FlyingGorilla
Spaceman
OR, 'Fun With Tractor Beams'
A single thread reporting all known bugs in abbreviated form might help cut down on repeats. Or possibly a sub-category of this forum, with different threads for different types of bugs.
That being said, here are a few of the bugs I have noticed. Some of the more interesting were found after purchasing capital ships, so few people may have encountered them yet.
1. When piloting a large capacity ship (Kamekh or Paradigm), I found out by accident that it is possible to "Tractor" in a jump point. The point becomes boxed cargo, and stays as such when either sold or ejected, and the jump point does not regenerate after leaving the system and returning.
2. When buying the Kamekh or Paradigm, they come with some cargo freebies. I figure, okay, they were either left by the previous owners or were thrown in by the dealer as freebies. The Paradigm even comes with its own small squadron of assorted wingmen in the hold. Where I scratch my head is when I see that one of the ships in the cargo of your new Paradigm is... another Paradigm. Interesting use of spacial folding for cargo transport. Oddly, this second Paradigm can not be ejected like any of the other ships in the hold, but can be sold for the full price you paid, meaning not only do you get your current Paradigm for free, but you actually make money buy selling the cargo/ships that came in it.
3. Which reminds me of another useful feature: If you save your game, sell a piece of hardware, then respawn/reload, not only does your ship have the hardware back, but the station now has one for sale (the one you sold before respawning). This is useful for duplicating those especially rare items (Steltek guns), if you're not technically savvy enough to edit the .csv files. Not sure if this was an intentional feature to be used as such, but it seemed unlikely.
4. Back in my faithful Kamekh or Paradigm, I find that it's possible to get an easy win against the Droid by tractoring it in instead of shooting it. Not having played the original Privateer, I don't know if this was possible. If you're reasonably fast, you can do it to the Steltek Fighter, too. They make decent wingmen, if a bit slow. After combining this trick with the last one (okay, actually I edited the .csv), I've had an interesting few missions where I took out an opposing fleet by unleashing my own personal fleet of Droids and Steltek Fighters, and just sitting back and grinning. Take that, Oxford Demons! (Whoops, how did I get a Steltek Fighter before the Oxford missions? Something funny going on here...)
5. Actually, it's worth considering making all non-wingmen untractorable, as otherwise any enemy smaller than a capship is easily defeated by tractoring him when he gets too close. I considered using this as a legitimate way of making big cash, by selling off all the ships that tried to attack me, but it looks like most ships only have a default sale value of $10. (Something else that maybe needs corrected).
6. Finally, I seem to be having trouble with the Righteous Fire plotline. While doing missions for Desiree, I got to the one where she asks you to go undercover, but when I leave I find no mission objectives, and no "Active Mission" on the mission computer. Returning to the bar, Desiree has disappeared. I figured, "Well, I've already done all the Murphy missions, all the Goodin missions, all the Tayla missions, and most of Desiree's; so maybe it's okay to go back to Oxford now." However, when I go back to Oxford, Masterson gets all snooty again when I try to enter the Library without a Library card. I even tried reinstalling Privateer in case all my tinkering had screwed something up, and then copied over the "save" and "serialized xml" directories from my old game, but the same thing kept happening. Has anyone else gotten this far? Did my saved game just get corrupted somehow? I opened the game save file, and saw the value "access_to_library 1 2.000000", so I tried changing it to 1.000000 (No sight of Masterson, directly to library stacks), 0.000000 & 3.000000 (Masterson is still snooty). Anyone got any ideas.
A single thread reporting all known bugs in abbreviated form might help cut down on repeats. Or possibly a sub-category of this forum, with different threads for different types of bugs.
That being said, here are a few of the bugs I have noticed. Some of the more interesting were found after purchasing capital ships, so few people may have encountered them yet.
1. When piloting a large capacity ship (Kamekh or Paradigm), I found out by accident that it is possible to "Tractor" in a jump point. The point becomes boxed cargo, and stays as such when either sold or ejected, and the jump point does not regenerate after leaving the system and returning.
2. When buying the Kamekh or Paradigm, they come with some cargo freebies. I figure, okay, they were either left by the previous owners or were thrown in by the dealer as freebies. The Paradigm even comes with its own small squadron of assorted wingmen in the hold. Where I scratch my head is when I see that one of the ships in the cargo of your new Paradigm is... another Paradigm. Interesting use of spacial folding for cargo transport. Oddly, this second Paradigm can not be ejected like any of the other ships in the hold, but can be sold for the full price you paid, meaning not only do you get your current Paradigm for free, but you actually make money buy selling the cargo/ships that came in it.
3. Which reminds me of another useful feature: If you save your game, sell a piece of hardware, then respawn/reload, not only does your ship have the hardware back, but the station now has one for sale (the one you sold before respawning). This is useful for duplicating those especially rare items (Steltek guns), if you're not technically savvy enough to edit the .csv files. Not sure if this was an intentional feature to be used as such, but it seemed unlikely.
4. Back in my faithful Kamekh or Paradigm, I find that it's possible to get an easy win against the Droid by tractoring it in instead of shooting it. Not having played the original Privateer, I don't know if this was possible. If you're reasonably fast, you can do it to the Steltek Fighter, too. They make decent wingmen, if a bit slow. After combining this trick with the last one (okay, actually I edited the .csv), I've had an interesting few missions where I took out an opposing fleet by unleashing my own personal fleet of Droids and Steltek Fighters, and just sitting back and grinning. Take that, Oxford Demons! (Whoops, how did I get a Steltek Fighter before the Oxford missions? Something funny going on here...)
5. Actually, it's worth considering making all non-wingmen untractorable, as otherwise any enemy smaller than a capship is easily defeated by tractoring him when he gets too close. I considered using this as a legitimate way of making big cash, by selling off all the ships that tried to attack me, but it looks like most ships only have a default sale value of $10. (Something else that maybe needs corrected).
6. Finally, I seem to be having trouble with the Righteous Fire plotline. While doing missions for Desiree, I got to the one where she asks you to go undercover, but when I leave I find no mission objectives, and no "Active Mission" on the mission computer. Returning to the bar, Desiree has disappeared. I figured, "Well, I've already done all the Murphy missions, all the Goodin missions, all the Tayla missions, and most of Desiree's; so maybe it's okay to go back to Oxford now." However, when I go back to Oxford, Masterson gets all snooty again when I try to enter the Library without a Library card. I even tried reinstalling Privateer in case all my tinkering had screwed something up, and then copied over the "save" and "serialized xml" directories from my old game, but the same thing kept happening. Has anyone else gotten this far? Did my saved game just get corrupted somehow? I opened the game save file, and saw the value "access_to_library 1 2.000000", so I tried changing it to 1.000000 (No sight of Masterson, directly to library stacks), 0.000000 & 3.000000 (Masterson is still snooty). Anyone got any ideas.