A long time ago, Nayjay123 made a Hardwar saved game called "Fly High" available on Captain Zedo's site. This saved game allowed you to fly your moth as high as you wanted without stalling - allowing you to fly out of craters and into the barren wilderness. Crazy!

He recently posted (at high volume) to Zedo's message board, asking how he managed it. After a bit of thought, I realised how he probably did it, and gave my method a test. It worked.

Instructions

First, make sure you have a button bound to "God Hangar". You'll need it. See this page from Zedo's site on how to set this up.

Start a new game or resume a saved one. The plot needs to be at the point where the blockage between the Mines and Port craters is blown up, but before you actually venture into the Port crater. The easiest way of getting to this stage is to use the Plot Jump facility in the God Hangar.

Fly into the Port crater from the Mines, as you normally would. Your shields will be depleted rapidly and your Moth will begin losing power. Eventually, the alien will come to your aid. It will gradually lift you from the surface. Then, suddenly, it will yank you above the crater wall and off into the mists of the planet.

At this point, hit your God Hangar button! You'll be instantly transported to your godly abode, with an important ability still intact - the ability to fly as high as you want without stalling!

Things to Try

• Take a shortcut between craters by flying over the walls and going "direct". Just don't get lost.
• Fly around under the craters and laugh as enemy buildings try to shoot you through the floor!
• "Sit" comfortably atop Lazarus Hightower in Downtown and chant "I am the highest flier of them all!"
• Pick up a few enemies on your tail and then astonish them with your high-flying prowess before mocking them from afar! (Thanks Zedo!)
• ...use your imagination.

Quirks/Side-effects

Yes, this Fly High cheat has other effects on the game. One is that your moth turns into a rather fetching translucent model, for the discerning flier who likes to sneak around like a ghost (at least with U2.04 and Direct3D, it does). But while other (AI) pilots can certainly see you, they don't want to mess with you... read on.

I noticed that my moth had become translucent as soon as I took the screenshot from above Lazarus Hightower (see above, right). But it wasn't until I tried Zedo's suggestion of making a bunch of enemies, then escaping over the crater wall and generally mocking them, that I discovered this.

I was sitting just above Hardwar's "ceiling", watching those poor computerised suckers desperately trying to reach me, when I wondered why they weren't even firing missiles at me. I descended to their level and soon found that, even if I sat still, they weren't attacking. They just lined up around me, no matter how many of them there were, and waited. Check out the screenshots at the side of this text for proof.

This is just conjecture, but your moth's translucency and the fact that nobody attacks you are probably because the game is treating your moth as a Hologram. Do AI pilots ever attack Holograms, or are their targetting systems simply distracted by them?

It seems that when the alien rescues you, as well as disabling stalling, the game disables the AI pilots' ability to attack you for a brief time. Again this makes sense; imagine you were still relying on a standard Cell and were carrying expensive cargo when you entered Port. Once dropped off in the Mines, you might be smacked down by pirates before you could reach the light well. Disabling their ability to attack you for a while prevents this. So by enabling Fly High, you also enable No Die. (Please kill me for that last sentence.)

To the bitter end

Unfortunately, your Fly-High™ and No-Die™ abilities only last as long as your moth. If you swap your moth, you lose your special powers. This means it's not possible to fly Syd's moth at the end and have everyone simply follow you around.

But try this: hop into Syd's moth and attract a healthy "following" of devoted "fans". Then dock at a hangar where you've stashed the high-flying moth, and launch. Your new-found friends won't attack, but they'll still trail you round. Quite amusing, especially when the cramped conditions start to trigger large-scale fights! Give it a try.

Our first and, er, so far only submitted screenshots come from OmEgA.

The first shot not only demonstrates what the Customs Block looks like from the "outside" (which should be a pile of solid rock but isn't), but also shows that flying high isn't the only use for a strategic press of the God Hangar button. He's produced an almost invisible HUD, presumably by teleporting to God Hangar just as the alien ship started to affect his moth's display.

The next two shots demonstrate his quest to get everyone on Titan following him around (á la No Die). Good luck! It will be interesting to see if the game can cope...

If you have any screenshots to submit to this section or other sections of this site, please feel free to submit them and I'll post them as soon as possible, so long as they're not chronically boring. Or just rubbish.

Site produced by Huz. Feel free to use or link to any of the material from this Hardwar section, but give credit where credit is due. Or I will be forced to kill you. Really.