Zygor
Zygor is the default first planet in sector 0 0, the Zygorian homeworld and Galactic Command's principal market. Players arrive in its neutral sector and use it for ships, equipment, trade, and maintenance. It is a planet record that can be scanned and orbited, but its supplies come from special restocking code rather than from the population-driven production of an ordinary colony.
Market and services
The ship must be in orbit at Zygor to use its services; simply being in sector 0 0 is not enough. A purchase must fit within the item's recorded amount available for sale, the buyer's cash, and the ship's cargo capacity. Unlike purchases from ordinary planets, however, BUY at Zygor does not subtract the purchased quantity from its stock record. Separate customers can therefore buy against the same listed stock; it is a per-purchase availability limit, not a pool depleted by sales. Classic and ge-next both use this rule for neutral-zone planets.
- BUY purchases goods from Zygor's market inventory, including weapons, supplies, and other items marked for sale.
- SELL exchanges carried goods for cash. In the standard game, this player-to-market sale is available at Zygor, not Tahanian Station.
- NEW purchases a new ship, shield or phaser system, or an eligible ship upgrade.
- MAINT requests ship repairs, subject to the usual cash and combat restrictions. Tahanian Station also provides maintenance.
These are Galactic Command services, not ordinary player colony administration. Zygor's default owner is a configured Galactic Command name; normal players do not manage its production or stock as their own colony. Ship classes, equipment, item base prices, and the central planet's name and position come from configuration. ge-next also checks Galactic Command faction standing for business at Zygor and can refuse a sufficiently disliked player.
Classic stock, starvation, and the 2.2e change
When classic first creates Zygor, it stocks 32,000 each of its hardware items, including torpedoes, missiles, ion cannons, flux pods, fighters, decoys, mines, jammers, and zippers, and marks these for sale. It also places 32,000 men there, but does not mark them for sale. Zygor has no initial food and no ordinary production allocation to replace it. By contrast, Tahanian Station initially sells 1,032,000 each of men, food, and troops. The initial inventories and classic help text show the intended split between Zygor's equipment market and Tahanian's colony supplies.
That initial Zygor population has a problem: classic processes Zygor through the same food and starvation routine as an ordinary populated planet. Without food, one eighth of its men die on each update. Continued updates would leave it with only a token population; it does not literally fall to zero, because the integer food requirement stops triggering below 100 men.
A change identified in the classic source as a GE 2.2e patch addresses the continuing decline by restocking Zygor after the ordinary planet update. It replaces the quantity of every item category with 1,032,000, marks every category for sale, and sets each sale price to twice its base price plus a random amount below that price. On subsequent updates, the newly stocked food prevents the recurring starvation that would otherwise reduce Zygor's population. Ordinary purchases cannot deplete that food stock because neutral-zone BUY leaves the recorded quantity unchanged. This is a scheduled reset of the planet record, not production by Zygor's workforce. It is not an after-sale refill: buying from Zygor does not reduce the recorded stock in the first place.
The order leaves one visible flaw: a newly created Zygor still enters its first update with 32,000 men and no food. The starvation check runs first, reducing the men to 28,000 and generating the starvation event; only afterward does the 2.2e restock set men and food to 1,032,000. Thus the change stops recurring population loss under ordinary market use but does not prevent the initial starvation event. The resulting distress mail is addressed to Zygor's non-player owner; classic can leave its text in the print buffer and expose it in later output. See Classic bug: Rejected mail leaks into output.
It also changes Zygor's role. From its first restock onward, it sells men, food, and troops that were originally meant to be supplied at Tahanian Station. It sells other categories absent from its initial hardware stock, such as gold and spies, as well. The intended market distinction is therefore not maintained in the running classic game. A future ge-next version is planned to restore a clearer division between the two markets; current ge-next has not done so.
ge-next restocking and saved state
ge-next gives Zygor a dedicated update path instead of passing it through ordinary planetary production, food consumption, tax, revolt, or starvation. At creation and on its scheduled update, it marks all item categories for sale and sets each quantity to the maximum representable 32-bit unsigned value (4,294,967,295), effectively inexhaustible in ordinary play. This codifies the post-2.2e behavior, as it makes all items for sale at Zygor. Sale prices are recalculated from the configured base prices with the same twice-base-plus-random formula. Zygor is still a special market rather than a colony whose population grows its stock; a sysop can alter the configured base prices and other settings.
Zygor's database record also carries ge-next housekeeping state unrelated to its in-game inventory:
- Its
timestampholds the current planetary update day and pass number. Other planet records use timestamps for their own update/catch-up history, but Zygor's first-record position lets the scheduler resume its global pass after a restart. - Its
plantimesaveretains the scheduler's interval between planet checks, so the next startup need not estimate it solely from the database size. - Its
nebseedstores the seed used to derive the nebula map. ge-next reloads it at startup so the map remains stable across restarts. This field is not a stock item and has no classic gameplay equivalent.
These fields are stored in the planet record, not exposed as Zygor services. See Planetary update cycle for the scheduler and Classic bug: Skipped planetary updates for the classic timing defect.
ge-arena
In ge-arena, Zygor is not a persistent market and does not use the ordinary restock or scheduler state. It starts a match empty and receives announced, mode-specific supply drops during play. Players collect applicable supplies under the arena transfer rules. ge-arena chooses its nebula seed in memory for each match rather than saving it on Zygor.
See also
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