The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

Is there anything that can be done about the planets in combat?

Nothing is more frustrating than the early game combat, especially when one dies essentially because one bumped a planet.

Now if this only happened near planets I suppose it could be tolerable.  However, one can be in the middle of nowhere and combat WILL HAVE A PLANET.

Never mind that the planet is so small as to actually be a stationary asteroid with some kind of amazing density - it can't be moved and it has a huge affect on the local gravity.

Perhaps the planet isn't small at all...  that would mean that the 30 man Spathi space ship is the size of a planet.

Surely in a space ship of this size we could fit more folks?

Just how big are these Spathi?  They'd have to be the size of a continent each!

If nobody else sees this as a major annoyance then could someone point me to the requisite lines of the source which create the planets?  I'd like to comment that out, no wait, I'll just delete the useless code.

Probably, but that's part of skill regarding the game.  Everybody runs into the planets when the game gives you a blind spot occasionally.  At the same time, though, the planet is your great equalizer and your best friend in some cases too.  

It would be nice if deep space encounters didn't have planets, but otherwise I think the topic poster is just whining.

Easy enough to do:  comment out lines 89 and 90 in src/sc2code/encount.c and rebuild.  No more planets when out in deep space.

Of course, expect to see alot of this kind of thing on your text console when you play:


...but fixing that is an exercise left up to the reader.  :)

All combat should be changed to an isometric view where you cannot, in fact, see anything.
Its more fun that way....

What I'd like to see is an option to turn off zooming when you get close, or to scale it back.  The way the screen would zoom in SC2 was the single worst thing about the game - getting blindsided by a planet in a close range chase, having the solar system view zoom in so the planet you're headed for is just barely off screen, and so on.  All of it could be fixed by just eliminating the zooming, if you're willing to live with the poor detail view.  Or maybe make all zooming player controlled.

I never really had a problem running into planets, unless it is ofcourse when it does end up in the blind spot.

I always keep in mind where the planet is though.

A pretty cool addition would be a little 'map' just a simple grid, where the planet is shown as a sphere, and you as a Blue blip, and your enemy as a red blip, and asteroids as grey blips.

I think it would be pretty cool, and there is lots of space in between the ship data.

You can't take away the planet. Without it, a Mycon is just a fat target for most ships. Other ships, especially the larger ones, gain significant benifits from having the planet. And how would the VUX kill a number of ships that it can Limpet without having a planet to nudge the enemy into?

I would certainly be glad to have a mini-map that shows the location of the planet. But I don't like the idea of controlling the scaling; what happens if you're playing multiplayer?



Wow, the game does that? I figured that the existence of the planet (and, of course, the gravity well that it generates) was something that was hard-coded into the melee engine. After all, every melee encounter has one (yes, the Sa-Matra battle lacks one, but I figured that the Sa-Matra itself was considered the "planet" for that encounter).

It IS "hard-coded" into the melee engine, which is why it is necessary to alter the source code and recompile the game executable to make it go away.

But therein lies the beauty of open-source software; if you've got the know-how, nothing is "hard-coded", and everything can be changed.  Some things are just a bit harder to change than others.  ;)

And if your completely self taught about computers, and are too young to learn code etc? Rot? =p

Maybe there could be an option to have an arrow on the edge of the screen? It'd point towards the planet, so you know where it is. It would change the game balance quite a bit, though.

One thing I learned in combat, was that if you coast for too long,  you'll eventually crash into the planet. Be sure to change your course every now and then, and you should be safer.

Has anyone else noticed that asteroids seem to be LAUNCHED at you? 2 objects travelling at high speeds, in a very large area, even with wraparound, would very VERY rarely hit your craft, yet im getting smacked by these things constantly =p Its very difficult to perfect kill a CHMMR with an ORZ when your getting bumped into that terawatt laser every few seconds =/

If you coast along in certain directions -- the four cardinal directions are best -- and one circuit doesn't smack you into the planet, you'll never hit it. Until an asteroid comes along, or the enemy rams you, or...

Divine Retribution?

There are always 5 asteroids in the arena.
If one gets destroyed, moments later a new one will be spawned.

I'm not sure whether Nic's one-line change will really get rid of the planet, or whether it will only prevent it from being drawn and colliding with things.
The gravity effect may still be there.

For a very different kind of game, try changing NUMPLANETS in line 178 of init.c, and play a game with 10 planets. :)
You may want to change line 355 in ship.c too from
if (GRAVITY_MASS (ElementPtr1->mass_points))
to
if (0)
so that bouncing off a planet doesn't hurt.