The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

Do any of you of you know where the Kohr-Ah and the Ur-Quan's main base of operations is (homeworld)????

Some say the Kohr-Ah originated in the Acturus system...

You mean Antares???

Err... the system the Supox attacked the Kohr-Ah in  ;) but its not Arcturus (thats where the Burvix are from).

So ye probably Antares.. something beginning with A but not the planet the Burvix are from (hey I dont know all the solar systems by heart  :D )

I checked Antares, its Kzer Za...... im checking all Kohr Ah worlds with no sucess, also im cleansing their systems of kohr-ah  ;)

I checked Delta Crateris, fought my way through the ring, and protecting the sa-matra is a infinite amount of kzer-za but it shows them protecting a planet not the actuall sa-matra. Guess i found a bug...

Nah, it's there all right.

You just need to figure out where it is in there.

BTW, you may not find the Kohr-Ah, becuase they are an offshoot of the Ur-Quan brownies. You see, 200,000 years ago bla bla bla, the brown Ur-Quan were enslaved by the Dynnarri, who used them to kick the other races of the Sentient Milieu into oblivion. A while after, they decided to perfect their super slaves by splitting them into 2 races, the green ones (thinkers) and the black ones (fighters and labourers). Eventually, a green Ur-Quan called Kzer-Za found out "Omg, hey, if we are in pain, the Dynarri are in pain, so im gonna make some super pain on me, and they wont take control of me!" so he drank some uber poison but not enough to kill him, and he blurted this new finding on the com, and the other slaves began to pretty much tear themselves to pieces, while battering the Dynnari. After this, they made several painful methods, mainly the "agoniser", keeping them in screaming pain every minuite, and the Dynarri couldnt bring themselves to control the Ur-Quan becuase they would feel the horrible pain.

Eventually, they managed to kick the Dynnari (after several years) and turn them into talking pets used to instill fear into other races with a large booming male voice. Death could not be the penalty for them, they would recieve a fate more worse than that, non-sentience and to become a translator to the Ur-Quan. Of course, becuase of being in this pain, they went mad, and became the villains we all know.

After the Dynnari was kicked into non-sentience, they were soooo insane, that they knew that the only way to stop them being slaved again, was the enslavement of other worlds by the Ur-Quan. ( Kzer-Za found this out, he called it: "The Path of Now and Forever".

A supreme commander called Kohr-Ah (yes he was a black 'Quan) though, said that all life must be wiped out. He called this his : "Eternal Doctrine".

So all the green ones went to Kzer, and all the Black ones went to Kohr, and about this time, the Kzer-Za found the Sa-Matra Precursor weapons platform and used this against the Kohr-Ah who were also in the finishing touches of wiping out the Milieu.

In the end, there was like one Milieu world left, and the Kohr-Ah was like "This world must be cleansed" and the Kzer-Za was like "No it must be shielded, WTF are you on about". So then they had a big fight AGAIN. Now, using the Sa-Matra, the Kzer-Za won the battle and there was a few survivors left. The Kzer, probably not even thinking straight said to the survivors "We think the Doctrine may actually be a good idea, go to another galaxy" and so the Kohr-Ah did. (My thoughts may be that the Milieu world may be the Faz (Utwig ancestors).

After this, the Kzer-Za had a big war with the Alliance, and then they ended it pretty quick after slaving other worlds and using the big bad Matra.

The Kohr-Ah then came back from another galaxy to fight the Kzer-Za after cleansing their galaxy.

So chances are, you have to go to the Kohr-Ah galaxy to find out their part of the story.

Kohr-Ah not kill the Utwig trying to go start the doctirine with the Kzer Za, plus you havn't answered my question. Wheres the Kzer Za homeworld. Plus the Kohr Ah influence could have went through arcturas, but some of them would have had to try to kill the utwig....

BTW, they should make a patch for this game so the galaxy is bigger, get some voice actors. And make 6 more species!!!!

Also put in a homeworld for the Kohr-Ah

Ur-Quan do not use planets as "homeworlds" and haven't since the time of the sentient mileu they've been nomadic.  That said. their world of origin probably is not in this area of the galaxy (The Melnorme mention that the Taalo are one of the few, if not the only, species in the Mileu who originated in this area).

don't forget not all the races were destroyed. The Yuli or the Drall were enslaved by kzer za and one eliminated by kohrah.
and the Melnorme(mael-num at that time) survived when fleeing from the first doc war.

Mind you, there is NO actual proof the Mael-Num actually *ARE* the Melnorme... It's just an assumption.. Though it can be rather likely..

Actually, I think the melnorme-maelnum correlation was confirmed by TFB.

Also, there are a few slight if irrelevant modifications to that history: Kzer-Za died in the process of paining himself. A consequence of this is that he did not devise the enslavement doctrine.

Secondly, both branches of Ur-Quan call their doctrine the Path of Now and Forever. The Kzer-Za refer to the Kohr-Ah doctrine as the Eternal Doctrine.

Soooo, theres no homeworld. Thats cheap! I was in Kzer-Za/Kohr-Ah space for a couple days trying to find a homeworld!!!!

Man, i wish the game developers made the gaxlaxy bigger  :P

Don't foget, there IS a voice-actor patch for UQM, get it at sc2.sourceforge.net.

I've just started making my own Sc2.5, which will have a new storyline and a bigger galaxy ;).

- Dean

regarding map size:  This map is only a small section of the galaxy, which makes the galactic spin and core arrows make sense.

Dean if you can make a great mod which follows the story and is worth downloading, ill download it!

The glitch also is, early in the game when you break through the ur quan defending the sa-matra, and you go to it, its like a homeworld. It shows a infinite amount of Kzer-Za around PLANET not the SA-MATRA

Have you never actually seen the Sa-Matra? It looks just like a world from a distance, because the Ur-Quan surrounded it with a shield made of fused asteroids to protect it and keep people from figuring out what it was. It's the stereotypical "battle station the size of a small moon". So there's no actual plot hole with the combat screen, even if there is an obvious plot manipulation to save on graphics data. :)

The Ur-Quan spheres of influence reflect where their battle fleets are currently stationed, not where they actually live. This is true for a lot of species, hence why the Ilwrath's homeworld is actually outside their sphere of influence -- they're an aggressive species, they only care about prowling the hunting grounds, not where they live -- and so on.

And, for what it's worth, I greatly prefer it that the SC2 starmap does not contain a homeworld and sphere of influence for every species, and many species come from places -- and have been to places -- far far away and inaccessible. It makes the world feel more open-ended, more realistic. Nothing is as constricting-feeling as the idea that the world of the story only extends to the places the designers in the game could implement.

Some corrections to Elerium's story:

The devices in SC2 are called "Excruciators". "Agonizer" is a term from Star Trek, the things they have instead of communicators in the Mirror Universe.

Kzer-Za was a Green, but he died long before the Slave Revolt -- he was a "martyr", remember? It, in fact, says a lot about the different personalities of the two subspecies that one of them named themselves after a long-dead historical figure and the other named themselves after their current leader.

"Path of Now and Forever" and "Eternal Doctrine" seem to pretty much be used interchangeably, actually. It's in one speech where the Kzer-Za use PoNaF for their own philosophy and ED for the Kohr-Ah's, and it seems to me to just be because "Eternal Doctrine" is a less exalted term. (Sort of like how someone might their own king a "Monarch and Protector of the People" and the other guy's king "The Enemy Leader".)

The Kzer-Za won a *ton* of wars before meeting up with the Alliance; they supposedly enslaved their way through half the galaxy until they reached Alliance space, which was about the antipodes to where they started. The Kohr-Ah never left the galaxy either, that we know of -- they just went in the opposite direction.

The Yuli and the Drall were genocided by the Ur-Quan on orders of the Dnyarri during the Dnyarri Slave Empire, because they were deemed too weak to live. The only species from the Milieu that was slave-shielded was the Faz (hence the admittedly weak theory that they're somehow connected with the Utwig, whose homeworld is called "Fahz"). The species that the Kohr-Ah genocided as part of the Eternal Doctrine was the Yuptar. All of those, along with the Taalo and the Mael-Num, who escaped, account for the seven "major" races of the Milieu, though we don't know what happened to whatever "minor" ones there may have been. (If they were very minor, though, it doesn't seem the Dnyarri would've gone to the trouble of keeping them alive.)

Thanks Mr_Jiggles, I'll try to do the game proud. I'm not actually modding, but re-writing the game from scratch - that means I can have it just the way I want but it also means a LOT more work. If you have a "wishlist" or suggestions, get them in now!

Also, I'll need people more tallented than me to do the ship drawings and (later) music. If you want to do either of those (or voice acting, or beta testing, etc.) give me a hollar.

- Dean

Perhaps if the original Ur-Quan homeworld were located, some brown Ur-Quan might be found on it.

Art, wasn't Kzer-Za the "founder" of the excessive-pain-kills-off-Dnyarri-power, and wasn't Kohr-Ah the leader of the Kohr-Ah at the beginning, when they were exiled by the Kzer-Za, after the first doctrinal conflict?

Yes,  but i do not think there is any more brown ur-quan. The dynarri injected all of them with genetic modifcation stuff. Turned em green or black. The dnyarri wouldn't let anybody be in between you were either worker/warrior or scientist/ leader

There could have been some that escaped into deep underground shelters, or perhaps fleed dynarri space.

Sure, but the original Kzer-Za wasn't any kind of political leader among the Green Ur-Quan. There *were* no political leaders among the Green Ur-Quan; there were no *leaders* among the Green Ur-Quan. They were all mind-controlled slaves, and Kzer-Za was just a scientist whose mind was particularly useful to his masters.

By discovering the secret to breaking Dnyarri mind control, Kzer-Za started the Ur-Quan Slave Revolt among *all* Ur-Quan, Green and Black. It's never implied that Kzer-Za had anything to do with the Path of Now and Forever -- it couldn't have even started to be an idea among the Ur-Quan in his time, when all Ur-Quan were still slaves. The Green Ur-Quan just picked him as a figure to venerate because he was a Green and named themselves in his honor, but when the Greens became the Ur-Quan Kzer-Za the original Kzer-Za had been dead for years.

By contrast, the Black Ur-Quan were led by the general Kohr-Ah *at the time* that they named themselves after him. Kohr-Ah himself is named as the one who created their version of the PoNaF, the Eternal Doctrine.

That's a big difference. It'd be like if the Democrats decided to name themselves the "George Washington Party" and the Republicans named themselves the "George W. Bush Party". It shows a whole different attitude, at least in my opinion.

As far as surviving Brown Ur-Quan.... I mean, sure, anything's a possibility, if you want to write the sequel. But thematically I think it's a terrible idea. It's really hard to figure out how a Dnyarri, which is demonstrably able to sense and control minds over an entire planet and much of the space surrounding it, would completely miss a colony of Brown Ur-Quan living free, *especially* if they were still on the Ur-Quan homeworld. After all, the Ur-Quan were the favored slaves and the Dnyarri had what appears to be something of an obsession over them. And at the time "Dnyarri space" extended to the entire galaxy, since they inherited the Sentient Milieu's territory. Traveling outside the galaxy to, say, the Magellanic Clouds seems to be difficult but possible -- like traveling to another continent would've been in ancient times-- but it seems unlikely the Ur-Quan could have done it, since the total conquest of the Milieu is reported as taking days -- and the Ur-Quan would be the least likely species to launch an organized exodus at extremely short notice, what with their xenophobic ways and single-seat ships.

"But thematically I think it's a terrible idea. It's really hard to figure out how a Dnyarri, which is demonstrably able to sense and control minds over an entire planet and much of the space surrounding it, would completely miss a colony of Brown Ur-Quan living free, *especially* if they were still on the Ur-Quan homeworld."

Yes, but they had friends with a device that could block out the telepathy of the dynarri. Also, since the taalo are in pretty space, who's to say they didn't bring their "friends" with them?


"single-seat ships."

Seats? I thought most Ur-quan liked to hang from the ceiling. Unless the maybe browns had a taste for luxury.  ;)

On the other hand, a large number of browns could have independently set out for the Magellanic clouds -- the UQ were explorers, after all...

Well, the whole tragic and dramatic thing about the Taalo was that they didn't finish the Taalo Shield in time, right? Or they did finish it, but they weren't in time to use it before the Ur-Quan descended on them and killed them dead.

Then again, if it does become a plot point for the Taalo to be found alive in some other dimension somewhere, it adds excitement to that to have free Brown Ur-Quan living with them too. Actually that sounds pretty good -- the existence of either of those would shake the worldview of the Kzer-Za and Kohr-Ah pretty badly, but both at once would be enormous. Completely destroy their sense of historical determinism. (I still think any honest Ur-Quan sequel has to *contain* a final answer for the Ur-Quan's deep, tragic historical dilemma, even if it's not the point of the game. It's really not fair to them if the overall outcome is "We destroyed what they believed was the reason for their existence, and they eventually got over it and signed on to the League." Or even "We destroyed what they believed was the reason for their existence, and then killed them all because our ships are so awesome.")

The Brown Ur-Quan being in the Magellanic Clouds is also an interesting twist, although I have my doubts that more than a very small handful would go -- again, not much social organization, preference for wandering independently. If anyone *would* go it'd be a lone Ur-Quan explorer, of course, but I can't picture them starting any more than a tiny colony. Still be enough to wildly shake up the fleeing Ur-Quan fleets when they got there.

Point of information: The Ur-Quan did not kill the Taalo dead.
To quote the makers, "The Taalo live!"

Even in game, we hear the Orz say the Taalo are playing *time games* on the surface, but we cannot see them.

I don't think the taalo and brown UQ were mentioned just for a backstory. I think they both live and were to be a major or minor part of the TFB SC3, that never got made.

Side note, does anybody have any theories on the biology of the taalo? We know they were silicon based but not like the chenjesu and we know what their homeworld is like (actually I forgot, is it hot or cold?) Were they flexible bodied creatures living in temperatures that only mycon might find comfortable? Or were they rocklike, but still very different from the chenjesu?

With regards to the Ur-Quan, you are dead wrong.

Without divulging too much, back when I visited the TFB mothership, I was told by the creators in a private conversation that the point of SC2 was to get the Ur-Quan "off the stage"; to open up the story to other threats, and that they had gone to the well as many times as they cared to with regard to the Ur-Quan.  Which would place the original brown Ur-Quan wholly in the realm of backstory, if the creators are to be believed.

It was said in as many words that the new threat was likely to come in the form of the Orz, and though the Taalo were not brought up, having them "reach from beyond the grave" to provide assistance with both the Ur-Quan Conflict and the, erm, "Orz Threat" seems...like lazy scriptwriting.  But given other statements by the creators, they would likely have had some manner of role in whatever would have come next, and in this case, only the creators know for sure.

Haha, the orz? :D

Yes, I must have been crazy to think the ur-quan were going to be the big bad guys again with their puny fusion cannons and all. It should have been obvious to me that the orz would rain down fleets of deadly nemesis warships from sub space. I mean, not only do they talk/look like something from a nintendo money machine cartoon animal franchise, but they have deadly ships that can kill an entire cruiser if four or five gang up on it. We don't stand a chance. :o

"We're in some real pretty shit now man... That's it man, game over man, game
over, man! Game over! What the fuck are we gonna do now? What are we gonna do?"

Have you ever tried playing Orz vs. computer cruiser? You will whomp it. The Nemesis is a 23 point ship for a reason.

Well, if the Taalo do, indeed, LIVE! then I'd consider it sloppy scriptwriting to  mention it and then just let it slide. If we had a TFB sequel I would expect the Taalo and their *time games* to play some part in the goings-on, even a minor one. I think it might work, actually, to have the Ur-Quan be a sort of distant threat -- they're in scattered, fleeing disarray but you have to stop them from "ever amassing the resources and the will to set out on the Path of Now and Forever again" -- and the Taalo's return, or even simply making known the possibility of the Taalo's return, could be the means for convincing the Ur-Quan to join the civilized world.

This provides a natural segue by which the Orz could become the big bad guys, since they control the Taalo homeworld and they and the Taalo seem to have an unfriendly relationship. (They *chase* the Taalo the way the Dnyarri once *chased* the Taalo. Ominous.) Attempts to contact the Taalo could upset the Orz and push them into open conflict with you, leading you to slowly but surely discover their horrifying true nature.

You are a stronger man than I if you weren't totally freaked out by the Orz. They *were* cartoony and cute. That was what made them so horribly menacing. Horrible menace that is twisted and distorted and disguised is more intimidating than menace that's simply boomed out at you by a big deep voice.

And you're a fool if you judge the Nemesis or any other ship by how well you, a human, can play against a computer-controlled version of it. The Nemesis is far and away in the top tier of ships in the game, once you learn to control the howitzer and figure out how to use the Marines strategically.

I ran some tests. Awesome computer to awesome computer, the nemesis beats the cruiser (the damn cruiser would not aim when shooting missiles!  >:( ), but the dreadnaught beat the nemesis each time (Each duel had three rounds). I can't seem to kill a cruiser with the nemesis, despite my ability to dodge it's missiles and fire accurately with the howitzer (though I didn't find the turreting to be very effective in this battle). One thing I will say about the nemesis, is it is one of the few ships which stands a good chance against the avatar. That's the opinion of a strong fool, anyway.

P.S. For those of you who got shivers from the orz, just wait until you see this:

http://images.google.com/images?q=tbn:4_wW12nAKgoJ:http://www.ezthemes.com/previews

If you suffer tramatic psychological harm from the image above, remember that I am not liable.

Ah. I see you are not trying to get marines on board! That's the thing... the point defense can't kill them reliably. Especially if you draw fire with a nearby bullet shot before they enter range.

"Ah. I see you are not trying to get marines on board! That's the thing... the point defense can't kill them reliably."

It can't swat them down as it can with UQ fighters, but two or three hits will kill marines. The only way to hit a cruiser with them is to cut him off and hope some can nail him from the bow. Otherwise, they'll just trail the cruiser until they get fried. It seems that since the nemesis is fast/manuverable enough to dodge nukes somewhat easily, the howitzer is a safer choice than marines.

Anyway, fighting the orz would still not be too bad, as they do not have thralls. Plus, let's not forget that without human intervention, the orz fall to the kohr-ah. A sub-korh-ah threat is not very scary.

The flaw in that line of thinking is that it depends on the idea that the Orz species, ships, and sphere of influence you see in the game is all there is to the Orz.

The fact that the game makes it pretty clear that this is almost certainly not true is the creepy part.

(That said, any story writer who decided that the Orz storyline involves nothing more than the Orz fleet opening hostilities on the rest of the galaxy and you blowing up the Orz fleet would, indeed, be the biggest lameass ever.)

Well if the fish species you see is really just a *finger* of yet another telepathic overmind (making them the orzlek, or orzmanu ;) ), then I guess you have a point. But if *orz* are just *orz*, then it probably wouldn't be hard to get the arilou, taalo and maybe androsyn to help you kick nemesis ass, up and down all ten or eleven dimensions (damn theorists can never make up their minds about how many times they want to add a couple directions to the universe).

Heh. "Fish Fingers". Yuck.

What's wrong with fish sticks (besides their attempts to take over the universe)? They're salty, oily and come in small packages, yet they don't immediately induce vomiting as do their relatives, sardines.

By the way Art, notice that it says "Enlightened" under my callsign, whereas yours says "Zebransky Food." This means two things: 1) My mind has reached a level of  incredibly wisdomousness, while yours is being slowly liquified by stomach enymes. 2) You should do less worrying about the Orz and more about the Zebransky.

Speaking of which, how hard is it to survive an attack from an animal that is extinct?

Better watch out Deus hes gonna find another species to rise up and annihilate with his ZFP friends  ;D

They're fishy.

You evolved from fish.

I guess that's exactly why it's so revolting; it's like eating a distant cousin.

So then you wouldn't consider eating a non-cousin to be revolting? What kind of forum is this? :o

That's exactly why I'm not worried about the Zebranky -- they're all dead.

Unless the Orz are their ghosts manifesting from another dimension, or something.

More to the point: If *Orz* were just *Orz*, then they wouldn't scare the Arilou or the Taalo or the Androsynth. Taalo come from an era of galactic-spanning civilization and a tech-level way above the Chenjesu, if the Taalo Shield is any sign. And the Androsynth were pretty damn badass. The fact that the Arilou are freaked out by them and the Taalo are apparently being *chased* by them and they somehow made all the Androsynth go bye-bye is our *clue* that we're going to find out some horrifying hidden power of theirs in the sequel...


It's still against the law in most states, though I hear they do it all the time in the rural South.

So then what are the fish shaped creatures you see on your viewscreen? Are they the orz or just puppets of some telepathic super entity. And if they're such a threat to our universe, how come the kohr-ah killed every fishy in the taalo sector during their rampage, with such ease?

The latter seems to be strongly implied by all the *fingers* and so on dialogue. It's pretty clear that the *fingers* don't, for example, have the power to directly do whatever was done to the Androsynth, and yet they were involved with doing it. (Toys for Bob confirmed it in an interview, before people start jumping on me about the ambiguity of Orzese.)

As for why they don't resist the Kohr-Ah... well, they're really freaking weird and we don't know why they do what they do, and they don't seem to value their own lives or see combat as a danger the way we do. To them it's a game or, as they put it, *dancing* *party*.

Whatever weird greater threat may come out of the Orz phenomenon isn't necessarily negated by the Kohr-Ah death march, after all. We don't get to see what happens at the end of the game either way -- it may be that the Kohr-Ah would have had been the ones to deal with the problem rather than the Alliance, and it may be that the problem might be much harder to deal with if there isn't a physical Orz species that's made an *alliance* *party* with them. (On the other hand, maybe the *alliance* *party* is a foot in the door. Who knows?)

About the Orz chasing the Androsynth, that's actually not the only interpretation.
The quote is "Taalo are in *heavy space* and next what? They spread to *Pretty Space* because Dnyarri are chasing them. Now Dnyarri are sleeping, so Orz can *chase* them."
"Them" could refer to the Dnyarri.

Alright people, you don't need to wait for a TFB SC3. Just play Starflight 2 and you can consider it a sneak preview, at the very least. Here's a translation key to make the shift between 'flight and 'control more easily:

Orz = Uhl

Fingers = Uhlek, Umanu

Fish Fingers = Legk

Pretty Space = Cloud Nebula (your *heavy* ship will need nebular shields or else you will be *frumple* and *dissolve*.)

Taalo = Lowar

Taalo Shield <=> Uhl Weapon

The marines have 3 HP each. Yes, you need to be judicious with their use. But it isn't too hard to get in front of the cruiser... you are much faster than it is.

That said, yes, the Orz would not manifest their threat just by shooting up the Alliance. Perhaps they will try to be more friendly, thus... well... having unpleasant scary things happen.

Yea, well that's just 3 laser strikes away from this (don't look, meep):

http://eeecooks.com/recipes/2002/02/15

Possible. Unlikely. Confusing, anyway.

The Dnyarri are, from our point of view, all dead. The Orz term "sleeping" is therefore most likely a metaphor for death. (It could be something else, which presages a return of the Dnyarri in the sequel, but that doesn't seem to me like TFB's intention.) It's hard to see how the Orz could meaningfully *chase* a species that's completely extinct, even given their weird point of view.

Anyway, the most natural reading is that the Orz can now *chase* the Taalo because the Dnyarri are no longer chasing them. The other reading implies that the Dnyarri chasing the Taalo somehow precludes the Orz chasing the Dnyarri, which is weird. Anyways, why should the Orz *chase* the Dnyarri over any other ordinary TrueSpace-bound species?

The simplest reading to me, anyway, is that the Taalo become vulnerable to the Orz because the Taalo enter the Orz dimension. But whatever -- whatever it means, it means that there's an Orz/Taalo connection.

3 laser strikes is pretty expensive. If you space the Marines properly so that they don't all arrive at once, you can run down the Cruiser's battery that way, and then the Cruiser's screwed. (Especially if you can manage to get Marines on the Cruiser's tail just after the Cruiser has launched a nuke at you.)

I find "sleeping" a better description of the Dnyarri state than "death". After all, as the SC2 events showed, they can return from that state.

Even if it's not TFB's intention to have the Dnyarri return, they may still have wanted to suggest it as a possibility to the reader (also note the Talking Pet outtake).

Not  if you consider the Dnyarri's and Talking Pets the same creatures, but just in a different state.

No, it's the Dnyarri being telepathicly active which would prevent the Orz from chasing the Dnyarri. In other words:  "Now Dnyarri are [powerless], so Orz can *chase* [the Dnyarri].".
If you ask me, the it makes more sense this way. Why wouldn't the Orz be able to chase the Taalo while the Dnyarri were chasing them too? Note that the "so" refers to the Dnyarri sleeping. It doesn't refer to the Taalo having spread t o*Pretty Space*.

Lots of possibilities. Perhaps the Orz were friends with the Taalo (there's plenty of evidence for that in the Orz dialogs). Perhaps the Orz consider the Dnyarri as a particular threath. Perhaps they have something the Orz want.

What's a bigger problem is what comes directly after the chasing lines:
*campers* is a positive word. If "They" refers to whatever the Orz are chasing, which the language would indicate, that would suggest they're not chasing them to harm them (at least from the Orz' perspective). They just want a *party*. In that case the Orz chasing the Taalo would make more sense.

Oh, I see now. So our dimension never "smelled" good to the orz, because the Dynarri had already taken over the good hosts. Now that they are disabled, "heavy" space is there for the infesting. An interesting thing to note is that the orz know the arilou and dynarri, but the arilou do not know about the dynarri (though they know about the orz) and the dynarri might not have known about either. Also, the Taalo cannot be controlled by the Dynarri, but they can easily be taken over by the Orz (almost as if the Dynarri and Orz are opposites in their telemanipulative abilities.)

(http://eeecooks.com/recipes/2002/02/15/fish_sticks_1903.jpg[img])


 :o Don't look at this meep-eep, or you will surely burst into flames!  :o

Camper could possibly translate into fighter or opponent.  Hence they really could want to wipe out the Dynarri (and why they so eagerly join the New Alliance).  Get them while they're ineffective against their slowly incomming invasion.

And then when the New Alliance becomes signifigant *campers*...  Orz-NA war.

Me thinks it's like this:

The Androsynth are all clones, and thus all have the same *smell*, and the Arilou (Becuase of the second war) couldn't help them change their *smell* becuase of the Hierarchy-Alliance war. Maybe the Arilou didn't care? Maybe they only cared for Earthers, but anyway, my theory is that becuase they all had the same smell, and opened them to the Orz, the Orz adapted to every single one of the Androsynth, using them as host bodies. If you know about Orz too you go mad (such Arilou said "Ignorance is your greatest protection, that is why the Androsynth opened themselves and there are no more Androsynth, only Orz (which implies they could be taken as hosts)"

The Dynarri are rendered useless by the Ur-Quan, and so are inactive meaning that the Orz can take over new bodies to infest our dimention (as seen by the chasing in previous threads).

Don't know about the Taalo though, if the Orz are freinds with them or not..

Just my 2 cents  ;) well at least what I think  :P

No, if the Dnyarri were the factor blocking the Orz from TrueSpace, it seems odd that it took them hundreds of thousands of years after the Dnyarri's fall to finally invade our space. (Remember that that whole story took place so long ago that, since then, the Ur-Quan have traveled 180 degrees around the galaxy.) It's made pretty clear that whatever the operative factor was in letting the Orz through to our space it had to do with the Androsynth's Dimensional Fatigue experiments.

Also, no matter which way you interpret the Orz dialogue, it's either that the Orz are *chasing* the Taalo because the Dnyarri aren't, or that the Orz are *chasing* the Dnyarri because the Dnyarri stopped *chasing* the Taalo. You can't read it to mean that the Orz are now *chasing* any other members of our dimension, like Humans or Androsynth -- as meep-eep says, either it's the Talking Pets (the *sleeping* Dnyarri) they really want, or else they're doing something to the Taalo who are now in *PrettySpace* and not here. The Androsynth takeover is entirely separate.

And we don't have any evidence that the Taalo can be easily taken over by the Orz. In fact if the Orz *chasing* means anything like what "chasing" means to us, it means they're trying to do something to the Taalo but haven't done it yet. (Since if you interpret it that way, the Dnyarri *chasing* the Taalo means the Dnyarri ordering the Ur-Quan to genocide them, but -- importantly -- failing.)

Are Androsynth all clones of each other, without genetic alteration? There was originally a *group* of Androsynth, not just one, and it said they were heavily genetically modified. I would imagine they'd still be tweaking their genes after the Exodus, given that they're superior to ordinary Humans and whatnot.

Even so I'm not sure I like saying "smell" is intrinsically linked to DNA. The Arilou said being "smelled" was entirely dependent on *knowledge*, on what our minds know about "Them" (the Orz, or whatever's behind the Orz), and that ignorance was our best protection, and that *if* we began to become curious and intellectually investigate the idea of "Them" we *would* inevitably be drawn into their web, even though we're mostly genetically unique compared to the 'Synth. I don't think it was simply madness the Arilou were warning about -- I think that whatever happened to Bukowski really was the prelude to the full-on "snagging" that happened to the Androsynth.

As far as friendship... *chasing* doesn't sound friendly to me, especially from a species that also calls ship-to-ship combat *dancing*.

"No, if the Dnyarri were the factor blocking the Orz from TrueSpace, it seems odd that it took them hundreds of thousands of years after the Dnyarri's fall to finally invade our space."

The Orz do not perceive time in such a linear manner. Plus there are quite a few things that were not good about *heavy* space for Orz. First their were Taalo with their mental shields. Then there were Dynarri taking the best slots. Then many of the sentients were killed or driven away during the UQ war. But when the andro-disruptions let some of the *heavy* space *smell* into their home level, the Orz saw that ours was a dimension of great opportunity. Few threats, *happy campers*, entire *playgrounds* of potential *bubbles* instead of small crews in passing ships in the emptier dimensions, and somekind of environmental conditions that the orz like (besides the plethora of hosts).


"And we don't have any evidence that the Taalo can be easily taken over by the Orz."

There is this quote:

"Taalo are in *heavy space* and next what?
They spread to *Pretty Space* because Dnyarri are chasing them.
Now Dnyarri are sleeping, so Orz can *chase* them.
Then we can have a *party*. They are even better *campers* than you.
Do not feeling bad. You are good enough *campers*, but not yet."

*Campers* are suitable hosts. So either the Dynarri or the Taalo are easier to take over than humans. This is odd, because the Dynarri are telemanipulative and the Taalo are invulnerable to that telemanipulation.

But we're *campers* and the Orz haven't taken us over; by that logic the only *campers* we know of are the Androsynth.

It could just as easily mean that the Taalo were willing to make an alliance with the Orz.

*Campers* are potential hosts. *Bubbles* are hosts that are occupied by orz.

I don't think the Orz would have turned down a standard alliance with the Taalo, unless they wanted to infest them and the Taalo resisted.

Well you forget, the Orz took over the Androsynth because they knew too much... maybe knowledge makes you easier to host... adn the Dynarri and Taalo would be extremely intelligent species I'd think :)

I think its like this, Smell is unique to your DNA, but only you, not for instance, your father. When your knowledge of the ORZ is great enough, they can identify your smell exclusively, thus can come after you. By this token, the Androsynth, once one of them knew enough of the ORZ, the entire species was easily *smelled* (because they are identical) thus vulnerable to the ORZ.

But the Taalo are silicon based, and so they wouldn't have DNA. How could they be easy pickins for the Orz?

they don't have one. after the first doctrine war they went across the rim of the galaxy in diff directions. they meet in the area the game takes place in.

The Orz know how to talk to them, but they haven't been picked at all. They are "playing *time games* on the surface", remember?

That doesn't shoot down this theory at all. They may not have deoxyribonucleic acid as the substrate for their genetic code, but if they're alive they must have *something* akin to a genetic code that determines how they reproduce and grow. That's what makes something a living thing.

I think the Orz are wacky enough that it's unlikely that any of their abilities are tied to a specific, biological molecule.

I think I finally know what happened to the 'Synth.

Orz is a dimentional being from "heavy" space, the space where the Taalo are in, and was "below" when Arilou were "above".

When the Androsynth showed themselves to Orz, it smelled probably one Androsynth and found out they all smelled the same. When this happened it took control of the entire Androsynth race overnight.

(I'm going to have a go at translating the Orz, read it in another post :P)

Look:

Orz are happy *people energy* from the outside.
Inside is good. So much good that Orz will always *germinate*.

People energy may refer to the Orz taking host *energy*.

And here:

If you are *campers* you will enjoy *the change*, but maybe not yet.
It is best if many happy Orz are coming to your *house*.
Let's *spitting* the fun words for several *pieces* and then surprising things!!!

Thats creepy.

Art:
*chasing* can be friendly. Perhaps they're just persuing them for an *alliance party*.

To Deus_Siddus:
What is this *campers* being "suitable hosts" theory come from? And what do you mean by "host" anyhow?

"*chasing* can be friendly. Perhaps they're just persuing them for an *alliance party*."

Friendly because they look at everything as a game.


"What is this *campers* being "suitable hosts" theory come from? And what do you mean by "host" anyhow?"

A host in this context, is the victim of a parasite. The Orz take over the minds of *campers* and gain some sort of biological benefit from doing so. They also seem to like to play games with their slave *bubbles*, like *dancing*. Whoever said you can't play with your food? Anyway, I think *campers* are potential hosts, and *bubbles* are hosts, presently. *Happy campers* seem to be hosts that are not *jumping in front* or being *silly cows* or *sick fish* by resisting the orz's designs on taking them over.


This would all make sense as a potiental sequel candidate. Since the Orz have *many bubbles*, they won't just attack you with *go-go* fishes in nemeses. They'll have a whole entourage of "bubble thralls", ready to fight every last silly cow, sick fish, human, chenjesu, ur-quan, and lowar that stands, sits, or hangs in their way. *Heavy Space* is now a realm of the orz, or at least it would be if TFB made Starcontrol 3. Thus, this sort of plot would create a new hierarchy replacement, with many different species' ships, and many different abilities/designs, to be matched against the fleet of the new alliance of free stars. Fortunately, the Ur-Quan HATE mind controllers, so you'd get them on your side in addition to the Chenjesu and Chmmr. I'm sure the Orz have a real heavy hitter species of their own (maybe infested precursors!).

I've translated most Orz, and I'll say, it's creepy. But don't worry I'm not gonna turn into a Bukowski ;)

I agree with Deus_Siddis, that theory fits the idea of the Orz perfectly.

Just in case you're serious...

Interpreting "*bubbles*" as anything else than atoms or other elementary particles seems extremely far fetched to me.

I also don't see a single clue in the game for Orz infecting alien races (perhaps alien society, but not individuals). Which quotes would suggest this according to you?

The Orz looking at everything as a game doesn't have to be true either. Everything with "*game*" and "*dancing*" etc. could actually be just a translation mismatch.

I'm not sure why you guys are trying to interpret the Orz language.  It was clear from the first transmission that the system could not accurately translate their language so therefore, there shouldn't be any logical meaning to anything they say.  Also, if their words did not sucessfully tranlate into our dimension, it could also be possible that their appearance didn't translate correctly as well.  We see cartoon-like crabs on the screen.  Their appearance might in reality be more agressive looking to further match their Nemesis ships.  In fact, maybe their Nemesis ships didn't translate over properly as well.

Atoms? That's actually a new one on me. If the Orz bodies physically exist it seems clear that they *are* made of atoms, unless you think *fingers* refers to the Orz species completely being some kind of psychic illusion or exotic matter or whatnot, which isn't something I got out of it.

The fact that *bubbles* is contrasted with *fingers* seems pretty clear to me -- the Orz are one with many *fingers*, like single organs of one big organism, meaning they're a collective organism, a hivemind. By contrast we Humans are individuals with no direct connection to each other, walled off from each other by our physical bodies like *bubbles*.


It always seemed to me that the neatest explanation for the Androsynth suddenly vanishing and being replaced by the Orz was that the Androsynth literally became the Orz -- that the Orz hivemind took over Androsynth bodies and then physically transformed them into a form more suitable to it or a form less likely to be recognized or whatever. It's the kind of plot one would get from Lovecraft, which is what all the Bukowski stuff is very, very clearly referencing.

But as far as Orz  mind-controlling people Dnyarri-style, I don't see it as their modus operandi, even if they're capable of it. We don't actually see Androsynth mind-controlled by the Orz, and we're explicitly told by the Arilou that the Androsynth as Androsynth no longer exist. I think it'd work thematically better if the Orz must transform things they infest, and if infestation is always a species-wide or society-wide event.

Hmm.. Interesting theory, Art..

So Orz is one(?) singular creature (think "Overmind"), which "takes over" other species, and.. err.. "transforms" them into Orz?

Let me see...

*funny* = ?
*see* = see, I'd guess... Or feel.. Maybe notice.. Detect...
*light reflections* = something that you can touch. A regular "object"
*many bubbles* = many people. Identities. Like Humans are *many bubbles*
*campers* = non-Orz
*fingers* = Species that are taken-over by Orz. Androsynth is one of them.
*heavy space* = The "space" "above" Quasispace? Or a "space" "below" truespace?
*smell* = *see* non-*light reflections* (*fingers*? *pretty colors*?). Read: something that is not of your own (either *light reflections* or *pretty colors*)? It seems to go either way, judging from http://www.classicgaming.com/starcontrol/sc2/quotes/orz.txt
*pretty colors* = Something that is not a *light reflection*? (Origin: drugs? Seems likely)
*game* = something to do?

Should translate to something like "I am Orz. I have taken over many species"...

I've always thought -myself- that Bukowski thing was the key to uncovering what happened to the Orz/Androsynth... But since I never read any Lovecraft stuff.. Maybe you're sort of right, Art... And I bet the keys to the Orzeze language/understanding are *fingers* and *bubbles*...

Hm! Maybe the Orz spread, whereas each Orz is an "overmind" to it's *fingers*? A pyramid structure? One Orz feeds/serves/whatevers it's *fingers*, and each of it's *fingers*  do the same to THEIR *fingers*?


More interesting stuff:
So, the Androsynth made some kind of portal (*slippery place*, where you can *slip* through spaces), which in turn let the Orz get in (let them *smell* a new *level* (Hyperspace?), and take over the Androsynth (making them a *finger*)
Maybe, they mean with *dance* to "take over" one's soul, by destroying their physical host? Thus, they gain knowledge and they can *smell* more?


SIGH! Even MORE interesting stuff!
*party* = A large *fingerifizing* (*becoming*) thing?
*become* = *fingerifizing*. Making someone a *finger*
*happy* = Orz. Being a *finger*.

Hey I came up with that theory! ;) Art improved it 100 fold so it's mine and his :P

@Orz

Me thinks that "fingers" means "links to hosts". It fits in as you see below:

I think it's "First it's the alliance with us, then you will become"

That is *funny*. You think you *see* Orz but Orz are not *light reflections*.
That's funny. You think you see Orz (as a race) but Orz are not what you see.
Maybe you think Orz are *many bubbles* too. It is such a joke.
Maybe you think Orz are many people too. That's a joke.
Orz are not *many bubbles* like *campers*. Orz are just Orz.
I am not many hosts like people. Orz are just me.
I am Orz. I am one with many *fingers*.
I am Orz. The one with many links to my hosts. (like overmind)
My *fingers* reach through into *heavy space* and you *see* *Orz bubbles*
My links to my hosts reach through into your space and you see Orz hosts.
but it is really *fingers*.
but it is really my links to my hosts.
Maybe you do not even *smell*? That is sad.
Maybe you do not see/take over (like Orz)? That is sad.
*Smelling* *pretty colors* is the best *game*.
Taking over other races is the best "game".

I am Orz the one with many *fingers*.

I am Orz. the one with many links to my hosts?

After knowing about Orz, Orz can "Pull" *silly campers*. *Silly Androsynth* do not want. (So maybe theirs evidence that the Androsynth are futiliy resisting Orz?! This is getting too *creepy*.

*smelling* is definitively NOT taking over.
See:

- Six or nine *pieces* ago, myself the Orz did not even *smell* your *level*.
- Then the Androsynth made some *slippery places* and then Orz can *smell* it.
- Then we can *smell* the Arilou. Again they are *jumping in front*.

Also. I think I'm wrong with *smell* being "detect"...
(that is after you made them NGAAAAH

I'd have to refine *smell* so it means "Detect as a possible *finger*".. Or maybe it depends on the context.. Either Detect, or Detect as possible *finger*....

Also, no-one can ever "own" a theory.. Something can get "assigned" someone's name. but it's not "beloning" to someone. I bet this theory has been hinted at thousands of times before... Let's just name it the "Overtake and Transform-theory", or anything fancy like that...

edit: maybe it's time to make a graph of this.. Hmm..

Edit:
So *heavy space* is where most races do their thing. So either Hyperspace or Truespace. My guess is Truespace...

What about this Megagun? :o

Even more *pleasant combinations*. I am *successful* the most.
Even more pleasent races?. I am successful!
Perhaps after the biggest *party* you will understanding the Orz
Perhaps after the biggest * alliance* you will understand the Orz (Be a part of Orz meaning biggest alliance?)
and I can showing you other *levels*.
and then I can show you other levels of change.
There are so many, but you only *play* on this one.
There are so many  but you stay on this one.
One is not enough.
One is not enough.
We are *friends* now. Never be afraid to *open* enough and *spread the wax*.
We are allies now. Never be afraid to learn more and spread the word. (Elerium:- Presumably knowing the Orz which would allow them to pull in *campers*)


Edit:
Same with you Megagun, I think *heavy space* means Truespace.

The idea I get is that whatever the Orz and Orz ships are composed are looks just like the usual elementary particles in our 3 (spatial) dimensions. But these Orz particles also have a component in a fourth dimension, unlike ours.

Would you expect no Androsynth bodies then? The buildings shot to pieces suggest that the Androsynth were firing on something ghostlike, which means they had the time to do so. If some Androsynth were infected, I'd expect other people trying to stop the infected ones. There should have been bodies then.
As Bukowski says "It's as though something appeared out of nowhere, blasted everything with nuclear bazookas, then grabbed all the Androsynth and disappeared.".

Also, Lovecraft may have been TFB's inspiration here; that doesn't mean they'd just copy it. Whatever you expect from Lovecraft does not necessarilly have to be true here.

Meep-Eep i'm gonna have a go at explaining the homeworld thing :)

If Androsynth "know" about the Orz, Orz can "pull" them. So, I think they pulled their entire homeworld and race into the Orz space:

I will tell again the many *pieces*. You do not know *special things*.
Here is some. *Time* is not one but many.
*Space* is many. *Colors* are many. You are so *sticky*.
You cannot *slide* like Orz from *outside* to *inside* and *in between*.
It is sad, but Orz can *pull* the *campers* after being *connected*.
This is soon.
Orz are trying to *pull* the Androsynth, but they are so *silly*, they do not want.
Arilou can *slide*. Also Taalo. Many can *slide*, but Orz are better of course.

So all the bodies dissapeared on the homeworld (replaced by Orz) and the entire homeworld was left a wreck. After that:-

I, myself pushed the *fingers* into the *new town* and there are so many *campers*.

So hes still must be transforming some Androsynth in his space, while those that submitted are *pushed* into the *new town* as Orz and connected to him via the *fingers*.

I've made a simple diagram of the orz "Overtake and Transform"-theory, which can be found HERE (http://home.deds.nl/~megagun/sc2/Orztheory.png).
I hope you can somewhat understand it.. :) And I hope it explains at least SOMETHING to you.. What I'm basically trying to make clear is the method of how the Orz (according to the theory that they somehow take over species, making them their *fingers*) work.

Also note that the name of this theory is subject to change. :)
Also note that I haven't really read this topic throroughly yet..

Edit: the REASON for the Orz to do all this stuff? Probably that, in their space (their *playground*), there isn't much food, etc... Or maybe too much. At least, SOMETHING is there which makes them do this thing..

Also, it just occured to me that almost every "space" has a natural portal to the "less dense" one. Quasispace -> Hyperspace -> Truespace. One can "slide"(?) from Quasispace to Truespace without the need of any technology. Explains why the Orz are "below" Truespace. If they were "above" Quasispace, they would be able to naturally glide there.. However, this sub-theory might be killed because of the fact that no natural portals exist from Truespace to something else. Unless we're missing something. Also, I think my diagram has the above/below thing wrong. I think it should be a pyramid rather than a funnel... Damn! Ohwell. At least it's got numbers next to each playground/space. One "above" another should be +1, while below should be -1 from it's parent "playground".. Excuse me if I make no sense. :P --updated the diagram. Now it's OKAY.

 ;D Good theory :)

Edit: aha! *Smelling* *pretty colors* is the best *game*. Means seeing into other spaces is nice (from seeing your table :) )

Reason Orz do this thing? here:

Here is *bright* and *smooth*. The other place is *hurt* Orz too much tired for keeping together.
Other place is **Frumple**. Orz are here now, but almost not yet.
Soon Orz are really here! You are help Orz with *parties*.
Orz looking for you, and find you. So much joy!!
Now *smooth* place all the time, and after now never going back to outside.
Never!!

Edit: Megagun it makes perfect sense ;)

Second Edit: Orz Timeline update? (I've had a go :P)

?.?.? Arilou open portals and see Orz. Orz tries to make them "fingers"? but Arilou are too quick and enter the portals and close them before Orz can do a thing. Arilou also may have a natural resistance to the Orz *fingers*. Orz hates Arilou.

20,000 years ago, the Taalo entered Orz space to escape the Dynnari Slave Empire. The Taalo may have been submerted by the Orz, hunted, or hiding from the Orz after escaping on their homeworld. The Taalo race in Truespace has now been wiped out due to Dynarri Ur-Quan genocide. Taalo play *time jokes* on the surface.

Androsynth find Precursor device on a planet and experiment with DF (Dimentional Fatigue). They open a portal leading to Orz space and Orz *smells* the Androsynth. As Androsynth are all clones, Orz *smells* every single one. Orz pushes himself from his space slowly into Truespace due to cracks made by the Androsynth. Androsynth homeworld pulled into the Orz dimention. Orz make Androsynth *fingers* in his dimention. Androsynth now serve Orz but futily resist.

Orz is now pushing himself from his dimention to ours becuase he's under pain from his dimention. Cause unknown. Orz senses Quasi-portal next to Chandrasekhar and warns the Captain to not go there.

I updated my diagram. Now it's okay...

Anyways, I wonder if one's *smell* depends on one's species, or one's biological self. Can the Orz *smell* species, or individuals? My guess is, that they can *smell* species, not individuals, once they enter a new playground/dimension/-space.... But then, I wonder what the Arilou did to us Earthlings then.. They "changed our smell"... hmm... Peculiar stuff..

Also, if you follow the Quasispace/Hyperspace/Truespace trend, it seems as if each one gets less dense. Quasispace is dense, Hyperspace is less dense, and Truespace even lesser dense. If the Orz Playground lies beneath Truespace, does that mean that their playground is, well, even lesser dense than Truespace? Maybe that is why they want to get out of there...

Also, where did you find that the Taalo were able to go to the Orz playground?

Another thing to note, is that the Androsynth introduced the Earthlings to Hyperspace technology (since, after all, a trader reported that the Androsynth vanished "in a blaze of red stuff" (or something like that). If he knew about Hyperspace technology, he would have reported that they vanished in a Hyperspace portal). Maybe that is why the Orz seem to be interested in the Earthlings... since they're pretty much the same and all... However, that means that either the Orz can't *fingerify* an entire species all at once (the Earthlings would have been *fingerified* too, then), or the Androsynth were significantly different than Earthlings... OR, the Arilou succeeded in changing our *smell*, which makes me wonder why Orz seem to be so friendly then still...

Either way, the Orz-Arilou stuff might be even more peculiar than the Orz-Androsynth stuff...

Edit: now what happened with Bukowski? If he met an Orz, surely the Arilou failed... Hmm.. Let me quote everything that has to do with Bukowski and the Androsynth..




Hmm.. Seems like the Orz ARE *Pretty colors* (non-physical-beings).. At least, that's what I think.... Odd stuff happened back there, that's for sure..

Maybe, the Arilou only CHANGED our *smell*, hoping that the Orz wouldn't recognize us... Hmm.. Apparantly, Bukowski came in touch with the Orz, by simply knowing who they were, and knowing said info made the Orz able to *smell* him?

"Interpreting "*bubbles*" as anything else than atoms or other elementary particles seems extremely far fetched to me."

Sorry, I meant to say *fingers*, not *bubbles*. *Fingers* are those who have been taken over.


"I also don't see a single clue in the game for Orz infecting alien races (perhaps alien society, but not individuals). Which quotes would suggest this according to you?"

Most of the orz quotes seem to me like they're making the orz out to be body snatchers. Plus, Starcontrol 2 is very similar to Starflight 1 (Lone captain, defeated human empire, giant inverts with tentacles trying to wipe you out, super weapon of an advanced, perceived to be extict race, that you must destroy before it is too late, etc). Plus, according to mobygames.com, Paul Reiche III worked on both Starflights, before doing the first two Starcontrols. So I wouldn't be surprised if Starcontrol 3 followed in the footsteps of Starflight 2 (with the Orz taking the place of the Uhl).


"that the Androsynth as Androsynth no longer exist."

Luke: You told me Orz betrayed and murdered the Androsynth.

Obi Wan: The Androsynth were seduced by the Orz. They ceased to be Androsynth and became Orz. When that happened, the clone men who were your enemies were destroyed. So what I told you was true - from a certain point of view.

I wonder why people believe *Bubbles* to mean Atoms.
Doesn't that basically mean something along the lines of:
Now you're *bubbles*. With us, you'll soon not be *bubbles*
Individuals might fit.

Someone in IRC told me that this is the key to the understanding of *Bubbles* = Atoms.. Since it'll mean that Orz aren't "many atoms"..

well.. Right now, I'm still wtih the *bubbles* = Individuals. But I can see how it COULD mean Atoms.. In a peculiar way..... mhm.. I wish we had more dialogue that had *bubbles* in it..

Yes. It sounds like the Orz are offering to "elevate" us to some non-corporial form.

Yes. I don't see anything that contradicts either interpretation. I just thought the atoms (or other elementary particles) theory was the more common one.

Hmm..

Body Snatchers does kind of fill in the niche of what the Orz are doing, a land war in less than 5 years.. I think they were pulled and the Orz tried to take over them. And the 'Synth tried valiantly to destroy something that was non-corporeal. After the war was over.. I guess they took over the dead bodies and transformed them into the *fingers* we see now. The 'Synth now transformed probably were fighting in their own bodies to get rid of Orz which probably doesn't work saying: "Silly Androsynth do not want."

In order to contact alien species they must be corporeal, so Orz uses the Androsynth as fingers.


Elevating to other corporeal forms could be what Orz wants. But if the *campers* were *connected* to Orz, they wouldn't be lonely... No more lonely juicy bubbles.. Maybe Orz just wants everyone to be connected to him after killing them?

Either that or he wants to ascend us to a non-corporeal form..

wow i asked a question about the ur quan homeworld, then we get into a huge discussion about the orz. Great way to derail a topic.

I *do* think Bukowski's messages are the key to the nature of the Orz/Androsynth relationship. You don't have to actually have read Lovecraft to get the idea of what's going on. Bukowski becomes known to some incorporeal, abstract living thing that lives as pure spirit/mind/whatever by simply becoming aware of it (which works since it's pure spirit/mind/whatever), and it then starts attacking him and, somehow, taking him over to the point of affecting his body. Remember the cuts magically appearing all over his skin?

Enh, the nature of the Orz is the eternal discussion topic for SC2 fans, since it's the biggest and most interesting unanswered question in the game. I don't think you can really get far with the Ur-Quan homeworld once you accept that they probably don't have one anymore.

Argh, too bad that uhl weapon was a one use device. Anyway, I bet the orz demon spirits were going to have a MAJOR relation to the Precursors, that you'd have learned about in SC3 (if it was ever really made). It goes something like this:

A) The Precursors left to fight/flee the Orz.

B) The Precursors transformed into the Orz.

C) The Precursors were nabbed and quickly carted into the Orz dimension, leaving their tech behind just as the androsynth later did when they got snatched. (This is what my money is on.)


"Ur-Quan homeworld once you accept that they probably don't have one anymore."

How did you come to that conclusion?

The Kohr-Ah have a nomadic civilization. They roam around burning stuff, they don't conquer worlds and aren't able to take resources from said worlds like the greenies do.

*sigh* WE DISCUSSED THIS TO DEATH EARLIER IN THE THREAD.

The game makes it pretty clear that the whole of the Kzer-Za and Kohr-Ah civilizations, including their highest leaders and whatnot, travel around the entire galaxy enslaving and killing things, and that that's all they really care about. They don't live in planets, they don't need the luxuries of lesser races, etc., etc.

It's not *so* clear that you couldn't write fanfiction trying to claim that the Kzer-Za and Kohr-Ah *do* revere the ancient Ur-Quan homeworld over somewhere in another sector of the galaxy, and try to explain how that makes sense next to their observed behavior in the game. However, there's no particular reason to think so aside from it being potentially interesting.

Anyway, the answer to the OP's question -- do the Kzer-Za and Kohr-Ah spheres of influence actually center about a homeworld? -- is a simple No. The two spheres of influence are vaguely centered around the temporary parking space of the Sa-Matra. And spheres of influence denote the concentrations of fleets, which *are not necessarily* equivalent to spheres of actual political ownership and *do not necessarily* have the actual homeworlds at their center. Remember the Ilwrath having a homeworld outside their SOI, because their whole fleet goes out "hunting" at the same time and is all busy killing Pkunk?

I didn't say the UQ had a capital world, I just said there's no proof their place of evolution was destroyed (for all we know, it could still be sitting just outside the SC2 map, with brown UQ climbing around on it).

The black and green UQ are GMOs that were spawned from test tubes, so of course they don't care about their ancestor's history.

Actually, they seem to have a lot of respect for their history. From
the way the Ur-Quan (greenies or blackies) talk about the
origins of their civalization, they seem to hold their common
accestors in high esteem. Otherwise why would they talk
(at length) about the start of the mileu?

Also, the homeworld was clearly in the territory of the Sentient Milieu, which was huge and galaxy-spanning. When it says the Dnyarri took over the Ur-Quan civilization, it probably doesn't mean that they grabbed a bunch of far-ranging scouts -- it means they *took over the Ur-Quan civilization*.

Given that they created Greens and Blacks because they were more useful than the original Browns, I find it hard to think of any reason why they wouldn't have modified the whole population, or left any Browns alive on the surface out of the goodness of their hearts. They certainly didn't mind genociding whole races completely because they were less than useful, and the process of doing so seemed amusing to them -- there's "no limit to their cruelty", remember?

I feel pretty sure that the Kzer-Za and Kohr-Ah, which, as mentioned, *do* seem to hold their ancestors in high esteem, would know about it if there were unmodified Ur-Quan left. If the Brown Ur-Quan do exist, it'd have to be through some massive oversight on the Dnyarri's part, and in a form so limited and hidden that the galaxy-spanning Slave Empire *and* the subsequent Kohr-Ah and Kzer-Za marches across the galaxy would've completely missed them. I mean, this is the kind of thing they would care about.

"Given that they created Greens and Blacks because they were more useful than the original Browns, I find it hard to think of any reason why they wouldn't have modified the whole population."

Making major genetic changes to already existing organisms is probably no easy task. It might be much easier to just create a couple specialized offshoots, from modified embryos.


"I feel pretty sure that the Kzer-Za and Kohr-Ah, which, as mentioned, *do* seem to hold their ancestors in high esteem, would know about it if there were unmodified Ur-Quan left."

How do you know they don't know of any? I mean, they *don't* hold humans in high esteem, so why would they tell us about their homeworld (which by the way, the commander says is not far from "this area of space").

Well, somewhere further above in this thread, someone was discussing how the Orz could be such a threat, when the Kohr-Ah just sweep over them and destroy them.  Easy enough to explain:

Consider that Orz only recently entered our space, and thus haven't had much time to build up a strong power base.  Consider also that, unlike the Androsynth, the UQ species are neither one particularly curious, and, given a threat, the natural reaction of the Kohr-Ah is to crush that mosquito with a sledge hammer.  The New Alliance is more likely to behave in a diplomatic and slow-paced "friendly" dialogue with this apparently amiable race, thus giving the Orz plenty of time to adapt or whatever they need to do, and build up a significant threat.

This is why, in a sequel, the Orz can be a threat to the New Alliance that they wouldn't have been to the Kohr-Ah.  The Kohr-Ah quite simply don't give the enemy time to become dangerous.

It might be easier when you have absolute control over every single individual in the civilization.

But that doesn't matter -- the question is:

Why keep the rest alive?

You miss my point. I don't think all existing Brown Ur-Quan were turned into Greens or Blacks -- I think that Greens and Blacks were made, and the remaining Brown Ur-Quan killed or allowed to starve to death. The Dnyarri have absolute control of the bodies of everyone in their empire, remember? It's *trouble* for them to make their slaves eat and reproduce and so on. They can't let the Brown Ur-Quan *free* -- they wouldn't create a threat to themselves like that -- and they do seem to enjoy wantonly, violently killing living things they have no use for. I submit that it's very likely the Browns were genocided.

In any case, I can't quote dialogue, but every mention of the Greens and Blacks says the Ur-Quan were forever "divided" into those two castes, I believe, not that two castes were chosen from among the Browns to be above them -- that would be a division into *three* castes.

It's such a huge omission to not mention the Browns if they're still around that I can't believe that, if they do exist, there are very many or that many are aware of them.


Ur-Quan don't lie. They view lying as a trait of weakness. Even when they keep something secret from you they *tell* you they're keeping it secret from you -- they don't engage in deception.

(Sure, they could be lying about all of that, but I'd prefer to take the game at face value on this point.)

In any case, if they have a homeworld, I very much doubt there are Brown Ur-Quan. If there were, they'd've been forcibly co-opted into either the Path of Now and Forever or the Eternal Doctrine. Both those philosophies claim to *define* the place of Ur-Quan in the universe relative to all other species -- Ur-Quan who live outside of such a philosophy and don't take their rightful and required place as the rulers of all creation would be intolerable to them. Even the split between Kzer-Za and Kohr-Ah was intolerable to them -- they fired on their own brothers and came close to exterminating each other (the Kzer-Za stayed their hand at the last moment rather than destroy all the Kohr-Ah) over it. Why would they leave Browns to live in peace? How *could* Browns live in peace in a world dominated by Greens and Blacks with a messianic fervor for ruling the whole galaxy?

It just breaks the game's thematic consistency to imagine a homeworld full of happy, peaceful Browns living like any other species. If there are Browns they're few, they're hidden, and they're extremely special, and their existence must play a huge and convoluted role in the Kzer-Za/Kohr-Ah rivalry. (That is the *only* way I would accept Browns being written in a piece of fanfic.)

"I submit that it's very likely the Browns were genocided."

Very rarely does any species truly get destroyed in the SC universe, it seems. More often they resurface, like the mael-num, taalo or androsynth.


"In any case, I can't quote dialogue, but every mention of the Greens and Blacks says the Ur-Quan were forever "divided" into those two castes"

I don't know if the browns would be considered a caste. The greens and blacks on the otherhand, were specialized for separate purposes in the the dynarri empire.


"It's such a huge omission to not mention the Browns if they're still around that I can't believe that, if they do exist, there are very many or that many are aware of them."

The UQ didn't mention that the Mael-num or Taalo were still alive, but they are.


"Even when they keep something secret from you they *tell* you they're keeping it secret from you -- they don't engage in deception."

Only if you ask them about it, do they tell you that it is not for you to know.


"Why would they leave Browns to live in peace?"

The B&G UQ hate their forced alterations. To them, it is a bad momento of their enslavement by the dynarri. They might consider the browns to be a sacred piece of pure UQ heritage.


"It just breaks the game's thematic consistency to imagine a homeworld full of happy, peaceful Browns living like any other species."

I don't know that the UQ were ever "happy" or "peaceful".


"If there are Browns they're few, they're hidden, and they're extremely special, and their existence must play a huge and convoluted role in the Kzer-Za/Kohr-Ah rivalry."

That sounds like a possibilty, as well.


"That is the *only* way I would accept Browns being written in a piece of fanfic."

I'm not talking about fan fiction. I'm only really concerned with the plot of the true SC3, that never got made.

The Androsynth resurfaced? News to me.

The Androsynth weren't thought *destroyed* in the Exodus, if that's what you mean. It was pretty obvious to the Humans that they'd fled using some kind of advanced technology to go somewhere else. Sure enough, somewhere else was where they were.

Now the Androsynth are all gone and there are only Orz.

And do you seriously mean that no species truly get destroyed? The Zebranky weren't all killed by the Zoq-Fot-Pik? The Algolites didn't die in a stupid accident caused by the Spathi? And the Melnorme and the Dramya -- you don't see many Dramya around these days, do you?

Let's not forget ALL THE RACES IN THE SENTIENT MILIEU. These were major races that ruled areas far exceeding the starmap in SC2. Most of them are *dead*. The Yuptar, the Yuli, the Drall, the Fahz (okay, the Fahz weren't destroyed, they were slave-shielded, and they *may* be the ancestors of the Utwig -- but there you go, the only species that might still be around is the one not explicitly stated to have been killed.)

The Mael-Num were *never thought to have been destroyed*. The Kzer-Za and Kohr-Ah *tried to kill them and they ESCAPED*. The Ur-Quan are upset because they were never able to find them again.

The *only* species on your list that was actually thought to have been killed and might still be alive is the Taalo, and the nature of their survival is questionable.

Which is good, because if SC2 really did openly claim and confirm that a species had been killed but then brought them back, it'd be guilty of horrible storytelling. When you tell a good story, you don't jerk the reader around all the time by seeming to make it absolutely clear that someone is dead and then suddenly bringing them back with an after-the-fact explanation. It's why superhero comics are so annoying -- the fact that deaths mean nothing because the writers are too attached to the main characters to let them be dead, so increasingly bizarre explanations for resurrection get built into the plot.

One thing I liked about SC2 was how, if you dawdle, you really can watch whole civilizations get wiped out by the Kohr-Ah, never to return.

"In any case, I can't quote dialogue, but every mention of the Greens and Blacks says the Ur-Quan were forever "divided" into those two castes"


Yes, exactly. They said they "divided" or "converted" the Ur-Quan into the two castes, not that they took the castes out of the regular population and left the regular population alone.

All the quotes seem to indicate that the Ur-Quan were *transformed* into Kzer-Za and Kohr-Ah, not that Kzer-Za and Kohr-Ah are two species taken *out* of the Ur-Quan with the regular Ur-Quan left alone. It says that all the Ur-Quan were used for was doing the Dnyarri's will, and that the Kzer-Za did all intellectual tasks and Kohr-Ah did manual tasks. It doesn't leave much room for the Brown Ur-Quan to even exist, does it?

Why would the Dnyarri give two shakes of a withered tentacle about the original Brown Ur-Quan species? Why would they allow most of the species to remain less useful to them than their tailor-made Greens and Blacks, rather than allowing Greens and Blacks to simply *replace* them all, by letting the Browns die or killing them or genetically modifying all of them?

Remember the Slave Empire ruled the *whole galaxy* and the Dnyarri had *absolute control* over the bodies of their slaves and *no regard at all* for the slaves' comfort, welfare or dignity. So arguments that replacing a whole species would be impractical don't hold much water for me -- it'd be downright easy if you could effortlessly force everyone on a planet to do exactly what you want all the time, which is how the Dnyarri operated.


The Ur-Quan aren't lying about the Taalo. They genuinely don't know. Same with the Mael-Num (and the Ur-Quan don't even think the Mael-Num are dead -- they know the Mael-Num escaped and that's it).

AS I SAID BEFORE, I think that if the Browns still exist they're in small numbers and somehow hidden so that the Ur-Quan DON'T KNOW ABOUT IT. My contention is that it'd be a hell of a lot harder for the Browns to hide somewhere where the Kzer-Za and Kohr-Ah couldn't find them than for the Taalo or even the Melnorme -- the Taalo have wacky superpowerful dimensional technology, and the Melnorme had a whole intact civilization that apparently went nomadic way on the other side of the galaxy. The Browns, if they existed, would have been PART OF the Kzer-Za and Kohr-Ah civilizations (they didn't split until *after* the Doctrinal Conflict, remember?) and I fail to see how they could have escaped without being seen. Or, if they're still there, how they can still be there and not be and important and often-mentioned part of the Ur-Quan conflict. I mean, surely the Kzer-Za and Kohr-Ah wouldn't just leave them alone.

The only scenario I really like is some random coincidence allowing a lone Brown Ur-Quan scout who'd flown to the farthest reaches of the galaxy set up some tiny colony somewhere. But I don't even like that very much -- if it says ther Ur-Quan are *now divided into* the Kzer-Za and Kohr-Ah, then I prefer to think that the Ur-Quan really are all divided into the Kzer-Za and Kohr-Ah. Putting every damn species that's ever been mentioned in the game into the game is stupid and destroys the sense of loss you have at hearing how the Ur-Quan were modified -- it *should* be something irreversible and permanently written into their existence as a result of the Dnyarri's predations. It'd be as bad as undoing the Slave Empire's slaughters by figuring out a way for the Yuli and the Drall to not be extinct anymore.


Yes, but this is fanfiction. I don't see that much evidence of it in the game.

There's a real sense of loss at how they've been changed by the Dnyarri, but there's also a sense of competition between two alternative ways of being. If they really felt that way about the Browns why wouldn't they let the Browns be the rulers of their society, as the genetically pure Ur-Quan? Aren't they always harping about how the Ur-Quan are basically superior to all other species and anything non-Ur-Quan is bad?

The Kzer-Za *do* brag about how they're smarter and more sophisticated than the Kohr-Ah. And the Kohr-Ah call the Kzer-Za "effete bureaucrats" and talk about how they're the "Effectuators, the doers". It sounds to me like they are proud of who they are, at least right now, and that they think the way they are is the way all Ur-Quan should be.

In other words, if there were Browns I don't see either subspecies allowing them to exist without forcibly integrating them into their own Path of Now and Forever.



A petty state of constant war would be even worse. The Ur-Quan, in case you didn't notice, are not that proud of their history -- they talk about how they "earned" their way out of the hellish existence of constantly killing each other to compete for territory and power.


I really doubt very much that TFB would do something as corny as bring back the ancient Ur-Quan original species just for the cool factor of having them around. It's what I dislike about fanfiction -- SC2 fanfiction would also want to make there be surviving Androsynth, and discover a living enclave of Yuptar, and find a way to reprogram the Mycon to be friendly, and discover a living Precursor in the body of an Ortog, and God knows what else. (Yes, I regard SC3 as fanfiction.)

I don't see any good plot reason to bring the Brown Ur-Quan back. Major tragedies like that should not be undoable. It was very gutsy of TFB to do something like kill off all the Androsynth in SC2, and I'd prefer SC3 to take the same kinds of risks.

"The Androsynth resurfaced? News to me."

I don't remember where, but somebody said that they'd heard from PR3 that androsynth were going to be in SC3.


"And do you seriously mean that no species truly get destroyed? The Zebranky weren't all killed by the Zoq-Fot-Pik? The Algolites didn't die in a stupid accident caused by the Spathi?"

I sort of meant space flight species (like ones you could encounter/fight). Non-sentients and planet lovers don't really count for much beyond backstories.


"The Yuptar, the Yuli, the Drall, the Fahz (okay, the Fahz weren't destroyed, they were slave-shielded, and they *may* be the ancestors of the Utwig -- but there you go, the only species that might still be around is the one not explicitly stated to have been killed.)"

I betcha' the "arilou" were one of those sentient milieu races, only under a different name at that time.


"The *only* species on your list that was actually thought to have been killed and might still be alive is the Taalo, and the nature of their survival is questionable."

I bet there's some brown UQ with the Taalo (that, or the Taalo know where to find some.)


"One thing I liked about SC2 was how, if you dawdle, you really can watch whole civilizations get wiped out by the Kohr-Ah, never to return."

Yea, but that's because you failed.


"Why would the Dnyarri give two shakes of a withered tentacle about the original Brown Ur-Quan species?"

The dynarri look like pillows, they've gotta have a soft side. :)

Anyway, I'm sure there were plenty of UQ scouts around the rimm of the galaxy when the dynarri hit the fan. But you're right, the dynarri probably did not leave any browns left, within their empire.


"It doesn't leave much room for the Brown Ur-Quan to even exist, does it?"

Not in this area of space, but perhaps on the fringes or in another dimension. Plus, the orz say time is not linear or something similar, so maybe they still exist in another time for you to visit, (as seen in SF2).


"Yes, but this is fanfiction. I don't see that much evidence of it in the game."

Fanfiction for now, but it might not be if TFB makes another sequel.


"I don't see any good plot reason to bring the Brown Ur-Quan back."

I don't think they would have been mentioned in SC2, if they didn't have some future purpose. Perhaps the two defeated UQ species will merge back into browns, in order to make a united threat against the alliance/orz.

Wow, Art, you sound pretty pissed. I highly suggest you take a chill pill and maybe lay off the highly theorized thoughts about the SC universe for a while, no offense.

Firstly, I find this statement of yours confusing:


and later, at the last part of your post:


I’m not sure whether or not I’m misinterpreting, or you’ve accidentally contradicted yourself, but to explicitly say something, the Androsynth (with the whole Arilou/Andro/Orz fiasco as fragile enough as it is) race in this case, was completely killed off as if it was fact written in stone?  I always figured they were simply “taken” or absorbed by the Orz. I think TFB tried their best to shift away from the fact that they where either killed or just “destroyed”. No, I don’t think there any surviving Androsynth left in the home dimension, or “heavy space”, hence the much quoted Arilou (“There are no more Androsynth now, only Orz”), but I think it was beyond their intentions to kill off the race as a whole. Even the Melnorme don’t know about their true whereabouts. Unless I’ve misunderstood you, which, of course, would make my entire argument pointless.


I believe there was a quote from Fred Ford / Paul Reiche (?) in the creators chat about it, but it doesn’t explicitly say that they’d make them come back, just that it would be a possible part of the story:
http://www.classicgaming.com/starcontrol/history/files/scchatlog.txt
www.classicgaming.com/starcontrol/history/files/scchatlog.txt

I will, however, wholeheartedly agree with you on the rest of the races they were explicitly killed off or already destroyed. I don’t want to see an Agolite family suddenly pop out of a Spathi’s anus and say they’ve been living in there for the past 300 years for mere survival. I don’t want to see a lone Zebranky suddenly pop out of nowhere piloting a deadly shuttle and claiming he learned how to fly by watching the Zot-Fot-Pik build spaceships while he was peeking out of a crack while hiding in a closet. I wouldn’t say the Dramya would be completely wiped out, but the Melnorme certainly kicked their sorry asses into oblivion during sometime in the past. And, well, I’m certainly not going against what you said about the Sentient Milieu being dead.


Which is exactly why we don’t know about certain races (Taalo OR Androsynth) and if they’re actually DEAD as a doornail.

I’m not going to bother with the brown Ur-Quan argument, seeing how I’m in agreement with the fact that it’s just not logical, considering how both races are incredibly full of themselves and I can’t see them going back to being one specie without major conflict.

I don’t particularly like fanfiction either, with the whole corny and overdone “surviving race outpost” that most seem to aim for, so I’d agree with you there too.

That’s all I really half to say, thank god. Consider it shitty or stupid, since I'm shitty and stupid.

Thanks for backing me up, Maria. Sorry for being pissy -- I've been stressed out with various RL things recently.


PR3 said that they were definitely thinking about the Androsynth and their role. I thought they meant they'd go into greater detail about how the Androsynth were "taken". But, sure, there might be the possibility of the reversal of what happened to them with the Orz -- however, I do remember that question batting aside the "surviving racial outpost" as a possibility.

In any case I doubt that SC3 had ever been plotted or planned to any significant degree by TFB. SC2 was created rather haphazardly and on-the-fly, after all.


I know what you're saying, and it makes sense for game purposes that no species you encounter *in the game* will be unavoidably destroyed in the game. Even so. TFB clearly wanted to make that a possibility and to avoid waffling around with the idea that species that die off will obviously be reinstated. I would think, for example, that they really did intend the Ilwrath and Thraddash to all be dead after SC2, or at least the Thraddash.

Anyway, the Brown Ur-Quan *aren't* a species you meet in the game. They're a long-ago ancient legend.


Blah. I don't like this kind of plotting, though maybe TFB aren't as averse to it.

In real life new entities and factions arise and old ones disappear forever. Everything is not something else. Some things end, and some entirely new things begin. It does not make a story better or more cool to tie everything up in knots that way. (Another thing I dislike about fanfiction.)


Hard to see how. All Brown Ur-Quan were controlled by the Dnyarri, and were programmed to attack and try to kill the Taalo on sight.

I guess you could do a plot revolving around the Taalo coming back with Brown Ur-Quan to show the Kzer-Za and Kohr-Ah the error of their ways. Maybe the Taalo Shield you found isn't the only one -- maybe they had another prototype and used it to rescue some Browns. It could be interesting.


*shrug* It's still part of the game, and you can still win with every species destroyed except Humans. I don't consider myself a failure for getting the Ilwrath and Thraddash to genocide each other.


Ha. "I'm bored, Captain. Kindly send two of your crewmen to come entertain me, preferably one male and one female."


All of these are acceptable, I guess. But that means no homeworld for the Brown Ur-Quan in TrueSpace, and not much contact between them and the rest of the galaxy, and that if they're introduced there has to be a big convoluted plot around them.


Well, it's up to them.


I *like* that things can be mentioned without having a future purpose. They're part of the Ur-Quan's story -- they're necessary because they explain how the Kzer-Za and Kohr-Ah got to be so different and got to be mortal enemies while still being "brothers". They're a symbol of the past they've lost. They don't need to be anything more than that.

It's for the same reason I don't want Milieu races coming back, or Chmmr turning back into Chenjesu and Mmrnmhrrm.

Also, the "fusing together again" -- it's not like the Brown Ur-Quan had Green-ness and BLack-ness programmed into them and you can somehow metaphysically snap the DNA into two pieces and put them back together. SC3 did this a *lot*, and it was annoying. (The VUX and the Vyro-Ingo being two "halves" of a species, ugh. It's the kind of thing I let SC2 get away with once without getting annoyed, with the Chmmr, and only then because it was kind of unexpected.)

 I don't see either Ur-Quan species undoing their transformations -- surely, since they possess all the technological relics of the Dnyarri, including the ability to gengineer Dnyarri into Talking Pets, they have the *capability* to gengineer themselves. I think they choose not to, because they both regard their special abilities as Kzer-Za or Kohr-Ah as a badge of pride.

Although I by-and-large agree with Art, and always enjoy reading his articulate, thoughtful posts (even while worrying that any expends so much thought on such an old and fallow game), I do disagree with a couple points.


The more I read history, the less true tihs truism seems.  By "entities" I assume you do not mean "beings," but rather "political entities."  If you mean beings, then, sure, certain species have become extinct, although anyone who thinks that the dinosaurs "disappeared forever" doesn't fully grasp the process of genetic inheritance.  Err, or can just check out an alligator.

Assuming you mean political entities, my disgreement becomes even stronger.  First, I concede that many relatively obscure cultures have been wiped out entirely and "disappear forever."  Second, I concede that a few relatively major cultures (I'm thinking like the Myceneans, the Toltecs, the "Sea Peoples" and so forth) have also vanished.

But for every one ancient entity that vanished altogether, there are many that, although they were destroyed, reemerged in some new form.  Obviously, Rome and Ancient Greece provide the best examples.  With the latter, it's hard to identify a genetic heritage -- the modern Greeks really are nothing of the ancient Greeks -- but the cultural heritage is stark and obvious.

The Egyptians left behind monuments, those monuments shape contemporary Egyptian self-understanding, even though the Egyptians who built them are almost totally different racially from the ones who guide tours there today.  The Aztecs were wiped out, but Aztec blood runs still in Mexico and Indian-pride fuels Marxist rebellions in Chiapas.

France has been reconstituted six dozen times since Caesar genocided the Gauls, but nevertheless the heritage of Napoleon, Louis XIV, Charles Martel, and so forth still infuses daily culture.

When Franco went to execute ETA terrorists in the 1970s, and the Dutch raised a human rights protest, Spaniards counter-protested with signs reading, "The Duke of Alba didn't kill enough."  Alba's butchery took place hundreds of years earlier.  The Hapsburgs lost their crown, the monarchy lost its control, the Low Countries changed hands a dozen times, and still a legacy persisted.

The Jews were slaughtered and scattered by the Chaldeans, stripped of their cultural identity and of their leadership.  Then they were slaughtered and dominated by the Romans.  Then they were scattered in a diaspora.  Then they were purged by an Inquisition.  Then they were massacred in pogroms.  Then in the Holocaust.  But they still hold on to their Biblical homeland and persist.

If it has been so hard to wipe out the Jews -- despite the best work of Babylonians, Romans, Christians, Nazis, and Arabs -- if, despite the genocide of the Aztecs, the plagues of smallpox and other European diseases, the forcible conversions, the slavery, the colonization, you still have Indian rebellions in Mexico, is it really so implausible that somewhere in the vastness of the galaxy there could still be Taalo, brown Ur-Quan, or anyone else?

As much as SC2 is about races being wiped out, it is about races implausibly escaping extermination / permanent removal -- the Kohr-Ah, the Mael-Num, the Faz (maybe), the Taalo, the Syreens, hell, the Chenjesu and the Mrrnhrmm, the humans (with Unzervault), the Zoq-Fot-Pik (first the zebranky, then the Kohr-Ah), the Shofixi, the Spathi, etc., etc.  All of them were either spared at the last moment, escaped annihilation, escaped seemingly permanent imprisonment, had some lost survivor somewhere, etc.  That seems more to be the game's theme than utter annihilation, even though the threat of utter annihilation is the story's driving force.

Shrug.

FWIW, I agree with this:


The idea that the world (defined however broadly or narrowly as one wants) extends beyond the confines of the story being told is part of what defines good fantasy / science fiction.  When every loose end is tied up, it makes the world seem small and contrived, existing only for the story that was told and nothing else.

I don't consider them to be enemies, mortal as they might be. It looks to be a form of trial by combat (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_by_combat) to me.

I concede that you're right in terms of things leaving traces of themselves behind, although the SC2 universe is more brutal than life on Earth in this respect (there are bigger weapons and bigger ways things get blown up and burned up and so on).

Although on this particular point, you'd be better off looking at a chicken than an alligator. Crocodilians already existed quite separately from dinosaurs during the reign of dinosaurs -- dinosaurs' most direct descendants are birds.

You're right, they're not mortal enemies -- neither will ever voluntarily exterminate the other -- but they are very much enemies, as in utterly opposed in their goals (within the limits they've set for themselves.)

The Kzer-Za, anyway, refer to the Kohr-Ah as "devils" and refuse to cooperate with them even when something as momentous as the Dnyarri coming back happens.

Right, the alligator line was more than slightly tongue-in-cheek, although partly also motivated by what I see as the tedious "dinosaurs as birds" meme that's been running around since the late 90's.


Sure, but it's also a lot bigger and there are a lot of technologies that make survival a lot a easier (such as self-sustaining deep space craft). 

You're assuming that that "devils" remark isn't just the opinion of one Kzer-Za soldier.
And it's not that the Kzer-Za don't want to cooperate, it's just that they don't expect the Kohr-Ah to "see the danger until it is too late".

"Wow, Art, you sound pretty pissed. I highly suggest you take a chill pill and maybe lay off the highly theorized thoughts about the SC universe for a while, no offense."

He's entitled to his opinion. I don't think anybody will be offended because their favorite pretend SC3 plot predictions got shot down.


"I don’t particularly like fanfiction either, with the whole corny and overdone “surviving race outpost” that most seem to aim for, so I’d agree with you there too."

Yea, but that's why it's fanfiction. Only the original writer(s) can add true sequels to stories.


"PR3 said that they were definitely thinking about the Androsynth and their role."

If it were my choice, I'd give the synth the axe. I always thought they sucked.


"I would think, for example, that they really did intend the Ilwrath and Thraddash to all be dead after SC2"

You can't kill the ilwrath, they were a long standing part of the SC universe. Nobody could ever be more evil.


"Blah. I don't like this kind of plotting, though maybe TFB aren't as averse to it."

Think about it, if the arilou are such an old race, how could they not have been a part of it. Their so secretive, it is a very good possibilty. After all, their name is not really "arilou" (perhaps it is really drall, yupti, etc.)


"All Brown Ur-Quan were controlled by the Dnyarri, and were programmed to attack and try to kill the Taalo on sight."

Unless, they get in range of a taalo shield.


"I don't consider myself a failure for getting the Ilwrath and Thraddash to genocide each other."

Who killed the Ilwrath? Did they somehow put everyone of themselves on ships that only carry about 20 critters, and destroy themselves on the thraddash? There had to be some survivors on one side or the other.


"But that means no homeworld for the Brown Ur-Quan in TrueSpace"

I'm sure their homeworld is still there. It is just vacant like the taalo one. It never says anywhere that their homeworld gets torched, does it?


"Well, it's up to them."

Indeed, let's just hope the make another one.


"I *like* that things can be mentioned without having a future purpose."

It just seems cheesy to me that there were just green UQ in SC1. Then all of sudden there's a bunch of crazy history out of nowhere, that has no bearing on the future or present (besides the KA rampage).


"It's for the same reason I don't want Milieu races coming back, or Chmmr turning back into Chenjesu and Mmrnmhrrm."

It would be ridiculous that EVERY Chenjesu got cyborged. And what would be the point, anyhow. Plus, no sequel is complete without the godly broodhome.


"Also, the "fusing together again" -- it's not like the Brown Ur-Quan had Green-ness and BLack-ness programmed into them and you can somehow metaphysically snap the DNA into two pieces and put them back together."

I'm sure they would not all fuse. There would always be some diehards.


"I think they choose not to, because they both regard their special abilities as Kzer-Za or Kohr-Ah as a badge of pride."

Or maybe they just don't have the genetic material samples that are necessary.


"it's hard to identify a genetic heritage -- the modern Greeks really are nothing of the ancient Greeks -- but the cultural heritage is stark and obvious. The Egyptians left behind monuments, those monuments shape contemporary Egyptian self-understanding, even though the Egyptians who built them are almost totally different racially from the ones who guide tours there today."

I find it hard to believe that those entire peoples got completely destroyed. If so, who would have been left to pass down their cultures?


"France has been reconstituted six dozen times since Caesar genocided the Gauls"

I don't think the Gauls were completely torched. But their culture was destroyed and now they speak french. So there were changes, but it is not every day that an ENTIRE group gets completely composted, despite our species' frequent conflicts.


"As much as SC2 is about races being wiped out, it is about races implausibly escaping extermination / permanent removal."

Indeed, things happen in big strokes, in both directions in SC2.


"Crocodilians already existed quite separately from dinosaurs during the reign of dinosaurs -- dinosaurs' most direct descendants are birds."

Maybe that's because Crocodilians are *relatives* of dinosaurs, not *descendents*. ;)

No problem, same thing happens to me, and pretty much everyone else.



Agreed, I don’t have anything to say in conflict with this. Or something. I tend to get wound up in certain things. Meh.


D’aww, you don’t like the ‘Synth? I always thought their guardian ships and bizarre Ace Ventura hairdos were oddly unique in their own way.


I liked the Ilwrath too, and I don’t think they would be completely wiped out; severely weakened, yes.  Same might apply to the Thraddash. Granted, some people chose for each race to make mass genocide towards each other, some people didn’t. So just to play it safe, I think it would be in best intentions to keep both races around for the sequel.

I’d like to thank Frank for the insight on the lost and/or surviving peoples, it makes for an very interesting read. I don't really have anything to add to it, being honest.


Here here, I couldn’t agree more. There wouldn’t be anything left for us to talk about if that were the case.

Peace

Also self-destructive and almost suicidal in their veneration of pain and suffering. Which, for plot reasons, is why I prefer to think they're dead.


The Sentient Milieu encompassed the galaxy *in TrueSpace*. The Arilou are not *from TrueSpace*, or at least haven't been since some undefined very long time ago. They could easily pre-date even the Milieu, or come from some other galaxy altogether, or whatnot -- the fact that they moved their home planet to another dimension should tell you they're pretty beyond the tech-level of even the Milieu. (The Ur-Quan have technology from the height of the Milieu -- no clue about QuasiSpace. Melnorme know nothing about it. If the Taalo had such a power, they didn't develop it quickly enough or powerfully enough to save most of their race. Etc.)

Anyway -- the Ur-Quan are pretty clear on having killed the Yuli, Drall and Yuptar.  It's pretty deeply ingrained in their memories -- it's one of the major horrible traumas that made them become what they are today. I'm not going to question their history on this one.

And the Ur-Quan have *seen* the Arilou. They wrote up a little file on them for the First War, remember? No way they wouldn't have gotten the connection if the Arilou were anything like the Yuli, Drall or Yuptar.

Besides which, I don't peg the Arilou as being Sentient Milieu old. That's disappointing -- they should be far, far older and more powerful than the Ur-Quan civilization. Somewhere around the age of the Precursors or maybe a little younger.

(Besides which, I have my own pet theory -- a bit weak, and a bit derivative, but that I like a lot -- that the Arilou are Humans from the future. It'd explain the weird attitude they have toward Humans now.)


Yeah, I mentioned this. Officially the Taalo only finished one Shield, the one you have, and it didn't work perfectly.

The Ur-Quan could be wrong about this, sure, but the memories they have come from being the ones who actually invaded the world and killed all the Taalo, so.


The war didn't consist solely of space battles. This is clear from the fact that both homeworlds are *blown out and destroyed*. The landers you send there *tell* you that there's nothing alive on the surface. Homeworlds being killed off is a pretty big deal.

We know that the Thraddash's ships might not have been the most powerful but that they were known to build and stockpile huge numbers of nuclear weapons for blowing up cities with. The Ilwrath may have had similar. And both races were *exactly* the type to consider it a holy duty to get their entire populations involved in the war as much as possible.

I dunno, I find being utterly destroyed in war a fitting fate for both species. Well, especially the Thraddash -- you *knew* their Culture cycle was going to lead to their total demise pretty soon.

I wouldn't be super-upset to see a sequel with one or the other species surviving, but only with a good explanation for why they were kept out of the war -- my expectation would be for the Thraddash to have bombed the Ilwrath and the Ilwrath to have large-scale kidnapped and captured Thraddash until everyone was dead.


Even torched homeworlds are still there. Didn't you ever go to *visit* the Ilwrath and Thraddash homeworlds after they all died? Or visited another homeworld after the death march starts? Their surfaces get burned up but nothing ever blows up Death-Star-style.

They just don't count as homeworlds once no one's home anymore.



Though even if they make it us whiny fans don't have to like it. George Lucas himself was responsible for the Star Wars prequels, after all.



Cheesy? I liked it. It's backstory, it's explanation. It means the Kzer-Za do what they do for a reason rather than just being jerks. I *like* that kind of thing -- things that make these species into peoples with histories rather than factions with a role to play in one particular war.



Actually I buy this being a full-species process too, for different reasons. I question how individual life-forms that grow as big crystals inside a huge soup can really be -- stuff like the Broodhome seems to imply that they can link up and act as a single colony and such.

Anyway, the impression I get of the Process was that it was a planetwide process -- again, just as with the KZ and KA, all the language they use about it is as though it were a massive, whole-species-changing shift. The fact that you *only* talk to Chenjesu being Processed through the slave shield -- that the Process' rate is completely determined by the sunlight reaching the surface -- I dunno.

Again, I'd be disappointed to have something huge and momentous like this be undone, or half-undone. It's a big deal that the Chenjesu and Mmrnmhrrm made this huge step to join together -- it sabotages the whole thing and cheapens it to have the other races still be around.

And, look, if it were based on ships I'd never want to see the Guardian go. But there's no harm in keeping 'em for melee only.


Reading the dialogue makes me think that they *all* seem to be diehards. Given that I don't see any hint of at all wanting to go back to no Kzer-Za or Kohr-Ah. On a social level they could "fuse" without any physical changes -- nothing forces them not to work together except their mutual distrust and dislike of the other caste.

And anyway, my point there was just that "fusing" is not a good way to put it. Each individual Kzer-Za would be radically changing their bodies and each Kohr-Ah another, to fit the pattern of a species that hasn't existed in millennia. It would not be a natural or painless process.


Doubt this immensely. They didn't need genetic material from a Talking Pet to turn Dnyarri into Talking Pets. Why should they need to have Brown Ur-Quan DNA to make Brown Ur-Quan? They seem to be able to make great big modifications almost from scratch.



Their cultures aren't passed down, or at least not in a separate, recognizable form. The Etruscans get absorbed into the Latins and later Romans with only faint traces of what might have come from their culture still visible. Otherwise it's just some old documents and artifacts and monuments that people dig up and try to figure out.


Yes. Which means that alligators are irrelevant to the idea of a remnant of dinosaurs existing. Alligators and crocodiles and things *already* existed *with* the dinosaurs, and when the dinosaurs died they kept on existing.

It still functions to make the same point -- many species go on living. But it is different -- it's a common misconception that dinosaurs are a form of reptile, when really they're a transition between reptiles and modern avians.

One of the conceits of the game is that each captain you talk to is somehow a "typical" member of his race and speaks for everyone. Otherwise many things just don't make sense. (Yes, this is unrealistic. Like I said, conceit.)

Kzer-Za don't have "soldiers" in the sense you seem to mean -- there's a small number of Kzer-Za that all seem to view themselves as officers/council members/political leaders. It's part of the Ur-Quan ego. At least, some random Kzer-Za captain feels perfectly qualified to decide that your crimes merit execution, that you will be punished but your crew won't if you surrender, that  you can be absolved of your crimes if you tell them about the Dnyarri, that they shouldn't talk to the Kohr-Ah Primat, etc.

And that excuse is a dumb one. Of course the Kohr-Ah won't see the danger until it's too late if they aren't told at all. Yes, the Kohr-Ah could slow down the process of searching for the Dnyarri if they argue or purposely try to obstruct or whatever, and yet it still seems far more logical to give the Kohr-Ah the *chance* to help rather than blindly insist on fighting the Doctrinal Conflict to its end. It feels like the Kzer-Za simply distrust the Kohr-Ah by instinct -- assume they will be headstrong and unhelpful -- even in the direst of straits.

Not to niggle, but since you seemed to feel obliged to niggle with my example, what the hell.

First of all "dinosaurs" is an incredible broad term with little biological basis that is essentially of the same vintage as the notion that all infections are "fevers" or all rapidly spreading tumors are "cancer."  You can stick any collective label on any group and make it stick, but that doesn't make it analytically useful.

That said, while there were some "dinosaurs" that had avian qualities -- particularly the late Cretaceous variety -- a blanket statement that dinosaurs were, as a group, a transition between reptiles and avians is just silly.  Brontosaurs?  Ichthysaurs?  Triceratopses?

The dinosaurs that didn't go birdlike largely got wiped out, of course, so the bias to see them as pre-birds is, I guess, understandable.  Mostly, it just seems faddish to me -- the fad started largely with Jurassic Park, which popularized the bird-like dinos (velociraptors especially).  Dinosaurs, to the extent that the category is analytically useful, represent huge, lumbering, thick-skinned, reptilian creatures.  If that concept has an heir today it is crocodiles, not turkeys.

Moreover, FWIW, crocodilians would have been classified as dinosaurs but for the fact that crocodilians were not extinguished alongside the other huge reptiles.  The dinosaur label was pretty much just thrown on large, extinct, non-mammal / non-avian creatures, into which category crocodilians would have fallen.

Probably not worth arguing much more over, but there it is.

"They could easily pre-date even the Milieu, or come from some other galaxy altogether, or whatnot -- the fact that they moved their home planet to another dimension should tell you they're pretty beyond the tech-level of even the Milieu."

And yet they are not very effective in battle. They stand no chance against human cruisers, and don't do very well against UQ dreadnaughts (if not, then why didn't they just single handedly kick the UQ's asses?)


"the Arilou are Humans from the future."

Yea, I've had a similar theory. It shoots down the "if time travel were possible, where's all the time tourists," thing while explaining how come these "aliens" look like tiny dudes. Still, the problem is I feel no need to go back a million years and fight beside chimpanzees. I know they will survive, or else how can I exist? Anyway, I don't want to be a pasty little wimp who zooms around doing unnecessary surgery to people without getting to charge extreme medical bills. :(


"The Ur-Quan could be wrong about this, sure, but the memories they have come from being the ones who actually invaded the world and killed all the Taalo, so."

It doesn't matter if there were any survivors on the homeworld, the taalo species is still alive (I don't think the orz lie).


"The landers you send there *tell* you that there's nothing alive on the surface."

But who killed off the ilwrath? The thraddash never set their fleet into ilwrath space. Besides, the ilwrath are not from chenjesu space, anyway. Their homeworld is someplace else (upspin, I think).


"They just don't count as homeworlds once no one's home anymore."

I consider a homeworld to be the place where a species evolved. That's why it is still called the "Taalo Homeworld", even though there are no Taalo on the surface.


"George Lucas himself was responsible for the Star Wars prequels, after all."

They left much room for improvement. Still, I think the core of the prequel's story was much more dramatic and involving than the last three episodes. If episodes 1-3 were made first, and 4-6 had just recently come out, what would fans be complaining about then? "Luke Skywalker is such a whinner" "Why is Anakin in that doppy comic book samari suit, for most of the movies?" "That pervert was in love with his sister? Yuk." "I many more 'death stars' are they going to build? And how did they build a new one so fast?"


"Cheesy? I liked it. It's backstory, it's explanation. It means the Kzer-Za do what they do for a reason rather than just being jerks."

Yes, but they didn't need to have 3 UQ species to explain that.


"It would not be a natural or painless process."

If it were painful, then the dynarri's altering sessions would have freed the UQ and rebellion would have taken place then and there. Remember, pain breaks the dynarri's hold.


"Anyway, the impression I get of the Process was that it was a planetwide process -- again, just as with the KZ and KA, all the language they use about it is as though it were a massive, whole-species-changing shift."

The Chmmr (unlike the chenjesu) are awful communicators. They didn't really explain much of anything when you get right down to it.


"Why should they need to have Brown Ur-Quan DNA to make Brown Ur-Quan?"

You're being too superficial. It's not just their carapace, it is their minds and constitution. GMOs never work right in the end, because organisms are just too complicated for you to just be able to change a few things. Remember your theories about the Mycon? If the Precursors couldn't even get it right, how could some couch pillows do it? The browns (though aggressive) were probably more balanced, evolutionary organisms.


"Alligators and crocodiles and things *already* existed *with* the dinosaurs, and when the dinosaurs died they kept on existing."

Say, what if some of the Crocodiles saved some of the Dinosaurs and brought them with them? Would birds be too set in their philosophies and feathers to accept the Dinosaurs? :)

"Brontosaurs?  Ichthysaurs?  Triceratopses?"

Ichthysaurs are not classified as Dinosaurs, but Marine Reptiles.


"The dinosaur label was pretty much just thrown on large, extinct, non-mammal / non-avian creatures, into which category crocodilians would have fallen."

No, Dinosaurs are basically the brethren of mammals. Both Mammals and Dinosaurs are warm-blooded, mostly verticle-legged, independent offshoots of Reptiles.

Ship strength is not directly correlated with a civilization's age, wisdom or power.

The Arilou *explicitly* say that they don't have that many skills in "corporeal" science, that they don't have many physical resources, and so on, and this is because their existence is mainly "spiritual". They also explicitly say that they prefer to intervene from behind the scenes and only as much as is possible to fit their goals -- that they have no desire to be major players in interstellar politics.

All this fits very well with the idea of a very old civilization that has passed *way* beyond the sorts of things we care about -- spaceships and resources and territory -- but has some particular, singular purpose they want to accomplish. Like humans who long ago lost the ability their ancient, ancient ancestors had to breathe underwater but who send little submersibles to the ocean floor for various missions.
[quote["the Arilou are Humans from the future."

Yea, I've had a similar theory. It shoots down the "if time travel were possible, where's all the time tourists," thing while explaining how come these "aliens" look like tiny dudes. Still, the problem is I feel no need to go back a million years and fight beside chimpanzees. I know they will survive, or else how can I exist? Anyway, I don't want to be a pasty little wimp who zooms around doing unnecessary surgery to people without getting to charge extreme medical bills. :(
Ha. Well, for one thing, *you* don't know how time travel works. The grandfather paradox is only a paradox in a world where there's ever only one history, not where time travel entails splitting off alternate timelines and adding new possibilities to a set of all probable futures. It may be that in the SC2 universe the Arilou know that they must go back to the past to ensure the past occurs as they remember it -- that they have to maximize the probability of their existence through intervention, maximize the number of timelines where they survive, etc.

Some of the Arilou dialogue seems to directly hint at something like this -- their knowing the future, knowing the Human race has a destiny, being intimately related to humans, binding different "threads" of history together, etc.  That's why I like this theory.


You're misinterpreting me again. I'm saying that there could only be Brown Ur-Quan if the Taalo had a working Taalo Shield that they could have used to protect the Browns from being mind-controlled long enough so they could take the Browns through whatever thing they used to go into another dimension, without the Dnyarri forcing the Browns to kill them.

The Ur-Quan tell you the Shield was not completed in time to be used, and that the Taalo were unable to use it to save themselves. I believe the Melnorme are the ones who tell you that there was only one prototype ever built and that it didn't work well enough to be useful.

In order for the theory that Browns went through the portal to work, it seems to me that these sources would have to be wrong -- there'd have to be another Shield that worked on a big enough scale that it could protect all the Browns while they were going through the portal.


WTF does Chenjesu space have to do with anything?

The Ilwrath homeworld is at the Great Eye of Dogar, at Alpha Tauri (I believe). This is completely unambiguous. The Ilwrath tell you this. The lander describes it as the homeworld when it lands on it when it's bombarded.

Yes, the homeworld is not in the Sphere of Influence on the map. That's because it's clear that the Sphere of Influence does not actually measure a race's political territory or whatever -- it's just an estimate of where their *fleets* are. The Pkunk SoI moves with the Pkunk fleet even while there are still Pkunk at the homeworld. Same deal with the Ilwrath -- the SoI doesn't cover the Great Eye of Dogar because their fleets have ranged far afield from the homeworld to guard the Chenjesu and Mmrnmhrm and kill the Pkunk.

When you *go* to the *Ilwrath homeworld*, the lander tells you that they've looked around and *eveyrone appears to be dead* -- there are *no signs of habitation*. On the *homeworld*.

I'm sorry to get upset again, but you seem to be purposely not paying attention to what I say.

As far as who killed them -- the SoI also doesn't include all ships or colonies of that race either. No reason that just because the Thraddash SoI doesn't ever move toward Ilwrath space that a strike team couldn't have gone out armed with a barrage of nuclear warheads to take out the capital.


Fine. Then every species, by definition (except maybe for completely artificial species like the Mmrnmhrrm)  has a homeworld, and the original question is completely moot.

This isn't how the game uses "homeworld", or what most people think of when they say it. Either the Syreen or the Humans didn't originally evolve on their homeworlds, given how similar they are, but that doesn't make Earth or Syra less of a homeworld. Gaia is now very much the Syreen homeworld even though it's an adopted one. And so on.


I don't really feel like arguing about a whole new topic. I really have nothing to say if you think the prequels were actually better than the original trilogy. (I don't think the original trilogy was all that good, but *come on*. I mean... *come on*.)


They didn't need to, but it was more interesting.

Why are you such a friggin' minimalist? Stories are more interesting when they have more details.

And it wasn't there Ur-Quan species. It was one Ur-Quan species that was divided into two. It's the brother-divided-against-brother idea.

It's really just because we've gotten in the habit of saying "Brown Ur-Quan" as though there was something special about them. Brown Ur-Quan aren't even called that in the game -- they're just described as brown, but always mentioned simply as "Ur-Quan". The regular Ur-Quan, who used to be one species, were made into two different species that hate each other. That's a tragedy, and that's interesting.

By this kind of logic, we absolutely must have a Zebranky appear in SC3, because you could have explained the Zoq-Fot-Pik becoming a cooperative without them. Or we must see Algolites in SC3, because you could explain Spathi carelessness and stupidity without them. Or we must see all the Milieu races in SC3, because you could have had a Sentient Milieu with just Taalo, Ur-Quan and Mael-Num, so if the other races are mentioned they must be important. Sheesh.


I don't mean literally painful. I mean it would result in social disruption and make a lot of people upset. There probably isn't any direct pain involved, since you wouldn't do it by changing adults into new forms -- you'd just genetically modify the gametes that form the new offspring so that all new babies are of the new species.

Besides, only a certain degree of huge, excruciating pain works to free Ur-Quan from Dnyarri control. Ordinary levels of pain don't work, or the Dnyarri would never have been able to maintain control for long at all.


I sort of liked their abrupt personality. It made sense for a species that wasn't used to having to say things in words (since they communicate naturally by radio signals and are sort of like a hivemind, as I see them).



*shrug* All the descriptions of the Ur-Quan don't show them to be that much more psychologically balanced than the Kzer-Za or Kohr-Ah.

And you go way to far by saying genetic engineering "never works". It never works perfectly, like any other kind of engineering, but it does, in fact, "work". That is, you can predictably make certain changes, and while those changes always impose tradeoffs, it isn't some written-in-stone Frankenstein's-monster rule that everything you do will go horribly wrong.

In any case, I don't see why the Kzer-Za or Kohr-Ah would *want* to change back. As I said, *they* seem pretty convinced they're all right, even if the rest of the galaxy doesn't. By their own standards they've been incredibly successful so far -- far more evolutionarily successful than any other species in the galaxy, given that they've killed or enslaved all the others.

At most, this is an unproven fringe hypothesis, no?  Unless biology has changed a lot sense last I looked (which is quite possible).

Here's the best statement I can find on the issue, taken from a ludicrous creationist / evolutionist debate I found on another forum.  It puts things elegantly, if rather hifallutinly:


Which classification system are you using, D_S (and Art), when you argue that Ichthysaurs are "marine reptiles" and not dinosaurs?  What definition of "dinosaur" are you using?

When I use the term "dinosaur," which is itself, as I said, a fairly sloppy and useless term, I use it to connotatively more than denotatively and, remember, my usage of it was first in the thread.  All I meant was simply, "Giant, scary lizards were largely wiped out, but you can still see crocodiles."  Using the bird analogy perhaps would have been more apt, but, as a romantic, nothing short of the extinct elephant bird (damn those Polynesians and Captain Cook!) comes close to capturing "dinosaurness" for me.  Huge, implacable crocs, on the other hand, do quite nicely.

As a side note:


Sure.  But I think the better analogy to the SM is a hegemonic power like Rome, not a regional one like the Etruscans (as significant a role as they may have played in history).  Huge, powerful empires can be demolished and fade in prominence, but nevertheless Rome, the Ottomans, the Caliphate, the Chinese, even short-lived empires like Hitler's, will have continued cultural and ethnological existence until the Earth gets destroyed.

Now, I agree with you that in SC2 there are better means of wiping people out, and the Dnyarri might have been more thorough and effective, but who knows?  What little we know about them suggests incredible incompetence (indeed, the one Dnyarri we meet is more like a petty, scheming Shylock than an all-powerful Elder of Zion), and given how easily races avoid annihilation in the SC universe, I'm comfortable with the idea that any of the races mentioned as destroyed could still be alive.  If told badly, it would, of course, be bad story-telling, but then so is the complete repopulation of the Shofixi by a Jerry Lewis-style Asian stereotype.  So, there you go.

This is... not true. The superorder Dinosauria is defined as being separate from other archosaurs, including the crocodilians, because they have upright legs that are set directly under their bodies, while other reptiles, like crocodilians and lizards, have legs that extend outward from their bodies.

This is how dinosaurs are defined by biologists, even if the word is used more loosely colloquially. An ichythysaur is therefore not a dinosaur, and neither is a pterodactyl, and neither is an iguanadon.


Well, "transition" is an overly strong term, but yeah -- before dinosaurs there existed reptiles, and after dinosaurs existed birds, and birds are the descendants of the therapod version of dinosaurs. But even the other kinds of dinosaurs have things in common with birds that they don't with reptiles -- the shape of the joints that allows them to have upright legs is the big thing, and paleontologists suspect that dinosaurs may have begun to develop warm-blooded-ness.

The thing is that birds *are directly descended from a kind of dinosaur* -- they're descended from therapods like the T-Rex. Paleontologists who use cladistic taxonomy will say that, properly, birds really are a kind of dinosaur -- birds are a kind of therapod, which is a kind of dinosaur, even if birds have attributes that earlier kinds of dinosaurs all lacked.

This isn't true for any other kind of animal today. Modern reptiles like lizards and crocodilians are descended from *non*-dinosaur reptiles that lack the dinosaur bone structure. Same thing with mammals, which descended from therapsids, which are distinct from dinosaurs -- in fact, before the Permian extinction *they* were the dominant form of large life on Earth and the dinosaurs replaced them when they dwindled almost to extinction, and then the K-T extinction arrived and the therapsids' mammal descendants took the top dog place back.

So saying the modern versions of dinosaurs are birds isn't just a fad -- it has some pretty strong basis in fact. Sure, sauropods and ornithiscians as opposed to therapods don't look much like birds, but then there were kinds of therapsids that don't have much to do with modern mammals. That doesn't invalidate the "mammals are the modern heirs of therapsids" idea.


No, it wasn't. It specifically was coined for those large, extinct creatures that have reptilian features otherwise but seem to have a more developed, "modern" skeletal structure, with the upright legs. Dinosaurs aren't even taxonomically reptiles -- by the original, non-cladistic definition of "reptile" -- for this reason, and crocodilians are.

(Cladistic taxonomy says dinosaurs are reptiles, but it also says birds and mammals are reptiles -- it defines a "reptile" as anything that was descended from the first animal to have the characteristics of a reptile.)

Dinosaurs are *like* crocodilians, yes. They're both classified as members of the class "archosauria" by paleontologists. But taxonomically they are distinct. Crocodilians, because they lack the dinosaurian skeletons, were less competitive on land and were thus predominantly water animals, just like they are today -- the informal, colloquial definition of "dinosaur" usually stipulates that they have to be *land* animals, even leaving aside the taxonomic business, so that's another point against saying crocodilians should be dinosaurs.

Besides which, the crocodilians of that era contained many very large species that are now extinct -- if the term "dinosaur" were as all-encompassing as you claim those would be "dinosaurs" even if modern crocodiles and alligators weren't. But no paleontologist uses that term for them, because they're *not* dinosaurs.


Well, I'm pretty sure you were factually wrong or arguing from bad facts in what you said, so hey.

Not "fringe" at all. Probably never provable, unless we somehow manage to clone a living dinosaur, but quite a popular theory last I checked.


Umm... the one I learned in fourth grade, and have repeatedly seen in science texts since then, and that is here?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinosaur


Well, Frank, I hate to say it but you're, well, just wrong.

I mean, "dinosaur" when used "connotatively" is "dinosaur" used *wrongly*, at least nowadays when scientific terminology is percolating through the common vocabulary like this. It's like saying "fish" means "things with fins and tails that swim through the water", thus making marine mammals like dolphins and whales "fish". It's true that there was nothing wrong with using that term back when _Moby Dick_ was written, but these days -- no. It's just wrong. "Dinosaur" as used by biologists has a strict, well-defined meaning, however fuzzily the term may be used by laypeople. So does, for example, "fish" -- ordinary people think of starfish and clams and octopodes and whatnot as "fish", while no biologist would ever use that term for them, even casually, and increasingly educated people are dropping that usage too -- notice how we're starting to call them "sea stars" instead of "starfish" and so on.

Anyway: most people who use Linnaean classification specifically say dinosaurs are *not* reptiles -- the bone structure is different enough from the vast number of other things we call reptiles that they shouldn't be lumped in the same group. The bone structure of a therapod is *much* more like a bird's than like a reptile's, and all the other kinds of dinosaurs at least share that trait of having bird legs rather than reptile legs.

Cladistically, yes, as I said, dinosaurs and birds and mammals are all "reptiles". But birds are a kind of reptile that falls *under* dinosaurs in the cladistic tree, while crocodilians spring off from a parallel branch, as do mammals.


All right, I guess I can accept that. I'd venture that you can't tell too much about the old Dnyarri race from our one friend, since he's a mutated and surgically altered and generally screwed-up example of the species, and his brain is constantly being bombarded by disruptive radiation from the Taalo Shield, but hey. If an SC3 sequel tells the story of the resurgence of the Drall and does it well, I'll eat my words. I just think it'd be hard to do well -- at least the Shofixti had an established personality you could work from, while resurrecting the Drall would mean working from scratch.

"Well, for one thing, *you* don't know how time travel works."

I don't think *anybody* does. Theories are one thing, testing and seeing is another. Know anybody who's actually travelled backwards through the/a timeline (the orz don't count ;) )?


"I'm saying that there could only be Brown Ur-Quan if the Taalo had a working Taalo Shield that they could have used to protect the Browns from being mind-controlled long enough so they could take the Browns through whatever thing they used to go into another dimension,"

The one they had worked well enough to bring hundreds of UQ along. Plus, a Dynarri's powers only work at a certain distance. If there were any deep space scout UQ who had not been in range of a Dynarri, they could have joined the fleeing Taalo.


"I'm sorry to get upset again, but you seem to be purposely not paying attention to what I say."

Not on purpose, it's just that these are a lot of little fine points from a game I've not played through in a while and I might be a little tired, at the moment. That, or maybe I'm just not *solid* enough to understand you. ;)


"This isn't how the game uses "homeworld", or what most people think of when they say it."

There's the Taalo "Homeworld". And as you mentioned, the lander crew calls the Ilwrath planet a "Homeworld", even though they are all supposed to be dead.


"Either the Syreen or the Humans didn't originally evolve on their homeworlds, given how similar they are, but that doesn't make Earth or Syra less of a homeworld."

I bet Earth is the real one, we've got all kinds of hominids up the wazoo.


"I don't think the original trilogy was all that good, but *come on*. I mean... *come on*.)"

I didn't say one was better than the other, just that the prequels had more of a core story to work off of. Episodes 4-6 might have been better executed, but their story was slightly more "yeehah", than dramatic (except for the last part of E6, that was the best and most unexpected climax of scifi). Anyway, you're right, we don't need to talk about a whole other universe.


"Why are you such a friggin' minimalist? Stories are more interesting when they have more details."

Because the details eventually start to get kind of repetitive or confusing. So many irrelevant species going extict and then coming back. Also, unnecessary details and window dressing should be eliminated, to focus better on the heart of the story (something the aforementioned star wars prequels could have done better [kill jar jar for starters]).

Iguanadons were one of three types of animal -- we'll leave open as to what they were -- offered by Richard Owen as an example of "dinosauria."  So I don't know what your definition of "coined" is . . . .


And next say that "birds really are a kind of reptile."  See, e.g., http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/diapsids/avians.html ("Using proper terminology, birds are avian dinosaurs; other dinosaurs are non-avian dinosaurs, and (strange as it may sound) birds are technically considered reptiles."); http://www.dinosauria.com/dml/diction.htm (definition of "clade") ("An animal is a member of every clade that its ancestors are, thus making a bird a reptile (it is descended from a member of clade Reptilia) . . .").

The problem with the birds-as-dinosaurs meme isn't that it's wrong -- as I said before, you can slap any definition on a group, come up with a meaningful criterion of membership that excludes some and includes what you want -- but that it's not useful for common parlance.  Here, maybe it makes sense to distinguish the word "dinosauria," i.e., the taxon, from "dinosaur," i.e., the popular noun.

Under the birds-as-dinosaur school, it would be inapt for me to say, "General Foch was a dinosaur who still believed that sufficiently courageous charges could overcome any defenses," or calling a huge, outmoded American car a dinosaur, because "dinosaurs" are in fact adaptible, agile creatures still in existence.  Not only that, under the birds-as-dinosaur school, the word itself ("awe-inspiring or terrible lizards") becomes meaningless.  Who is inspired by the turkey, other than Ben Franklin?  Not to mention the butchery of popular imagery, where dinosaurs are huge, lumbering beasts.

Dinosaurs as birds is a fad in popular culture.  I am quite confident that thirty years from now, dinosaurs (if they're still taught in school despite ID) will be depicted as T-Rexes and triceratops, with brontosaurs and ichthyosaurs, pterodactyls and, probably, enormous crocodiles.  The obsession with feathery raptors will have passed.  I'm not saying that the taxonomy will change (but maybe it will, who knows?).

Finally, I'm all for defining words rather than letting sloppy usage destroy them.  But in this case, it's not sloppy usage destroying "dinosaur," but modern revisionism.  It's like people who argue that there's no such thing as "race," because in their biological theory, race doesn't exist.  Defining race out of existence, defining "reptiles" to include birds and "dinosaurs" to exclude iguanodons, parsing "genocide" finely to exempt every non-white country's act of genocide, all these are fun linguistic games to play, but not particularly useful for the day-in, day-out.

Although I appreciate your efforts to condescend to me -- really! -- I'm not even sure what you mean by: "Umm... the one I learned in fourth grade, and have repeatedly seen in science texts since then, and that is here?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinosaur"

Surely even someone as fantastically educated as you was not learning about phylologies and clades in fourth grade.  Given that Wikipedia (font that it is of all dubious knowledge) doesn't render an actual definition of dinosaur, it's not clear what you're pointing to.

Are you pointing to: "Dinosaurs are animals that dominated the terrestrial ecosystem for over 100 million years"?

Or

"The term is a combination of the Greek words deinos ("terrible" or "fearfully great" or "formidable") and sauros ("lizard" or "reptile")."?

Or "[T]his article hereafter uses "dinosaur" as a synonym for "non-avian dinosaur", and "bird" as a synonym for "avian dinosaur"."?

Or "Dinosaurs are archosaurs, like modern crocodilians. These are set apart by having diapsid skulls, having two holes where jaw muscles attach, called temporal fenestrae."

I'm tickled by the conceit that that was the definition you learned in fourth grade; tickled, but unconvinced.

Oow, it looks like some egos have been horribly maimed. :'(

Common people, we're talking about an intentionally comical game and dead animals here. No need to get upset.

Anyway, here's my general thoughts:

Art: SC2 is not that dramatic of a game. It is much lighter than the Starflight games (even though it has the same writers), and it is very open (anything could happen).

Frank: "My classification system" is the one that makes the most sense and is the most widely adopted. I don't know what you're talking about, and it doesn't really matter as evolution is not quite that segmented, but the system Art and I use makes a lot of sense if you think about it. Fish had spines, then amphibians could walk on land, reptiles could raise young on land, mammals and dinosaurs had upright bodies powered by warm-blooded metabolisms and birds could fly and walk upright (and were also warm blooded). Also, each goup is/was very diverse and successful.

Hmm.  You know, I looked back at my original post, and based on what I said, I've been bested in this debate, since I mentioned "genetic inheritance."  I think -- but may be self-serving here -- that I initially was going to go with the bird example, but then because of my distaste for it, switched to alligators.

That said, crocodilia does serve the original point better than birds, in that crocodilia survived the cataclysm that wiped out the "big reptiles" without going through major adaptations, whereas "avian dinosaurs" pretty much left their forbears in the dust.

I stand by my general arguments about the (lack of) usefulness of the modern classification of dinosaurs, my distaste for the birds-as-dinosaurs meme, and so forth.  But I can't in good conscience claim that that was my explicit point from the beginning.

That said, the dinosaur comment was a tangent to a larger point about surviving destruction, which point I think still stands.  It is very, very hard to wipe something out, whether you're a comment and they're the archosaurs, you're Fred Soper and they're mosquitoes, you're Caesar and they're the Gauls, you're Arab/Nazi/Catholic/generally evil European and they're Jews, or, you're Dnyarri and they're a member of the SM.

Clearly I should register so I can just edit posts.  Oh well.


Well, of course this depends in part on the warm-bloodedness of dinosaurs, a topic still hotly (haha) debated (and, at least last I checked, leaning toward the exothermic school).

But my point is that I'm not sure why this division is any better than talking about reptiles as a species of egg-laying, dry-scaled land animals with either individual teeth or curved (turtle-like) beaks and talking about birds as a species of egg-laying, feathered, flying animals with beaks.  Dinosaurs then falls into the reptile category and birds do not.

For my money, that distinction is the better one.  There's a reason why dinosaurs were called "terrible lizards" not "terrible birds."  It may not be the taxonomically ideal reason, but it is probably is a humanistically solid one.  Birds, fish, mammals, reptiles, and insects are distinguishable by their skin as much as anything else (feathers, fish scales, fur, rough scales or tight scales, exoskeletons).  If it turns out that dinosaurs were covered by feathers, I might be inclined to think of them as birds.

Of course, scientists ought to use whatever classification system works best for them.  While I, like Orwell, prefer pints and gallons and feet and inches to the metric system, I don't think scientists should use the English system.  Likewise, I'm quite content with scientists doing whatever crazy things they want with *their language.*  So, Pluto is a planet for me and will be so in coversation for at least several more generations, even if the concept of "planet" is not practically useful or logically applicable to Pluto.  And birds will be birds, not reptiles.  And starfish will be starfish, not sea stars.  (Although I don't think that most people think starfish or octopuses are fish, though if pressed to assign them to some category, they might break down and do it.)  And race will exist.  And gender will exist.  And so forth.

To lay out another bias, I'm all for keeping the number of animal kingdoms (if that's the proper term; it's been a long time since high school biology) as low as possible, so putting dinosaurs in equal standing to fish and mammals and reptiles and birds seems like a bad solution to me.  (So does saying that the "thumb" is not a finger or that arachnids aren't insects.)  Shrug.  We all have our biases.

For purposes of communicating clearly in day to day speech, I think it's better not to call birds reptiles or dinosaurs coequal to the other kingdoms.  Since last I checked the message board for an old, rather sophomoric game is most amenable to colloquial, not scientific, speech, I don't see why we shouldn't just speak in plain English.

"To lay out another bias, I'm all for keeping the number of animal kingdoms (if that's the proper term; it's been a long time since high school biology) as low as possible"

I *think* they are called Families, but I'm not sure. Kingdoms the largest categories, of which there are currently six: Archaebacteria, Eubacteria, Protists, Fungi, Plants and Animals.

And yes, there are many ways of breaking down organisms into classes and all are just opinions. But I think it works OK to have six families of verts (or whatever they're called): Fish, Amphibians, Reptiles, Mammals, Dinosaurs, and Birds. At least, that's how I see it.

BTW, why the hell are sponges considered animals? If algae are not plants, and slime molds are not fungus, how come sponges got thrown into our kingdom?


"Since last I checked the message board for an old, rather sophomoric game is most amenable to colloquial, not scientific, speech, I don't see why we shouldn't just speak in plain English."

There are a number of games that use (sometimes dumb) humor and they still have an interesting story. But Starcontrol is mostly humor, I'll give you that.

BTW -- did the same guys really write SF as SC?  I remember being struck by a similar feeling when I first played SC -- I played SF ages and ages ago -- but dismissed it as just genre similarity.

Is there any way to play a decent version of SF2 on the PC?  SF1 has the fun Genesis version and SF2 has the fun Mac version, but SF2 PC has unplayably bad graphics (at least by my tastes, which can be quite forgiving) and sound.

No. In fourth grade I learned that the difference between dinosaurs and reptiles was that dinosaurs have upright legs that go under their bodies and reptiles don't.

This is mentioned in the article. I have seen it multiple places since then, even though I am not a biologist.

It wasn't until recently that I learned about the complicated stuff like cladistic vs. Linnaean taxonomy, and what archosaurs are, and so on, and I'm not sure I have that accurately. But the definition of "dinosaur" I know is simple -- it's something with reptile-like characteristics that has a stronger, more developed kind of limb joint than reptiles.

Does it really matter more what you're "inclined to think of them" as or what scientists find useful and actually use on a day-to-day basis?

There is a taxonomic clade called Dinosauria. Crocodilians aren't in it. This is an actual, official, standard definition.

And biologists almost always think things like bone structure are more basic and essential than things like the structure of skin. In any case fossils of feathered dinosaurs, like Archeopteryx, do exist. The existence of Archeopteryx and its relatives is what makes it difficult to draw a clear line between birds and dinosaurs.

Cladistically, of course, birds simply are dinosaurs, no question. They're just "avian dinosaurs". But they're definitely directly descended from dinosaurs, which in cladistic terminology makes them dinosaurs, just like we are reptiles because we're descended from reptiles.


...Sure. But even in fourth grade most of us dinosaur fans were saying things like "Ichythysaurs aren't dinosaurs, they're marine reptiles". I don't think that this is a matter of something arcane that "scientists" use -- this is the actual definition ever since the term dinosaur was coined -- as early as the 19th century scientists had started classifying dinosaurs vs. reptiles and certain kinds of dinosaurs vs. others by the leg joints. The *public perception* is that dinosaurs were dinosaurs because they were very big. But the way the scientists saw it, this was a secondary thing -- dinosaurs were *able* to grow very big because of their different skeletal structures.

You're free to use the word "dinosaur" however you want in your daily life. But the stricter definition *does* trump the looser one.

Most people's definition of "fish", for instance, is either "things that live in the water" or "things that live in the water with fins and tails". A lot of people will carelessly call dolphins or whales "fish". But this is laziness -- there's no benefit in doing so. Most people who actually have studied dolphins or whales even casually know that they are, in fact, mammals -- it's a pretty simple, important piece of knowledge and once you know it you can keep things straight in your head much more easily instead of being confused every time you hear something about dolphins that doesn't apply to "other fish".

The thing is that the reason these things are "taxonomically better" is because they *make more sense*. You only lump together "big, old, extinct reptile-like things" in one group if you don't pay much attention to the members of that group. The shape and structure of dinosaurs is really quite different from that of other big reptile things. If you had a bunch of dinosaurs in cages along with a giant crocodile from the Triassic, you could *see* that the giant crocodile is a different kind of thing -- unlike all dinosaurs it creeps, it stays in the water, its belly drags over the ground. And you'd have things that didn't quite fit your definition -- say, really small dinosaurs four inches high -- that would clearly still be dinosaurs even if they weren't "big monsters".

Just like people call dolphins fish because they've only ever seen pictures of them. If they had a dolphin in their backyard it'd quickly become obvious how different a dolphin's lifestyle is and how different its actual shape is from that of a real fish.

There are plenty of terms that have no scientific use that you can use instead. Say "great beasts" or "ancient monsters" or something. Use the scientific term "archosaur", which was invented for this purpose (it adds pterosaurs and crocodilians to the mix). Just like if you really want to talk about something that includes dolphins and whales say "sea creatures" or "children of the deep" or whatever. Poetic license gives you a large number of terms to choose from -- you don't need to muddle actual scientific terms with strict meanings to do so.


*sigh*

Why is it asking so much to go with what is clearly written and used all the time by scientists? There isn't a "controversy" over this in reality -- people who have *studied* dinosaurs and know what they are talking about more than you or I have already created the taxons and recorded them and they're now in basic use and there's no way to change the terms around without causing trouble.

People used to think dinosaurs were just really big lizards because they didn't know very much about dinosaurs. Way back in the *nineteenth century* after they studied enough fossils they started thinking dinosaurs were different from reptiles. It only seems like an unnecessary wrinkle to you because you haven't spent much time studying dinosaurs.

FWIW, arachinds just plain aren't insects. They haven't *ever* been insects. The word "insect" comes from the Latin word for "divided" (like "bisect") and it refers to things with three-segmented bodies. Arachnids don't have a clear division of their body between thorax and abdomen -- they have a head and only a body -- therefore the people who invented the term "insect" never intended it to be used for arachnids -- therefore the reason arachnids aren't insects isn't because someone "invented" a separate category for arachnids to go into but because some people *don't really pay attention* to little bugs when they look at them and *lazily* lump things together into a category without thinking about it.

I mean, you can easily use a slang term that most people will be okay with, like "bugs", for both. (There is an order of insects that's specifically called bugs, but even scientists usually only refer to those as "true bugs" because of how widespread the vague term "bug" is.) If you want to be proper about it you can say "arthropods". If you want to exclude lobsters and crabs you can say "small, land arthropods". It's not that hard.


You're thinkin of "classes", by the way. All animals are in one kingdom, the animal kingdom.

And, yes, that's me saying you should use scientific terminology correctly instead of guessing. Sorry. But "plain English" is plainer when you don't muck around and mix definitions through laziness. I'm not saying you should say "members of superorder Dinosauria" or use a big word or whatever -- I'm saying you should call dinosaurs *what dinosaurs are* and not misuse the term.

Would it be so offensive if I told you that the Gauls really were one specific group of barbarians in Europe and that you shouldn't use the word Gaul to just mean everybody who lived outside the Roman Empire, even though that's what ordinary folks who don't know anything about history sometimes do? Or to tell you that before Augustus Caesar it was the Roman Republic and not the Roman Empire, even though most people don't really know or care about the difference? Or to tell you that even though a lot of people say "Chinese" to mean all East Asians that such-and-such a person is actually Korean? Would I be quibbling then?

Come on. I'm asking you to accept that the people who use the term *most* on a day-to-day basis have an actual, working definition of it, and just because people don't know it doesn't mean the term doesn't *have* a definition, which is what you seem to be saying -- that it only has a "connotative" meaning. Just because you don't know something or your friends don't know something doesn't mean that that ignorance is acceptable and that speaking ignorantly is "plain English".

I find your increasing self-righteousness a cause for increasing amusement.  That said, I'm not sure who's more foolish, the fool, or the fool who bothers engaging with him.  (Foolish, here, used not to mean *stupid,* which I most certainly do not think you are, but to mean of poor judgment.)  Oh, I could certainly up my scorn factor to try to match yours, but why I would want to try to insult you, when, as I've said before, I have high regard for the thoughtfulness and intelligence of your posts, I can't see.  Why you want to insult me, I cannot imagine.  Perhaps you think it ups your stock to try to mock me.  Maybe it does.  It strikes me that it makes you look absurd -- especially as you desperately use Google and Wikipedia to try to and look like you're an expert on taxonomy.

You live in a world where you can simultaneously claim that "A lot of people will carelessly call dolphins or whales 'fish'" -- a phenomenon I've never observed -- and that cladistic taxological terms "[a]re in basic use."  I live in a world where people use dinosaurs as a short-hand to refer to the huge reptiles of the past, call animals with feathers "birds" but not "reptiles," and refer to gilled creatures as fish and aquatic mammals as mammals. 

Your mistake is in assuming that because two usages have a similar degree of looseness (calling all huge old reptiles "dinosaurs" and calling all finned sea creatures "fish"), they are similarly sloppy.  But that's simply not true.  Sloppiness is using less precision than the situation demands.  Here, we were talking about the creatures that were extinguished in the cataclysm that wiped out much of reptilian (or whatever you want to call it) life on ancient earth.  Using "dinosaur" as a short-hand for those creatures is loose, but it's not sloppy, especially given our cultural context.

But I think that mistake comes from an overall bias toward beligerence.  Your inability to perceive the more-than-slightly tongue-in-cheek tone of my last post (such as insisting that spiders will always be insects) reveals a lack of perspective.  It's the same lack of perspective that left some people patiently examining whether the bugs under feet looked one way or the other, while the rest of us got on walking and going about our business. 


I'm not sure if here you're trying to suggest that *I* was refering to all barbarians as Gauls.  Since historians refer to the group on which Caesar committed genocide as "Gauls" -- and Caesar himself used that term -- it's the term I use.  I'm well aware he killed lots of other barbarians, too.

Likewise, I'm not sure if you're accusing me of refering to the Roman Republic as the Roman Empire, or just insinuating that I did?

Or that I called all Asians Chinese?

But yes, in a lot of circumstances, you would be quibbling.  For example, if someone said, "Rome's empire was responsible for countless attrocities, such as the slaughter of the Gauls," and you jumped in and said, "Well, technically, that was the Roman Republic," it would be an example of a stupid, childish quibble aimed mostly to derail conversation and flaunt your own nitpickish "knowledge."  This is particularly so given that "empire" need not be a title willingly taken on.  Or is it fair to say that America isn't imperialist because we're a republic? 

"No!" cries Art, when the French protest the war in Iraq.  "We're expansivist republican, not imperialist!  Get it straight!  Anyone knows that!"

The degree of specificity called for is guided by context and by purpose.  If we were talking about changing Roman culture and someone confused imperial and republican Rome, then your comments would be productive.

As I said a few posts ago, given the initial wording of my post, I think your correction of my use of dinosaur made sense.  But a blanket rule that dinosaur ought always only to apply to certain big creatures (which we cannot properly, apparently, call lizards or even reptiles!) and not to others seems silly.  And arguing that because the cognoscenti use a word a certain way it ought only to be used that way seems, at the least, elitist (not so bad there) but at the worst, impractical (a deadly sin, in my opinion).

Put otherwise, if you received a distress call that said, "I'm stuck a sea and have seen neither fish nor fowl!" I don't think the proper response would be, "Well, what about dolphins?"

"certain big creatures" should read "certain big, scaled creatures of prehistoric times"

Now I'm REALLY getting sloppy!  Or else walruses are dinosaurs, too!

"BTW -- did the same guys really write SF as SC?  I remember being struck by a similar feeling when I first played SC -- I played SF ages and ages ago -- but dismissed it as just genre similarity."

Yes, and the similarities are somewhat obvious to me too. I think the Ancients were way cooler than the Precursors, though.


"Is there any way to play a decent version of SF2 on the PC?  SF1 has the fun Genesis version and SF2 has the fun Mac version, but SF2 PC has unplayably bad graphics (at least by my tastes, which can be quite forgiving) and sound. "

Yes, there are:

1) Download a Genesis emulator and a rom. (This worked great for me, but sadly I hate the genesis version with every fiber of my being.)

2) Download the Basilisk 2 Mac emulator and the Mac starflight 1&2 off of our site (starflightcentral.com).

3) Buy a genesis and cartridge or old macintosh (like the LCIII that I use) off of ebay for cheap.

"especially as you desperately use Google and Wikipedia to try to and look like you're an expert on taxonomy."

Hahaha, that's what I do all the time! :-[

To make myself feel better, I like to think that I'm a lightningly fast super central processing unit, which must use wiki and google as it's memory. In reality, I'm probably just dumb. ???


BTW Art, us laymen (whatever you mean by that) do not call cetaceans and echinoderms fish (and it didn't take wiki or google for me to learn any of that, just high school biology and some interest in life's many forms). And if someone from another culture thought I was French of Lebanese, I wouldn't lose my shirt (only a jack ass would get so upset over something so ridiculous).

Anyway, I'm not upset, but I think super-precise, elitist intellectualism is no brighter than any old meathead who thinks bar fights are the ultimate test of one's self worth. I think the current definition of a dinosaur is pretty good (don't get me started on sponges, though), but it is not that valuable. Classifying *dead* species does not have many real life applications. It is just dishing out names for dead species (dinosaurs), using a dead language (latin).

Besides, as I've said before, english is a primitive, half-assed language with many rough grafts from other tongues (like french and latin), and it is ever changing and evolving. So using it perfectly is not that rewarding, just use it for what it is meant to do -- communicate information to other people. I was just joking about the dinos and descendents thing, it really doesn't make a big deal when you're talking about whether or not the Ur-Quan still have a homeworld (which they do ;) ).

@DS -- The Genesis stuff would just be for SF1, right?  I've played through that before, although a refreshed wouldn't hurt.  Mac emulator would be for SF2?  BTW -- Mobygames simply has a "special thanks" to PRIII; are you sure he worked on the game as a writer?

@Art -- On my way home from work, I came up with what I think is a pretty good example of my general point about precision in language.  (As I noted above, with regard to my specific reference to alligators early on, you were right to call me on them not fitting in with dinosaurs as I had suggested they did.)

Here's the example:

Every little kid learns early on that tomatoes are fruits, not vegetables.  As it turns out, this is actually a pretty fruitless (hehe) distinction, because there isn't a division between fruits (the ripened ovary of a flower, a factoid I didn't just Google, but only because I've had this discussion before) and vegetables (which lack a technical definition, but are basically just the edible part of a plant).  But say that the child-like distinction holds.

So you are hired as a stocking clerk at a grocery store and are told by the manager to go lay out the tomatoes.  Unfortunately, there are no labels (bad grocery store) except for "fruits" and "vegetables."  Where do you put the tomato?  Following your logic, I think the answer would have to be in the "fruit" section.  But a good grocery store -- indeed, every grocrey store I've been to -- puts tomatoes with vegetables (often near garlic, which is neither here nor there).

The reason is that when we're preparing food, "fruit" is a shorthand for "plant matter eaten as a sweet snack or after a meal" and vegetable is shorthand for "plant matter eaten during a meal."  (Now here's where you niggle -- "But dessert is part of a meal too!")

That's why children are amused by tomatoes being fruits, because they are a fruit that defies fruitiness.  They know that tomatoes fit better with vegetables -- and that they would find them in the "vegetable" section.

So a customer comes, looks for apples, bananas, peaches, plums, oranges, and so forth, and finds none.  He comes up to you and says, "Sir, there's no fruit here!"  If you respond by pointing to a habanero chili hanging above the greens, you deserve a punch in the face, not an accolade for the precision of your language.

:)

That's where many discussions go wrong, and can turn out very long and pointless:
people using different definitions. It doesn't matter what definition you use ("a fruit is whatever you find in the fruit department"), as long as both parties are using the same definition.
That's why in discussions I often ask for an explicit definition of terms, something which not everyone always appreciates.

"The Genesis stuff would just be for SF1, right?"

That's right, there never was a genesis SF2.


"Mac emulator would be for SF2?"

Starflight 2 AND Starflight 1. One thing about running the mac SFs on basilisk or a modern mac system, is that sometimes the sound does not work (maybe there's a way to make it work, but I haven't found it). The easiest thing would probably be to run it off an old mac (that's what I do), using system 7 or so. If you don't mind paying a little for a mac w/OS7 or already have them (or maybe you have a bunch of old mac games that you've been dying to replay), then I would suggest that path. If you don't care about the sound and don't really want to pay anything more for a run through SF2, then basilisk might be the answer. Note that there might be a way to get the sound to work on a modern computer system, I just don't know of any and never really tried (because I already have that LC3).


" BTW -- Mobygames simply has a "special thanks" to PRIII; are you sure he worked on the game as a writer?"

Did you see that link that Moronic Maria gave a couple pages back? In that doc, PR3 says that he worked with Greg Johnson and a few others to write SC2. Also, if you go to mobygames and look up SC2, you'll see that Greg Johnson is on the credits under both "Additional Design", "Special Thanks To" and "Writing / Dialogue / Story".

So I don't know how much of a part PR3 had in Starflight, but I think Greg Johnson was a major part of Starcontrol. BTW, in case you don't already know, Greg Johnson was part of the core team that worked on Starflight and Starflight2: Trade Routes of the Cloud Nebula.

@ meep-eep -- Well, in this case, I don't think our debate is so much over a lack of clarity on definitions -- even under my definition, the point I was making was wrong -- but rather a debate about definitions themselves, i.e., whether a tomato can sensibly ever be classified as a vegetable (under the false dichotomy).  But it's a point well taken.  Usually, in serious debates, I do try to provide definitions of controversial terms.

@ DS -- Ah, I hadn't heard Greg Johnson's name before.  Truth be told, I played SF1 a long time ago ('91 I think) and SF2 about the same time.  SF1 I played through but only with heavy reliance on the hint guide (I was pretty young / lazy at the time, as opposed to now being older / lazier but better at games).  I don't think it really registered on me as a great game.  It's only after having enjoyed SC2 so much that I want to go back at try out SF. 

I had actually worked (pretty seriously) on a SC/SF clone for a while, so I had tried replaying SF, but I found the old DOS graphics / sounds too much to bear.  I really do like SF's RPG elements though, something that I would've ported over to my clone concept.

How is SF3 coming, by the way?  I've been following it for what feels like a decade now, eagerly hoping to get to play the same game with updated graphics.  If you guys succeed, it will be the second greatest indie project dream of mine (the first being the completion of any of the various X-Com remakes; X-Com was also being cannibalized for my clone -- the research and base-building elements, mostly).

"It's only after having enjoyed SC2 so much that I want to go back at try out SF."

We'll I don't want to take anything away from SC2, because it has a very fun combat system and some really funny lines and delivery (spathi, umgah, kohr-ah), but I still very much think Starflight is the best (of all games, actually). Maybe that's because I played Starflight in my childhood, or maybe it's the darker, more in depth, more realistic feeling universe. But if you like SC2 even though you find it somewhat shallow, you might like (or relike) Starflight and maybe the lighter Starflight 2. BTW, do you still have an old mac to run it on?


"I had actually worked (pretty seriously) on a SC/SF clone for a while,"

Was there a website for your project?


"How is SF3 coming, by the way?  I've been following it for what feels like a decade now, eagerly hoping to get to play the same game with updated graphics."

We hit a few speed bumps, but things seem to be moving again, nicely. I feel a little sorry that people have had to wait so long (and continue to wait), but I think that with 2005 technology, SF3 will be much better than it would have been five years ago. Hopefully we'll just have clear sailing from here to the release. BTW (I can't stop using that abbreviation :) ), we changed our site address to www.starflightcentral.com a few months ago. Going to the old site address will no get you anyplace, anymore.

And just so everybody knows, I am the only ass hole who works on the Starflight 3 freeware project. Don't judge it based on me. :)


Sorry if this is off-topic, Meep. And I don't want to take anything away from you guys, you've all done a fantastic job bringing one of my top 5 favorite games of all time, into this millenium.

Also from scchatlog.txt:
and

Deus_Siddus: Well, considering that we're talking about vegetables and fruit and definitions, and StarFlight in a topic about the alledged Kohr-Ah homeworld, I'd say you're relatively on-topic.
Seriously, I don't see the harm in letting a dead thread derail.
Though I could always split it up.

My recollection of SF was that it was very good but had a much less tightly-wound plot than SC2.  I remember sort of vaguely bumping around various side plots, getting a Spemin mind-control device, then making a certain discovery about fuel (left vague to avoid spoiling), then fighting a battle or something, and then the game just sort of winding down.  There was an ending text scroll but no termination of the game, and all that was left to do was to fly to some nebula where there were super powerful ships that always killed me, and then be killed by them.

By my recollection, things were darker, but not that much darker.  I mean, the Spemin were pretty ridiculous, the races were all pretty stereotyped and somewhat less interesting than SC2's (with less backstory, too), and the fuel issue, though somewhat mindblowing, didn't seem to have the same tragic arc as the Ur-Quan subjugation.

That said, I played SF1 when I was young and I don't think I gave it its due, and I played SC2 first without any walkthrough as a kid, then when UQM came out and I was already steeped in the game's arcana.  I mean, I still think it's pretty goofy that such serious conversations are had about the game, but on the other hand, it's pretty mind-boggling that there's so much texture to the story.

I think a major aspect of SC2's light-heartedness is the voice acting.  I played it first without any voice acting, and took the whole thing much more seriously.  When the Dnyarri sounds like a boor, the Thraddash like boars, the Orz like hopped up surfer dudes, the Yehat like cheesy highlanders, etc., it's hard to take the storyline very seriously.  The text itself is so filled with tragedy (albeit also with wildly implausible aversions of tragedy) that it's really pretty dark.  Particularly, the Ur-Quan arc (which is echoed, or presaged, by the wonderful Githzeraki / Ilithid Planescape story) and the Syreen / Mycon arc really, really impress me.

The game I worked on never had a website.  It has a lot of design docs, particularly a huge series of race descriptions.  The race descriptions, which include ship designs, missions, etc., are somewhat embarrassing now that I realize just how derivative they were.  The one thing that was really solid about the game, I think, was the capital ship and combat models.

The basic conceit was that you would be able to design your capship in a fashion akin to X-Com's base design (meaning, laying down modules in empty squares) -- that is, in two dimensions rather than just in one.  So it would be a top-down cutaway of the ship.  You'd lay down different types of modules, which would include crew quarters, research labs, engineering bays, weapons closets, then the standard SC2 type stuff (thrusters, storage, etc., etc.), and also hangars and exits from hangars.

Combat had two elements, a turn-based strategic part where your fighters were effectively icons (although the game was 3D) and your capship was a big, mobile base.  Each race had two types of fighters -- heavy fighters, which could do good damage to capships, and light fighters, which could beat heavy fighters.  (In practice, there was high diversity and not every heavy could hurt caps and not every light beat every heavy.)  You launched fighters from your hangars.

Heavy fighters could shoot cap ships (when in range) during the turn-based mode.  Capship weapons (when in range and within firing arc) could fire on any fighter.  Fighters could be moved (in free 2D, i.e., not tile-based but distance-based) and every fighter exerted a zone of control.  When a fighter entered another fighter's zone of control, that fighter could choose to initiate combat (but only during its turn -- if that makes any damned sense). 

Once the dog-fight began, it went to an SC2 style real-time top-down sequence.  But unlike SC2, the dog fight map was circumscribed.  If a fighter left the area, it "fled" the battle and the other side got to move the fighter wherever it wanted within a certain range.

When you targeted capships, you would be able to target the component you wanted to fire upon, though you had to fire on the outermost components before working inward.  As components took damage, their effectiveness would fade.

In addition to fighters, capships could also launch troop pods, which could fired upon by other capships or attacked in the real-time mode.  Troop pods that fled did not get to be moved by the other side (thus meaning you had to kill them to stop them).  Troop pods would have no offensive capability.

(More on troops in one sec.)

Finally, within capships would be icons (in this case, real icons, not 3D models) of the crew, consisting of engineers (who could repair damage), scientists (who were useless in a fight), pilots (who were useless in a fight but which you might not want to leave in a hanger bay if it was going to be destroyed), and soldiers.  Each crew class would also have officers, somewhat a la SF, somewhat a la Master of Orion II.

Okay!  So, when a component took enough damage, it lost pressure and any crew in it not equipped with environmental suits (i.e., all but certain soldiers or crew members of a robotic race) would die.  So, you had to move crew around to avoid getting killed (usually by moving them inward).  Now, here's where the troop pods come in.  When those hit your capship, or yours hit their capship, you could move troops into the other guy's zone.  These troops could do various things, including kill enemy crew, destroy unlaunched enemy fighters, and destroy components.

So, the idea would be that during the fight, you'd be moving crew around trying to send engineers to repair damaged components (but evac'ing them when it looked like they were going to blow), rushing troops to repel boarders, using light fighters to screen off the heavy fighters and heavy fighters to dish out the pain on the enemy capship.

The problem with this design, which ultimately was one of the death knells of the game, is that it made battles enormously complex.  This would be good if all the game were was a scifi ship-to-ship combat simulator.  (Maybe.)  But the problem is that combat is simply a regular but not sole element of SF/SC2 style games.  If every battle involved this much maneuvering, the player would never get anywhere!

Really, what killed the game was two things -- my lack of ability to understand core gameplay concepts (something that takes a lot of time to learn) and our total lack of manpower.  There were only three of us working on the game, while pursuing other things.  As things wound up, we proved pretty successful the three of us: I went on to some grand law school success and to work as a game writer for TimeGate and Bioware; the programmer got a huge scholarship that ultimately matured into natural language processing work through a DARPA program; and the artist is now a luminary at Animal Logic, Fox's in-house 3D effects studio down in Australia.

But our chimeric, ambitious, derivative, overly-complex clone never really got much beyond a working dogfight system and ship editor, a few ship models and skins, a number of race designs, and some hundred pages of design docs.

"By my recollection, things were darker, but not that much darker.  I mean, the Spemin were pretty ridiculous, the races were all pretty stereotyped and somewhat less interesting than SC2's (with less backstory, too), and the fuel issue, though somewhat mindblowing, didn't seem to have the same tragic arc as the Ur-Quan subjugation."

That's true, SF's light side was in it's communication dialogs. I guess what I meant was the overall feel of exploring space (this is the mac/amiga/pc versions, now, not the genesis). There wasn't as much music, no comical voice acting, battles were not quite as arcade like, creatures on planets did not look humorous, it took longer to do most tasks, and the art in general was less colorful (literally). That's just what I think space exploration would be like for the most part, dark, empty, somewhat lonely, and very mysterious. Of course, without the comical aliens, it might have been too dark. You've got to have some contrast, or else the player losses interest, I think.

Basically, I think SF and SC are two different ways of doing the same thing, each one appealing slightly more to a certain crowd.


"The problem with this design, which ultimately was one of the death knells of the game, is that it made battles enormously complex.  This would be good if all the game were was a scifi ship-to-ship combat simulator.  (Maybe.)  But the problem is that combat is simply a regular but not sole element of SF/SC2 style games.  If every battle involved this much maneuvering, the player would never get anywhere!"

That's true, and people would probably have expected that same kind of complexity in the other aspects of the game (making it even more of a task to complete). Still, it sounds like something that would be interesting for a game like Homeworld or Nexus.

Now that I think about it, I believe that was the story behind Nexus. It started out as Imperium Galactica 3, but they spent so much time on the combat engine, that they couldn't really work on the other parts of the game, and had to make it an entirely space combat oriented game, under a new name.

That's a good point, and definitely the bias that story-writers have is to view the game through the lens of its writing, not the gameplay.  You're right to ground the discussion in the way the game plays.  But since it's been so long since I played it, and I played it on the more colorful systems (Genesis and Mac), I'm not sure whether I can add much. :)  I would query whether it makes sense to think of this as a deliberate design goal or as simply a byproduct of the limitations of the system they used.  The Ultima series used lots and lots of black pixels early on and slowly phased them out as monitors, video cards, and pixel art developed, but that wasn't because the games were meant to be lighter or less serious.


Yeah, maybe, although I'm not totally sure on that score.  For example, X-Com (one of my all-time favorites) had a very complicated tactical combat engine, a less complicated base design system, a very simple supply system, an even simpler research system, and a ludicrously simplistic aircraft interception engine.  I don't think this was too problematic, although I'll confess that because I played the game on easier modes, I never fought in my own base so I never really fully grasped how the design system was supposed to work.

(SC2, for its part, clearly has a more complicated dogfight engine than any other engine; in a lot of ways, the whole thing is dressed up around that engine, which is weird, because you spend vastly more time mining and flying around than you do fighting.)

The hardest thing, I think, when designing a game that you haven't played a thousand times (i.e., something that's at least somewhat novel in a genre) is answering the questions, "What will the player be doing now to play the game?  How does this gameplay support the game's concept, how does the storyline complement the gameplay?  What will the player's goals be at a given moment, and is the gameplay helping him achieve his goals or getting in the way?"

IMHO, a classic modern example of a failure to ask these questions occurs in Sid Meier's Pirates remake (which otherwise demonstrates great design vision) -- the fact the wind always blows from the east.  The player has many goals in Pirates, but learning how to sail into the wind really is never one of them; nor is spending long voyages on the open sea.  And when the player is sailing from Mexico to Cuba, he often literally is completely inactive, except for minor adjustments to sail cross-wise rather than into the wind.  You just sit there and watch your ship on the blue sea.

Our hyper-complex combat engine did not accord with the goals the game was setting for the player.  The player's goals were almost always exploration, communication, travel, and so forth.  Combat is meant to be a hazard, but hazards should not occupy all of the player's time unless the player conceives of his goal as overcoming hazards, which I don't think he does in an SC/SF style game.

I actually think SC2 itself somewhat fell prey to a similar problem.  Its combat engine is the heart of the game and the most fun aspect of gameplay, but the game seldom if ever gives the player combat-related goals and doesn't really reward the player for fighting.  At the point when combat becomes cost/time effective, RUs really don't matter very much any more.  And the time the player spends in combat zones is fairly minimal, if he knows what he's doing.  If he doesn't, combat becomes an overly consuming hazard -- blindly exploring enemy space can be very combat heavy, which is either silly when you're powered up (which can happen very early if you mine a lot) or frustrating if you're not.  My last play through of UQM was probably something like 30% mining, 30% watching my ship fly back and forth from the starbase, 30% conversation with aliens, and 10% combat.  Of those, the only part that felt like it was really engaging me as a player, rather than as an observer, was combat.

UQM is a very fun game, though, which suggests that with enough polish, these problems aren't crippling.  But I think that's because no given task in UQM takes very long to do, whereas the strategic battles we were planning would've been very time-consuming indeed.

"But since it's been so long since I played it, and I played it on the more colorful systems (Genesis and Mac), I'm not sure whether I can add much."

I only seriously played on the mac, too. To me, the PC version had a super dark interface.


"I would query whether it makes sense to think of this as a deliberate design goal or as simply a byproduct of the limitations of the system they used.  The Ultima series used lots and lots of black pixels early on and slowly phased them out as monitors, video cards, and pixel art developed, but that wasn't because the games were meant to be lighter or less serious."

That's true for DOS games, but I don't think that was how it had to be for the mac version, which came out 5 years after ('90) the PC version ('85). The mac version actually had a white and light blue interface, but the game still seems generally more stark to me than starcontrol 2.


"(SC2, for its part, clearly has a more complicated dogfight engine than any other engine; in a lot of ways, the whole thing is dressed up around that engine, which is weird, because you spend vastly more time mining and flying around than you do fighting.)"

I think there are a few ways to patch this that would have made SC2 more rounded like its predecessor:

1) Make planets giant, less active, more complicated places with limitless resources (seriously, how could you ever mine everything on a whole planet, in a few days and pack it all into a ship). Also give the lander some more abilities, make it slower, and give it some physics. Have more alien encounters (sometimes hostile) on planets (like storming a UQ base for real).

2) Make fuel much less expensive so that exploration is not so severely punished.

3) No end of game, unless you fail. Make it so the player can fly around after the destruction of the Sa-Matra. I always love it when games like starflight or myst, let you explore after the main hurdle is complete.

4) Make Hyperspace black and don't have particles zooming and exploding everywhere, and save these effects for the more exotic quasispace. (This is a minor thing, but my eyes just get tired of the red after a while and I think space should be black with stars, no matter how many dimensions you are using.)


Now, some of those suggestions might have been in the plans, but SC2 completed past the deadline. There could have been more to it, if only more funding was allotted.

Don't be silly, a lander is neither a extremely efficient and sophisticated piece of mining equpiment OR an actual battle vehicle. I'm rather sure that the lander is an all purpose tool (contains equipment to investigate cities etc, contains a stunner, allows for mining) so all you can do is pick up the most accesible loads of minerals from a planet: to really "mine" the entire thing out would take years and years, which the New Alliance does not have. So you have to quickly and inefficiently go around scrounging as many resources as you can. I hope you didn't think that you are completely draining a planet's resources when you mine it, the space station only needs 7~ or so radioactives at minimum, at most it needs a supply ship every year (or w/e it is). You don't exactly have a fleet either, a maximum of 8 ships at a time does not appear to be that many in actuality. And yeah, because it's equipped to go mining and scanning stuffage it would be hardly able to storm UQ bases. A spathi ship's automatic defenses hurts a lander pretty bad, and spathi ships are not known for their firepower. Making a lander being able to do ALL of this stuff is just... again, I use this word, it's silly.

If we sort of limited this idea it would pretty cool though. Expensive upgrades from Melnorme allows your lander to have improved firepower (not just faster stunning stuff) or able to set up mining bases (go around every month or so to pick up resources, at the cost of leaving the lander and a crew there) or even smashing a modified lander into an enemy ship like space marines  :D.

None of it seems actually worthwhile (it's easy to get minerals, your flagship is already pimp, and it would be hard to code a UQ base to give it justice with the limited lander game engine), but who knows, these are possible incorporations for a sc2 expanded patch.


Not much point to this... I think it adds a cool feel to the game that you can't explore all of the map practically, it makes it feel more real and that there's so much space besides the little section you fly around in. There are other games where you CAN go everywhere and kill every baddy and get every *insert unit of value*. I'm glad that sc2 doesn't have that and is more focused on the story.

Besides, I think it is possible (if you're munchkinesh like that) to go everywhere using quasispace and melnorme, and also pointless as there's nothing there. Late game you get tons of credits with nothing to use it on besides fuel, I myself never felt "limited" except early on with few options and crap modules. But that's one of the parts of the game, upgrading your ship until it's super duper. It would defeat the point if your ship started out being able to go to almost all of the SoI's early on in the game.


Sure, why not. It would be great to see the race's responses to you after the ur-quan are defeated, differing depending on which other races got exterminated :P. Might sort of screw up the ending sequence and movie, but whatever.


I love the effects and coloring. A simple toggle option would suffice in this case though.

"Don't be silly, a lander is neither a extremely efficient and sophisticated piece of mining equpiment OR an actual battle vehicle."

Then maybe you could have different types of landers for different missions and you already have those space marines for ground warfare. After all, I only ever used one lander slot for my one type of lander (if it got destroyed I'd load a previous save game), so why not put some other toys in those empty slots? Anyway, my point was that the planetary exploration aspect of SC2 was very limited, and I think it would have been much cooler with a '90s version of the starflight planetary system (giant worlds, ecosystems, infinite resouces, realistic weather hazards, etc.)


"Not much point to this... I think it adds a cool feel to the game that you can't explore all of the map practically, it makes it feel more real and that there's so much space besides the little section you fly around in."

Well, if you don't want to explore or go off the beaten path, then I have the perfect game for you:

(http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00005B4AS.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg)

"Besides, I think it is possible (if you're munchkinesh like that) to go everywhere using quasispace and melnorme, and also pointless as there's nothing there."

That's why you need more diverse and complicated planets.


"Might sort of screw up the ending sequence and movie, but whatever."

Not at all, you'd watch the movies and then still be able to explore (the MK 1 just wouldn't get torched or maybe you'd get another capital ship of somekind.) You could watch, in game, the Chmmr fleet emerge and fight/chase off the UQ into a small circle of influence, off in a corner someplace.


"I love the effects and coloring. A simple toggle option would suffice in this case though."

Well, they do go well with the 3DO hyperspace theme, but I still think space should be quieter. I guess there's still truespace that's nice and tranquil.

Limit lander space to only 3~ or so and put in all these different types, make you have to choose what kind of landers you want. Perhaps melnorme upgrades would not affect all landers, so you would have to choose which kinds (go to super hot star systems and bring along the fire resistant one, maybe energy/earthquake too). Or generalize the weather upgrades into one big lump, that would work.
-enviroment resistant
-hunting lander with monster resist and fast stunner
-basic miner with fast move speed and increased equipment (maybe have this require less fuel and put on fast move to hunter)
-a battle lander for storming those UQ bases  ;D
-an exploratory type lander, the only one equipped to analyze those energy stuff (moon base, ruined cities, crashed ships, etc).

You have to think about what kind of landers to use depending on where you're going to go. Might be a bit too annoying, perhaps just keep the amount of possible landers as is but you need to upgrade from melnorme to get the specialized type.


... I'm going to ignore your insult for now. Don't push it.

Exploring is more fun if you can't just do it in a single round trip. I usually explore every significant place I can, but making it easier doesn't help gameplay experience (unless you want a beginners option, where people have trouble learning how to farm planets efficiently). Making these places easy to get to rather defeats the point of getting off the beaten path.

Oh well, I concede there is no real harm in dropping fuel prices just a bit, altho you don't have anything to spend it on besides fuel late game >_<.


Unless you are talking about more sidequestesque things, it still won't be that interesting. Making planets more complicated will make things interesting when just mining, but doesn't add any reason to go explore (one planet is just like another after you've seen 30-40~ systems).


Well umm, it wouldn't quite be the same thing since you don't have your good old vindicator, but ssssssssshyeah, why not. I can see it now: minigame Talana & zelnick's honeymoon, touring the universe :P. Get a caster that lets you call upon the new alliance for support (infinite) so you don't have to worry about being destroyed.

"-enviroment resistant
-hunting lander with monster resist and fast stunner
-basic miner with fast move speed and increased equipment (maybe have this require less fuel and put on fast move to hunter)
-a battle lander for storming those UQ bases 
-an exploratory type lander, the only one equipped to analyze those energy stuff (moon base, ruined cities, crashed ships, etc)."

You could just have three types:

1) Explorer: Good for lifeform hunting and building investigation.

2) Miner: Extra cargo space and resistance to hazardous environments.

3) Warrior: Kicks ass.


"... I'm going to ignore your insult for now. Don't push it."

Oh come on, you've got to find that somewhat amusing? If you find that degrading somehow, just imagine how the guy who designed that game must feel. I'd like to see the design docs for that one (probably just a couple pages).


"Unless you are talking about more sidequestesque things, it still won't be that interesting. Making planets more complicated will make things interesting when just mining, but doesn't add any reason to go explore (one planet is just like another after you've seen 30-40~ systems)."

So then you would only explore space, if you had quests to complete there? What if you explored just to see the ruins and bones (if they had bones) of the taalo homeworld? Or could see dozens of species of lifeforms with many unusual adaptions that they'd use to hunt each other or you? I mean we all live day in and day out on one planet, earth, and yet we do not get too bored.


"Get a caster that lets you call upon the new alliance for support (infinite) so you don't have to worry about being destroyed."

Sure, if you've beat the game and conquered the universe, you should be able to unleash eternal death onto your enemies. They lost, you won, life's a bitch (for them). ;)

I suppose if you don't feel like making people have to choose which types of landers to take, that's decent. My idea was to force people to switch landers depending on where they are going (general mining stuff, get miner for "safe" worlds, get enviroment resistant one for hot systems, get hunter for bio data, OR if you want to do quest stuff grab explorer, battle lander, maybe a miner for anything you might see along the way, etc.) Otherwise though, I feel there isn't much point in having specialized landers as there is no "damage" system in place for landers (they just refill with crew). You'll just have to go down a place twice or three times with the differing landers :\.


ofc  ;)


You need to put SOMETHING there to make it interesting. Like getting some backstory by landing on the taalo homeworld etc etc, that would be cool. If not, then no, I would not want to go there.



Define "too bored". Plenty of people get bored and tired of their lives; have you ever heard the term "mid-life crisis"? And please, do not compare video games to real life. Touring the world is more interesting than touring the universe of a video game. No video game can be nearly as complex and intricate as real life.

Hmm.. Something just kicked into my mind...

If the Orz really are non-physical beings, it would make PERFECT SENSE for them to "take over and trasnform" other sentient races! When they do that, they can alter their surroundings, and actually get something done!

"My idea was to force people to switch landers depending on where they are going (general mining stuff, get miner for "safe" worlds, get enviroment resistant one for hot systems, get hunter for bio data, OR if you want to do quest stuff grab explorer, battle lander, maybe a miner for anything you might see along the way, etc.)"

Same here, only I'd go with less landers to prevent micromanaging.


"You need to put SOMETHING there to make it interesting. Like getting some backstory by landing on the taalo homeworld etc etc, that would be cool."

Agreed.


"No video game can be nearly as complex and intricate as real life."

Right, but you can have things in games that you'd never get to see in real life, so there's a counter balance to that. It would be beyond words to stand on the face of another planet, with thousands and thousands of miles of cold space between you and everything you knew. But the chances are you'll never see mars in person. Nor will you fight in an epic battle of deep space, I don't think.



"If the Orz really are non-physical beings, it would make PERFECT SENSE for them to "take over and trasnform" other sentient races! When they do that, they can alter their surroundings, and actually get something done!"

But why do they need to affect their surroundings, if their surroundings cannot affect them? Do they just do it for fun. Maybe the Orz just need us hosts, so they can *germinate*.

I get the impression that the Orz is one great big entity that has already assimilated everything in its own universe, which would probably mean that it's (apparently) safe and very, very bored. Then the Androsynth punch a hole into the Orz universe or something like that... Well, that ought to get its attention. After all, this could be the first interesting (and possibly threatening) thing to happen to the Orz for a long time (whatever that means for the Orz).

Maybe because this way, they can start an offense against the Arilou? They're physical beings too, you know.. And since the Arilou probably have a wrong *smell*... Now that they've got a physical form, they can attack them?

The arilou are still one dimension above the orz, so umm no.

Umm.. They've got access to Hyperspace.. So if they go to the natural portal, they should be able to, actually...

Burb is my brother, by the way. He's been taking over with the gameplay analysis while I've been busy with schoolwork and fuming about dinosaurs.

A few more storyish things:


Yeah, sure, but even so it'd be a million times cooler to go to the Great Wall of China, or Macchu Picchu, or even a local nature walk to see the sunset than to play through a scene in a game that takes place on Mars. The only way games can come close to competing with real life is through actual simulation, which tends to require a really powerful graphics engine being used by really talented artists, or through gameplay -- whose power is totally situational. That is, you can make me feel I'm stranded all alone on a distant planet, but only by making things happen in a certain order and having them react in a certain way to my actions. Going through space feels scary and disorienting because, unlike real life, I know I may "die" if I don't husband my resources extremely carefully.

Thing is, you take that away -- you give me infinite fuel to go through HyperSpace, for example -- and it feels a lot less exciting and dangerous, and soon it starts to feel like doing nothing but watching pixels on a screen. I feel this way about most games that include a "god" mode or anything else that gives you the power to explore indefinitely without risk. It can be fun, but it's never all *that* fun for me.


Either works. They do seem to enjoy *parties* with *dancing* in *heavy space*. There seems to be something inherently more enjoyable about *heavy space* -- that here it's easier for the Orz to *hold together*, whatever that means. Almost as though they experience life more vividly in our space than in theirs, which draws them here -- hence their desire for vivid experience like combat and explosions.

Based on various interpretations of Orz space as somehow being less coherent or dense than our universe -- just as HyperSpace and QuasiSpace seem *more* full of energy and packed close together in TrueSpace -- it may be that the Orz-entity finds life in a floating gray haze unpleasant, and becomes more conscious and more real if it has bodies. I dunno, though.


Doubt it. I doubt that the Arilou are *entirely* physical, anyway. The way they use terms like "discorporation" and the whole theme of their being super-evolved and aware of space and time on a different level and whatnot gives me the sense that the Arilou's bodies are only a sort of  vestigial thing that is less important than their spiritual selves.

"He's been taking over with the gameplay analysis while I've been busy with schoolwork and fuming about dinosaurs."

Yea, I hate dinosaurs, too. One snow ball and the bastards go extinct. >:(

HOLY SHIT, i leave for a vacation for like 4 weeks and this is what i find, 12 PAGES OF NONSENCE  ;D!

LOL, MY GOD, I DIDN'T EVEN BOTHER TO READ ALL DIS!!!

And what did that bring to the discussion exactly?

And don't give up on the English lessons.

Well,  I first asked a question about the Kohr-Ah Ur-Quan Homeworld then You people hijacked it and started talking about orz, then when i came back there was 6 more pages of stuff, i skimmed through this and it had nothing to do with my topic.


BTW, i was tired last night and i don't have to spell proparly if i want to  >:(

Kohr-Ah first, we got bored and it slipped to a new theory of the Orz, then it slipped into some talking about schools, then dinosaurs....  :D

/\/\0dz, k'ck @n|) |3@n 7h'5 5p311-f1@m'n6 n008 14m3r /-\5/-\P!!1!1!!! mr._j'66135 '57 73h r0xx0r, d00dz!11!1!  n0|30dy 7@|<3$ #!$ 7#|23@d$ 0ff 70|>!c!!1!!

dont you think that is a little extreme? :-)
sorry..

|)0|\|+ 'j00 7#1^|{ +|-|47 '5 @ ]'+7]3 3*+|23^^3  ??????

:-D

My point exactly. People who get into a huff just because others are using a discussion forum to discuss have some reality issues. And trying to own a thread belongs to the same mindset that produces, in its extreme form, 1337-spouting script kiddies that try to own the Net. I felt a little irony was in order.

i guess... :-)


anyway whats a spell-flaming noob?
i havent heard that term before... :-)
it seems he wanted a full public walkthru in other bits as well which was weird to me...

at least he hasnt tried to d/l the entire net here :-)

I've never really tried translating this stuff, tell me how I've done:


"\/\0dz, k'ck @n|) |3@n 7h'5 5p311-f1@m'n6 n008 14m3r /-\5/-\P!!1!1!!! mr._j'66135 '57 73h r0xx0r, d00dz!11!1!  n0|30dy 7@|<3$ #!$ 7#|23@d$ 0ff 70|>!c!!1!! "

Mods kick and ban this spell-flaming new-be loser A.S.A.P.!!!
Mr. Jiggles is the rock dude!!!
Nobody takes his threads off topic!!!


"|)0|\|+ 'j00 7#1^|{ +|-|47 '5 @ ]'+7]3 3*+|23^^3"

Don't you think that is a little extreme?


Ok, how did I do?

lamer not loser - otherwise fine... but can you scan read it?? :-)

(i had difficulty with spell-flaming cause i hadnt seen it before :-) )

also mine was easy to translate - it was in clear text above :-)

oh and newbie is one word...

but in this case the term is n00b - or noob... its a derogatory term for a new person, where as newbie is just a statement of fact.

ok this thread is now i free for all, i now command you to go NUTS!

Who knows how to play random wars?

Nobody declares when a thread has changed topic, it just happens...  Just let nature take its course!

ok i read from 1 to 6 then got bored from all the talkin bout the orz i say we take a page from the kohr-ah's book and just wipe out all orz in the sector then send scientists like ur-quan,humans,airilou if they like,and pay the melnorme, and send them all to go and study the remains in the star system the orz's were , finnally we use the information to modify our warships to fight the orz ships most effectively. and wait for the orz. ill start studying for weaknesses in orz's ships tonight

(ignores nathan)

Now to begin random wars,

LEMONY LICK-IT: A SERIES OF HORNY EVENTS


can any one top that  randomness?

points at jiggles TRAITOR ITS A TRAITOR he's workin for the orz how much are they paying u jiggles huh?!!!! >:( whats ure mission? to stop all building of a defense? huh huh?

all my work was done the client of star control online (no u cant go online with it just a melee game allowing for multiple ship fleets fighting meanin u can have more then just a 1v1 match)

ok i got it i started testing with a bad start in simulations they wiped out numurus species of ships when i reached the chmmr first i did a 14v14 match man it was a quick battle in 5 seconds the fastest 14v14 match i ever saw the chmmr completely wiped out the 14 orz ships without a single ship lost but whoes surprised im not but then i did 1v1 again the chmmr easily won but i then tested my theory and did 7v1 where the 7 is the orz it was a massacre the chmmr was completely anihalated without causin a scratch oh my theory is cause orz ships not that powerful that the only way they be a threat is numbers they could be like bugs i mean they could keep comin with millions and millions and ships and believe me a chmmr ship expensive so we need a cheap and yet effective weapon against the orz in a 14v14 match the ilwrath did pretty well and thats cause the screen was filled with them and they didnt have time to cloak but the ones that did, did some damn good killing. so cause the ilwrath will no doubtfully not help us so i say we program a small battalion of sylandro probes to go and capture a ilwrath ship so we may get the secret of cloakin. considerin ilwrath have reasonably cheap ships i expect the cloakin device easy to produce we can redisign shofixty and zoq fot and pik ships with it for quick kill ships to destroy small patrols that the orz will surely deploy and for larger battles we can outfit human cruisers and ur-quan dreadnaughts with it (long rang kills and the dreadnaughts fighters prove effective against orz) o and for those who havnt play star control 3 yes the ur-quan become good again and join the alliance though the kohr-ah rebel yet again even though the blue prints of the marauder were burned oh well and dont ask me for outcome i never had time to finish. well back to the orz threat all i can say for now i think we have a good chance in this coming war death to the flower child's i mean orz well they do seem like there on crack dont they?

It's hardly surprising that many ships with medium or long range weapons can take out a single ship with short-range weaponry easily. Star Control Online can be found here (http://sourceforge.net/projects/lumingl), if you want to experiment with lots of ships.

BTW, Nathan, you may find this site (http://www.correctpunctuation.co.uk/) useful.

Is Star Control Online based on TW? I've never heard of it.

It was a project of Chris Nelson, before he started working on UQM at TFB.

hey when i talk on forums i dont give a darn if i dont put down punctuation correctly as long as people can understand u its good enough

Uhh...  What?

FWIW, I've skipped reading your earlier note because

• it was very hard to read quickly because of the lack of capitalization, punctuation, and line breaks, and
• the quality of the presentation is usually a good indication of the quality of the contents, which means it's probably not worth reading anyhow.

i don't use capitals as a statement of support for the arab people. the arab alphabet does not have capital letters. by not using capitals i'm showing that most arabs are just like us (and not terrorists or something).
everyone, show that you've got nothing against arabs, and renounce capitals!

Then use Arabic.  Until you start typing in that, have common courtesy and type the English language properly.

Personally, I think using their numerals is support enough.

Actually, the so called "Arabic numerals" have little to do with Arabs. (see Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_numerals)).

Nice to see that I'm not the only one who knows of that little canard.

Also, algebra was not "invented" by the Arabs -- it was invented by the Greeks -- and the word itself was coined by a Persian.  Sigh.

And Scimitars were invented by the Turks.

Hey folks...new to the board, but I'm an avid SC2 fan..played it since the beginning and still do.


I've read alot of the posts on this thread....about the Orz, Arilou, Androsynth and whatnot.

I'm trying to grasp the idea everyone has about the Orz. It seems to me that alot of yall believe that the Orz are responsible for the Androsynth demise. While I'm not dismissing that idea, who is to say that the Arilou aren't?
The Arilou showed a vested interest in human longevity.., that's apparent in your conversations with them in the game. Is it far-reaching to think that the Arilou destroyed the Androsynth in order to protect Earth? From most records, the Androsynth were on a mission of revenge against the Earthlings.

Why do the Orz occupy Androsynth space? I can't tell you that...but from the storyline you know that the Orz and Androsynth don't trust each other...or are even perhaps enemies. Perhaps the Orz followed the Arilou into Androsynth space.
It's also known that the Orz don't know where the Arilou homeworld is....the Arilou tell you that you are the first to find it.
To me, it seems like there's a kind of cat and mouse game going on. One chasing the other.


Someone may have already mentioned what I've said above, I just haven't seen it yet. You'll have to excuse me.

The arilou mention that the androsynth let the orz find their "scent" and as a result of that there are no more andorsynth, only orz. You find that the androsynth were doing research; apparently that research drove people mad, such as the scientist. Doesn't really implicate arilou at all.

They could be trying to frame the orz, but they also said that they stopped interfering in the "physical" plane a long time ago, now that we are safe or w/e. 

The androsynth cities were destroyed by land battles. The arilou are very weak physically (their ships aren't hot stuff either), it seems EXTREMELY unlikely that the arilou did that. Guess what the orz have: howitzers and battle marines. The arilou have short range lasers O.o.

Also look at this from wiki:

Does not seem like how the arilou would go around teleporting places to kill androsynth. Also, this only began to take place when the scientists started experiments; ODD timing for the arilou.


Seems nothing like the arilou. Doesn't make a bit of sense, if the arilou could destroy the androsynth they certainly wouldn't need a psychic link. Unless you're saying the arilou planted that idea in bukowski's brain.

Umm seriously, the only fact you have going for you is that the arilou might want to eliminate the androsynth because they are enemies of humanity, and even that seems far fetched as the arilou could have done it LONG before.

So umm your theory is pretty much completely unfounded and rather flawed.

I had forgotten some of the details you mentioned. Good points.

As much as I don't like the Orz parasiting people theory, I checked the script of their speech someone posted.

I suppose this explains a lot.

"Going. Yes. Orz is go with you same place for *party*.
Nobody is forget.
Next is *alliance* *party*. Always promise is good to keep.
So much pleasure is coming, Orz and the you is change together as soon as *camping* is started.
You are not even aware, and then everyone is so happy.
You are not forget. *Alliance* is promise.
Orz are wait."

"Orz and the you is change together as soon as *camping* is started
You are not even aware, and the everyone is so happy"
Gaaaah

Why do the Orz have to be the creepiest maniacs of this game...
I liked their generally funny way of speaking, the innuendoes of becoming relatives and enjoying parties, spicy games and sauce, and of course, their bad-ass ships with powerful long range howitzers and *GO!GO!* space marines.
Herm.

They still seem to imply that humans are not in for the same fate as Orz. I still blindly hope that the immaterial scientist-slashing demon ghosts aren't the Orz themselves. I wish for friend Orz with whom we can conduct *parties* !

"Just tell me this. Are we in for the same fate as them?"

"You are not same. You are *happy campers*, but already you know.
I will not talking about *silly Androsynth*, now is stop asking.
If you are say the question another time
it is *frumple* too much and Orz are *dancing* for *dissolving* the *campers*.
I am clear!!
You are not so *silly*!"

Okay, maybe they aren't clear about our fate. Well, the fate we get if we don't talk about the Androsynth. But they don't want to wipe us out. Well, not in the same why they want to wipe the androsynth.
I'M SURE DEEP INSIDE THEY (HE ?) ARE(IS ?) (A ?) KIND HEARTED TALKING FISHCRABSQUID !

Yeah, keep in mind the Arilou actually *fought against* the Androsynth the one time the Androsynth had the capability to harm the Humans (when they fought for the Ur-Quan in the First War), and then *stopped fighting* because the Humans were slave-shielded and therefore safe. Exterminating the Androsynth to protect Humanity seems farfetched to me.

Well the fishies, their marines, and their nemesis starships are probably perfectly nice little creatures (of course they could have also been on a crusade against air-breathers, but that's another story). The "Orz" is/are the true threat, not its *fingers*. An Orz has no physical form, it/they is/are not the chubby little pokemon you see on your viewscreen.