Hi there all.I decided to try the game as i remember playing it back when it was released but i never managed to finish it.The thing is from what i remember the game wasn't very hard until the later missions but now the game is near impossible.
Lasers and missiles pass through enemies as hit detection is completely broken.I run the game with the newer 0.74
dosbox and tried messing with the speed with ctrl-f11/f12 (and changing the cpu type to pendium old) but the game still is broken.Only the bodies of enemies can register a hit as moving parts like legs do not register hits.I managed to go to the 6/7th mission in the first planet(where you need to destroy 3 portals while having also to protect your base buildings... and is simply impossible.Is there any trick to make the game playable or forget it until a newer dos box version gets (hopefully) released ?

When it comes to missiles, I aim at the ground directly in front of the enemy and that usually does the trick.

Well i used the 30/50/70 mm guns and yes i used the missiles on the ground but still you use to much ammo to kill the enemies so you need to use cheats...In any case i just used the cheat codes for additional 30/50 mm ammo and extra missiles and managed to get to the last level of the campaign hoping to beat the game but after kiling the boss ,enemies respawn almost infinetely from the gate portal making it impossible to capture the gate and complete the game.
For what is worth at least i almost finished it this time and it still is a lot of fun even after 18 years ! Maybe in a future version of dosbox it runs properly -unless it requires a patch made specific for it.For example Outcast had a problem with timing with new faster cpu's so it was unplayable for a long time until a patch was released and made it possible for a re-release of outcast here in gog and for a genious to work on a amazing hd patch.Maybe something similar could eventually be done also to shattered steel through i doubt it as it isn't a very well known and remembered game sadly.