Here are a few minor undocumented features.
Skip intro
Hold the left mouse button to skip the intro sequence.
This is mainly useful on the hard disk install. When playing from floppy disk, you can skip the intro just by booting from disk 2.
Pause Tetracorp slogans
In the new game / load game screen, a series of advertising slogans for Tetracorp appear. If you hold a mouse button, the current slogan will stay on screen until you let go.
Another overlooked feature is how the text ticker makes sounds. It only makes the tick sound when playing consonants, not vowels. This gives the ticker something resembling the cadence of human speech.
Land on hangar
If you order a ship to Land on Surface, it randomly chooses a square to land on. If it chooses a square with a hangar in it, it will land in the hangar instead.
Free temporary Gravity Nullifier
At the start of the game, for a limited time period, your colony and the enemy colony are affected by a temporary Gravity Nullifier effect. This is hard to notice, because it has normally worn off by the time you buy the Asteroid Tracker blueprint that lets you see asteroid speed. However, you receive Asteroid Tracker automatically when fighting the Tylarans.
Asteros half-life
Asteros depletes at the rate of one unit every four days. This starts from the moment you colonize the asteroid. This is probably a bug in the Powerplant code, although it may represent radioactive decay, given that Asteros does increase radiation. See building behaviour for the strange way Powerplant functions.
Ax’Zilanth viral resistance
The Ax’Zilanths have the ability to adapt to the Virus missile. After the first Virus missile, every subsequent Virus missile you fire has no effect.
Where are my 5,000,000 credits?
If you defeat the final alien, you receive a unique message of congratulation with an award of 5,000,000 credits. The game then freezes at that point. Checking the game code, however, it doesn’t actually give you 5,000,000 credits.
You don’t have to play all the aliens in order to get the win screen, just beat the last one. The game doesn’t keep track of which aliens you beat anywhere.
Keyboard controls
These are documented in the manual, but some players may not be aware of them.
- Press spacebar to toggle between building view and flat view. This also refreshes the view, which makes the extracted buttons visible after using the PANEL cheat.
- Press S to enable the Ship cursor for clicking on ships. Press again to return to the standard cursor.
- Press D to enable to Demolish cursor (green bomb) for demolishing buildings. Press again to return to the standard cursor.
- Press the left and right cursor keys to rotate the asteroid. Also refreshes the view to make extracted buttons visible after the PANEL cheat.
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