I sent this to the person who wrote HACKING, but that occurred to me it was probably the wrong forum, so reproducing here.
The documentation notes that clipping is bounding box at the moment so Spathi butt missiles are likely to hit you if not aimed precisely.
I found increasing their distance from the rear of the spathi ship in the spathi.c by about 50% made them much more usable, if a little less realistic in their magical appearance away from the ship.
Btw, HACKING lists a mailing list. Is there by any chance an IRC channel? Maybe on OpenProjects.net?
In src/sc2code/planets/pstarmap.c
493c493,494
< && GLOBAL (autopilot.y) != ~0)
---
> && GLOBAL (autopilot.y) != ~0
> && LOBYTE (GLOBAL (CurrentActivity)) != IN_BATTLE)
Otherwise the auto pilot banner flickers annoyingly and distractingly through a battle if it was engaged when an encounter occurred.
Well, just got this, so nothing much more to contribute. Mmmm StarControl2, I loved thee so...
Oh. Wait, maybe something more - planet transparency is incorrect for the "encounter in space" black square around the planet instead of space background. Will look at that after I play some more. Spathi are so dang cute