The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

Umm.... are there any? Ive done it with a HEX editor but I want t know if there are any cheats for battles ;D.

Use spathi.

not that i know of, but then again, i've never really needed to cheat in melee  8)

How did you cheat with the hex editor? I'm assuming you opened up your saved games and changed values... What did you change? I've poked around a bit, and haven't seen anything recognizable. Just curious, thanks.

well you won't see anything recognizable.

i'll check real quick and tell you some simple values as a head start  ;)


.:: EDIT ::.
Here ya go
first of all i use Hex Workshop which is free (just do a google search)

the location for the RU values is : Row 0000 : Column 5-6
                                                              5       6
but only the first half of column 6 like so [FFFF FF00] (the 00's you don't edit)

the location for the Credit values : Row  0070 : Column 10

that's all i feel like finding right now
                                                                                       

i've tryed it in version 0.5.0 but think that it might not work but I might have done it incorrectly...
do you know about the lander bug???

before you goto the orbital platform (space station), when you first start the game, goto jupiters first moon and get some radioactives... then go back to earth and land on the moon and check the luna base.. then goto the orbital platform again... tak to the guy with the t-shirt and give him the radioactives you got.. you'll get inturupted by an ilwrath guy who is an easy kill as those of us who have played the game know.. finish talking to him, you can ask him about specific details about things and what not if you would like but you don't have to...then before you exit the station goto the shipyard... go upto your land and sell it holding enter and you will all the sudden get infinite landers to sell... giving you more than enough money to finish the game... get as much as you need but you problebly don't need kore than 100k RU or so you can stop after a while...

as I said I have tried to confirm this on 0.5.0 but haven't done it successfully do they might have worked out the bug... but you can try it if you'd like.... it worked on the old pc version...

The lander bug was removed ages ago. It was actually fixed in some copies of the PC version.

i wonder if there is a simple way to make that bug come back, for all the people who feel they have to cheat for RU's...  ;D

Probably not; it seems the whole "Outfit Starship" part has been heavily rewritten since PC SC2. The new system has a bunch of slots for landers, just like any other modules, instead of a buy/sell operation on the lander pool (funny, I don't remember it being that way in earlier UQM versions).

You know, maybe they could add some sort of console and let you cheat, but I wouldn't want it. I discovered ages ago that beating a game, even on the easiest setting, was way more satisfying than cheating and walking through it. I couldn't tell you why.

Trust me, it's not THAT hard having to mine a few planets. And it's not THAT hard beating the Ai in melee. (Infact it's pretty easy.) This isn't one of those shinobi-level difficult games that are so hard on easy that set on difficult mode your friends will pay the price. I don't like those games. I don't care if the Ai plays like a retard. A lobodimized retard, even better. Because I want to beat the game, but I don't want to cheat.

what i would really like is a difficulty setting that makes your enemies a bit smarter during melee, i mean i can defeat a kohr-ah pretty easily with an earthling cruiser if i do a gravity whip before it damages me (this is even in super melee with the difficulty turned up). And i reject using the spathi cause then melee gets a little TOO easy.

oh and i want an 'Ur-Quan Checkup' system, where the ur-quan appear in the sol system after a period of time. Or you could have a "low profile" difficulty, EXAMPLE, if you fly through an enemy races territory and get in a bunch of melee battles with them, either that race or the ur-quan goto sol and guard the space station till you come back and then you have to confront them on a harder difficulty during that one melee battle.

okay i think i'm done rambling ;D

Improving the AI would, IMHO, be the best way to make the game harder without changing the plot at all. Currently, the AI likes to chase the player, which gives the player a huge advantage in range. This makes the Spathi Eluder the ultimate Ur-Quan killer, as it can run away and lob torpedos at pursuers. Now, imagine the computer Dreadnoughts standing still or moving unpredictably. The Dreadnought's fusion blast has a longer range than anything the Eluder has (although it lacks the tracking), forcing the Eluder to move within range to do anything at all to the Dreadnought (which could launch fighters to further complicate matters for the Eluder pilot).

The way I see it, the AI could be improved by giving it a few more tactics (e.g. retreating, pillboxing and gravity whipping) and the ability to switch tactics unpredictably and when the tactic it is using doesn't seem to work. When trying to hit fast-moving ships, it could also be advantageous for the computer to add a small random component to its aim if the enemy is consistently dodging incoming shots.

This sounds interesting, too.

See, improving the Ai is exactly what I don't want. That's what I was talking about. I enjoy beating the computer. I've played games where the computer plays a "perfect" game that will beat you every time and it only serves to lessen my love of the game. So I go the other way. I want a stupid Ai. In man vs machine I want to know man will always win. If I want to lose that's what PvP is for. Which is why I don't PvP anything. I like to win. I like to know I'm going to win.

Chill, dude. Nobody said anything about making the improved AI compulsory, let alone the default. In practice, this would probably be a new difficulty level for the full game and melee. Also, there's no particular reason to make it "perfect"; in fact, doing so in a game like UQM is likely to be quite hard. We're talking about giving those who have beat the full game umpteen times with various additional restrictions and who regularly beat the awesome AI in melee when outnumbered 1:3 something new to try.

That said, I don't quite see the point in a game you can't lose. Where's the challenge?

As an alternative, the harder AI could result in more RU gained from blowing up a ship in the full game, as you'll going to need it anyways because the AI is wiping the floor with you.

Possibly because some people game to relax as they have more than enough challenges in their day to day lives. After struggling with getting NASA's SAN back online so that they can launch the Shuttle, I sure as Hell don't want to play a game that is going to frustrate me further than I already am. ::)

Personally, I think any further development should be about refining the current codebase to weed out the bugs that are outstanding and then improving on the already existing design and content. It makes little sense to ad-hoc "features" in to a game that, frankly, doesn't require it. I've always believed that the SC universe was always about the story, not how well you click the arrow, shift and enter keys. This may come as a shock, but some of us don't even like the combat although we acknowledge the necessity of it for the defense of our beloved Precursor ship.

i hope that any of you aren't assuming that if a harder difficulty were made that it would be permanent, that's not something that the developers would do.
If they were gonna make a harder difficulty, there would be a choice, so don't get bent outta shape  8)

I'm not quite sure what sort of improvements you're referring to, but, in my opinion, weeding out the grossest stupidities out of the AI and using it for a new difficulty level is "improving on the already existing design", not "ad-hoc features". However, I agree that ensuring the stability of UQM should be a priority at this point.

Personally I consider the combination of action and adventure game aspects to be UQM's greatest strength. While the plot is a work of art, and I'm therefore loathe to tamper with it, (mostly) plot-irrelevant aspects of the game such as combat difficulty and minor user interface conveniences are the sort of thing that I feel could be developed further. Essentially, I'm suggesting a way to enhance replayability without changing the plot or any other artistic aspects of the game.

I understand that combat is an aspect of UQM you prefer to avoid, but I don't think that opinion is representative of the population of UQM players. I also fail to see how adding a higher difficulty level of this type would detract from your experience (other than by diverting development resources).

Hey gang
 I just ran across Ur-Q yesterday and loaded it up on my laptop so I could play a game that would not be to demanding on my computer. It started out pretty fun but within an hour I'm caught in a glitch. I just went into a solar system and mined a bunch of materials, but at a large cost (I only have three crewmen left). When I try to leave, a race called PROBE 2418-B destroys my ship in under a second. Nothing I do changes this outcome. Keep in mind, I'm still in the newbie category and my ship is extremely vulnerable. No amount of talking, running or fighting changes the results. I still die. I can stay in the system indefinitely without any conflicts, but as soon as I leave these guys bear down on me and its over as fast as it starts. If this kind of bug is happening in the beginning of the game, then I can just imagine how pissed I would get if I had a bunch of hours invested and got caught in this loop. That’s why I'm posting here, to try to find a cheat just to break out of this system and get somewhere safe so I can resume my exploration. I don’t want to have to start over, especially if something like this can occur again. Any body else feel my pain. I'm using 0.5.0 if that helps. Thanks

it aint a bug, those probes are supposed to be like that...

do you have any other ships besides your main vessel?
if so you could always transfer crew over to your main one so you can escape alive.

if you don't i guess your up shits creek, although you can use the saved game editor on my site to give you extra crue and resources and modules and whatever you can think of (except changing the in-game date) so you can have a powerful ship to destroy the probe.

if you want the saved game editor, look at my sig  ;)

First things first: head for Earth. That's what you came for anyways. If you've done everything needing to do at Earth, the probes won't come after you outright (they will come though) once you leave the solar system again.

If you play it out right, you should have enough fuel to start exploring after you've done the things you have to do at Sol (not to mention a new friend). Save your game before you leave, pick a system, check it out and if you don't like it, reload the game and try again.

On this note, perhaps a sticky topic "tips for new players" is in order?

Thanks for the quick response. I do have two extra ships, my spare and a ship from some guys that were hanging out at pluto. but the problem is I only have three crew members between all of them. Is there some way to send one off as a decoy or something?
 I got your save game editor, can you tell me how to use it? sounds like just what I need to get out of this mess.
 Thanxs again.

 BTW I'm not in Sol, I'm in Alpha Ptolemae S.E. of Sol.

If you don't mind me intruding, I'll answer that Kohr-ah Death;
The easiest thing to do is to locate your savegame on your computer and copy the editor in the same folder. Search for a file named Starcon2.00 and that will be your first savegame, Starcon2.99 being the last (if you got 99). Then open the editor and cheat away.

NOTE: If I were in your shoes, I'd just start over instead of cheating.

well he could always do a "reasonable cheat", you cheat to get out of a situation then you "uncheat" the save file to what you had before you cheated.
That way you get out of the sticky situation and get to live a bit longer  ;D

Me again
 I don’t like using cheats, I just don’t want  to go back through all that crap again. I was just going to give myself enough crew members to get away from these droid folk. I don’t have a Starcon2.00 file on my computer. In fact I've searched my C:\ drive and do not have any save game files what-so-ever. I have saved before this point, but not as frequent as I should have. I salvaged 2 solar systems before I got caught in my current situation. Here is the string I have for my game directory and I see no savegame info. (does Ur-Q 0.5.0 have anything to do with this?)

C:\Program Files\The Ur-Quan Masters\content\packages\addons\remix

I put the save editor in each one of these folders and executed, but I got the same error...FILE DOESNT EXIST.

 Has anyone else had this happen to them? Maybe I bit off more than I could chew when I decided to spread my seed throughout the galaxy with substandard equipment. Oh well, I guess I'll either start from a old save or maybe just find a game that’s less buggy.

 I had high hopes to play this 'cause I had "star control 1" way back when I was a fetus but I guess its just not as easy to forgive game bugs as it was when I was more nieve. I tried to play the first Command and Conquer game about a year ago and realize real quick that theres a reason these old games get put in the archives....bugs out the arse.

 Good luck guys and save the galaxy for me. thanxs again.

just search your hardrive for starcon2 and it should show up, but turn on the "show hidden files and folders" setting first in your folder options

What bug are you talking about? You went into unknown territory without crew, what did you expect?

If you've got a hex editor, you can edit the savegame manually btw. The crew is the 16th and 17 byte of the savegame. Don't set it higher than you've got room for, or I don't know what will happen. Setting it to 0x32 0x00  (50 crew) should do the trick.

See here (http://uqm.stack.nl/wiki/The_Ur-Quan_Masters_Technical_FAQ#Where_are_my_saved_games_stored.3F) on how to find your savegames.

My suggestion, take that guy hanging around pluto, keep a safe distance from the probe, and destroy it. It will take a while, but it's the best thing to do with probes at the start.

My second suggestion would be accept this game as a loss, keep your notes, and start over.
I know it seems tedious but I started UQM several times before beating it the first time. It's just the way things go till you get the hang of the game. (Lot's of games are like that.) You may have to restart the game later, unless you get in the habit of using multple save games to save at different points, and even then you may have to set the way back machine for way back to fix some screw ups. Don't give up, keep trying.

Another thing you can do is practice in super melee with a few spathi's vs a whole bunch of probes. The practice will help out.

That you most certainly did.

"Less buggy"? If you play badly, you get killed. Isn't that how games work in general?

I don't recall Command and Conquer having any noticeable bugs last time I played it (about a year ago, too). It seems like you are misunderstanding things and blaming it all on bugs.

Let me give you a tip that will save you some time if you start over: don't mine every planet. Look at what kind of minerals are present on the planet, and only mine them if they are worth your time.