Word getting around the water cooler is there are some preferences that are available for change to reduce the number of RSI and tourettes inducing events.

That way you shouldn’t have to rage back across the Galaxy to shoot a couple of ships down for your completely incapable Empire who deems that you should be the only spaceship for the other Empires’ 50gazillion* ships.

[spoiler /See all the cheats by clicking here/ /Hide the cheats/ ]

1. Go find your Spore’s directory. It should be located in your applications directory.eg. C:\Documents and Settings\<<USERNAME>>\Application Data\SPORE\Preferences
   
2. Make a backup (make a copy) of your original preferences.prop file.
   
   
3. Open the file preferences.prop and add some of the lines to the end, where x is the set variable of your choice.  Using Notepad is probably the easiest way to edit this file.universeSimulatorPirateRaidFrequency x
   universeSimulatorPirateRaidAllyFrequency x
   universeSimulatorPirateRaidPlunderFrequency x
   universeSimulatorHappinessDisasterFrequency x
   universeSimulatorBiosphereCollapseFrequency x

   Some other potential things to play around with.

   universeSimulatorGrobTeaseAttackFrequency x (default:100)
   universeSimulatorGrobWarAttackFreqExtremelyAware x (default:40)
   universeSimulatorGrobWarAttackFreqVeryAware x (default:80)
   universeSimulatorGrobWarAttackFreqAware x (default:160)
   universeSimulatorWarAttackFrequency x (default:300)

   0 should disable the given event normally.

4. Save the file.
5. These apparently can be entered during the game the same you can enter Spore’s cheat system by pressing ctrl+shift+c, but then you’d have to do that all the time and Spore gives you enough RSI as it is.  On the subject of console cheat entry, entering “help” should bring up the list of all the available cheats.

[/spoiler]

Also got word from EA game support on Spore crashing a little too often. Not that it’s very helpful for me but might work for other people.

Hi Jort,

It might be worth trying the Nvidia beta drivers that have solved a lot of issues for folks.

http://www.nvidia.com/Download/Find.aspx?lang=en-us

Regards,
EA Support

If like me you have been blessed with Spore’s excellent saved game feature of giving you only one saved game. Then only to find at some stage become stuck with a broken saved game, where by it crashes every time you load it. There is some hope.

1. Go find your Spore’s saved games. It should be located in your applications directory.

   eg. C:\Documents and Settings\<<USERNAME>>\Application Data\SPORE\Games

2. There should be a folder called Game0 (or similarly otherwise) as well as a folder Games0.old (again similarly otherwise).   Copy the folder Game0 to a spare location, as backup in case it doesn’t work.
3. Open the .old folder of the relating saved game you’ve just backed up.
4. Copy all the contents of this folder into the normal folder (eg. Games0) and overwrite all the files in there.
5. Load up and Spore, and check out when you saved your game previously.

Of course this may not work for everyone. Also it’s somewhat dependent on your saving habits.

Best of luck. Or not.

UPDATE: If you can’t find your “Application Data” folder. Go up to your menubar and go Tools -> Folder Options. From there go to the View tab.  Go down and look for the Hidden files and folders option. And select “Show hidden files and folders” from the radio buttons. That should then make the hidden “Application Data” folder visible.