Elite / Frontier Know this bug ? Know a solution ?

[eph]

Can't blow up mil. satellite

Hi, I have problem with my first recon mission. When I approach military satellite it's moving in strange way. It's not moving fluently but keeps jumping short distances. It is very difficult to match speed with it (autopilot manage to get 120km from it, but it not able to get closer). I have to pilot manually. I managed to get as close as about 10km from it (speed about 17000km/h). But when I fire a nuke (after I select satellite as target), it is somehow slower than me (or maybe not slower but it goes sideways away from me and satellite) and never gets to the satellite . It blows up after short time long distance (~100km) from the satellite trying to approach it. I tried to fire also normal missiles but the behavior is the same. What should I do? Is it a bug of this mission or is normal? I will try to complete different one.
I've got highres hack of jjffe 2.8 running on Linux.

Thanks

 

[Glyndo]

Can't save or load

Hi all

Stumbled across my old 3.5" disk version of FFE and was struck by a wave of nostalgia so tried to play it on my computer. I don't have an A:\ drive so I looked on the internet for a download and eventually managed to get JLFFE and also GLFFE.

Both of these work fine; well, they both load and I can play the game on both versions. However, I can't save on either version, both crash when I press the save button (or whatever it's called!).

I tried installing an older version of JLFFE (first I had 2.8 so I tried 2.6) but that hasn't solved anything.

Does anyone know a way to fix this? I'm about to try a complete delete and reinstall of every FFE related file so I'll post my results.

EDIT: Reinstall didn't work; I've still got the same problem. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!

UPDATE: Added the folder to the other computer on my home network and played it from there, and it works perfectly! Not sure how or why, but I'm not complaining! Been getting myself reacquainted with such a classic game, and finally got my hands on the Thargoid ship!

 

[DraQ]

Arise, cadaverous revenant!

*bump*
*raises thread through black art of necromancy*

Is velocity fudge in FFE the inexplicable slowing down when engaged in combat in the atmosphere (from usual about 15000km/h max to about 2000-3000)? How to fight it apart from getting the Aniso mod? If getting anisotropic is the only solution, can someone outline the differences in the gameplay between vanilla and aniso?

Edit:
Additionally, is there any way to prevent ship's computer from "assisting" you in combat? I want my computer dumb and not trying to fire any thrusters unless explicitly instructed to do so.

 

[LouisdeFuines]

My bug:

During assassination missions the game sometimes switches to a higher time mode.

Assination above a planets surface results in yourself crashing into the planet, since the automatic engines are off.

In space:
Your target is suddenly thousends of km away.

This happens, saddly to say, with JJFFE 2.8. Not with the unpatched DOS-Version :-(

 

[Star Buck]

Cant Find Base

Star Buck reporting for duty sir!

So I am playing FFE again in anticipation of ED and it's been awhile.
I've expected a military mission. Destroy Satellite, photo recon.
I've destroyed the satellite but can't find the darn base.
I've skimmed the planet at 500m for quite awhile but...no base for my shiny new camera.
Am I missing something?

 

[Sir.Tj]

Star Buck reporting for duty sir!

So I am playing FFE again in anticipation of ED and it's been awhile.
I've expected a military mission. Destroy Satellite, photo recon.
I've destroyed the satellite but can't find the darn base.
I've skimmed the planet at 500m for quite awhile but...no base for my shiny new camera.
Am I missing something?

It's a known bug I'm afraid.

If you save the game before entering the system you can sometimes get lucky and when you jump in the base is there.

 

[Star Buck]

Does the base show up as a tag on the planet? Also, I seem to remember being able to click on a planet in solar system map view and engaging auto pilot before, but can't now.
Doing that wrong or am I mistaken?
Thanks!

In other words, can I jump in, zoom in on the planet in the solar system viewer, and see if it's there before fighting the 50 ships along the way?

Eh, I've reloaded and jumped in 5 times with no luck. Time to load before I took the mission.
Sometimes military intelligence is just not so good.
Or maybe the stinking federation sent a destroy mission to the base before I get there.
Yeah, that's what I'll say...

 

[Sir.Tj]

Are you playing on ffe3d? I seem to remember some loaded their save game into another version like jjffe where the base would be there, complete the mission and then go back to ffe3d and reload the save.

 

[Star Buck]

I am playing ffe3d. Thanks for suggestion but that's too much work for one mission. There will be more.

Wow so check this out. I skipped that recon mission and later picked up another. Same damn problem. Satellite goes kaplooie but no base to take pics of. I'm frustrated so I get to about 1000m altitude, take a pic of the surface, go back to originator and they're throwing a party for my great success. "Here. Take this platinum cross! "
Star Buck says "Yes sir!" and I get a rank promotion.

 

[Star Buck]

FFE3D...
Ya all know that trick where you jump into a system, auto-cruise to a station, then when ship starts to decelerate you kill the engines, gliding at top speed until your within a couple KM and hit the brakes by punching auto pilot again...
Was this ability (cheat) removed?

 

[AndyJ]

As T.j. said, the missing base target is a well documented issue from the original FFE. Always save your game before hyperspacing into the target system. When you hyperspace in, check the target planet in the planetary map for the +rontier base/dot - and if you can't find it, reload and try again. Saves a whole load of flying/fighting!

Now, going off topic for this forum area...
The original FFED3D might not display the dot on the planet surface anyway, even if the base does exist. If you're not using it already, try my current on-going patch for it from SCC or the Russian EliteGames forum. (Both are free to join by the way). There's also a dedicated thread to it on-site here

The deceleration cheat - possibly it was removed (fixed) in JJFFE, I'm sure I've seen velocity-related fixes commented in the code. Using time acceleration to do the final 'jump' into the station/starport that you're attempting to dock with -rather than crash into it- does still work though...

Just looking back at older posts in this thread, if anyone does understand what the velocity fudge was all about I'd be interested to hear. I think Anisotropic mod claims to remove it and the fudge may be to do with ships 'warping in' at close proximity to attack you instantly - Aniso keeps them further back with a new timer before they'll start shooting. If I recall, Aniso's change also blocks time acceleration whilst missiles are flying to prevent cheating on base-destruction missions. I may look at adding this to the canon FFE build as an optional feature if it's wanted, as it seemed quite a self-contained change.

 

[Steve]

Huh?

I thought the missing target bug had been eradicated a long time ago? I certainly haven't experienced it for years (in-game) except one time recently when I took on three missions to the same planet simultaneously and one target didn't show up