The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

So far, the most violent planet I've found is Alpha Pavonis 4.  The vitals on it are 1404 C, Class 7 weather and class 4 tectonics.  Who can find something nastier?

I seem to recall the only planet around Sirius to be a deathtrap, especially considering it's the first planet most people starting the game will visit after leaving the Sol system. I think it has high temp, high tectonics, I know it has class 8 weather, and might even have hostile life to boot.

The first (only) planet of system 192,152. It is so hazardous, you can't even orbit it without your ship melting.

Wait...... Ships can melt if they are too close to planets/stars?

And yes, when I first played UQM and I tried to land on the sirius planet. Well I had a couple of things to say when I landed.



          OMG!!!!! ABORT!!!! ABORT!!!!!! *boomsplode*

The planets close to Supergiant stars are the most hostile, in overall.

Earth is the most dangerous place i nthe universe. A good thing it is shielded.

Yup. Thank god I don't live there! :D

Where is this kind of planet data actually stored? I did a search for "pavonis" in the source code but found nothing.

The Spathi home world. Those evil creatures will kill you every time!

The star names are in content/lbm/starcon.txt (with most of the other user interface text) for easier internationalisation. The stars are defined in src/sc2code/plandata.c. The planets themselves are generated pseudorandomly (with exceptions for plot-related stuff), mostly through code in src/sc2code/planets.

Ok thanks, it's kind of fun playing around with these things. I also tried doing a faster-time mod.

EDIT: It seems like combat is sped up alot after I did this. Is combat slower in time slower-time mod?

How about the planet with the VUX Beast on it?

I'd say Mercury is the most dangerous, because you get told to go there, and before you have any lander enhancements.  You could potentially waste lots of crew and several landers on Mercury in the (mistaken!) belief that it's necessary in order to advance the game.

Delta Lyncis I? The Beast doesn't make it so dangerous, since it is only one. Just like the Vindicator. It can be easily avoided, if not confronted.


Yes, you're right. There's no possible way to find about Io and its much easier-to-take radioactives stockpile, save for exploring (which you won't do before you save the StarBase, since you won't know that it's necessary).

Also dangerous are the Alpha Centauri planets. After Sirius, that star is your first destination for sure due to its popularity as the closest star from Sun. (at least the TrueSpace Alpha Centauri, the star in the game is probably another one, even if it's still a red supergiant).
Fortunately, even if you're not going to get minerals from your trip to AC, you'll still meet a very nice - though missing a dialogue line  ;D - person.

Actually, the first time I played UQM, upon hearing that Mercury was dangerous, I explored the rest of the solar system and looted Io and some other moons.

Are there different categories of planets? Like "normal weather, normal tectonics", "extreme weather, extreme tectonics" that the planets are generated in? If so then I guess there are many planets that are in the most extreme category and which planet is the most dangerous is random between them.

The full classification of planets is given in Ultronomicon.

...And to go with the, I guess, "attractive nuisance" theme, I propose that unfriendly homeworlds are the most dangerous.  If you're skeptical, just look through the archives and check out all the "How many ships does a homeworld have?  I fought 934753208 but that still wasn't enough to invade" threads.

You fought 934753208?! Well, if only you had fought one more, you would have conquered the planet! Enemy homeworld fleets always have 934753209 ships.
And when you conquer it, you gain complete control of the race, you can order them to mine for you, to build ships for you, to attack other races for you...  8)

And BTW, the REALLY MOST DANGEROUS planet is the one with the Cloaking Device. Weather and tectonics are Class 100, the temperature is 1,000,000,000^oC and so on. If you land on that planet you will be vaporized immediately. God, if only you enter its star system you will be completely erasen from history, from the most distant past to the most distant future (you will not have existed ever!).
That's why you need to combine the Glowind Rod and Wimbli's Trident to make a propulsion system for the Utwig bomb, in order to detonate its sun and cool the planet down. And then you need to move fast, or the gravity well will collapse.
This adds to the danger of the planet - you'll lose a device which is required to finish the game and you will be stuck.
(The system I'm talking about is Alpha Corvi, which can be reached by travelling to the northwestern corner of QuasiSpace.)

And, without joke, the most dangerous planet has to be Eta Vulpeculae II, at least before Bukowski destroyed the data on the central computer. A planet with information that can annihilate an entire race and nullify the borders between dimensions, bringing into HS&TS evil entities like Orz...

Orz aren't evil!

And... only ONE race? I think the most dangerous planet is that one in Delta Crateris...

"That's not a planet, it's a battlestation!"

 :P
The Sa-Matra not only is not a planet, it also never commited genocide. Only enslaved races.

And Orz isn't evil intentionally - no one is -, we just call him so since he did "evil" things.

if 192,152 means Sirius, I've seen far more dangerous planets than that...

Well... the computers on Eta Vulpeculae II aren't exactly the planet either. I was just pushing the boundaries a bit. :P

The computers are part of Juffo-Wup... err, the planet I mean. If you go on the planet you will be tempted to visit them.
And indeed there are so many ruins that it's hard not to bump into them when you are chased by the evil bio...

That's the idea right? That they named some stars in HyperSpace after known stars. Isn't that kind of unrealistic, I mean for one, things are commonly named in systems, like the name of stars today. And to use the same name for two different stars, just assigning stars in HyperSpace with random TrueSpace names isn't very smart either.

Kind of.  From the map:


See, they're still named in groups.  Just give the constellation a name and slap alpha, beta, gamma, delta, et cetera on the individual stars to distinguish different stars within a constellation.

I don't think they are using the same name for two different stars, exactly.  It's two separate systems of naming that have little to do with each other.  Each system is self-contained; it's only when you try to look at them both together--or when you don't know which system is being used--that you run into problems.  It's like, when you say "dinosaur", do you mean it in the specific, technical sense that experts use, or do you mean it in the "common use" sense (giant prehistoric lizards)?

And yes, it is a bit of a handwave and it probably wouldn't actually be done that way, should such a situation occur, but it allows the game map to be arranged freely according to the needs of the game, instead of requiring the game to be painstakingly arranged according to existing astrological data, which would probably be a lot more work without adding a lot.  (And of course, it also means that discoveries of new astrological objects don't suddenly make the game map "wrong" because, oops, it doesn't have those things: the more visibly separate you make a canon universe from the real universe, the less any changes in [the real universe/our knowledge of it] will affect suspension of disbelief.)

/derail

You can't be sure Orz did anything evil, or even "evil" - I don't think he did...

Well, it's your opinion. But in the 1998 IRC chat FF/PR3 confirmed that Orz was the one who snagged the Androsynth. If you don't believe me, search for "snag" in the chat (on The Pages of Now and Forever)

And how do you know the Orz didn't take the Androsynth for safe-keeping when "They" came?

Eh, it just seems more likely. And why didn't they bring the 'Synth back after the threat passed? Because they were unsuccesful in safeguarding them?
The Arilou, who seem very trusty - not only for the errors they make in dealing with humans since "they forgot how it was like" -, tell us not to trust Orz.
Just all bits of information we have on the subject seem very well joined if we consider the 'Synth victims of the Orz.
Now, of course, even if Orz were "They", why is merging/whatever bad? Neither the Arilou nor the Orz are good/evil, they just have different views, it would look - and the quote from the same IRC chat -
Still, it's a bit "evil" to do to something anything against his will. Well, the Arilou are a bit "evil" too then...

Simple - the threat didn't pass.

Well, but how do you explain this Orz quote then?:
"A better *level* for games"? So a better dimension for saving races from "Them"?!
The Arilou are "*jumping in front*" again? They can't be "Them", of course, since they warn you about "Them". And if the Arilou had arrived sooner to save the Androsynth, why didn't they save them, and instead waited for Orz? Then why did they "*jump in front*", for no reason?!
In my explanation, they would have done this to protect the 'Synth from Orz, but were unsuccessful.
And why does Orz want to have "*parties*" with us?!

It seems to be that TFB made the Orz intentionally ambiguous.
But if I were to make a sequel, I'd make the Orz good (or at least not evil), just because that would be the least obvious and hence most interesting scenario.

The next Star Control would be no doubt very hard to make, if only for the need of taking a decision in this direction.
I would like the Orz not evil, still - since I like him.
Ah, BTW, one other thing I would like to see is the Utwigs not getting killed -
che'z'puf made a subtle suggestion about the Faz being Utwigs, and FF/PR3 suggested, even more subtle, that the Faz will anyway die in the sequel.
So I highly hope that the Utwig are not the Faz.

I'd like to see the Orz kept ambiguous, but with more evidence (ambiguous in itself) for both sides.  :D  Who says every last thing has to be resolved?

But if it were resolved I'd rather they didn't turn out evil.

Judging by this comment, I doubt it would stay very ambigous (although it's possible).

As for resolving things, I think it would be nice that fans are rewarded for their decade-long speculation with a resolution. Of course there would have to be new unresolved issues to keep us speculating for another decade.

Oh, I see.

Yeah that was basically my point.

Yes, I guess it's a clever solution in that way.

Playing UQM again, started looking for nasty places (for landers to poke around) after I saw this post.

Sof far most dangerous (for landers) places I've found are:
Zeeman Ia - Weather 7, Tectonics 6 and Temperature 4995 C
Alpha Apodis IIIa - Weather 7, Tectonics 7 and Temperature 2653 C

Have to keep my eyes open, maybe something nastier will show up... 8)

So really the most dangerous planet is random from game to game? Or are there some hard-coded really dangerous planets?

The random seed is the same from game to game, which makes the pseudo-random generator generate the same planets and moons. In fact, changing it would probably mess things up badly as planets and moons necessary to the plot may not be generated with all seeds.

src/sc2code/planets/solarsys.c: line 243 sets the random seed for each solar system to the co-ordinates of the system. This seed is then used to generate the other random seeds used.

Ok, I see. I thought that the SHOFIXTI_DEFINED, RAINBOW_DEFINED, EGG_CASE0_DEFINED etc. took care of setting up the special systems correctly and that the rest (at least the rest of the planets) were random.

But anyways that means that you should be able to find the constantly most dangerous planet. I'm not very good at understanding the source code but one could just examine every planet that's generated and save the ones with the most extreme tectonics/weather. Also save the ones with the highest temperature, however that's generated.

Look at uqmdebug.c (and doc/devel/debug).  You can use it to iterate through all the worlds in the game and collect information like this quite easilly.

Ok... Could you use functions like "dumpUniverseToFile" to dump all the planet information?

My plan was basically to find the place the planets are generated and just add a line that also dumps the information to a file. Unfortunately, like I said, I'm not to good with source code so I'm not sure I can even pull that off.

I searched all giant and super-giant stars and found these. My basic criteria were tectonics and weather higher than 6 and temperature higher than 1500 °C.

Zeeman Ia - Weather 7, Tectonics 6 and Temperature 4995 °C
Zeeman IVb - Weather 7, Tectonics 6 and Temperature 3892 °C
Alpha Geminorum Ia - Weather 7, Tectonics 8 and Temperature 1800 °C
Alpha Apodis IIIa - Weather 7, Tectonics 7 and Temperature 2653 °C
Alpha Camelopardalis II - Weather 7, Tectonics 8 and Temperature 1310 °C
Alpha Columbae III - Weather 7, Tectonics 7 and Temperature 1920°C
Beta Cephei Ic - Weather 8, Tectonics 7 and Temperature 164 °C

No wonder that Zeeman is so hot. Remember Burton's tactic from the SC2 manual?

Nope, what was that?

In the future, use http://starcontrol.classicgaming.gamespy.com/sc2/sc2_hist1.shtml (http://starcontrol.classicgaming.gamespy.com/sc2/sc2_hist1.shtml) for the Star Control 2 backstory.

Ok, thanks.

You mean PoNaF's copy of the story from the PC SC2 manual (http://starcontrol.classicgaming.gamespy.com/sc2/sc2_hist.shtml), right (your link seems to be broken)? If you have the manual, you can use that instead, of course.

Ah, oops, it was http://starcontrol.classicgaming.gamespy.com/sc2/sc2_hist.shtml (http://starcontrol.classicgaming.gamespy.com/sc2/sc2_hist.shtml) without 1, of course.
Thank you for correcting me.