Ranks in Fury : Commander is ALWAYS a higher rank than Lieutenant. Going Commander to 2nd Lieutenant is a joke. I'm not sure who's army the devs used as a guide but I dont want to serve in it.
Several of the Fury missions do not up the Fury ranks at all, including the last one. At the very least, completing the plot should have given you a rank increase in the Fury fleet. Assuming normal rank increases, and Commander is the highest rank, you should come out of the last mission a Full Commander.CTW : In 2 missions in Terran, the ability to have the ship automatically pick up containers and astronauts is disabled. Pick up the scientist from the captured TL is one, Aldrin is the other. Anyone using a script to beam aboard either gets a crash to windows when they do. I fail to see why containers collection is disabled in either mission.
Money : The Fury missions payouts are a bit of a joke. Some missions pay nothing and carry the same risk as ones that seem to pay too much. All the missions should have some pay, the last mission especially. I'd suggest to even it out, remove the bountys paid in 931, and put a 2mill payout on the final mission, and all the search and destroy missions and convoy missions regardless of where they are. One is sort of a mercenary after all, and expects payment every mission. Not getting paid would be enough for a real mercenary to quit and walk away. We are not doing this for love of the Argon, thats for sure ! I was getting 4-5 mill payouts in 931, and then you get nothing in the final mission which is a lot harder ? Thats not right ! The TL mission didnt pay anything either, and that was downright annoying, given how hard it is, and especially that it said it had a payout and then didnt.
Relative hardness : I keep reading threads about impossible odds in the fury convoy missions. I do beleive these missions should be capped as to how many enemy you get. Many people choose the hardest starts, which have race issues that take a long time to rectify, and so by the time they start Fury, their combat rank is very high. This should NOT penalise them in the Fury missions. I finished Fury at vindicator rank, and that was hard enough. I couldnt have done it in an M7, or with several M7's, which is what people on Battlemaster are saying they are doing. I only got though because I was using an M2. But normally this early in the game (just on 1 game day), one would not have an M2 yet. Yet most people want to complete the plots early on in their game play, not have to spend weeks to get a ship capable of surviving. The enemies in the missions should be capped, and should be reasonable. These are not the normal combat missions where number and type of enemies should be determined by combat rank, they are special missions that should have defined fixed forces to take out. imo.
Claiming the Caiman : No way should you be forced to space walk to claim the caiman. In X3R, the moment I heard about exiting the ship to claim, I got SOS, and then rejected that and have used Cycrows claim software ever since. X3TC is no exception, its the first thing I added. SOS is a valid part of the game. If the ship has a SOS or claim on board, the claim should work in the mission. The mission should recognise that the target Caiman has turned green. How it was done is irrelevant.
Claiming generally : I've claimed 19 derelict ships with claim software and the stats say I've only claimed the 1 ship. That was the Caiman I was forced to get out of the ship to claim. The stats are wrong. Please fix. [Edit : Point taken, please ignore - just grousing].
Marines : I understand getting a bunch of incompetent brawlers for the board the Vidar mission, because your practicing. But in the Aldrin mission, getting marines with 1000% NO HOPE of getting on board the target ship is pointless in the extreme. The marines should have been the cream of the Terran navy, all of them fully trained in all fields. The Aldrin marine mission was frustrating in the extreme. Not only did the marines have no chance of pulling off the boarding, the first time I ran the mission, none of them came back on the first try at all, so it was impossible to do 3 attempts, so the mission was not completable. After reloading, on my second try, half of them never came back, they buggered off into space somewhere. It took several hours to run a mission that should have last 30 minutes with marines capable of taking the target the first time. If the devs dont want to leave you with experienced marines, dont give them back ! The ship turns blue and presumably terran, so change the marines back to terran as well. Otherwise, put a time limit on the Terran Scabbard so it will attempt to board if you are unable to secure the ship after 30 game minutes.
Also in that Aldrin mission, the constant bombardment by the Terran fleet looks silly. The target by rights, should have been destroyed long before any marine can get near it. There should have been a general ceasefire as soon as the shields were down, and then a single ship with Ions doing the job of keeping the shields down. Its not very real with a 93% cap on the hull. And the longer it takes you to do 3 boarding attempts (guarenteed to fail), the more stupid that hull cap looks.
