I love raiding InoCo too. But I visited all their systems, crashed all their Galanet nodes and killed hordes of their fighters. Jumped to Zebos, resupplied and went back to Old Empire space. Got 421 skill points for Ternie, and the rest got less. Did this before the final mission for the MSF.

[Trucidation]

Yeah, good ol' Galanet, I love blowing that stuff up. Zebos is pretty high on my list of places to tour too especially considering the broken warehouse. Earlier on though when my team still sucks, pirates are the easiest option. It's like they're flying around with huge neon SHOOT ME FOR EXP signs on their heads... pity the poor foos. Can't quite bring myself to shoot trader convoys though, those people have a hard enough life :-P