The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

Heyo,

      I'm a new to the forum and I haven't played SC for probably 9 years now, but I still have some fond memories.  SC2 was easily the favorite of the three, and though it was awesome, there were a few things that I would have enjoyed more of.

     I remember that I loved running around exploring new stars, scanning for minerals and what not, and the occasional battle now and then.  There were a number of stars, however, that I felt were too far and too dangereous into Ur-quan territory to really spend time going into.  So incentive...

    Personally, I would have loved to have more insight into the backgrounds and pasts of several of the races.  (Supox, Zotfokpik, Thraddesh even.)  So perhaps having ruins that could A) be used to enhance the story and B)be used as currency with the Melnorme.  Perhaps, speaking to one of hte races they simply mention or direct you toward more of the "deeper" galaxies that will allow certain things to happen.  Running into a rogue Arilou that has a slippery tongue, or an abandoned Ilwrath ship that you can take over (mind you, only one).   Just adds some more incentive to really explore, although I loved doing it none the less

    Can secondary weapons be deactivated?  Perhaps when you first meet a race, they are incapable of using their secondary weapon, but then you have some missions or artifacts found that allows the secondary weapons to function or "discovered."

    I'm sure it'd be difficult to add any of this, and I'm no programmer, so i'm simply being ideal.  But I like to get creative :).

    Personally, I say just leave the game as is, nothing to make the game "easier," or it'll end up like so many recent games that have turned up short.  Good luck, I hope I can help test the game for its second final release.

   Dsaber 

Not sure about the ruins... but disabling the race's secondary weapon could be accomplished by forcing the AI to use the "weak" profile.

The idea of finding derelict ships is an interesting concept. Could make it like a scavenger hunt where you could find all the ships of all the hostile races if you looked hard enough. Like a few derelict ships in androsynth space.

It would be interesting, but I can see a problem. You need an actual captain of the race to pilot the ship, so you can't just pick up an empty hulk floating around and start blowing up the galaxy (one of the reasons why you stop building Spathi Eluders after a while). But you can always pull of some freaky superhuman computerhacking after which you find a drver's manual or something. :P

And I've always wanted to fly an x-form in story mode, so sounds cool.

A few derelict androsynth ships would be easy to explain since all androsynth are, are human clones.

That would be very interesting.

A problem to the "no captain" issue, you could always make it so there are a few amount of crew onboard that you can take hostage (wouldn't be the case with the Ur-Quan or Mycon and maybe a few others) and with that you could use one of them as a pilot...

Or you could pick up details and information from different derelict ships (there can be more than one can't there?) and use it to make a ship that can be piloted without a dedicated race pilot(or hack the interface of the ship itself). You know you'd think with blueprints it would acually be easy enough to build a ship to human specifications.  :-\

Of course, for a game as wild as Star Control, you can make up anything and make it logical in the context of the universe.  I mean, as far as I can tell, 99% of any ships crew is for cannon fodder.  Realism, at least with space ships, is not this game's forte. ;P

That said, what few (vague) rules of logic that remain in Star Control make hacking ships problematic.  The Mycon, for one,  seem to be part of semi-living ships, so hacking it in any way to be piloted by a human seems implausable at best.

Most other ships probably wouldn't be a problem though...but what would you show in the pilot animations in game? Surely not the Earthling Cruiser's cockpit...

All you would have to do for a mycon ship is figure out how to make it grow more crew.  ;D

Actually building their ships seems a little out there, but perhaps being able to import one of their abilities or weapons onto the flagship as a module... Maybe Greenish would sell you this integration tech instead of the PDL tech (and this integration tech would have the side-effect of letting you build the PDL module)

Of course, each ship may not provide the ability you really wanted.

Like, an Androsynth derelict gives the Vindicator its bubbles, not the comet. Forget about the Hellbore Cannon upgrade, get the same effect by importing Ur-Quan fusion blasts (which are roughly equivalent). Do a raid deep into the depths of Ur-Quan territory to find the vault where they keep the Chenjesu ships to unlock DOGI... etc.

I'm trying to image the Vindecator armed with
the Druuge cannon and three generators. Yummy.

Or a vindicator with fighters and 400 crew.   :o

now what would you get from the Shofixti? Game over?  ;D

Not EVERY race has a technology worth integrating...

Then again, unless you want to cop out on one or both of them, I'm having trouble imagining why anyone wouldn't want the Utwig or Yehat modules. Then again, the idea of the flagship zipping around using Reeunk Afterburners is an appealing thought as well. ;D

You could only have one primary and one secondary module, of course....

I'm thinkin a mixture of the Kohr-Ah spinning death discs and the utwig S.I.A.T. (Sudden Impact Absorber Technology) would be great.

Or the Kzer-za Plasma Blasts with the Quasispace insta-transport ability of the arilou...

or

standard configuration with the ability to launch marines  ;D

or have zapsats  ;)

Who sais the only things u get from derelict ships is technology? Just be creative for example. Shofixty derelict with a couple injured crew. Heal them up make them mate. And since Shofixty seem to be able to repopulate easily, guess what SLAVES. In game stuff cost half price now.

Slaves? We're the New Alliance. Not only would the Shofixti be willing to join up (as we've seen) and provide discount crew (as we've also seen), but WE'RE NOT THE FRICKING DRUUGE! ::)

On the other hand, I could see other stuff besides technology and ship blueprints coming from derelicts. There's already an in-game example of this with the derelict Ur-Quan. Potentially, you could get any number of things from a derelict; the injured crew is actually a good example, but not for slave labor. Instead, injures enemies could be interrogated at the starbase to yield any number of results in terms of information; artifact locations, sites of recent battles (where you might be able to find more derelicts), news on current events you might not learn otherwise, locations of homworlds, Rainbow Worlds, and other important places, IFF codes (so that you don't attract enemy attention as easily in hostile space),  etc. etc. etc. Extend this to other things outside of the scope of the normal game, and you could learn about enemy troop movements, scientific research concepts, intelligence and counter-intelligence from that race, and other things that might be important to a galactic war effort (though those things seem like they belong in a 4X game better).

Also, why only take weapons tech from a derelict ship? Depending on the species of origin, tech can come in many forms; Spathi ships could yield upgrades for hi-occupancy crew pods, Arilou ships could provide inertialess drive tech, Pkunk ships could provide superfast booster engines, etc. The potential is nearly endless.

Relating to the piloting of derelict enemy ships - if one had a race which was able to lure enemies off their ships, that would be a way of capturing enemies to pilot different ships. Hey, we could call that race the Syreen...

This idea is good, it fits really well with the gameplay aswell. I like the idea of certain racial technologies being able to upgrade existing ones and new modules altogether. It'd widen the appeal of the game a great deal.

I don't think that Syreen-sucked-out-crew are in any shape to captain a ship.

Also, I don't see how adding these modules would widen the appeal. It would be a nifty feature, sure.

Not widen, I meant rekindle the appeal of the game sorry. Im just hankering for another reason to play through the game again.