Elite / Frontier Know this bug ? Know a solution ?

[Blood]

Again flying around in FFE after all these years. And hooked again . Thanks to the GLFFE.
Still having the same problem however. Thought I'd ask around.
When flying on a mission, for example to film an installation on some location, I, naturally, will be attacked by other aircraft. If so, my engine completely stops. The engine will not work, autopilot does not work, speedsetting does not work. So in stead of flying around I will drop like a brick to the surface in no time. The only solution that works for me is keeping the ENTERbutton of my keyboard pressed, wich will accelerate my craft. And, now don't laugh, will make sure that I reach my e-button for countering missiles mostly too late. Which can be frustrating . When my enemy is shot to pieces I can again set speed and fly my deadly constrictor like the tinkerbell it really is.
It happens with every spacecraft I buy and fly around with. Wondered if anyone else had the same engineproblem.
Be happy with any input.
Thanks.

Blood.

 

[xnonix]

Use numpad zero for ECM. Your fingers are long enough to reach this key.

 

[DraQ]

As in certain old joke:
It's not a bug, it's a feature!

When you were attacked in FE2 you had to switch to (not so aptly called) 'engines-off' mode manually before even attempting to engage the enemy, as it was difficult to catch even a glimpse of your enemy when buzzing by on full burn. In FFE your on-board computer gives you full manual control as soon as you're attacked, which is good. What is not so good - as you have noticed - having your engines suddenly switched off when flying at high speed close to planetary surface can be somewhat perilous.

Anyway, both, GLFFE and jFFE have a cool little feature called "Jordanian controls" - it gives you full control over your ship's thrusters.
[Numpad8] fires the main thruster,
[Numpad5] fires the retros,
[Numpad 1&3] top thruster,
[Numpad 4&6] bottom one,
[Numpad 7] right thruster and
[Numpad 9] left one.

Also, for relatively stress free recon missions, consider approaching planet's surface around 200km from target, dropping to somewhere between 100 and 1000m altitude and accelerating towards your destination while maitaining as low as possible altitude until you reach velocity of 15000-20000km/h. Low altitude combined with high velocity will make you impossible to intercept and, considering that most of the military bases are built on balls of rock hardly worthy to be called 'major bodies', this kind of velocity will give you a lot of time before you drop to the surface. In the final phase of your approach turn the engines off altogether and do only small course corrections with your maneuvering thrusters (and sometimes main one), so that you will pass as close to the target as possible, point your sights down, make a photo and blast off.
It'd probably be possible to do recon missions with IP Shuttle using this tactics, was it not for it's lack of hyperspace capability and inability to survive skirmishes during the in-system travel.

This technique requires some modifications in situations, where the object to be photographed is on the bottom of some deep valley, or other such geological feature, you have to either approach along the longest dimension of the valley, or just do it hard way.

Why is the plural of 'ball' censored?

 

[Latexmonster]

I've noticed a strange bug that causes me to be unable to complete any millitary search and destroy missions.

I take on a mission, where I supposingly get some/a nuclear missiles, get to the specified system and find the satellite thats projection my whereabouts. But then I can't launch the darn missile!
There is no seperate button on the dashboard for a nuclear mssile and launching any other missile ( as I normally would) , doesn't have the slightest impact on the satellite. Without blowing up the satelite I can't complete the mission.
I have a feeling that somehow I didn't quite the correct missile when I got the mission, but the icons do seem to change and every other mission such as foto mission have been working properly.
Any suggestions, any ideas?

Anders Lerche,
Copenhagen, Denmark.

 

[Steve]

Firstly, make sure you have enough spare missile pylons to take the nuclear missile.
If it's been successfully loaded onto your ship, it'll show up thus... (this is the original lo-res cockpit)

This shows four other missiles (Thargoid missiles in fact) plus the nuke just to the left of the top-right Thargoid missile (the black & white diamond icon).
Select a valid battle target (like the satellite) and then launch your missile.

 

[Latexmonster]

Steve- you are The Man! Finally there is a sollution for my problems, and a way to get back into the game again. Should have asked a long time ago really

Oh while we are at it: since you seem to be quite tech savy, would there be a way to make space appear black instead of dark blue in Frontier First Encounters? It's alway bothered me that you were flying in a blue night sky instead of the wastness of the ink black cosmos, if you know what I mean.

Sincerely
Anders

 

[Steve]

Oh while we are at it: since you seem to be quite tech savy, would there be a way to make space appear black instead of dark blue in Frontier First Encounters? It's alway bothered me that you were flying in a blue night sky instead of the wastness of the ink black cosmos, if you know what I mean.

Every version of JJFFE since 2.4 has had the facility to make space black, in the options menu (graphic detail submenu)

 

[Shemshu]

This may not be a bug but even with labels on I am unable to find Rockforth Legal academy on Thompsons planet. I've landed at yorkville and looked around but see no sign of it.
Help anyone??

 

[DraQ]

Academy is labelled "+rontier" and is located in a deep valley on the opposite side of the planet.
There seems to be a bug in this mission not allowing the missiles to reach the target, you can counter it by launching them from a considerable distance and using time compression (stardreamer).

 

[Shemshu]

So how about these apples.
I've picked up Argents Quest and started the mission. Fly out to Pleione and commence data retrieval et al. I'm not the best user of engines off (but getting better) so I have a tendancy to fire not fire prehaps too much as windows XP decides that it'll dump me out of the game to introduce me to "Sticky keys". I cancel the keys and go back but this gets tedious. So I decide in my own fashion that I should turn the "sticky key" short cut off and now I can't use right shift to slow the ship down. Nothing happened, till I started getting background beeps from windows telling me I'm hitting the key and nothing is happening. Is this a bug?
Also to try and fix the problem I turned "sticky" back on and now when I go to open the FFE/game folder my PC is highlighting all the files before the executable and trying to open them all at once, telling me in the process that this may take some time. Have I irrcoverably damaged the game and my PC or is it a bug??

 

[DraQ]

It seems that your windows have gone bonkers (how unsurprising), nothing particularily alarming though, in worst case restart should cure your problems.

Also, sticky keys work badly with games in general.

 

[Shemshu]

It seems that your windows have gone bonkers (how unsurprising), nothing particularily alarming though, in worst case restart should cure your problems.

Tried this but still having the same issue. Any other ideas?

Also, sticky keys work badly with games in general.

Quite. This wasn't an attempt by myself to use them it seems to be an XP feature that self enables if you perform the right function, ie hit the shift key 5 times in quick succession. Unless your playing games how often do you do that?

 

[DraQ]

Tried this but still having the same issue. Any other ideas?

Apart from possibility of it being just a stuck key, I'm pretty much stumped.

Did you restart your machine completely?

This wasn't an attempt by myself to use them it seems to be an XP feature that self enables if you perform the right function, ie hit the shift key 5 times in quick succession.

Nothing can brighten your day as much as default settings, it seems. I know that pain.

 

[Shemshu]

So as I'm buzzing around to random planets I get Zeanla. Imagine my surprise when they have Thargoid missiles for sale, mycoid and "New Equipment 4".
Obviously the thargoid missiles work but what about the Mycoid missile? or the new equipment 4. Does NE4 have an activation key and what does it do or this part of the broken missions.

 

[Steve]

So as I'm buzzing around to random planets I get Zeanla. Imagine my surprise when they have Thargoid missiles for sale, mycoid and "New Equipment 4".
Obviously the thargoid missiles work but what about the Mycoid missile? or the new equipment 4. Does NE4 have an activation key and what does it do or this part of the broken missions.

I flew to Zeanla to check this for myself (hell of a fight on the way in ) but the items you mention don't seem to be available. Which section offers these things to you? (upgrade section, bulletin board etc)

There is definitely reference to "New Equipment 4" in the program; I guess this is indeed part of the broken missions

 

[Shemshu]

I am in the glffea program so I'm going to check to see how it runs in glffe. I suspect that andro? might have upped the ante and introduced some better more available weapons. Will let you know.

 

[DraQ]

I am in the glffea program so I'm going to check to see how it runs in glffe. I suspect that andro? might have upped the ante and introduced some better more available weapons. Will let you know.

Might be that, glffea is modded version and introduces rather serious modification to the gameplay.

By the way, speaking of Aniso's mod, what is this dreaded "velocity fudge"?

 

[Steve]

what is this dreaded "velocity fudge"?

It's the rare but real danger of trying to eat clotted cream delicacies whilst travelling under Stardreamer

 

[DraQ]

It's the rare but real danger of trying to eat clotted cream delicacies whilst travelling under Stardreamer

And for real this time?

 

[Shemshu]

Nothing seems to have come of the aniso mods, can't recreate them although I am flying around in a stocked, locked and loaded Argents Quest. Maybe it was because I never finished the mycoid mission and istead chose to cruise around in my thargoid equiped Quest. Every time the thargoid missiles were offered I had at least one equiped to my ship (and there were more than one port offering them. Usually backwards mech 2 planets where "Pirates" be there!!)