The thargoid drive counts as a class 8 or 9 military drive. All military drives are better than their equivalent number regular drive, so the thargoid drive is the best drive in the game. But to get it, you must do almost all of the available hardcoded missions. (It takes about 3 game years do to fixed starting times on some of the missions)
My basic trading loadout:
Atmospheric shielding (so I can land on planets)
Drive (military or thargoid, smallest that will let me run the route in under a week)
1.5 times the fuel neccessary for the route (so I have backup)
No auto pilot since I fly and dock on manual faster than the autopilot could, using minimum delta t transfer orbits. (I practice with Orbiter, a space flight sim than NASA endorses as the most realistic you can get without being in the space flight business
:whistle: )
The money edit isn't worth it. This is one game where having unlimited money doesn't help if you are no good. And editing the ships gives the computer more of an advantage than it gives you, since the computer uses the exact same basic ships you do, and it can react more quickly. I edit the game to make it harder. (or sometimes to get more range so I can just go exploring the galaxy to see the sights, but that one also makes it harder to play the game)
Most of the best stuff, and the plot, is in the hardcoded missions. And you can't get most of them unless you start at the default start, in The Aliance space. There are also softcoded missions and plots that are only available through the military missions. And sometimes they are mutually exclusive. Especially once you get up to the higher military ranks, and find that some missions are unavailable because of ones you did for the other side. (basically, anything that shows up in the journals, is a major part of the game, and will affect your options, so it is worth buying 10 year subscriptions to each of them, and past those 10 years, there aren't any working hardcoded missions)
Unlike Elite II, the goal of FFE is the hardcoded missions, instead of becoming elite. Do you help the Empire, or the Federation? Squashing the Alliance in the proccess, of course. Or do you help the Alliance contact the Thargoids? And then find out about the shadowy conspuracy run by the INRA. (better be pretty high in the military so you can get nuclear missiles) Do you help the Thargoids, being labeled fugitive by the INRA, and get their technology? Or do you ruthlessly destroy them for the INRA and get labeled elite, and get the highest ranks in both the Empire and the federation?
And I say again. Look it up for yourself on jades.org since they have a lot more than I will put in here, including links.