The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

I finished my Star Control 2 Guide today and GameFAQs now hosts it without a hitch.

http://www.gamefaqs.com/computer/doswin/game/11094.html

If you notice any typos or errors, this would be a good place to post them. Much better than clogging up my e-mail.

Very good and extensive.  I do have several "disagreements" (mainly stuff to change if you're going for an "easy" walkthrough), but I can write them up when I get more time.

The one I will mention right off the bat that is more to "forgotten error" status - you neglect the Spathi cypher in section 2.4.  If the player doesn't have it from Fwiffo (i.e. blows Fwiffo away), they'll have to get it in some other manner.  If they come there without the Spathi cypher they WILL get attacked at the homeworld.

Agent Smith: Not quite accurate. Fwiffo tells you the secret cypher right after your lander comes back. One could blow him away and still be allowed to speak to the High Council.

excellent job Shiver. read it top to bottom. congrats on such a fine job.

~DEFIANT

No complaints here. Great work, Shiver.

Love it! Its brilliant! Your editor is amazing! =p

But what if they never find Fwiffo?

You can't not find Fwiffo. Hayes tells you to check Pluto after a month or so from the start and the walkthrough directs you to go there long before that.

I'm just waiting for the 10th planet to be discovered affirmatively and SC2 will be SOOoooo Outdated =p

In a way, it was outdated already when it came out; there's only FOUR moons around Jupiter!? I mean, come on. ;)

True...though Saturn's rings could be called thousands of mineable asteroids....

It's pretty obvious that the Solar System map only includes relatively large, interesting objects -- otherwise there would be literally thousands of tiny asteroids, gas giant satellites, and so on to mine. I don't think it was ignorance, for example, that led TFB to leave out Phobos and Deimos from around Mars or Charon from around Pluto.

As far as whether there's a 10th planet; a big, gas giant Planet X is pretty much impossible -- if it were there we would've detected its gravitational effects long ago. (You could have a Planet X that revolved around the Sun in a different plane from all the other planets, but that's considered unlikely.) If by a 10th planet you mean another Pluto-like object, we've already found over 800 of them; the whole swathe of little iceballs is called the Kuiper belt. It's only tradition that leads us to call Pluto a "planet" and the others not, since Pluto's barely bigger than objects like Quaoar and Sedna.

Interestingly, the asteroid Ceres is, in the game's history, important enough to be the original outpost station for humans and last line of defense for Earth's sphere of influence, and yet the game's Solar System map doesn't consider it important enough to let you visit it. I'd rather see Ceres added to some mod map than have Quaoar or Sedna added. (Also on my wishlist is actually being able to visit the Precursor station that humans supposedly found in orbit around Alpha Centauri, and maybe to find remains of the Mmrrnmhrrm colony the Spathi mentioned, just because we get so few chances in the game to learn anything at all about the robots.)

oh my, you're a very bored person..



may there be more to follow you! well done!  ;D

Wow.

Shiver, it is absolutely irrelevant whether you keep the Pkunk from finding the Yehat before the revolution starts.
Though yes it is a good idea to keep them around if you want later gifts.

Also, why do you advise the 'flying bomb' configuration to include two hi-eff fuel tanks? You can do just fine with one low-efficiency tank... But you do correctly point out it doesn't much matter.

DUDE why advise them to sell Fwiffo? You can't perfect 3 marauders and 3 dreads with a Chmmr, but with Fwiffo it can be done, or nearly so. Keep the Spathi!

Wow, good job shiver, very very extensive.....

I went for drama over efficiency. Besides that, a newbie who's never used the Chmmr Avatar before would be missing out.

I consider Fwiffo to be part of the story. He's the reluctant sidekick being pulled along.
For the same reason (the story), I would also suggest sending back the Pkunk until the revolution starts.

Agreed. I woudln't keep the Spathi for "efficiency" but for drama *and* sentiment; not only is Fwiffo my good buddy from way back at the beginning of the game, but Spathi-vs.-Ur-Quan is, in my opinion, one of the more dramatic battles you can fight. Lots of dodging and ducking and weaving, allowing even newbies to feel like ace pilots.

Chmmr are good for spectacle, and that's about it when you compare them to the other options for fighting Dreadnoughts and Marauders. They blast a kamikaze path through the Dreadnoughts until they blow up. Very sparkly and exciting, but I would argue less fun than fighting it out with Fwiffo.

I think that the power rush of flying the biggest and toughest ship in the game is more fun than the repetitive B.U.T.T firing of the Spathi.

Yes, but you don't *get* to pilot a Marauder in the single-player game... ;-)

Honestly, the Marauder's rather impressive ability to shoot right through ZapSats and punish tractoring with FRIEDs is good at making novice Chmmr players start having fond memories of Fwiffo.

But Fwiffo just cannot clean and empty trashbags back at starbase! Imagine the trama of deciding every second if a bomb has been hidden, or a poisonous gas that will be released the second he does his job. Not to mention the Ultimate Evil lives in the leftover remains of uncleaned food dishes!


 :P

Seriously though, keep the poor guy, if not for fighting the then just for the storyline. At least let him die honorably in battle......  ;)

I bet you a lot of money that I don't have that that is NOT the way Fwiffo wants to die.

Hell I bet a lot of money (that I still don't have) that he wants to live forever =p

Okay you whiners, I'll add a Q and A at the end of the last section addressing the issue of alternate ship choices going into that fight.

Agent Smith?  This isn't the Matrix.

And yes you are right.  I realized that after I made the post and logged off for about 15 minutes.

OK, my disagreements.  Meaning not outright problems, but things I would do differently:

1) To me, Mercury, Io, and Titan are the only 3 things in Sol worth landing on besides Pluto to get Fwiffo.

2) Centauri is a bad start.  I'd consider looking at Spathi space, or even better some of the stars between Alpha Pavonis and the Arilou portal or even Pkunk space to get enough RU to get going.  Afterwards, I would consider the Tauri stars, and Orz space.  Much more of a payoff that way.

3) Once we get to the Spathi quest, we start really chewing RU through fuel.   Generally in how I would write a game, I would put the Arilou quest in soon after all thrusters are installed, and detour by Spathi space.  Of course, you could be writing the game to follow the promptings so I don't know for sure what the intent is there.

4) If you go towards Tauri, a caster would be useful.  Actually you have to wait a year to get the Spathi caster - I usually see it useful to get rid of the Ilwrath as soon as possible if you need more safe and close mining ops.  So I warp to Arcturus, grab that caster, and I'm in business at Tauri to take care of the Ilwrath as well.

5) I would front load anything to do with getting the Melnorme technologies.  Those things help tremendously.

6) Point Defense Lasers are useful against the Ur-Quan.  They don't launch the fighters.

7) TWO crew modules and TWO Hi-ef fuel tanks on your bomb config?   Isn't that a little wasteful?

8) Utwig are better escorts than Chmmr.  Even Spathi is better than Chmmr.  I usually keep one or two Chmmr around as escorts though in case I have a problem on the way (a Slylandro or a roving Ur-Quan group), or want to deal with the defense mechanisms after I blow the generators.  Like you say, better to have empty slots anyway for the Pkunk and Yehat.

I might write up a speed FAQ and submit it.  I'm not sure lmfurb will like it, but it might be good. "As far as I know, the following course is the fastest possible way to win Star Control 2, in terms of virtual game time."  As people should know here, I can beat that by about 41 days (game-time) or so.

I agreed with that initially, but Sander suggested I raid the whole system to get as many thrusters as possible before I leave so newbies don't get trashed by Slylandro. Perhaps I should have skipped on that.



The Centauri stars do kind of blow, with an exception. I remember back when I didn't have the whole game memorized and was still struggling with the game a decade ago Delta Centauri was the first good system I found.



Yes, I was trying to stick to some sense of "plot". My personal favorite way is to hit up Orz space ASAP for the big bucks and best all-around ship.



One could do that, but I hardly consider that difference worth rearranging my entire Walkthrough for.



I didn't want to rush for rainbow worlds because of all the crap the Umgah give you later.



I still greatly prefer another crew pod, shiva furnace, or tracking module.



I'll say it again: it really does not matter.



I agree and will be making a note of this later.



If you really want to be courteous, try e-mailing the guy.

This IS Shiver's walkthrough....
Also, I ALWAYS clear out Sol to get the maximum possible amount of thrusters and then turning gear. I hate the Slylandro, especially early game, and I don't think that a newbie will have fun being constantly hunted down by the little bastards.

6) Point Defense Lasers are useful against the Ur-Quan.  They don't launch the fighters.


I still greatly prefer another crew pod, shiva furnace, or tracking module.

I am SO with shiver. If your going for the ultimate flagship, the Ur-Quan will be dead before the fighters get near you.

I did and the e-mail came back "Invalid address".  So in that sense, I'm considering this his notice.  If he's reading this forum, he can always pipe up and say something.

Yeah, the only reason I didn't do as well as that was that I didn't realize you could get enough fuel to get the portal spawner on just what was available in-system... I guess I was too attached to Fwiffo, should have been less militaristic.

I just completed the game for the first time with a little help of a guide. Since I'm a noob, you may or may not find my play technique interesting.


I got thrusters early, and I hardly saw the Slylandro cuz I did the deactivation quest early aswell.

I didn't run into that many hostile ships, and when I had to battle Mycon and Druuge my Flagship was pretty powerful (no point defence, spread lvl2 gun and front lvl3 gun, shivas&tracking,etc) so I never really used the escort ships.

I kept Fwiffo.

It took ages before I figured out that I could run from a battle, so I got into problems at the Mycon homeworld... >_<;

I made the mistake of bringing Avatars to the final battle, luckily I had some Arilou and Pkunk ships, which did all the work.

It was tricky to get the flagship into the opening cuz I got blasted when I spawned at the wrong place/too far away.

Didn't do the Yehat plot line, did you? If you did, it wouldn't matter what you brought into the last fight as long as it could kill a few measly Ur-Quan.

In case you didn't know, if you play your cards right the crippled flagship with the Precursor bomb on it never needs to see combat. Once all the shield generators are destroyed, the Sa-Matra's defense units (those orange fireballs and green bounce-balls) stop regenerating; you can use some more escort ships to destroy them (Terminators are a good choice) and waltz your flagship into the Sa-Matra trouble-free.

I did the Yehat-Pkunk quest, and their ships filled the slots of my lost Avatars. Unfortunately, I failed to notice that the Sa-Matra stopped shooting when the shield gens were gone...

I just unzipped the contents and watched/read the unimplemented end material. The Mark II is a new precursor service ship? The Precursor factory world is not on the map is it? It must be less than 50 fuel / 500 units away, maybe 'below' the Sol as there's no species there blocking. The Slylandro are above though, and the captain apparently run into one of their probes in the story.

Since I'm doing fanart still (nothin to post atm.) I cant help to wonder about the Sa-Matra looking... strange. The precursor ships are blue and organic? The flagship doesn't look that organic other than the spine, but I suppose they had to make it a bit bulky to make the modules work. The Mark II looks a bit like the Sa-Matra though.

Oh, and another question, why does the starbase guy mention some guys fainting? Is it the Ilwrath... sorry, Dill-Rats - Thraddash conflict?

I actually tried staying inside the Thraddash system at the time of their annihilation, but the only thing that updated was the planet surface, not the ships roaming around. I had to exit and enter again for them to disappear.

Are there any special features if you wait till year 59? The guide just says the game is over.

Yeah it is, it's on the semi-hidden system of Vela I. If you had followed the guide through you would've been there. To find it, zoom in as close as you can around the Zeeman supergiant.



The Sa-Matra didn't look organic to me, it's just curvey and colorful.



That comes up whenever a species is killed off, or maybe just the first time that happens. If the Pkunk join the Yehat it says that too, so don't take it too seriously.



In the bad ending, the Kohr-Ah's sphere of influence flies around and exterminates everyone else. They blow up the starbase at the end and send you a brief "you lose" kind of message.

Instead of waiting around a very long time for no reason, could someone please just post the end game text?

If you use UQM, you can go into the game folder, packages, unzip the file there (took ages for me), then find the slides/ folder for the good ending. I couldn't find the bad ending.

Works similar to a .pk3, anyone know?

With the help of Shiver's guide I found some new neat aspects of the game, like the Druuge fuel deal (I never even found the Druuge caster before).

There's no way to deactivate or talk through slave shields (other than Chmmr) is there? I tried using all the items, even the utwig bomb, tehe.

Maybe make some saves for each step?

I wish you could berate the Spathi for being cowards....Maybe claim that I will lower their shield and unleash the Ultimate Evil on them =p

Nope, slave shields are so well insulated that the ability to talk through them probably has more to do with the Chenjesu's unique, natural super-sensitive receivers than with your special transmitter.

After all, the transmitters aren't actually special technology; they're just transmitters built a lot bigger with more energy running through them than the ones your Starbase can be bothered to make. The Ur-Quan would be stupid to use a shielding technology that the Umgah could easily circumvent.

How do we know that they care that the slave shield can/not be talked through?

There is no bad ending. The screen just fades to black and the main menu comes back on.

3DO/PC change?

Well, if that was the case - I think it would be a lot easier to find a way to "break" the slave shield.

If you really need to send a message up and down, note that red light can get through. Just send up a signal only using red light, and it'll be fine.

If it diffuses this, making conventional lasers impractical, send it up in large areas. (have a large area of some desert be able to turn black or white, flash it on and off).

To send messages down, the most obvious way is to put a shutter in front of the sun.

You interpreted the slave shield as being red because it's transparent to red light? I interpreted it as being opaque and emitting its own red glow (or, perhaps, absorbing all radiant energy from outside and re-emitting that energy randomly in the longer-wavelength part of the spectrum, which makes slightly more sense). Whatever it is, it doesn't transmit light through directly; the slave shield "glows" and "pulsates" "unceasingly".

I actually pictured there being no day/night cycle on Earth anymore because the shield absorbs the sun's energy and randomly re-emits it at a constant rate all over the globe. (This would allow the human race to survive, but would, of course, wreak ecological havoc with everything else on the planet. Perhaps the Ur-Quan helped them build sunlamp greenhouses to keep less robust plants alive. Or perhaps they just didn't care.) I could be wrong about that, but I am pretty sure the shield isn't meant to let you see any patterns of light at all from either side of it. It does specifically say that no humans ever saw the stars again while the shield was up.

Of course, if you start analysing the shield concept, it doesn't hold up very well. It's fun (and very geeky) to elaborate on it though.

The slave shield looks as if it's a 50% opaque red 'shell', from both the inside and the outside. I'm guessing that the light passing through the shield is still white, but turns red as it bounces back up on the shield (Hayes mentions the red sky). If it delays light and radio variably for every given spot, stretching and compressing, it would be harder to communicate with micro signals atleast. But as someone said, you could probably just put a giant shutter in front of the sun and blink it (slower than the warping of the shield).

Since shielded planets have shading, I'd guess there's night and day.



A cool slaveshield could be some sort of sphere as used in Clifford Simak's 'The largest world' (swedish title). It's about a giant impenetrable shell around a star, sort of like a Dysan sphere. It's built of a material that makes radio and electronics useless, so people living inside the sphere has to get down with farming and that kind of stuff.

Of course, it would be pitch black from the outside, and it wouldn't work well with just a planet...

Well, you can't get a very clear image off the starbase view of Earth, but if you go to Earth itself, the continents can be seen easily in the orbit view, both projected and rotating-planet.



A very slight glow would wipe that out. And that could be provided by simple scattering effects, far short of the observed effect.

One big question....If the shield doesnt shut out UV radiation, could we send a single that way? If it does, wouldnt that do some serious damage to the world's ecology?

I always thought that the sky would be red, and during the night, it would be as bright as a full moon, but red, so not much change in the night.day cycle.