Hey all,
I reluctantly bought DS1 last week out of a growing and insatiable thirst for another Privateer/Freelancer experience and after only one day I have to say I am thoroughly disappointed and glad I only spent 7 bucks on it. Perhaps if I had played this game first and then gone to Freelancer I could appreciate it, but between the terrible voiceovers, the often confusing interface, and the over-simplistic and repetitive systems (is the trade/research station operator woman the same for every base in every system, with the same "landing permission was granted" line??) it is only out of sheer curiosity and my undying "start what I finish" personality that is inspiring me to keep playing, that and the seemingly implausible shred of hope that the game will get significantly better down the line.
My question regards another flaw in this game - the complete lack of thought put into some of these mission designs. I have tried the "take 3 pictures of this system" and "record conversation" missions and am totally lost, eventually just giving up and jumping outsystem to clear the mission from my slate. The camera missions tell me to go to three spots, look at the motive (is my English that bad that this makes absolutely no sense?) and take a centered picture, while the eavesdropping missions instruct me to go to the recording spot, wait for folks to show up, and then turn on my listening microphone (with no updates as to who I'm waiting for, when the time is right, or how to turn on the microphone.) I have since stuck to side jobs and the trusty "fly to a waypoint and blow up everything" missions, which were the only kind that Freelancer offered and one of its few drawbacks. Can anyone tell me what it is I'm doing wrong?

Yeah I was struggling with those myself yesterday. You need to hit the USE key which I think is F by default, it'll pop up a menu with all of one option and you select either camera or microphone.
The "motive" in question is actually the trade station, makes perfect sense when you think about it, if of course you've taken a bunch of hallucinogenic drugs beforehand.
It seems to be another of these games with less than ideal translations, several instances of the wrong word, certain phrases having the wrong tense etc. At least the cutscenes are better than the marionette shows in X2: The Threat
If you're after a space combat & trade game, you could do worse than to look for X3: Reunion, its about as Elite as a game thats not actually Elite can get and there's a bunch of mods to improve it. It'd be nice to see the X Universe games on GOG actually

Thanks for the help; I did come across the Use key last night trying to activate those ridiculously priced one-shot shield boost and repair bot modules, to no avail...this game seems to have gotten much harder just like that, perhaps the further you advance in the story missions the harder the enemies get? Or maybe it is my threat level based on the number of pirates I shoot down...
Also, is it worth going back and playing the games before X3? I have been reading about the series and saw a lot of complaints about the learning curve, the complex interface, and numerous bugs, but I dont want to jump into X3 and Terran Conflict if I'm going to be confused or miss storylines and other info from the previous games.

So nothing happened if you pressed the number that shows up in the menu for camera or whatever?
The story in the X games have always taken a back seat to the open universe, you might miss a little backstory but to be honest you'd likely not notice the difference.

I was taking camera shots till I was blue in the face - of course I suppose it would help if they were pictures of the trade station (why someone would want pics of a trade station instead of something more visually attractive like a planet or star cluster amazes me). With the listening mission I had no idea when to start recording; you're supposed to wait till everyone shows up but if you wait more than a minute it seems like everyone leaves...honestly I just havent had the patience to try either mission again. I'm having a hard enough time just trying to survive battles with pirates who suddenly are tearing me apart even though my ship is more upgraded than it was like two missions ago. It also doesnt help that the graphics and controls are extremely jerky for any fight sequence with more than 4 ships: I cant imagine it's my machine which is well beyond the recommended performance specs...is this normal? I'm trying to stick with this game, but they are just so many gaffes in the design I'm starting to wonder if it's worth it.

I thought I might as well have a go at explaining this too.
The spy missions are as formulaic as you'd expect from this game and always end up in a fight. Basically what you have to do is fly to the system with your objective in, then to the target (the research base) you then activate your 'spy microphone laser' deal, but you need to do the following:
1) Make sure you're sitting right next to the station, like as close as possible.
2) Look towards the docking bay to see the ships which are meant to be entering the research station for the 'secret' talks.
3) Wait until you see two or three ships enter the thing and then turn and face the research station
4) While your facing it activate your microphone using the F key (the text box for it will appear on screen and you have to click it)
5) You should then get a cut-scene which ends up with them noticing your 800 tonne ship floating outside their window.
6) A load of fighters will launch and attack you - kill the lot and return back to your mission's starting system.
Now the photo taking one is a pain too, I did two and never bothered again.
1) Basically you're meant to focus on a particular thing when taking the shot. Its usually the trade station, the research station or a mining asteroid.
2) Fly to the spot and just keep moving your camera around taking pictures to see if it registers it as a completed photo.
3) You should then get the next way-point marked on your HUD.
4) Rinse and repeat
5) You'll then get the local military shouting at you to delete the pictures, which you have the decision to or not. If you don't, you'll get blasted.
Its a dull mission which ends in a fight just like every mission in Darkstar one.
With regards to your query about the difficulty level, well from what I found its broken. The slider in the options goes from 1-5 which denotes the 'level' above you combatants will be. It doesn't work in my experience, because they're either the same level as you or 5 levels above you. I recommend keeping it on 1 because fighting will just piss you off when it takes too long, just get it out the way and attempt to enjoy exploring and the TERRIBLE story line.
Lastly, your question about performance. I have a PC which can run Crysis with every option maxed out at 1600x1200 getting 50-60 FPS in a fire-fight. Darkstar one lags to buggery when there are 4 ships on screen or you leave a trade station. I'd just get use to it because its basically a bug!

I did get the camera mission to work and it looks like if you just do the first three camera spots and ignore the fourth you won't face the military (the employer only wants 3 pics.) But the other missions are virtually impossible for me because of the extreme jerkiness (not sure if i'm willing to finish playing if everyone has acknowledged that this is a known, unfixable issue). I guess if I want to get some better shields and engines I have to stick to camera missions and collecting bounties from shooting down random pirates that have low-level difficulty.
Another question - what is the difference between the capacitor and engine upgrades? That's a ton of money to come up with when you add the price of upgraded shields and the crazy fact that you get no trade-in value for any of your energy equipment...both item descriptions say they provide energy, is one for the weapons and one for the shields/etc? And if I keep my old shield generator and upgrade the engines (and/or capacitors) will my guns stay close to fully charged (like in Privateer)?

I found the jerkiness was mostly cured by putting the details down to minimum but that may well have been my laptop being a bit crap that needed that. The combat still gets a little jerky from time to time but not too bad.

Thanks for the help on this one too, Aliasalpha. I figured out when I *should* use the microphone, but couldn't figure out *how* until I read this post. Enjoying the game much more since.
(Edited for grammar.)

Well, I'm going to put in my two cents worth, here, too.

I read somewhere (in a walkthrough, or a forum topic), that as you increase your ship's level (the total of the levels of hull/wings/engine upgrades you've done via artifacts), your enemy encounters increase in strength of ships/weapons, number of ships per "wing", and number of "wings" per encounter.

As for your threat level, I'm still looking for what part that plays in the game, will let you know here if/when I find it (the instruction manual says nothing about it).

Also, I've been playing around with doing my own mod for the game (and when it's done, I'll put it up on ModDB for everyone). In the process of testing it, I discovered that, though your enemies ramp up to match your ship's strength, your friends don't. So, if you upgrade your ship (say beyond level 10 or 12), before doing both of the "Flak" missions (don't worry, you'll find them), those you're defending may not survive the assault long enough for you to defend them. Especially painful was one mission in the main story line where I was to meet someone, and before I could even get from the gate to the location where the fighting was going on, the guy I was supposed to meet was blown away by pirates. So, I will repeat here the same admonition, don't upgrade your ship beyond level 10 or 12 before you complete most of the game (perhaps hold off on freeing those systems occupied by pirates - the ones with the skulls by them - till toward the end of the game).

Also, consider this: the best missile/torpedo launchers are found at stations, but the best weapons you can get in a cluster (turrets/forward weapons) for normal blasting away are found by taking out those pirate gangs you read about in the news.
Also, I'd recommend that, as you upgrade your plasma cannon, you take the path toward the plasma shell (the one at the top of the tech tree). And, to get there, go through the shield replenishment and EMP side.

And, by all means, whenever you upgrade your ship, don't forget to upgrade your plasma cannon.

If you get the ship to level 10 or 12, and have found more artifacts, just hold off as far as using them, once you've got them, at least till after Flak Mission 2. They're not going anywhere.

As for the "Eavesdropping" and "Photo" missions, just remember that, once you reach the waypoint, your target should change from the waypoint to the "motive".

Also, some of the other missions can get you into trouble with the authorities. Be careful who you take a mission from, whom it's directed against, and what the possible consequences of either a successful or failed mission are (besides the money you get). If it's a mission from someone called "Sinister Businessman" or some other questionable source, I'd suggest you leave it alone, unless you're planning on becoming a pirate or outlaw.

One more thing, you may have to perform a few illegal missions during the course of playing through the main story. In such cases, if you're told to avoid the police (or you've got cargo and pirates on your tail, and you don't want to risk the cargo by releasing it to fight), you might try going around the planet. It's a long journey, but, if you come from there, rather than from the gate, you might just be able to pull it off without incurring any criminal record.

Oh, and when you take on a mission to go somewhere and take out a pirate, if you've got to go through several star systems to get there, you might as well take some cargo with you that you can sell at the next star, dock at their station and sell it, then buy something the next station might want. That way you can get credit and money for trading, as well as the money for the mission and the bounties for killing the accomplices.

PK

Oh, one more thing regarding those better weapons from fighting pirate gangs - if you leave a cluster, upgrade your ship to the point where you get a new class of weapon, then go back to the previous cluster(s), you can fight the pirate gangs again, and get the higher-level special weapons. Go back through all of them, and you've got plenty of special weapons to sell for a nice profit (and all it took was clearing out a few pirate gangs). Well, okay, so, it may be a bit harder the next time through, but, for the best weapons you can get at your weapon level, it's worth it.

PK

patience. I had DS1 when it first came out and got quite a ways into the programme. For some reason I left it be and began with Freelancer and associated Mods which were excellent. I stayed in Freelancer space until about a 2-3 months aftewr windows 10 went into my big pc. Then, what must have been an ugrade went in, and FL was lost seemingly forever. I dont even know what the upgrade was! I have tried zillions of ways to reactivate it including having a right ***** witth Microsoft. Thats where I stand on that one.

Eventually I reinstalled DS1 from STEAM and began again with the game play method on patience and the total lack of wanting to hurry. Its actually more fun that first time around. Dont look for miracles, they only happen in your dreams or trainer mods.