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There can be several reasons, but the most common would be that you have been detected by a Lookout. Lookouts are a new species of NPCs that act as "Super Enforcers" since they can detect you no matter what outfit you have or where you are (although not all of them are "Super" but we will pretend that they are for now, you will learn it the more you play). Lookouts can catch you quite off guard if it's your first time playing, plus the area they cover is usually quite large and makes you confident when you don't see them.
Maybe
there are now other assassin's
"Lookouts" (body guards on patrol basically)
and a few other things.
the camera is to help take a picture of a person, and then using the clue's given by diana you compare if they match.
earings, drinking water, hat, coughing, etc.
You can then MARK, with whatever the button its given while looking through the camera hud, you can start removing marks or making one the "prime target" or "NOT A TARGET"
making sure you can easily identify who you're looking for, and who to avoid.
there's a lot of other things that I could go into, but id deff look up a guide! its..alot
2. Check if the Suspect has all of the physical traits and clothing listed in the phone/mission screen. If they have all 4, proceed to step 3. Note - earrings can be very small and difficult to spot, tattoos and necklaces can be partially obscured by clothing. Taking photos with the camera and zooming in can help with this process.
3. Tail the suspect and wait for them to show their two 'Tells' and their secret agenda. Unlike with the physical description, each suspect only has 2 tells and 1 secret agenda. So anything that doesn't match is an immediate giveaway that they're not your target.
4. Once you're sure you have the right person, assassinate the target.
This is great advice. I'm writing this down.
It sounds like the issue is your methodology, not your gear. Much like the original game, every Freelancer mission is possible to complete without any gear on loadout, certain things help a lot of course but nothing is necessary. JasonS already gave great advice, let me share some of mine.
Showdowns will always take place on whatever map is leftover as the final mission, so take that into account when choosing missions, so you aren't left to Showdown on a map that's difficult for them. I recommend avoiding the following maps:
* Marrakesh, Colorado, Santa Fortuna, Isle of Sgail, Ambrose Island: these maps have a lot of guards on them, which means a higher risk of death or being spotted. If you know what you're doing, you can manage them, but if you're learning I'd avoid them.
* Bangkok, Hokkaido, Haven, Berlin, Mendoza: these maps require multiple different disguises to get around and/or are difficult to isolate targets on to discretely kill them, which makes Showdowns more challenging.
Look at the screen opposite the Prestige Objectives board to see Leader traits ahead of a mission, and plan accordingly; someone who eats or drinks will be easy to poison, and a smoker can be exploded or set on fire. Note that the "Sweet Tooth" tell does not apply, those suspects will carry candy with them to munch on and not eat from food and drink around the level.
Finally, if you can help it, NEVER go loud on a Showdown. Alerting the network (the suspects, the lookouts, and the assassins) will likely result in the suspects and leader fleeing to an exit and failing the showdown. Silenced weapons and discrete kills are your friends. Bring emetic weapons (if you've unlocked the outside, you can find a Mushroom there for an emetic poison, or take it into the infirmary to make into a syringe), silenced weapons, and a banana and a grapevine (as in the campaign, slips from these objects are non-suspicious and won't alert them).
Suspects will have 4 physical traits among the following: hair color (or no hair), a tattoo, earrings (which may be in one ear, so check both sides), a necklace (can be worn over or under their clothes), glasses (includes sunglasses and glasses pushed up on the forehead), or a hat. Hair color is ALWAYS one of the 4, so you have an easy thing to check immediately.
As soon as you spawn, make a beeline for the nearest Suspect and take a zoomed-in picture of them. When viewing a Suspect through the camera, you can either toggle them as a non-Suspect off or on, or as a Prime Suspect; non-Suspects have their icons go grey to note you've ruled them out, Prime Suspects have a unique icon to note you've identified them as, well, a Prime Suspect. So, the Leader is a blonde? You see someone with red or black hair, use the camera to mark them as non-suspect. Additionally, Suspects will only have 4 Traits, so if the Leader is noted as wearing earrings, a necklace, and glasses, that means they won't have a tattoo or a hat, and thus anyone who does is not your target.
If you've identified the person you're fairly sure is the Leader, tail them. Eventually they'll perform a Tell (the icon over their header will change to reflect their action) or go to a Meeting, either way you can check if it matches your intel via the camera. If you match both Tells and all 4 Traits, you have a winner. Either track them to an isolated location or poison them to send them running to a bathroom, and kill them once you have the chance.
Later Showdowns will add more Suspects to the pool, including Suspects with different Agendas. There are 3 types: business meeting, handover meeting, or secret meeting. Aside from each having a distinct icon, the physical behavior of the Suspects in their meetings gives them away; business meetings, they always shake hands before they leave, a handover, one of them will give the other an item. Additionally, if incapacitated, they'll drop a burner phone, business is blue, handover is green, and secret is red. There's the possibility on later Showdowns that even if a Suspect meets all 4 Traits and 2 Tells, their Agenda doesn't match your Leader's profile, so it isn't them.
Showdowns include Assassins and Lookouts (icons next to the minimap alert you if they're nearby). Assassins tend to follow Suspects around looking discrete, but you can easily pick them out because they follow Suspects. Assassins are very dangerous and can kill 47 quickly, so if you notice one protecting your Prime Suspect, try to get them out of the way before going in for the kill. Even if the Leader heads into a bathroom and the Assassin waits outside, don't get complacent, if the Leader is killed they'll likely come in to check on them and spot you.
Lookouts may or may not be armed, they act as enforcers and can see through most any disguise. Easy to notice them, look for enforcers while in Instinct view. If they spot you, they'll immediately out you and their network will begin to flee. While Assassins tend to follow Suspects, Lookouts usually patrol a set area.
The best way to deal with Assassins and Lookouts is a bullet; provided you can do it without the corpse or you being seen, you get a nice little exp bonus for taking them down (knocking them out and hiding the body also counts). As further incentive, Assassins always carry a silenced pistol, always a good thing to have. Otherwise they're vulnerable to the usual Guard distractions; drop a weapon or a briefcase in their view and they'll confiscate it and take it to a weapon crate.
Because you don't want to raise suspicion in Showdowns, your primary objective should be to avoid notice. Even if you're just trespassing briefly and are spotted by a guard, if there happens to be an Assassin or Lookout around, they'll be alerted and their network will flee. Also be sure to avoid doing illegal actions unless you're absolutely positive there's no one around. Once you've identified the Leader, isolate them, pick them off, and be sure you stash the body. Then you can run for the exit and you're done.
Here's some further tips:
* As mentioned, the Banana and Grapevine can make NPCs slip and go unconscious without it being suspicious. Use this to grab a burner phone from a Suspect, and if it's the same type as the Leader, you can use it to lure them into the perfect assassination spot. Run to a secluded spot, use the phone, and wait; all Suspects part of that network will eventually arrive, and you can examine them to try and identify the Leader one at a time.
* Try to avoid incapacitating Suspects you know aren't the Leader. Even if you know for sure they aren't the Leader, you can't hide their bodies unless they're dead, which inflicts a 1000 Merces penalty for killing the wrong Suspect. If you don't care, great, otherwise knocking them out means you can't hide them and on top of all the usual reasons you don't wanna leave an unconscious body out in the open, if they get woken up their network will be alerted and flee. If you must take them down without the Banana or Grapevine, be sure you can drag their body somewhere no one will find it.
* If there's a handover network in the Showdown, the items they drop may include remote explosives, lethal poisons, or emetic grenades, all of which can be handy to take down the Leader.
* If you have an objective like "Make Target Slip" or "Poison Target", it only counts when you do it to the Leader, not other Suspects. Think you've found the Leader? Shoot them with a dart gun; if "Poison Target" isn't crossed off, you guessed wrong, if you get credit for it, you've found your target.
* If you alert the network, you're not screwed yet, because the Leader still has to actually flee to an exit and will stand there for a few seconds while they escape. If you get word your target is fleeing, you'll be shown their distance from their exit point, and if you haven't identified the Leader yet you can try to guess based on their location. Run to the exit point and try to shoot them before they make their getaway. Like in normal missions, guards along the way will escort them in addition to Assassins, so being caught at this point is a death sentence if you can't hide immediately, but you can still try to nail a headshot before they escape and then make a break for it yourself. Alternative, chunk an explosive at them and kill them all, a Merces penalty with a victory is preferable to the alternative of a failure.
The game mode is quite complex at first, and I think it would've been a good idea to be given a few "free fails" to get the hang of it. Or maybe something like spending merces to save your stuff in case of failure since money is useless once you have every weapon.
I also think that house cosmetics should be unlocked with merces instead of the eternal grind.
This could have been a fun mode, but it's just not.
SA is rewarded if you can pick it as a prestige objective but other than that, your questions above are valid in my opinion.
- It isn't, it's required for every mission.
- Agreed it doesn't make much sense, but it's understandable from a mechanic perspective; if there was no penalty for killing the wrong suspects, there'd be no point to trying to figure out who the leader is, the player could kill them all indiscriminately
- SA is available as a Prestige objective, the highest-paying one, but is much harder in Freelancer. Breaking out of the SASO mindset - it's okay to kill someone, leave bodies in the open, be seen doing illegal things - is critical to Freelancer.
- Every mission has a merchant available.
- It's intended to be a "Rogueslike" game, so every mission has to be completed in one go.
To be blunt, if you've continued to make zero progress despite the helpful tips people have offered you, then that's a skill issue on your part. It isn't that difficult once you adapt to the different kind of playstyle demanded.
If you're still up for giving it another go, pick a campaign that has you visit New York. Famously, you can raid the bank vault for several thousand Merces by extracting the datacore, and can find three more in the vault on a cushion, and in two safety deposit boxes. A quick, easy, and early way to grind money for equipment.