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Just finished Planet’s Edge for the second time after, what has it been, more than 10 years? Thanks to Abandonia and Dosbox! This was one of my favorite games back in the day and now I remember why: it’s the game’s epic scale and its multiplicity that makes it so appealing. You get to: explore a vast universe, meet characters of many different races in diverse locations and help them to resolve political problems, mine planets for resources, engage in space and ground combat against varied foes, discover new alien technologies that allow you to build ever more advanced weapons, armors and spaceships; the list goes on. There are some walkthroughs on the Web but I have found that they are somewhat wanting, particularly on the more strategic aspects (e.g. what weapons to get, character stats, etc..) so I’ve compiled some notes to help players who might want to (re)discover this great game.

General comments:
I found the manual at underdogs.com (there’s also a link to a walkthrough there). The manual is helpful since the controls are not particularly intuitive. You’ll want to check out the keyboard shortcuts—trust me, playing this game is much more convenient with the keyboard than with the mouse. Moreover, there are certain things you can only do with the keyboard. For example, contrarily to what the review states here, you CAN save and load anywhere at any time (except during combat) with “control-s” and “control-l”. Another example is that if you use the mouse for touchdown on the moonbase, important messages / announcements will often be skipped; this does not happen if you use the keyboard. The manual also contains the background to the story as well as the all important star map.

“Stat-maxing”
Unlike most RPGs you can’t level up your characters. However, you can clone and reclone them until you have the stats you want. Since you would be well advised to use heavy weapons, don’t settle for anything less than a 100% Heavy Weapons skill level with Katya and 75% with the other three (their maximum seems to be 85%, but getting this is very rare). Getting 100% with Katya is easy (takes a few tries on average) while getting 75% with the others requires more patience (will probably take about fifteen tries on average). Also, keep an eye on hitpoints because these can vary dramatically (e.g. Osia’s can vary from about 10 to about 30). One other thing to be aware of is that when William has Astrogation skill of 90% or more, your ships get a +1 speed bonus. It’s well worth the effort to create characters with good stats because it makes one heck of a difference in combat.
Once you’ve created your good characters, keep them alive with (mini) first aid packs if damage has not reached the half way point, or trauma kits if the half way point has been breached (only use Osai who has high surgery skill by default). You can find many healing kits all the over the place and should you run out, they are cheap to build, so there’s really no reason not use them at every opportunity.

***Warning: the next part of this post could potentially contain spoilers***

Weapons:
Don’t bother getting any weapons that can be stopped effectively by armor. Lasers for example, are almost completely useless. There are only a handful of weapons that bypass armor and within that category three stand head and shoulders above the rest:

Tac Nuke Rifle [Heavy Magazine, Tech Level 2]: by a very wide margin the best weapon you can get early in the game.

Cygnus Cannon [Neutrino Cache, Tech Level NA (can’t build)]: it has the highest firepower of all weapons in the game but its short range and relatively low accuracy limit its overall effectiveness.

Mass Cannon [Heavy Magazine, Tech Level 4]: not quite as powerful as the Cygnus Cannon but remains accurate at longer ranges and will still allow you to smoke just about anything organic with a single shot (even the toughest robots will go down in two). This is the best weapon in the game.

Armor:
Stick to armors that will protect you well against all type of enemy fire. Those include Shielded Reflecs, Evian Armors, Assault Suits, May Fields and Dreadnought Suits (in approximate increasing order of overall protective value).

Getting Powerful Early in Game:
Want to be tough right from the start of the game? Then follow these steps. Head to Alrai 2 and get three silver / bronze spheres in the rooms to the North and East (search the pedestals; leave the gold spheres where they are). Also get a platinum sphere by going through a hatch to the South-west. Then talk to the alien in the north-eastern most room and trade your four spheres for four Tac Nuke Rifles (equip them right away). Now you still need good armor so head to Procyon 3 and blast the guys who attack you. You might get hurt because your armor from the start of the game is pathetic so make sure you pick up and equip Shielded Reflecs from the dead aliens as soon as you kill them. Once you have four new armors equipped, you’re in business. Clear out the entire Western area for a large supply of Shielded Reflecs and Evian Armors that will last you for the whole game. While you are here, you might as well talk to the skeleton in the North-west to get a Dhoven Deed that you will need for later.

You are now so powerful that you could fairly easily finish the entire game with just this equipment, but I recommend one more upgrade later in the game. As soon as you can build a size five ship head to Deneb 2 and bribe the fleet. Beam down and kill the guards in the northern area for as many Assault Suits as you need. Also get a cyber credit from Voxen Ceph (refer to a walkthrough on how to do this) which you can give to the Barman on Diphda 4 to get a Mass Cannon (build three more at moonbase).

Space combat:
The rules are simple: 1.When fighting a ship of smaller size, you will almost certainly win. 2. Ships of the same size will pose a challenge. 3. Don’t even think about taking on a ship that’s a size or more above you. The only exception to rule 3 is orbital stations that are not supported by a fleet of ships. For these, arm yourself with Mega Missiles (which are guided), then approach to just outside the orbital station firing range (i.e. range 9 at the closest point of the orbit) and blast away with autofire. Then watch them slowly die on your scanner. Be aware that this might take some time though because not many missiles will actually hit. For example, destroying a level 7 orbital station with a size 5 ship might take as much as 15 minutes (just go do something else, then come back when it’s over).

When fighting multiple ships, destroy the smallest, fastest one first. Then disengage (you need to be 30+ range from the nearest ship and your speed has to be greater than the fastest remaining enemy ship). Enter combat again and destroy the next ship. Repeat as necessary to win.

If you prefer to avoid combat altogether, you can always bribe fleets. If you are not told specifically how much they want (this is almost always the case for larger ships) the rule of thumb is: take the largest ship size in the enemy fleet, subtract 2, square that number and multiply by 10. This is the MINIMUM you will have to pay (it will most likely be slightly more), which also has implications on the minimum ship size required to bribe. E.g. for an orbital station of size 7 the minimum bribe is (7-2)^2*10=250 (implying a minimum ship size of 6 to bribe). For a level 5 station the minimum is (5-2)^2*10=90 (minimum size to bribe = 4).

Raw Materials:
When you pick up raw materials, never take everything that is available since that will dramatically reduce the chances of the resource renewing itself next time you enter the system. You can also make use of a bug in the game to get unlimited amounts of any resource. Approach a planet so that it appears in your scanner (but do NOT orbit it) and tell your engineer to dump cargo. Then load up instead! Since the game doesn’t realize that you have taken the resources, you can repeat this process as many times as you like (e.g. to get 100+ New Elements, not that you’ll ever need that many…) This also works for planets protected by fleets! If you decide to make use of this bug, bribing is also no longer an issue. Pay 300? Why not! Just stop by Venus to pick up however much you need.

Building Ships:
Ships cost a lot of resources to build. This isn’t an issue if you’re using the bug mentioned above but it’s still a pain to collect all that stuff. So I recommend only building sizes 2, 4, 5, and 7. Size 6 is definitely a good one to skip because it's outrageously expensive in terms of raw materials.
Don’t use your big ships unless you want to bribe, fight, or collect raw materials; they’re just too slow. A size 2 ship with an MK5 engine (later MK6) is the best for exploring. You don’t need weapons because with the high speed, you can evade any pirate ships you may encounter.

Ahhhh man this brings back memories. I got this game at 8 years old back in the day (I liked the box apparently). Played the hell out of it for years, although I'm not sure I understood to much of it.

Just got it working under DOSbox, but for the life of me there's a few things I can't remember. Such as how to equip items on your characters? The only place I've found a game manual for download is a pay-for subscriptions service, anyone have a copy of it they could email me? Would appreciate any feedback (or just telling me how to equip items hehe).

-Erik
no.posting@emails.pal

can anyone here help me wit this game.. im using winXP and its too fast for the game.. i need to slow it down big time especially for the ships speed its too fast to control.. any help would be appreciated ....

[The Fifth Horseman]

The review. Technical info at the bottom. Try running it in DosBox on low CPU cycles.

how do i lower the CPU cycles, its been running on dosbox but still too fast.

[WaAn]

In DosBox

CTRL + F11 =Slower
CTRL + F12 =Faster

i need a walkthtough for planets edge... thankz a bunch guys.. brings back the old days..

You can get the manual and a walkthrough at home of the underdogs. Here's a direct link:

http://www.the-underdogs.info/game.php?id=830

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Guest @ May 2 2006, 04:08 AM) [snapback]227939[/snapback]</div>

how do i lower the CPU cycles, its been running on dosbox but still too fast.
[/b]

Try Ctrl-F11 to speed down, Ctrl-F12 to speed up!

Hi,

Can anyone give me any ideas how to get through the miniturisation section on Cor-Caroli I. I know what I have to do, but cannot get to the one section - where you ohave to put the gold wire, next to the south circuit. How do you get there to place the wire?

Most of the help available just says put the gold wire between the two bare cables.

Any help pleasae

Thanks,

Brett