Recipie for Success with Privateer 2 Credits: First, I'd like to say that none of what I'm about to present is original. It was gleaned from various sources that deserve credit for the countless hours of researching, developing, and sharing their work through this media. My role, as a gamer like yourself, was to put all these pieces of the puzzle together, ask a lot of stupid questions, and try out what I learned. It worked, and I personally had a lot more fun playing Privateer 2 with a lot less frustration. The game is still buggy and suffers unexpected crashes for which Origin in its infinite wisdon may eventually fix and release. Save your game after every mission. (jwalsh21@ix.netcom.com) My thanks to: Rob Connelly, connelly@ix.netcom.com Online Gaming Review, www.ogr.com The Cheaters Guild, www.thecheatersguild.com and all of you at newsgroup, alt.games.wing-commander 1. Resources you will need. A. A copy of Origin's Official Guide to Privateer 2. You can obtain this excellent and well written reference at any computer store or through the publisher whose card was included with the software for $20 or less. It describes every mission in detail, what constitutes success or failure, what must be accomplished to complete each mission, and offers one cheat. On escort missions, the escorted ship has a 50/50 chance of reaching its destination without your help. Save the game before leaving the planet. Once in space, communicate with the ship you're escorting and key the "Let's get going" number. It will jump out. Wait in space for the e-mail that states success or failure. If you fail, restore the saved game and try again until your escorted ship gets to its destination. B. A hex editor program. The one I used is called HEdit. It can be downloaded in windows 3.x or windows 95 versions in the programming and utilities section of www.windows95.com. This is an invaluable little utility that you may find useful in other pursuits and the price is very reasonable. Free for the download, and $25 for the full, documented copy. The file is compressed in ZIP format, so you will need to unzip it. C. The ZIP file extractor. To uncompress or unzip this and many other downloadable files on the internet, you will need another handy little utility called PKZIP, WINZIP, or WINZIP95; whatever your operating system persuasion happens to be. Download the appropriate version from www.pkware.com. The evaluation copy is free. The fully documented copy is available for a modest cost from PKWare. This is a "Must have" for every internet user so buying the complete copy is recommended. 2. Preparation. Two or more subdirectories should be made under C:\DARK to save your original files and to manipulate your "surgically modified" files. In file manager, the game saves in C:\DARK are called game00.iff through game09.iff respectively. Only 10 saves are allowed in the game. Successive saves overwrite the previous ones. After ten saves, you should copy them to C:\dark\save1 (2, 3, etc.) if you want to restore them later. Then copy the file you want to modify to C:\dark\tweak (or whatever you want to call this subdirectory). It doesn't matter where you are in the game, or which saved game you use, but for our purposes here, save the game you intend to modify with no more than an 8 character name. More than 8 characters changes the offset location, and the offsets locations referenced below may not be accurate. 3. Surgery. Step one, becoming a millionaire. Copy the file you will be modifying to your save subdirectory. Then copy it again to your tweak (or whatever you want to call it) subdirectory. Then take the original file in C:\dark and delete it. To avoid confusion, it might be handy to rename the game file to be modified to something like "game00m1.iff". Now open up this file in your tweak subdirectory with the hex editor HEdit. HEdit does not have a "save file as..." option. It saves it from where you opened it. As a doublecheck, when you open the file, it should have the name you saved it as listed in text in the upper right hand corner. Place the curser anywhere on one of the double digits in the center of the screen and click on it. On the bottom of the screen will be its location in decimal and hex values. We'll be using the decimal value. As you move the cursor a double digit to the right, its decimal value increases by one. Find position number 62. Change the values of position numbers 62, 63, 64, and 65 from 00 00 00 00, to FF FF FF 00. (If the last two digits are already 00, you can leave them alone). Changes you make are now highlighted in red. Now find position number 318. Change the values of position 318, 319, 320, and 321 from whatever their current values are to FF FF FF 00. That's it for now. Click FILE, SAVE, and exit HEdit. Now from file manager, copy this modified file back to your C:\DARK game directory and rename it to its original name, e.g. game00.iff so the game will recognize it. Exit file manager, exit windows, open your game, and open your modified game save. Open PAD, open SHIPS, open BUY/SELL SHIP, and if all went well; you should have in excess of 16,000,000 credits at your disposal! Step two, buying and equipping your ship. Sell your current ship and buy a Danrick. Then equip it with whatever missles you want, proximities work well. Load out your gun positions with mass ion cannons. For an equipment loadout, although you can now load whatever you want, as described below, you will only need the MkIII afterburner enhancer, a BSE II, and two MkIV coolant units. Although not absolutely necessary, you can load the rest of your positions up with NUKE em bombs. Save the game and exit. Step three, upgrading your guns. Although you can have a lot of fun with the game with no further modifications, there is one more change you can make. In case you were wondering why we added two MkIV coolant units to the mass ion guns which don't need them; here's why. The Kraven MkIV lasers are THE guns to use in this game and they need the cooling units. Here is how to install the Kravens. Go back into windows file manager and copy your saved game from C:\DARK to the tweak subdirectory. Rename it to something like game00m2.iff. Then delete the file from C:\dark. Open the file with HEdit and look for the locations of your mass ion cannons in their gun mounts. They are located at decimal positions 662, 670, 678, 686, and 694. And should have a value of 05, the code for the mass ion gun. Change these values to 06, the value for the Kravens. Save the file, and exit HEdit. From file manager, copy the modified file back to C:\dark and rename it back to its' original name. Exit file manager, and exit windows. Open your game, open the PAD, open SHIPS, open BUY/SELL equipment and look at your gun mounts. You should see either four Kravens and one mass ion gun, or five Kravens. I really can't say why all five mounts are not always loaded with Kravens. You may have to wait until Ralph McCloud gives you one; I don't know. Either way, now you can have some fun. It gets better!!! There are lots of other things you can change with the hex editor if you want to. See the code locations and descriptions in the FAQ section below. 3. Using undocumented Origin cheats. In the Wing Commander series, there were cheat codes you could enter when you started the game that let you blow up targeted bad guys with keyboard key combinations. There may very well be cheat codes like this for Privateer 2, but no one on the "Net" has reported them yet. There are, however some cheat codes built in by Origin that although undocumented by Origin, make life in the Tri-System a lot easier. Go into the Nav map while in space, type "F" (find) and type in the following for the cheats to take effect. They must be entered each time you leave a planet, not just once. PETY PETY refills your afterburner fuel. NO TALENT makes you invulnerable to hostile fire. REP ME UP repairs any damage inflicted to your ship. NAPALM gives you five or six free nuke ems, over and above any you've already loaded. CHILL OUT cools your overheated lasers to zero. Comments on use: If you use your afterburner a lot you'll run dry on long missions with a lot of combat flying. Go into your Nav map, type F, and then PETY PETY, and your afterburner tank is now full again. Using the NO TALENT option sorta evens up the odds a little while flying the best ship, with the best engines, and the best guns against a screenful of bad guys all shooting at you. There are some missions that are virtually impossible to complete without it. One, for instance, takes place at Nav 25 where you have to ID 8 Illias with escorts, all of which are shooting at you. You have to fly within about 150 clicks of each Illia to ID it, well within its gun range. 3 of the Illias are carrying contraband and you have to shoot them down. 5 of the Illias are carrying passengers and you'd better not shoot them down. If you try taking out the escorts first, the Illias jump out and you never find them, so the Illias have to be dealt with first under murderous fire from both the Illias and the escorts. After you're finished with the Illias, then take out the escorts. Then you can peacefully tractor in 3 survivors in spacesuits. If you use the NO TALENT option, you won't need the REP ME UP option. You don't take any damage. You also don't need to load your ship down with all the defensive gear such as shield regenerators, missle decoys, and repair droids. You also don't have to spend hours in a flight sim, or go to Top Gun School to learn how to maneuver around head on attacks. Head straight in and when in range, open fire. Sometimes, the bad guys bounce off you, and when they bounce, they bounce sideways or tail toward you. A couple of short bursts from the Kravens dispatches them quickly. The NAPALM option does not give you unlimited nukes, it gives you five or six at your immediate disposal, over and above those which you've loaded in your equipment selection. To get more, you have to go back into the Nav map, type F, and NAPALM again and get more. This is a handy way to level the playing field when you have a radar screen full of red dots all shooting at you. It's also a nifty way of making sure you get the bad guy you're after before he jumps out while the escorts keep you busy (like the "Businessman" you're supposed to take out at Nav 97). Some discretion, however is sometimes required. Nukes take out many but not everybody in a large area, but good guys and bad guys alike. Your wingman won't survive. Your cargo ship won't either. A particular hazard is where your radar screen has both red dots and green dots. The green dots are military, and if you take one out, all the military types start shooting at you until you land and take off again. When encountering military and bandits, the military will generally take out the bad guys for you and you can get on about your business. If you accidentally blast a military, you have to shoot down all the military and bad guys at each jump point before you can jump again. It can be done, but its time consuming. "Careful there civilian!" We loaded not one, but two Mk IV cooling units on your ship for a good reason. Those Kravens get hot quickly with continuous firing, and when they do, they stop firing. You can use the CHILL OUT option if you want, but the twin Mk IV's make it unnecessary. The guns cool down in a second. In fact, the most effective way to use the Kravens is with a series of short bursts, allowing them to cool between bursts.