The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

Will someone tell me how to lift off from planets once on them? :) the only way I get off planets is by having my lander blown up,  and when I discover a moon base it tells me to lift off.

Need help!

Hit Escape.

and one more thing... When I am on a planet getting resources, my ship stops collecting. I'm assuming my cargo is full. What do I do next?

Return to the ship and send it down again. If you look on the right of the screen you'll see your ship's status. On the very left side of it is a red bar that lights up as you collect resources. It's a good indicator of how many resources you've collected.

Thanks for the info! A great help!  But how do I get more crew members? ??? I'm flying around with 0 right now :-/

Head back to Earth's Space Station and use the Shipyard to increase your crew.  Maybe add a few crewpods first.  ;D

what components do you guys recommend for starters?

Thrusters and cargo holds are generally good when you're starting out.  I try and max-out thrusters ASAP (usually before leaving Sol for the second time; I leave Sol _immediately_ on starting out to get a few probe resources.)  ::)

I haven't left SOL yet, I tried to leave earlier when I just started playing, and some probe killed me right as I left. :P

My approach at the beginning of the game is as follows. Mine out every planet except for Venus (too dangerous) and Luna before you go to the starbase. Take care to grab radioactives on Mercury because by the time you get to it your cargo bay should be nearly full. Pick up Fwiffo, go to the starbase, then take care of the rounds there. By the time you're able to configure the ship, you should have ~5000 RU. Sell the Cruiser and you'll be up to 6000. Remove all of your modules and this total will be 11000.

Arrange your modules thusly:
2 Fuel tanks
3 Storage bays
2 Crew pods
5 Thrusters
2 Turning Jets

You can swap out extra thrusters for landers, but I don't recommend that until returning from your first trip. Just be really careful with that lander, okay?

Start mining southward (I know there's no such thing as north, south and so on in space, but humor me), picking up only green, yellow, orange, and purple deposits. Also, when you're only a few units away from finishing off a full load, do NOT pick up any more minerals until you've dumped off what you have back on the flagship. I say this because if you try to pick up more than you have space for, the lander will take what it can and the rest will vanish.

I should emphasize that you should AVOID enemy encounters as much as possible. If you must fight, use Fwiffo and if he perishes, RUN as fast as you can.

Continue in this fashion until you make it to Pkunk space, get gift ships from them, then once you're ready to return to the Starbase, sell off those ships and you should have a lot of resources to add full turning jets/thrusters. I recommend you at least add one more crew pod and two more fuel tanks, bring your cargo bay count up to 5 or 6, then spend the rest on landers. Start mining toward the Vulpeculae system (there are a LOT of Treasure Worlds and such in that area), and from there you should have plenty of RUs to do whatever you need to.

Generally this method requres knowing your way around the game (I can usually stop mining altogether after the second run and rely solely on gift ships and enemy scavenging afterwards), but obviously it's not required and you can amass a big fortune mining selectively.

After a certain point you'll be able to convert the Vindicator into a war machine, and from there I suggest that you "mine" Ur-Quan hulls, particularly in the slice of Ur-Quan-only space just beyond Betelgeuse (420:400 approximately). As long as you're careful enough to make it back in one piece, you should be okay. Carry extra shps but only use them to replenish lost crew.

So...that's the basic outline of my early-game method. Hope it helps.

Leaving Sol before rescuing the Starbase and recruiting the Earthlings guarantees Probe encounters.

Great starting guide, Sage. I might try that strategy sometime.

Oh, and by the way, how would you go about changing the take off button back to CTRL? It's annoying having to keep my hand over the ESC key, as I'm used to the v0.2 controls still.

Go to your UQM settings directory.

Under Unix-based systems, that's ~/.uqm
Under Windows 2k and later, it's in
Documents and Settings/(your name)/Application Data/uqm

Note that Application Data is usually a hidden directory.

I believe it's in \windows\application data\uqm under Win98.

In any case, there's a file called keys.cfg.  Edit that file to change the settings.

You want to find the line that says
Lander-Escape: key Escape

And either replace it with or add a new line that says
Lander-Escape: key RightControl

(Mapping multiple keys to Lander-Escape will make any of them work.)

The VControl documentation page (http://hkn.berkeley.edu/~mcmartin/vcontrol/doc/index.html) gives the "generic" instructions for configuration, and also lists all the names for special keys.

Not really, in win98 there isn't such thing. It is in The Ur-quan masters/Contect dir.

Ah, thank you. And, Deep_Jiffa, are you sure you're counting hidden folders? In XP, the 'Application Data' folder is hidden, so it may be also true on '98.

I am sure. I had win98*second edition* 2 months ago. Last month I have upgraded to windows 2000 and last week I have upgraded to xp.

Oh... I thought there was one somewhere, though I may have been imagining things again.  :P

P.S. You shoulda stuck with '98, or at least stopped at 2000 :P

There is. At least in Win98 SE. It might be possible to move it using tweakui or by editing the register directly, but on a normal install, it's there.
I'm looking at the dir from Linux now, so I can't tell for sure whether it's supposed to be hidden from Windows normally, but I don't remember that being the case.

Ah, I could check on my old comp, too, but methinks that's enough confirmation for now. :P

My old computer has 95 + I had windows 98 a while ago + I can install it anytime + remember when I posted when all of my saves "disappeared"? That was because the save place has changed! It wasn't in the "correct" dir( The one in uqm/).

Here all the proves you need to know. But come on! Why are we arguing about this small detail?

Actually when i start i never mine planets/moons of the inner planets. (Mercury, Vernus, Mars) except Earths moon. Radioactives can be found on one of the moons of Jupiter i believe). Less dangerous to start mining there for the first trip to the solar station...

There are lots of radioactives on Io (Jupiter's inner moon) but Io has a substantial amount of tectonics. Of course, with this larger screen, tectonics remain easy to avoid indefinitely until class 5 or 6... if you just want a single touch of radioactives to get the station going, one of the other moons of jupiter has one deposit of radioactives, and is completely safe.