I can add them but...

So I've been flying a pilot around for the past week or so, wanting to keep him as a "template" per se, and not start any major storylines.

Shoulda known, but duh, ferrying a wild geese fellow to his home planet started me down the wild geese string. Ooops.

Didn't realize it til too late. Now looking at the walkthrough I realize I'm locked out of getting into other strings - I wanted to duplicate a copy of a clean pilot file and then use this template to repeat all the strings. Looks like I can't do that at this point.

So how do I go about UNsetting these bits? I was reading some old topic about this and someone said to add 1000 to the value of the original mission bit.

b511 b515 became b1511 b1515

When I opened the pilot file, however, I found not only b511 and b515 but ALSO b1511 and b1515. So no luck there.

I realize I could manipulate an outfit to automatically start my pilot down any mission string I want, but I was hoping for a more natural experience, a blank slate.

The 1511/1515 bit-stuffs, as I recall, are outdated. Nowdays, you should type the bit normally, but put an exclamation mark before it. (For instance, for a bit that says "b52", you would type "!b52".

-Bob

I think there's 3 outcomes of the WG string: One leads to auroran, one leads to pirate and one allows you to start whatever other string you like. Which outcome you get is random.

The add 1000 thing was only in EV/O. Near the start of the Nova bible there's a big section on bits and stuff which explains all the operators.

This post has been edited by Guy : 09 January 2006 - 02:58 PM

Yeah, it's actually harder to not do any missions, while simultaneously not locking yourself out of them by declining, than it is to start the string you want. Staying out of bars helps, as does keeping your combat rating at zero and never accepting the "Delivery to Earth" mission.

I have a bunch of "template" pilots. One's strict play and several are copies of the same non-strict play pilot that have a variety of ships. I think I might also have one pilot that's done the Auroran string up to the multi-string bug abort point and has the Knight of the Red Branch rank.

I can't remember if I have a totally clean one with KotRB, but I know that whenever I try to get that rank it takes forever. In the three years I played Nova before joining these forums and reading the walkthroughs I never got it. It's fun, though, making and restoring backups. Much more fun that using a plug to set the bits or guarantee the "good branch" outcome would be.

Qaanol, on Jan 9 2006, 02:15 PM, said:

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Yeah - My primary goals in a template pilot tend to be a combat worthy ship (A good Starbridge or Valkyrie), access to the hypergates - which just got a lot harder apparently - and somewhere above 6 million credits.

I've done it in the past, but that was on my Mac and was a good couple years ago - starting over again now.

Never have tried a multi-string pilot, however.