What's the easiest way to maximize profits from Insurance Fraud?

Question

Insurance Fraud is one of the side activities in Saints Row 3. I'm planning on using it to get the Windshield Cannon challenge, but that means that I'm going to have to gain money in Insurance Fraud very quickly to make up for the time I spend goofing around and flying through windshields.

What's the best strategy for playing Insurance Fraud?

Answer

The trick I've always used (this worked in SR2 as well as SR3) is as follows:

• Start the mission
• Get to the nearest highway
• Stand in the shoulder until you see a car coming (ideally a long line of cars, or a large truck)
• When the car is getting close, run into the street and towards the hood of the car.
• Jump and hit the ragdoll button (in SR3, don't use your "sprint" for this, or you'll do a dive roll instead of a jump)
• If there are more cars behind the one you hit, try to aim yourself at another car while in midair.

When your adrenaline maxes out, try to "surf" down the highway by hitting the front of a large truck, and then guide yourself in midair so that you hit it again as you're coming down.

Cars appear to be more plentiful and drive faster on the highway, although this has been adjusted in SR3, so smaller streets are a more viable option. If you're in the road, they may slow down (this was much worse in SR2), which reduces the chances they will hit you hard enough to give good cash. Thus, stay out of the road unless you're just about to get hit.

In general, the more cars you hit in one fall, the better. Each car hit doubles your score for the hit, as well as adding a decent amount to the money counter. The cars don't have to be unique; you can bounce back and forth between 2 cars, and it will continue to count towards your multiplier.

If you're in adrenaline mode and the meter is running low, you can recharge your adrenaline if you "finish" a large hit before you run out. Adrenaline mode also doubles your score for any hits that finish while its active, so finishing a hit before it runs out is better than landing afterwards, if you have a choice.

Finally, if you're playing with a partner, one of you may want to hang out in the "extra adrenaline" zones. The highway is a much better place to get massive hits, but having your adrenaline maxed out is enough of a benefit to make it worthwhile if you have two people.

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Is it possible to “import” a Saints Row 2 character into SR3?

Question

I realize I could answer this for myself by spending an hour or two with Image as Designed and the Initiation Station, but I'm hoping someone already has the answer.

While there isn't any way to directly import characters from Saints Row 2 into Saints Row: The Third, the character customization for both games is very similar. But are they similar enough? Would using the same values for each customization parameter produce the same face? Do they even have all the same parameters?

Answer

After spending some time in Image as Designed in SR2 and in the SR3 Initiation Station, it's clear that you cannot create the same character in both games by using the same values.

While both games share nearly all the same customization sliders, the values are relative, not absolute. This can be most easily seen by switching ethnicities within the same game. Even with the same skin tone and all sliders set to 50 (the default), characters will not look the same if they were created from different ethnicities because different "bases" underlie your customizations.

Similarly, SR2 and SR3 use different bases, even for the same ethnicities. While it might be possible to create the same face in both games, they won't have the same customization values, making it impossible to easily "port" characters.

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