
Now I realize this is probably done for more realism and to create more of a challenge which I can appreciate.

The difficulty slider does nothing to help this, only affecting my durability. All the NPC ships are now bullet sponges! It can take a few minutes to destroy even one ship, a full battle can last 15-20 minutes or so between their now erratic tactics and each enemy using multiple shield and hull repairs. After reading up on mods for the game I also installed the Crossfire 2.0 mod package specifically for the extended SP campaign (I really don't have any interest in getting into multiplayer anytime soon) and after a few false starts got everything working swimmingly.well, with one big exception. After watching a recent stream of Freelancer I got the itch to drag out my old copy and play through the single player campaign again, something I haven't done for years.
