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A number of comments about this game:
First off, I got this game when it first came out, on floppy, with a huge fold-out glossy-paper map, which I hung on the wall. (It was lost when there was a flood and some people came in to help clean up afterward and knocked it down or something.)
Anyway, I really liked the game, and used a HEX editor (Proview, a DOS HEX editor) to look at the game and change my character stats so my nephews could play.
At one time I even had a fairly complete list of all the weapons and armor, and their stats, garnered from the HEX data in the game files (that file was lost in a move).
I'm in the process of attempting to re-build at least part of that file. I had figgured out enough information to fix the Cygnus Cannon so you didn't end up shooting your crewmembers instead of the enemy.
When I get it figgured out again, I'll try to post it somewhere.
A note about space combat: First off, try to make your ship as fast as possible, by putting the largest engine each ship can have on it (this may mean waiting till you get technical plans to upgrade your technical capabilities). Then, if you don't want to spend a lot of time fighting pirates in space, you can take advantage of a bug in the game: just stay ahead of the ship (you'll know them by the way they follow you outside of space lanes), and lead them to the "west" side of the map (to the far left of the area you can travel in). They will stop just before you get to the edge, and be stuck there until you come back with a bigger ship, or one with weapons instead of cargo, and blow them away.
You can take on larger ships, if you have Megamissiles, and your ship is at least a level faster than the chasing ship. Also, take advantage of the fact that the edges wrap (that is, if you go off the bottom, you end up at the top, same for the sides), and going off an edge means the other ship has to chase you clear across the combat area. This is especially helpful if you don't have enough speed to get away from an enemy ship.
Now for a note about the secondary story line (the one dealing with the person supposedly responsible for the "accident" that caused the alien ship to blow up in the first place): I had played Planet's Edge through all the way to the end, had the last part (but didn't want to take it home and end the game yet), and couldn't get into an area that appeared to be the next area in the pursuit of the Janixatrix. Originally, from what I gather from the game and from a phone call I made to New World Computing at the time, you were supposed to gather parts to build the Cygnus Cannon, just as you gathered parts to build the alien engine and get the moon back. Then you were to find, and deal with the Janixatrix (hinted at by Omega). Well, according to New World Computing, they thought the game was getting too large, so they just stopped coding for that sub-story, packed the game up, and shipped it.
There, now you don't have to pull your hair out trying to find the Janixatrix. Just enjoy collecting the clues till you get the last piece of the alien engine, then go home and watch the ending (which hints at a sequel which they also never produced).
If I were a game programmer, and not just a novice hacker, I'd write an open-source version of this game, figgure out how to finish the story of the Janixatrix, and then go on to persue a sequel. On the other hand, I would love to see someone just come out with a sequel that not only goes on from the ending scenes of Planet's Edge, but finishes the search for the Janixatrix.
My only other wish is that someone who has the original color paper map would use a high-quality scanner and scan the map in a large enough size that you can actually read the names of the stars, sectors, and the key.
Well, enough, hacked or not, with the original characters, or ones you've cloned, and in spite of it's not being finished and having a few bugs, go out and get it, play it, enjoy it!
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