The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

Is there any difference between these devices? Because they seem to do the same,they're just casters...
Or did the guys of Bob toys put the Burvix caster in case you couldn't get the Umgah Caster from the Spathi?
Well if you don't ally with them so they won't give you the caster,and you need the caster not only to call the Chmmr,it's a very useful device.
What ya think?

According to the source, they are 100% identical to each other in function.  Your notion that it's a "Plan B" 'caster in case you piss off the Spathi is as good as any that I've ever heard.

The only differences are:
the origin
the name
the image
you can't sell the Umgah caster to the Druuge.

Oh,thought you couldn't sell the Burvix Caster to the Druuge.Hmm okay gonna check that later.

Who were the burvixes andway?
Who destroyed them?

Yes you can sell the Burvix caster to the Druuge.  You can do that and play a trick on them the Umgah would love...

"Greedy fuel tanks...like sponge...har har har"

And as far as Mr. Cerulean says:


The Burvixese race evolved on the planet Arcturus I.
They lived there in a relatively benevolent manner
until the Kohr-Ah came and destroyed them during the course of 2 or 3 unfortunate days.  The Druuge were largely responsible for the Kohr-Ah's finding the Burvixese.
You see, the Burvixese were in long-distance HyperWave contact with a race known simply as the Gg. For decades the Gg and the Burvixese traded much valuable information
until the Gg came under attack by an invading race who you may know as the Kohr-Ah.  The Gg warned the Burvixese that the Kohr-Ah located races by their HyperWave transmissions and that they had already discovered the radiations from the Druuge.  When the Burvixese were kind enough to warn the Druuge that a hostile alien race
was homing in on their HyperWave's radiations, the Druuge shut down all their transmitters  and erected a powerful HyperWave beacon on the surface of the Burvixese moon.
The Kohr-Ah changed course, attacked the poor Burvixese and sadly, destroyed them all.

ok, ok..... I know the spathi have the caster. I'm allied with it.
They talk about it.  Every hint site talks about it.



Arrgghhhh  - how do I get it?
(thanks)

SPOILER ahead:


How good are you with their ships?
Does your fleet rely on them?
if yes: then you do not whish to receive their caster.
But it will come sometime.



BTW: I never got the Spathi-caster.
I always (even in my first game) found tht burvixese caster so early, that the spathi never left me.
Is that part of the code or another bug done by the protection-removing tsr-program i used (the arilou portal never opened for me, so i had to use a friends-save-game to get the portal-spawner.)? This happened in SC2 for DOS.
BTW: when (appr.) do the spathi leave? 2 years after alliing with'em or is there a fixed date?


Thanx,
Martin

The Spathi will be invited to study and attempt to take down the slave shield on Earth.  However the cowards that they are, they are working to duplicate the technology so they may slave shield themselves.  When they do that in one year's time after you ally with them, you will not be able to build/commission Spathi ships.

Just a nice trick - some people might consider this a SPOILER, so skip it if you haven't finished the first game yet, or whatever -

The Druuge are willing to buy back the Burvixe caster, and offer to fill your gas tanks to maximum capacity. If you go back to sol first and replace all none essential modules with empty fuel tanks, you take them up on their offer and get a cool surprise in the dialog + a pretty good profit.

Make sure you have at least a cannon on board your vessel. I never checked this part, but if your unarmed in Druuge space they consider you their property

Actually, your ship can be completly unamred, but in that case you must have escort ships.

On the other hand, if it's both unarmed and without esport ships...

I just tried this trick out, using a save game I cheated on to get there quickly (all of my other save games are past the point where the Druuge add me to thier Ledger of Hatred, and I'm too impatient to play the game halfway through again to check up on one thing). After getting the Portal Spawner and Burvixese Caster, I headed to Zeta Persai 1, saved the game, edited my ships config to 16 Hi-Eff Fuel Tanks and no fuel, then loaded again.

When I went to sell the Caster, the Druuge instead offered me the Rosy Sphere. So I declined the offer. However when I told them I didn't want it, they not only told me that they would make the offer again, but they accepted the fuel trade offer instead! So by declining, I agreed to a different offer entirely, got my fuel tanks filled, and listened as the Druuge whined about giving me 1610 units of fuel.

Can we say 'bug', anyone? Or is it merely possible that my savegame editing might have somehow caused this?

Man, that's the way it's supposed to be.
The normal deal for the Caster is, filling up your ship to the max capacity. But if you dont have the Rosy Sphere yet the Druuge ask you "Hey! We've got a special offer! Perhps you would like this here Rosy Sphere insted of the fuel?"
If you say no then the deal is made on previous conditions (the Caster fo the fuel)

Spoiler









Don't they give you the Rosy Sphere for mycon egg shell?

That's what I normally do, but they'll unload it on you for anything.

That's not the point. He makes you an offer for the Rosy sphere, which I have come to understand is not the offer intended here. If I accept, I get the Rosy Sphere. If I decline, I get the fuel instead. If that's not a bug (two, even) then I don't know what is.

an ant :P

Sage, it's not a bug. If they had no rosy sphere, they would offer you fuel first. But they had, so they did. If it works, don't worry about it too much :)

If you continue to keep the Caster (allowing you to play the trick again), then it's definitely a bug.

first time in ten years or so I've been going through the game... some things come back, and some things don't.

Wish I'd remembered that you can get the Rosy Sphere by selling the Druuge the egg case... which you get to KEEP after showing it to Talana (I did the Ultron way before the Mycon/Syreen thing).

I wonder if anyone else gets the same rush of guilt I do when they trade 100 crew for the sphere... it's terrible.  and then, when you get back to the starbase!  *sob*

Thanks for the egg-case tip... next time I go through the game I'll try that instead of doing something that makes me feel like joining an Utwig colony. :)

Spoiler











There are three egg cases in the game. You don't need to sell the crew at all.

Yehat, he just said that...

BTW, it turns out that he takes the Caster despite the choice you make here. This still qualifies it as a bug.

Allow me to lead you through the conversation I take so you can get a better idea of what happens...

I go to the Druuge world, he gives me the introduction, I tell him I'll sell him the Caster, he offers me the Rosy Sphere.

IF I say "I accept this unusual offer.", he says "Ha-ha! You are indeed a wise young human! The Rosy Sphere is yours." And thus it is so. I lose the Caster, and gain the Rosy Sphere.

However, if I say "Thanks, but no thanks", his response is...

"Very well, we can understand your trepidation. We have been unfair in springing this offer on you so suddenly. Perhaps we can offer the deal again, in the future, when you have had time to think about it. I will buy the Hyperwave 'Caster. In exchange, you shall receive all the fuel your ship can hold. We are now hooking up the fuel lines to fill your fuel tanks. Hmm.. Ah yes. The job is done. Now let's see how much was transferred.. It was 1610 units of fuel. Aieee! I am ruined! You have sucked my full tanks until they are dry! Cruel Monster! Bloated Villian! Slicer of innocent throats! What shall I tell my Manager! My spouse?! I shall certainly be assigned to tend the furnaces. I shall burn in the atomic fires! Aieee!"

Perhaps someone out there could confirm this? I'm using Striker's latest CVS build, so others with the CVS should (theoretically) have this bug as well. Perhaps even other builds as well?

EDIT: This seems to apply to offering to sell the Quasispace portal then instead saying no. He offers me the Rosy Sphere, but when I decline, I instead recieve normal price for it. As soon as I make my way to Copernicus I will see if this bug applies to the Deep Child Egg fragment as well.

EDIT2: Confirmed. This applies to the Egg Case as well...

Sage this isn't a bug.
When you go to the Druuge world they say something like
"I see you got the caster, if you sell it to us, we'll give you all the fuel you can hold"
The Rosy Sphere is just a special offer.
If you say no then the deal is made on previously determined conditions (they give you the fuel).
They are making this "special offer" every time you want to sell something because they think it's just trash and want to get rid of it.
I cannot understand why do you think it's a bug.

He never makes the original (read: not the Rosy Sphere) offer. Plus it's basically forcing me to make a final choice when in theory I should be able to back out of selling the Hyperwave Caster at all, like your selections indicate you can. And are you honestly seriously trying to tell me that those two completely unrelated statements made by the Druuge were supposed to be crammed into the same response? I think not.

The reason I keep on insisting that this is a bug is because so far the only two people who have disagreed with me have fewer posts than I, with no (visible) rank in the forum, and do not appear to be any part of the programming team. Besides that, I don't see either of you nay-sayers proving me wrong by checking for the bug yourself.

Yes he does.
He says this when you arrive at the druuge homeworld:

Attention alien starship
You have arrived at the Central Trade World of the Crimson Corporation...
...Home of the Druuge
Be welcome and take advantage of our excellent deals
Our sensors reveal that you have one of our more powerful HyperWave 'Casters on board your ship.
Have no fear, Captain. It was abandoned on the Burvixese moon...
...and by our law it belongs to you, however...
...we are fond of the device and wish to regain it through trade.
Give us the 'Caster, and we will give you all the fuel your ship can hold



You don't get to back out of any deal. The choices you have are:

- I accept this unusual offer.
which means: Yes give me the Rosy Sphere.

-Thanks, but no thanks.
which means: No don't give me the Sphere, I want the fuel.


Yes I am.
They are like those used car salesmen.
They want to get rid of some piece of trash, so they call it a "special offer", sell you some crap and take from you whatever-you-want-to-sell which is most likely much more valuable.


I do not understand how the number of posts can determine wheter someone is right or not.
Yes only two people disagreed with you, but there are none that agreed.


I did check it that's why I argue. The only reason I didn't use the exact quotes earlier is that I'm too lasy.

D'oh! I gotcha now. My apologies.

I shall take my fall in true blobbie style.

HAR HAR HAR! That funniest thing! You think me some ignorant guy who won't listen to reason! HAR HAR! Then he argue with you! Good joke, huh? ;)

I don't think that was really blobbieish.
A true blobbie would say that he still thinks he's right just to piss me of, then watch my face turn red, blue then purple and then watch me bitchin, for what I would get banned from this forum. And then the blobbie would laugh his ass-equivalent off
HAR! HAR! HAR!

See... you still got a lot to learn...

Maybe the response text could be changed to
"No, I want the fuel, as seen on TV^TM"

That would alleviate any misunderstandings.

I would attempt genocide or some other similarly global inconvenience, however doing so would be problematic. Despite my general dislike of your human of average intelligence (read: simple), the loss of all human life might be too much to bear. Plus I figure any joke dealing with the eradication of humanity would (sadly) include myself. So, yeah. I have so much to learn about the finer aspects of blobbie "humor", but no will to implement it.

And yes, some sort of clarification (even though I might be the first in a decade to point this misunderstanding out) might be useful.

Nah.
Genocide is always an acceptable solution to all of the world's problems. ;)
A short-term solution would be hand grenades. At least this is what I learned in Post-Apocolyptic California. ;)

And remember, genocide isn't a problem. It's a problem-solver. 8)

-=PakoPako=-

I did it that way my first time through the game. It made me feel dirty, especially when shortly after I was told that I had lost 1000 crew and that the cost was going to rise. I felt bad allover again when I went to get the Utwig bomb and the Druuge told me that I was the same as they were.

Big waves! BIG WAVES! HAR! HAR! HAR!