I found a 'cheat' years ago that works about 95% of the time to get through asteroid fields.

Hit your afterburners, but immediately turn left or right, then after a second or two, turn the opposite direction and hit it again. There is something about the physics of the asteroids that they will end up going basically parallel to you for a second or two after the afterburn before adjusting (hence why you have to zig zag).

Took me a few tries to get the hand of it again, but I can now to it at will.

They were far more deadlier than I remembered so I loaded up my copy from the Kilrathi Saga and lo and behold, you could take a hit (or two), never be instakilled and slightly easier to navigate them.

So my guess is that the game isn't really playing nice with the emulator. Which is a shame, because I bought it here in order to be rid of all the hassle...

There's a good chance they made it easier in the Kilrathi Saga. There were several changes made to those versions.

Yeah, I doubt dosbox could be doing anything that would increase the damage done by them.

Nor were they that hard in the dos copy I had on my pentium, 486 and 286... It's just that I don't have those machines around to test. The KS copy was at hand.

That reminds me of a funny situation. I have a legit copy of Civ1 but have never owned or looked at the manual. The DRM questions were so easy you could use logic to solve them, and even if you couldn't figure one out you had a 1 in 10 chance of guessing right and 3 chances before it went to the DOS prompt.

This is frustrating as hell, you guys are saying go slower than 250, I just tried an asteroid field at 30! Yes, just 30, and the dreaded magically-spawned asteroid that appears right in your visorscreen slammed into me.

I used to love these games on the Amiga and I was like 12 years old, now at 32 I'm being thrashed by my 12 year old self :P

I can't seem to get past the first mission, a fast moving asteroid always seems to magically spawn in front of me on my way beck to the Claw. I'm probably just moving too quickly, but I don't remember it being this difficult when I played it as a kid. The Dralthi still die pretty easy though.

Mind you, I had a Mac and so was playing Super Wing Commander instead of the original; there might have been some changes in difficulty.

Usually there is no need to fly through asteroids, unless there is a navigation point right in the asteroid field. Just navigate manually, so that to avoid flying through the fields

Well, nav2 is actually in the middle of an asteroid field, but I finally managed to complete it. Twice. Because I couldn't remember how to request a landing and Spirit flew into the Claw and exploded. I swear, that girl needs to be ordered to breath. I had to slow down to 200 though. 250 still got me killed.

Wait till you're fighting kitties in an asteroid field. Slowing down then will result in the kitties gunning you down. :-) But luckily they crash into asteroids too...

I find with asteroids you need to take your wings into account; just missing the rock on the left/right side of your cockpit will still result in instant hot fiery death. For me, I find it's best to line up with the NAV point and fly in almost a 'circular' motion, alternating left, right, up and down movement. It's important to not move in opposite directions (move left just after moving right to dodge, for example) because you might not be quite past the asteroid you were trying to avoid (this could be krashd's problem - at 30kps you may be flying too slow to get all the way past the rocks before turning back into them accidentally).

It's best to actually picture yourself in a ship - Wing Commander may be an old game but they did an excellent job capturing the dimensions of your spacecraft!

When you get to the minefields the mines home in on you so just feather the turbo and pray :P

Evidently flying at a high speed and also overusing the afterburner (just to blast yourself up and over or down and under an asteroid) is the key, because the asteroids seem to come at you at the same speed regardless of how fast you are going, so by trying to get through the field quickly you actually do. I can navigate in one end and out the other of a field within 25 or 30 seconds now, mines on the other hand? Oh, dear.

If you're truly desperate to avoid an asteroid field (like say you've just completed a difficult mission, but you're in rough shape and really don't want to fly through an asteroid field to get home), remember that you do usually have the option of flying over, under, or around the asteroid field. (For example, aim yourself at the nav point on the far side of the field, then aim up about 45-60 degrees, afterburn until you're safely over the asteroid field, then nose down and head for the nav point again.)