Yes i agree Hovis is easy to beat if you don't panic and look were you have to go. Besides he generally pulls up about 2/3rds of the way. Except for the very first time that I had to do the race.I've beaten him on the first or second try.It did not matter what ship or cargo [if any that I had.


One of FL little mysteries......................AZAR

@Deadfish - He's pressed 'Z' which kills your engines, and you just move along on one vector, but can rotate... 'tis all...

----------------------------------------
Author of the Freelancer Neural Net
Administrator of Kryosphere Studios
Lead designer of Freelancer: Rebirth

that is one of the easiest missions in the game, if you cant beat it the first time...................

Can't beat Hovis? Just ram 'im off the circuit and don't listen to him. I bet him in the Osiris, no really. All you do in the Osiris is block the rings so he can't get past, and then he'll get knocked off course. If you can't beat him, you really aren't a very good driver. No Offence.

does the mod work with Evolutions mod?? its recommended to use a light fighter during that race but i still got me a Crusader so im probably going to need the mod ><

for a first timer you'll need a light fighter, but I did it first time in a Clydesdale freighter...

some people say in a freighter you've gotta jettison your cargo, but it aint the truth... you can still work it perfectly fine with a full cargo hold and have no detriment to your maneuverabillty...

its much harder to beat him in Evo mod without a light fighter i refuse to use light fighters lol

yes i beat him many times in unmodded games... and just beat him again with evo mod... hm.. LOL nvm then. main dificulty is cuz Evo makes different ships charge their cruise at different speeds... his charges much faster.

Edited by - palmboy5 on 10/6/2004 6:27:43 AM

Edited by - palmboy5 on 10/6/2004 6:54:51 AM

i beaten him a lot off times, but loosed also from time to time... knock yourself against him in the wrong direction and see what will happends

i had also a few times that i was leading from start... lol... so was just before the finish before all was shooting at me...

______________________________
Legion of Fury (Clan Leader Seluka)
RIP-member
POTC-member (Pirate WarThog)

Every tip I had to say has alredy been mentioned, except for one:

Strafing. Is. Your. Best. Friend.

That is all.

I've replayed that mission at least 100 times and lost once, and that was because I hit him with my ship. If you are so bad of a pilot that you need a cheat to win, then maybe you shouldn't play the game.
Somebody should make a mod that makes racing Hovis harder, not easier.

I did not beat Hovis on the first 4 tries in SP. I was tired and trying to play in my sleep. However, after some sleep, I was able to keep my ship in the rings and dropped a few countermeasures when he called out the missiles to beat him.

David R. Thurber

Two comments, on the difficulty of beating Hovis and a simple hack for the race that I haven't seen mentioned.

Difficulty: skill, reflexes, and ship all are part of this. I think the machine performance comments are dead on as the reason why many people who have tried repeatedly can't beat him, though.

I play FL on a P3-600/384 MiB RAM with a 32MiB graphics card and if I use high detail settings and resolution, I lose every time unless I cut off cruise in the last half - I miss rings then because of the lag. If I drop to low resolution, low quality, I don't have a problem.

For easy hacks... well, just give Hovis an extra advantage. ))

In constants.ini, under EngineEquipConsts, bump up cruise speed. A ridiculous amount like in the "translightengine mod" is
<pre><font size=1 face=Courier>CRUISING_SPEED = 300000 </font></pre>
In the same file under PhySysConsts you also need to set
<pre><font size=1 face=Courier>ANOM_LIMITS_MAX_VELOCITY = 300000 </font></pre>

Then when you race, DON'T go on cruise. The AI doesn't adapt to this very well; Hovis ends up way out there (30k+) and keeps trying to tack back and forth on cruise. After the race, drop the changes and go back to normal.

Off-topic, the high speed hack does give you some cool rear views if you just take off in cruise; you can see the entire system shrink behind you. Go "up" or "down" and you get a birds-eye view of the system that lets you see large scale structures like clouds that are on the map.

Has anyone tried shooting him with a CD? ive never tried myself, just wondering if anyone HAD. I usaully keep a Torp on my CD/T hardpoint, and torps dont manuver too well trying to kill someone in cruise.

I wouldn't know--I beat the level first try . I suppose if you shoot at him you'll piss him off, plus all those nasty weapons platforms...also he's the guy you need to tell you where Quintaine is, so it's better not to get him annoyed.