Banana Flight Glitch

This game has several useful glitches that help with speedrunning.  Perhaps the most useful and certainly the most fun glitch is Banana Flight. SMAC games included the banana as a joke option that can be purchased in game.  The banana really does not do anything normally. It bounced around a lot, it can alert guards, but they cant actually hurt anyone.  I heard that the creators of the game joked that they hoped that one day characters could slip on bananas in the game, but that has not been implemented. However, the banana has a odd reaction with the shield weapon.

The shield weapon is purchasable in game (for a significant amount of in game money, so you can't do this until you have done a few missions) that reflects bullets and other objects that hit it. This applies to items you throw as well, or is at least supposed to.  If you throw a grenade while your shield is up it works as intended and your grenade bounces backwards (possibly resulting in you blowing yourself up). The banana, however, for whatever reason goes through the shield, and, ** if you are in the air, gives you a push upwards.**  By throwing bananas repeatedly you can gain enough height to counteract the in game gravity, and since this game allows you to change your movement direction while in the air this allows you to basically fly wherever you want.

In the Any% run you can't really afford the Shield, the banana item, and the grenade ammo that throwing bananas consumes until part way through the game.  The first mission it would be useful on is High Stakes, and unfortunately you just can't afford them at this point. I have not attempted a 100% or All missions run, but its possible in there that some routing could make it possible to get the necessary stuff before high stakes.  The next mission that flight is really useful for is Twin Punks, and by that point you have plenty of money. I generally purchase the shield, the banana, 2 Rifle ammo crates, and as many grenades as I can afford at this point, which generally lasts me to the end of the game (although you can get close on the grenade ammo on the last mission if things go wrong somewhere).

Anyway, I will conclude with some tips about using banana flight well that I have learned through experimentation.

1. Aim at high things. Bananas tend to give you more height when you aim at taller objects (buildings and such) and generally they do the best if you aim at things that are currently higher up than you are.

2. If you need lots of height fast, stay still while throwing the bananas. This tends to give you a lot more height and can rocket you upwards.  This is particularly useful on some missions as you can rocket yourself to extreme heights and snipe/throw grenades at assassination targets a long way away from you without ever entering the normal mission area or having to deal with any of their guards.  You can also do this to give yourself enough height so that you can then fly over other guards who might normally spot you flying around.

3. Bananas can rocket you downward as well... so be careful. If you aim at something lower than yourself your character will angle their shield downward... if its then hit by a banana you sometimes are rocketed downward, watch out for this.

4. Bananas alert Guards, so try to avoid throwing them direct at them if you care about staying hidden.  On some missions if you alert the guards you can be faced with a torrent of gunfire coming at you as you fly around, and it can be difficult to avoid it all.

5. Make sure you jump first... you have to be in the air for bananas to give you a height boost.

6. Bananas can affect you when they fall down. This will mostly happen if you throw banana's pretty much straight up while not moving to gain height rapidly, but if a banana begins its fall after gravity asserts its hold and hits your shield it will push you down some, and does a pretty good job at cancelling out any more height gain you will get from throwing bananas until it slides past your shield. This is just good to keep in mind and basically means you should try targeting things a bit away from yourself to avoid this.

That about wraps up my guide on banana flight. Hopefully this will be useful to anyone else that might want to get into this game.

Fear of Rain Cutscene Kill

So, I count this as a glitch as obviously this is not something the game intended you to do, but basically you can kill Wing during Fear of Rain while hes stuck in the cutscene not moving. Basically once he starts talking you are locked out of moving, but for whatever reason the designers of the game never bothered to lock you out of throwing grenades. If you accept the mission from a far edge then you can just barely lob grenades over the middle of the cathedral and hit wing where he spawns.  As long as you don't complete the text he will just sit there and you can get your four hits in one at a time, with a small wait in between each one for his invulnerability to drop. I will post a video of it soon on my youtube, but its on my World Record Any% run.

Madknight Pash

Here is a video of me showing how this works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qe0Icz3_IS0

Load time at the start of the game

Just a quick thing I thought I would bring up. Given the rules for when to start the timer the load screen at the beginning of the game counts in the run. Sometimes this screen takes much longer than it really should. I have found, however, if you load a game, then quit, and delete a file, your load time for your next game should generally be a lot lower. Just a little thing here to stop people from occasionally getting 1 minute load times before the game really even starts like I do sometimes.

Teleporter Glitch

The in game teleporter system is very useful for getting around, however certain missions will lock out some destination options and you are unable to teleport while in a restricted zone. This is intended to prevent players from cheesing certain missions. Luckily we can get around this and indeed use the teleporters to cheese those missions though (at least as of the current patch, version 1.1.1). There are two ways of pulling this off, I'm going to address both.

The first and easier method is quite simple. Once you accept a mission the game takes a moment before it locks you out of teleporting. If you (on the PC) hit the F key to accept the mission and immediately hit the M key to bring up the teleporter screen, if you have the right timing the game will have not locked the teleporters yet. This timing is tight, however, we can solve for that as well. If you attempt this and fail, hit the cancel mission button and immediately repeat the previous step. Canceling this mission creates a slight amount of lag making it extremely easy to hit the now larger window to get this glitch. This glitch is extremely useful for the mission High Stakes, as (at least in the Any% run) we don't have banana flight yet. Instead of doing the mission normally you can run to the top of the building (without there being any guards) to activate the teleporter, then teleport back to where you accept the mission and use the glitch. This will allow you to teleport directly behind the target and avoid having to deal with any of his guards.  This is also useful on the Wing man mission as its faster than either using bananas to fly to the roof of the cathedral or running up the stairs to get there.

The second method is harder to pull off, but is extremely useful for one mission in particular, Protocol 42. Protocol 42 has a cut scene that triggers as soon as you accept this mission that pulls you out of the normal in game engine. This prevents the first teleporter glitch method from working, as you will not be able to bring up the teleporter screen at all. Instead we need to do what is probably the closest to a frame perfect glitch this game has. The second method required you to be standing on the place where you would accept the mission and opening up the teleporter screen. Find where you want to teleport to, click the location and immediately hit the F key (not at the same time, right after). There is a fraction of a second between you choosing where you want to teleport to and you actually teleporting where you are still in your original position according to the game engine. If successful on the Protocol 42 mission you should see yourself teleport before the screen goes black and the cut scene starts. If you fail you will simply have teleported to your target and not triggered the mission. Luckly this trick saves you over a minute and takes very little time so you can easily teleport back to where the mission is started and try again if you fail. As a fun bonus if you succeed the ensuing cut scene glitches out and the ground is missing, which is kind of funny. Unfortunately this requires clearing the gang stronghold that covers the area, is not terribly useful for the Any% run unless you can clear the stronghold very quickly and pull of the glitch in a try or two.

Edit: Protocol 42 skip if done on the first try and with a pretty fast clear of the gang stronghold can save about 45 seconds give or take. I pulled it off once and it was glorious. This certainly is a viable strategy for Any%, but its still quite hard to pull off and starts losing you time if you fail 3 or 4 times.

Hope this helps any would be runners.

Edit: Here is a video showing the Protocol 42 skip which is the more difficult trick:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TE3QGf-6VNc

Namn	Författare
Banana Flight Glitch	Pash 7 years ago
Fear of Rain Cutscene Kill	Pash 7 years ago
Load time at the start of the game	Pash 7 years ago
Teleporter Glitch	Pash 7 years ago