SW2: Am I doing it wrong?

[Leman Russ]

Recently I acquired the Star Wolves package from steam (SW1, SW2 together with a pre-ordered SW3). The first SW was an enjoyable game to play through, and I finished it a couple of days ago. My experience with the second SW is different though. I follow the missions (I chose the MSF side), but keep getting so much enemy resistance that I wonder if I'm missing something? I just got a third pilot, corsair, and still have only the most basic weapons/fighters/turrets/etc. Yet I now run into (seemingly) scripted fights involving 10 enemy fighters that easily outmatch me. This turns into an endless string of die-and-reload actions I have to perform that really take the joy out of the game for me. So my question is: what am I doing wrong? Am I supposed to play side missions before engaging in the main missions? Am I missing some tactics or insight? Or did they make the second installment of this game so much harder?

[valky]

The enemies' resistance rises fast...you can do either the missions for mo' money on the stations or the other more common method usually was jumpgate-camping (if you are focused only on the main mission it'll be very hard later on). Uhm there even exist a random mission with some nice reward (1 mio).
Uhm can't remember exactly but i think there was a location right at the beginning before getting Corsair. on one side of a jumpgate there was a patrol waiting for you (plot related?!). You could kill it, jump back/forth..kill it again and so on. Although they weren't that bad against your crappy ships + gear at least at the beginning.
As said quite some time ago...maybe you should give it a try. The aliens and some other scripted events were hell without some 'other' income.

You could even (with some better equipment and maybe + Corsair) park at some random jumpgate, set your fighter guarding your mo-ship...shoot some ships which are coming from the jumpgate and after some time, everything is hostile. Go shopping / or do whatever you want and let them have fun for some 'hours' ..
(I think there were good locations right in some beginning sectors but can't remember them. There weren't not really factions in SW2 so it doesn't matter if you beat the living *** out of some sector and go elsewhere ^^)

[Leman Russ]

Thanks for the tip valky! I have not resorted to piracy yet, but I did find that lucrative trade route (although the route I found was for 500k instead of 1000k, but who's complaining ).

By the way, the thing that I did wrong was not running away. I figured that every battle I encountered was one I could win, but with all the random encounters and random traffic in the areas there's a good chance - and certainly when just starting out - that you won't make it. So now when the odds are against me, I tuck my tail firmly between my legs and make for the nearest exit

Looks like the second installment of Star Wolves will be even more enjoyable as the first! Already looking forward to playing the third one!