I've just done a run of Righteous Fire, but it seem the old sub-game system is gone? Shall we add RF as extra categories? Like RF Any% or something

I use a Dosbox Frontend called D-Fend Reloaded to configure my games, which stores the Dosbox config in a prof file with a lot of other settings, but the major relevant settings I use are as follows. The sound config should, of course, be in line with what you configure in Dosbox. --edit-- Actually, while the DosBox config has sb16 set, my Privateer installation detects/defaults/is set to just "Sound Blaster" rather than "Sound Blaster Pro/16

[dosbox] language= machine=vesa_oldvbe memsize=32 DOSBoxDirectory=Default captures=.\Capture\

[render] aspect=1 TextModeLines=25 frameskip=0 scaler=normal2x

[cpu] core=dynamic cycleup=500 cycledown=20 cycles=50000 cyclesup=10 cyclesdown=20 type=auto

[mixer] rate=22050 blocksize=2048 nosound=0 prebuffer=10

[midi] intelligent=true mpu401=intelligent device=default config= MT32Mode=auto MT32Time=5 MT32Level=3

[sblaster] type=sb16 base=220 oplrate=22050 mixer=1 irq=7 dma=1 hdma=5 sbtype=sb16 sbbase=220 oplmode=auto oplemu=default

[gus] gus=1 rate=22050 base=240 irq2=5 dma2=1 gusrate=44100 irq1=5 dma1=1 gusbase=240 ultradir=C:\ULTRASND

[speaker] pcrate=22050 tandyrate=22050 pcspeaker=1 disney=1 tandy=auto

[dos] Force2ButtonMouseMode=0 SwapMouseButtons=0 xms=1 ems=1 umb=1 4DOS=0 DOS32A=0 keyboardlayout=default codepage=default ReportedDOSVersion=default NumLockStatus= CapsLockStatus= ScrollLockStatus=

Ah of course, this is great. Just don't leave the turret too soon, or the first message will start playing again.

Righteous Fire seems best to put under a sub-game. I suppose farming could be done there as well for Any% categories, or otherwise an agreed upon save. The continuous run idea sounds interesting. In fact, in some ways RF could be more interesting than the main game because you don't have to do all the missions, only complete the missions for two of the three employers to continue with the story, which means that we have to work out which are going to be the fastest to complete.

--edit-- I just did a test, and while Jolston doesn't have any really high value items, Joplin does (usually) have Plutonium, but no ship dealer. However, you start with more credits (10,000) and some upgrades already (engine 1, jump drive, meson blasters) so you can kit out to farm easier. 10mins to a high spec Centurion is reasonable.

It could be six up, half a dozen down. Probably worth a shot. They show up fairly commonly around Basra, maybe even at Rygannon.

It'll only help keeping them friendly until Palan, and that'll depend on how many extra Pirate and Retro kills you pick up along the way. You can check how kills affect reputation in this thread https://www.wcnews.com/chatzone/threads/privateer-rf-reputation.25908/

But in summary, Militia Talons affect your reputation with the Militia/Confed the same as killing Hunters. You're going to have to kill at least 18 Hunters in Palan, so hostility with the Militia/Confed is pretty much unavoidable, but if you pick up enough Pirates and Retros then the 6 Demons you kill in Oxford won't be enough to make them hostile.

Okay, we are going to have to talk Drone combat strats here, because fighting the Drone can be a big make or break of a run.

The first obvious talking point is that the Drone tries to evade missiles. This can be used to reduce its chances to fire on you and some of the AI evasive patterns are to just afterburn in a straight line and out run the missile. In my 2hr16min run this is the kind of pattern it seemed the Drone was using.

Something that I'm considering right now is how the Confed ships factor into the Drone behavior during the fight. Again, in my 2hr16min run you don't see the Confed attacking at all (you do hear some gunfire, and maybe they did fire a missile or two). The Drone's evasive AI could be negatively affected by proximity to the Confed as they attack it, so a calmer Drone could be a Drone that's engaged and lured away from the Confed ships.

Just some thoughts, clearly we need to practice the Drone a lot and try find some patterns.

xyzophoj had an enemy spawn during his most recent run, but he did something significantly different in his farming stage. He bought a higher level radar. There are obviously trigger points for increasing difficulty in the game, early in the game you have single enemy missions, then later two, three and four as you progress. Exactly what the trigger points are, I don't know, but it wouldn't surprise me if upgrading the radar is one of them, as that is something you generally don't do until you've upgraded some other parts on your ship already.

Did a speedrun today (time will be a surprise) and something I noticed which seemed strange was that if I had no save files then enemies didn't seem to spawn at Achillies. I messed up my first attempt, and restarted leaving the save file there, but when I started a new game each time I launched there was about a 50% chance of enemies being present (I died every time). But without any save files in the directory it seems to never spawn enemies at Achillies. What are your observations?