I was very excited to see Starflight 1 and 2 on GOG. But last night I actually settled in to play Starflight 1 a bit, and ran into the following problem...

When exploring a planet, I saw an alien. It seeemed to "wake up" and instantly shoot over to my vehicle, and started whaling away at my crew multiple times per second. It was way too fast for me to react. I'm sure this was not the way the game was intended.

Everything else in the game so far seems to run at an appropriate speed.

Is there a fix for this? If not, I may be asking for a refund...

Thanks!

You could try slowing down the cycles by using Crtl-F11, IIRC. Around 2500 seemed to work OK. Plus, it's dangerous if you're just sitting there, not moving... best to hit Esc to pause the game. As long as you are doing something; checking maps, scanning, or moving, the game doesn't get any "free" cycles to speed things up like creatures and time. This is the trade off between DOS and fast computers.

So, if you're on the surface... keep the keystrokes coming! And remember that if a creature gets too close, use the laser on it until it's dead. There's not much use for lifeform data in SF1; it's all about the minerals. Of course, this reverses in SF2! 8)

Yeah, I will try slowing down the cycles, but again, the rest of the game works just beautifully so I would hate to have the rest of the game crawling. I would also hate to have to tweak the cycles back and forth during the game depending on whether what I'm doing at the time is too fast or not. But thank you!

I have that problem trying to get through the Burger King drive thru - too bad there isn't a refund on life.

Huh?

Well, this proved too frustrating, and I asked GOG for a refund, but be warned, they will not refund.

It's unfortunate, because other people are having this problem as well (I suspect everyone has this problem, but many may not have yet encountered a situation that has made it abundantly clear): http://www.gog.com/en/forum/starflight/a_lil_help/post9

I recommend playing the Amiga versions of the Starflight games, if you know how to set up an emulator (Amiga Forever is the easiest, but it is not free).
Graphics are much better, controls are better (mouse support), and there are five save slots making loading and saving painless. There is also an auto pickup option for the ground vehicle which I think is missing in the DOS version.

There is a minor bug with SF2, though. The game doesn't track cargo space correctly, which can lead to annoying error messages. I think the bug only kicks in if you try to load more cargo from the ground vehicle than the space ship can carry, or if capturing so many life forms that cargo capacity of the ground vehicle is exceeded.

I get satisfactory results on 1000 Cycles and suspect that 2000 or 2500 Cycles will work fine as well. I go based on how much time elapses between keystrokes on Planetscape and how fast the Spaceship launches and lands.

First, I should say that I am a die-hard GOG supporter, and that I did spent the money to purchase a copy of Starflight 1&2. I preface that to say, "Do not play this version of the game!" The Dosbox cycles cannot be balanced, and are not balanced throughout this version of the game. Everything, from the speed of the lander to the the speed of the creatures have different settings, which at this current time are seriously out of balance.
Again, lowering the cycles may work for some things, but the creatures still zip across the landscape like pinballs! I strongly suggest, for those of you who have been frustrated by the GOG version, that you download the 2/2010 Starflight/DOSBox version for the Win/DOS available at the www.starflt.com. Go straight to the Resource Pages.
This is the version I played and beat before GOG released their version. It works perfectly with no cycle adjustments, and also includes SF2 as well. I am sorry if I didn't believe you all that there was that big of a problem, but there is. So, until GOG can balance their version, I can recommend with full assurance that the www.starflt.com version works, and is playable.

EDIT: Oh, and... the starflt.com version has a built-in savegame system that you will really like!! 8) Cheers!

Currently playing on a netbook with Atom processor and, as explained above, the cycles are not "balanced" throughout the game. But having Ctrl-F11 and Ctrl-12 to change them is all you need to fix this.

NOTE: The faster the processor that you are using the harder it will be to find a proper setting. If going down to 100 cycles does not solve planetscape speed, you ARE screwed. But I seriously doubt that will happen for anyone.

First change the DOSBox config file to make the cycles added or substracted by Ctrl-F11/F12 (500 at a time is too much). 250 or maybe even 200 is ok.

After that you want to find a setting in which you can comfortably fly in hyperspace, without the time going by too fast. That will be your "maximum speed". The cycles of that setting should be set in the DOSBox config file to be the starting ones.

Then, planetscape: find a planet with lifeforms and walk around lowering the maximum cycles to something you find comfortable. Set to this number everytime you are about to get out of the ship, and go back to the maximum speed when you are ready to launch back into space.

And lastly, find an area with alien ships and pick a fight. You will have to lower the cycles more than what you did for planetscape in order not to get blasted away. Every time you hear the encounter alarm, just lower the cycles to this number.

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P.S.: I just lol hard every time people run into some small issue whle playing an old game and just quit (or worse, they bought it and want a refund). If they had played back in the day of DOS games, getting tangled up with config.sys and autoexec.bat would have made them go berserk.

The Starflt.com dosbox front-end is no longer (or not currently) available. Paradoxically, that may be because Starflight is on sale again here, and the front-end was packaged with the game. In fact various versions of the game. I used to have it but don't any longer, unfortunately.

It had - for me - the great advantage of including the original 4-colour CGA version, which was the one I owned (and still do). The GOG version is altogether too colourful :)

Is this still a problem for everyone? I really want to buy this pack.

Yes but GOG doesn't seem motivated to fix it. I wish they would contact Starflt.com and make a new wrapper based on their version (Starflt.com removed their version for download after GOG started selling it).

GOG cannot fix anything here, without rewriting the games' PC versions. From the starflt.com site (which I had not read before today), giving almost the exact same advice I did earlier on this post: http://www.starflt.com/tables/#pckeys

When part of the service provided by GOG is the sale of software in a condition that ensures it will work on modern rigs, though, that concern is a lot less frivolous than what you seem to be intimating. Messing around with that stuff back in the day might have been the status quo, but GOG sells games that are supposedly patched so that we don't have to deal with that stuff anymore.