Frontier - Elite 2

               Hints and Tips by James Judge

Hey - I've progressed from the ST version and now have the great
PC version of this good game. I've been playing for about 8 hours
(approx 2 game years) and now have a Panther Clipper that can take
me (nearly) everywhere I want to go.

Now, am I good, or have I cheated? I'm just good <ahem>. No,
actually I did use one cheat to get the Panther and am using
another to get from place to place. Normally I don't cheat, but I
couldn't wander around the systems building up the cash reserves I
had on the ST version and I feel that the 9 light year restriction
on Panthers is a bit daft.

OK, to the first cheat...

This one allows you to get huge cash reserves without the need for
doing any work and, so, allows you to get any ship you want. To
do this get a couple of passenger cabins and then get at least
one passenger. Next go to the shipyard and try to buy a ship that
costs LESS than your present one (ie you get money for trading it
in). When you try to buy the ship you are told that you can't sell
ships with passengers, but you get the money anyway due to a
programming quirk! Do this a few times and you will be rolling in
it. Don't use it too much, though, just enough to get that ship
you have always wanted, or to make some expensive repairs
occasionally.

Now, it's all well and good getting a huge ship like the Panther,
but if it goes only 9 light years there is no real point in
having the ship. Well, you're wrong. If you use the next cheat
(called the Wormhole cheat) you'll be able to figure out a way to
get anywhere in the galaxy using a small amount of fuel and only
a day or so's travelling time.

To do this you need to know how to fastscroll on the galactic map.
To fastscroll hold down the RIGHT shift key and then move around
the map normally - you'll be skipping a whole sector per keypress!

Now, if you fastscroll on the galactic map in any direction, when
you reach a distance of more than 655.35 light years, the sign
"out of range" changes to a "fuel required" figure, the minimum
being four tonnes. You are now able to jump to this system almost
instantaneously. Jumping to a system other than the one you
started from takes quite a bit of trial and error, due to the
distance between systems. For example, if you want to jump from
Sol to Barnards Star, you jump via a system called BEFAILIA at
co-ordinates -8,81. If you want to go to Ross 154 from Sol, you
jump via EQUIPHI at 35,-74. By using this technique you can go
almost anywhere without worrying about the range of your ship.

The best way to use this cheat is in Imperial space. If you're at
Sol jump to Wolf 359 and from there to Zeander at -81,-4, and
from there to Facece at 0,-4.  Go to the bulletin board and select
all Imperial Navy missions to Sohoa due in more than 6 days and
all missions to Vequess that are due in more than 12 days.  Also
pick up any taxi or courier missions to these two planets. Now,
jump back to Zeander (-81,-4) and then to Sohoa (0,-4).

At Sohoa take all missions to Vequess due in 6 or more days and
any to Facece due in more than 12 days, as well as any taxi or
courier missions. Now jump to Sozeex (-45,64) and then to Vequess
(0,-4). At Vequess pick up any missions due to Facece (in six or
more days) and Sohoa (12 or more days) as well as any taxi or
courier missions.

Now jump to Inackin (-8,77) and then to Facece (0,-4) to complete
the triangle.  If you continue this for an hour or so your
Imperial rating will shoot up and the cash will roll in. Also
your reputation will get a huge boost and by the end of the
escapade, you should be able to get all the cash at the start of
the mission 60% of the time (as well as extra cash for doing the
mission).

So, in graphical form this triangle looks like this:

---------------------------------------------------------------------

   >-->--> Working clockwise >-->-->

              Facece (0,-4)              Sohoa (0,-4)

              [Sohoa-6days]              [Vequess-6days]
               [Vequess-12days]        [Facece-12days]
                     |     \            /        |
                     |      \          /         |
                     |       \        /          |
                     |     Zeander (-81,-4)      |
                     |                           |
                      |                          |
               Inackin (-8, 77)       Soleex (-45,64)
                            \            /
                             \          /
                               \       /
                               Vequess (0,-4)

                               [Facece-6days]
                               [Sohoa-12days]

-----------------------------------------------------------------

That's it for this file. As a follow-up to this look out for my
Wormhole Chart which (when I've figured out how to put it into an
ASCII file) will show the wormhole routes for all the major stars
around the Sol system.

Happy eliting!!!










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