The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

Hello all. I never played SC2 way back then, but I'm a very oldskool kind of guy and I just had to try UQM. So far, it gives me the exact same "whoa, cool" vibe as the original XCom did.

Anyway. More than once, I've had Landers instantly fried upon landing by lightning bolts and various other environmental hazards. At first I was a wee bit miffed since it seemed pretty random, then I figured it probably had something to do with the stats displayed in the main window when scanning. Some of the icons there appear self-explanatory, but most completely stump me. Is there some reference somewhere to these stats and how they affect exploration? I can't seem to find anything related in the manual file.

Thanks in advance for any help!

in the left hand side, is as follows:
orbit
atmosphere
temperature
weather
tectronics

in the right hand side, is as follows:
mass
radius
gravity
day
tilt.

if you do not like the pictograms, use the command line
cscan pc
this will change the the default pictures into text, wich is easier to read. imo. ~DEFIANT

Weather greater than 2 means you get lightning bolts hitting the surface (and your lander). Obviously they range in intensity from 3 and 4 (dodgeable) to 7 and 8 (impossible). Similar situation with earthquakes and Tectonics. 3 and 4 (dodgeable)  to 7 and 8 (insane).

Temperature... above 100 degree C = periodic blasts of flame. If it's not too high (say less than 300 or 400) then they're very rare, while planets with temperatures of say... 4500 degrees are rather insane. However crossing paths with a hotspot is incredibly lethal and can demolish even a completely full lander.

General rule: Supergiant stars will have planets that are mostly if not completely above 100 degrees C.

Biological scan for life. If the creatures are moving insanely fast across the surface of the planet, you may wish to rethink going down to mine. Creatures can be quite lethal to your lander. If the atmosphere is a vaccuum, you can assume there is no life present.

If saving and reloading when you lose a lander is not your thing, then I suggest not going to any planet with a higher rating than 3 in either weather or tectonics, or temperature above 100 C.

You can obtain upgrades later that will protect your lander against these environmental disasters.

That certainly lights my lantern. Merci beaucoup!

Don't land on higher than 3???

For me, that depends on the stat.  Like said before 0-2 is a no-brainer...
3 is pretty dodgeable for all hazards.
4 or 5 for quakes isn't too bad... I generally lose a little crew and burn some extra fuel (to resupply)... But it can be worth it.  

If life iis a gold mine.  Each unit of biological data is worth 2 credits.  Fuel is 1 credit per unit.  1 unit of fuel is 20 RU...

So if you kill something for 5 units of biological data, then that's 200 RU...  If you clean up an entire planet and lose 10 or 20 crew... it's probably worth it.

Just my 2 cents ;)

Yes, and a rainbow world nets you a nice 10,000RU.

But by the same token, traveling through space is bloody expensive. A full high-efficiency tank doesn't last you very long at all (100 units of fuel, not considering the 10 fuel unit tank your ship is pre-equipped with) and costs 2000 RU to fill up to the brim.

Personally, I am the sort of person that doesn't mind restarting a game over and over and over until I clear out Venus (weather 8 ) with no lander casualties (took me over an hour) but if you're into 'playing fair' (saving and reloading totally eliminates the point of being able to buy additional landers) then you might not want to take the chance of landing on planets with greater weather/tectonic activity than 3.

But there are a pair of rather hostile worlds with exotics in Alpha Centauri that most people find worth risking lander death for.

I wrote a launcher which allows you to change all available UQM settings.

One of them is the ability to turn off the pictogram planet info, and have it just display the text version, like the PC SC2.

Grab it if you'd like

http://www.theafterm.ath.cx/uqm/UQM%20Launcher+Libs.exe

Heres a pic
(http://www.theafterm.ath.cx/uqm/UQM%20Launcher.jpg)

Nice.. but it completely crashed my Windows XP. Everything just hanged, even my Winamp stopped playing (or actually the play buffer begun looping), keyboard or mouse didn't respond. Waited minute or so.. and pressed reset to boot. Sorry :)

Luckily I didn't have anything important open at that time.. like some remix work ;)

I also have a program that does this. It's called "sh", and it won't crash your computer...

Personally I just don't remember Venus having anything on it that's worth wasting all effort on, so why bother? :) The only places at Sol I ever go to are Pluto -> Io (for radioactives) -> Starbase -> Luna -> Mercury, then on to greener pastures (that is, redder supergiant pastures).

Tectonics? sorry.

tectronics...sorry forgot the "r". but if your not sure what that means, its another word for earthquakes. of course you would have probley gotten that if you payed more attention in science class, and i, english, for spelling. ~DEFIANT

no, I mean I thought it was spelled tectonics, like plate tectonics?

it is... i think... ok now im confused ???

Rockasaurus is right on.

It's called 'insanity'. Something that comes with millenia of enslavement to psychic frogs, I'm afraid.

Truthfully, I do it because I wanted to figure out what the maximum amount of RU I could possibly obtain without ever leaving Sol. This included repeated refueling at the space station pre-Ilwrath and also never taking a single casualty.

J's launcher has one major problem: it only works on Windows. A more satisfactory solution would be to write the launcher to use the same libraries as UQM for its user interface, i.e. SDL. It could be a good idea to use UQM's menu code; this would solve both the compatibility problem and give us a setup program/launcher/whatever that looks suitably UQM-like.

Or an options sub-menu on the front menu...