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Dysgraphic Programmer has Star Control: Origins

Mar 7 @ 8:43pm

Landing Danger?

So I just started this game, and I lost all my landers.

I went out to titan and dropped by Jupiter's moons on the way back. On Io I was told not to try, the weather sucks and I need a better lander. Ok I moved on.

I went back to earth and upgraded some stuff. Then I went to Saturn's moons. No one told me not to so I landed. And my lander blew up. And then I stupidly tried several more times and on the other moon.

What's going on here? Did the game just stop holding my hand after I visited earth? If so it should have taught me what to look at to know it was dangerous.

Or were these different categories of danger, and I could have landed safely If I had controlled it right?

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Originally posted by hinoron1:

Environmental threats (i.e. the whole planet):
High winds: Blows you off course as you try to land (use the direction keys as you descend to try and keep within the orange squares as you decend by the way. Took me too long to figure that out). Hit the ground at too rough an angle and you'll take damage.
Heat: Cooks you.
Toxicity: Corossive gasses that somehow get into our space-worthy, airtight lander vehicle, choking your crew to death. (eyeroll)

If it's just a few bars of a threat type, you may want to risk it anyway if the resources are good enough. Your crew will die slowly, bit by bit. More than two bars of heat/toxicity though, you should probably avoid landing until you get...
Later in the game you can buy lander defense modules that counter X amount of bars of environmental threats. If it's a low grade toxic filter, it turns two bars of planet toxicity white, and thus harmless. If the plantet had 4 bars of toxic, and you've negated two, then it's going to kill your crew only about as fast as a 2-bar toxic planet. These environment modules stack effect also.

More localized threats can also damage or kill your lander, and may not care much about your environment defense modules. Most of these have warning indicators a few seconds before they go off (toxic gas cloud, earthquake, lightning, etc Big storms of high winds, a cyclone you can see from a distance). Exploding volcanoes are shooting off lava rocks constantly. They'll one-shot the lander. Dodge like a madman and pray! (those planets often have the richest goodies too.)

What else? If your lander blows up, all the resources it was carrying will drop in a black crate, marked with a black triangle over the horizons on the planet. You can go back for it with another lander.

Buy as many landers as you can, as soon as you can. Max capacity. You never know when your next planet is going to have a nasty surprise for you.

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Showing 1-4 of 4 comments

locustkllr has Star Control: Origins

Apr 4 @ 10:28pm

When you orbit a planet or moon, it's possibly dangerous traits will be in a little box on the lower right side of the screen. Dangers include things like high winds (makes landing safely very difficult), corrosive environment, extreme heat (both of which will kill your crew and destroy your lander). Other dangers that may not come up in a standard scan are aggressive wild life, wind and ice storms, volcanoes, automated defense systems, robotic hunters, radioactive hotspots/clouds and geysers.

While this is a game of exploration, to start off with, your landers will be quite vulnerable, so you must absolutely choose wisely where to land. During the course of the game you will be able to survive harsher and harsher conditions, given who you talk to and how you procure upgrades.