The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

Obviously, as anyone who's played the game will attest.  What's the deal with the Cruiser's paltry nuclear missiles?  They're nukes, yet they only do 4 crewman's worth of damage?  This is odd, when an acidic bubble does half as much.  This is in the future, so we can assume they're using thermonuclear, or hydrogen, bombs, pushing the yield well into the megatons.  How would enemy ships be damaged so little by such a godly weapon?  As far as I can tell, there are two possibilites.  One, the alien ships have awesome armor, and nukes just aren't that powerful compared to peer weapons.  The immediate problem I have with this theory is that it means each ship would need tons and tons of armor to withstand an attack, and would weigh hundreds of thousands of tons.  How do they move around so fast?  It requires a leap of the imagination--alien tech makes it possible--but I'm just a little too jaded and realisitc to go there.  I prefer the second take: The animation of a nuke hitting a ship is a graphig representation of the event happening, not a pixel-verbatim take.  I mean, the ships aren't really that big compared to the planet they're fighting around!  I believe that the nuke automatically goes off at a preset range, say 600 meters, to insure payload delivery and that it won't be shot down or dismantled or something by shipboard countermeasures.  At that range, in space, the damage threshold starts to make more sense.  But a graphic representation, not a verbatim one, opens the door to a whole host of other problems with the game--does each limpet now represent a cloud of them?  Is the Arilou ship...bah, never mind.

Just some random thoughts I had a moment ago.  I applaud SC and SC2 for not making humans the uber-force, and in fact making them on a rather inferior setting compared to the other races, but you still can't hide this discrepancy.  What is your take on this theory?

Well there are plenty of factors to think about:
- They are most likly low yield weapons.
- Ships are most likly pretty armored.

Personally I always thought the ships were bigger then they say, with each dot being like a 100 crew members or so and the damage was a representation of the damage to the ship.  But then again this is just my opinion.

Once upon a time, on the old Accolade-homepage
i found an history of earth, prescribing old human history:

Sometime in (for us) near future, an atomic war in near-east (iraq, iran, ...) will nearly destroy earth. The indutrialized nations start to bring their armies under UN-control and thus starting to make the UN a real Earth-government to stop the war. After that, _ALL_ nuclear weapons are stored in huge underground peace-vaults. When the Chenjesu contact Earth to bring us into war, we open the vaults to have some weapons, since the development of weapons are strictly observed (and in most cases, like thermonuclear technology) forbidden. The only new weapons are defensive nature (laser-defence). Therefor we are fighting with several hundred year old design of  nuclear bombs.

I don't remember it too exactly, but maybe it was also in the manual of SCone. Mine is not at hand.

BTW: It's scaring how realistic this nuclear incident still is! FF&PRIII just made these games, in a hope that anyone might see this danger also and tries to prevent the war. Although humankind might not become one without this imminent danger just ahead.

the nukes arnt that powerful to balance the earthling, cus its nukes are prety awsome as it is. Thier are lots of things that dong make sence

why arnt the bigger ships (dreadnaught) faster than the onse with slow engeons

why are lasers (chmmr) as powerful as machine guns (yehat)

why dont the lasers go on forever, like light generally does

how does the androsynth turn into a comet

it fire cant exist in space cus of the lack of oxygen, whats with the illwraht and the thraddash

how come asteroids dont break in colitions, and why dont they damage ships

what makes the saws from a kohr-ah make a dead stop in space

We get the gameplay justification for the nuke being weak... it's the physics of it that's confusing.
I agree -- there is no reason to arm the ships with low-yield nukes, since hydrogen bombs can destroy anything made of atoms. Game balance it is.

"why arnt the bigger ships (dreadnaught) faster than the onse with slow engeons"
Why aren't the bigger ships (dreadnaught) faster than the ones with slow engines?
Well, you could say that they ARE. The cruiser has weak engines, and the dreadnaught catches up with it. Perhaps you mean SMALL engines? Well, the big engine just makes up for the great mass of the ship, giving the dreadnaught the speed it DOES have.

"why are lasers (chmmr) as powerful as machine guns (yehat)"
Why not? Machine guns can't punch through armor. Some lasers can.

"why dont the lasers go on forever, like light generally does"
You cited game balance earlier -- now I do. If it went on forever, the screen would be filled with fire.
Also, lasers may have a reputation for being collimated (facing the same direction, not spreading), but this is an exaggeration. They do gradually spread out over distance. The limited range of the lasers is probably a representation of that (it doesn't make much sense otherwise), though the damage should ramp off if this were the case.

"how does the androsynth turn into a comet"
You might as well ask how the Mmrnmhrm ship transforms. It's one of the more blatantly nonphysical bits of star control physics.

"it fire cant exist in space cus of the lack of oxygen, whats with the illwraht and the thraddash"
What we see is glowing gas, not flame. We just call it flame. Also, the 'afterburner' might well have involved oxygen inside the reaction chamber.

"how come asteroids dont break in colitions, and why dont they damage ships"
The game is more fun that way. Same for ship-ship collisions.

"what makes the saws from a kohr-ah make a dead stop in space"
Precursor bungee technology.

There are so many things that the only real answer is "For the sake of gameplay," with and appendage to the story line later.

Here's a few more.

Q. Why are even the smallest spaceships as big as a planet?
A. For the sake of gameplay.

Q. Why do 2 ships coliding at incredable speeds do no damage to each other?
A. For the sake of gameplay. The manual says something abou all ships having structural integrety shields for this very reason, but the Chmmr pounding your ships with a crystal does do damage.

Q. Why do hits only kill crew, so that a ship pounded to h-e-double hockey sticks still function the same as a new ship?
A. For the sake of gameplay.

Q. Why does an androsynth ship which looks like it has 4 captians still function when it's crew is 3 or less?
A. For the sake of gameplay.

You see, the nukes aren't actually really nukes but tactical nukes. Extreamly tactical nukes come to think of it. The Guidence system is also very tactical. That is, if tactical means pathetic. :)

maybe the nuclear bomb is VERy VERY small? lets say as a size of a very small apple pie

ya i only pointed those out to state that lots of things like the weak nukes dont make sence

Nah, you all misunderstood; these are just missiles with a conventional payload but a nuclear propulsion ;)

no i think thier actually nukes. in the little story of what happened before the game takes place, it says that they took nukes and put then in 'peace vaults' and are now using them in the crusers

No, they're electrostatic repulsion bombs! Why else do you think it takes battery to fire?

it takes battery power to launch them

Why to use low grade nukes, and not big honking ones -

EMP

Big nuke goes off, big EMP.  It's all very well and nice that your foe is now superhot plasma, but it's not so nice that the EMP released from that bomb has fried every piece of electronics on your ship, leaving you to die a cold, dark death in space.

Not really. Ships are so far from each other in space combat that EMP doesn't reach to your ship. Makes you think... space combat would look like a blotch in the distance jumping around really fast while it fires things at you that rapidly increase in size.

"Hey computer, what's that cute little green speck over there?"
"An Ur-Quan Dreadnought."
"Oh shit!!"

Good topic, by the way.

Edit: I'm wrong. Every ship must be loaded with advanced equipment that can zoom in really far so you can see what's going on.

Er... maybe the 'synths formulated some dang strong acid... like, dude!

;)

Also, perhaps no one uses electricity anymore... maybe photonics?  Don't think it'd be affected by EMP...?  Just a stretch.

People people, this is the far future we are talking about, maybee technology we can't even think (or dream) about.

well fred and paul must have been able to dream about it, unless...

They could easily just have made something up, and then dubb it "near future".

is their any other possibility that doesnt involve time traval

Er... alternate universe?

still time traval would be involed. Maybe thats the origin of the ariloo:p

Actually, according to the manual, it's not THAT far in the future.

That's what happened to the Androsynth!  P&F must be part of that race of cloned mental giants who time-traveled back to pre-Ur-Quan days and integrated themselves into our society.  Yeah, that's it.  ::)

or they could be gods

I'de go for the latter.

Humans (Paul and Fred?) with the absolute best (read: perfect) sets of genes from the entire stock of humanity might be considered gods among men. Think about it.

maybe they are precurser

They are bigfoot/yetis?

i dont think so. Some how bigfoot doesnt seem like the one to create the meaning of life

Hey!  >:(

Anyways, I think that the EMP theory has been the best so far. And it isn't THAT far in the future, only under 200 years.

They aren't terribly small nukes. They are listed as MX surplus. That would make them W87 warheads from old MX , aka Peacekeeper, missles.  They would have a yeild of 300-475 kt depending on configuration.  I am guessing that either they use a proximity fuse or the enemy vessels are very well armored.  Or it just had to be that way to balance the game.  Lets face it, they home well, they have great range, realistic damage would make them unstoppable.

problom with the EMP:
How does it effect the Podship, or the Blade?

Well, it wouldn't affect the Podship or the Blade at all, but it doesn't matter since the Podship and Blade don't fire nuclear weapons.

It does however, beg the question--if an earthling cruiser hits another earthling cruiser, why doesn't it fry the other cruiser's electronics?

cus otherwise, ud have to resort to point defence wars, which are kinda dull

No. It'd be PDL wars.. with Earthlings.
And THAT is just dumb. :-X

Arilou mirror match.. that's pretty bad.. but it moves faster than Earthling/Earthling Point-Defense fights across the star system.

-=PakoPako=-