The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

Not necessarily a poll, but if you wanted to change some of the rules in Super Melee to try to make things fairer and to discourage annoying behaviors, what would you do?

I got to thinking about this issue myself, and from what I've read in here, a time-limit would be a good start in this direction.  Kind of like Mortal Kombat - if the match isn't decided after X seconds, then instate some rule to decide the match (like one with least crew self-destructs, and if a tie, both self-destruct).

Some things to basically make melee more fun to play without making "house rules" that demean the designers intent (like "no Spathi", or "no Utwig").

Thoughts?

personally I like the current situation, and long, calculated battles as I see it is where all the charm lies, when you use some strategies and not only your technique mixed with luck in order to win.
SC2 in his "antique" nature often encoarage people to rise suggestions to improve and add things to the gameplay. But if all these will make it into the game, we'll find ourselves playing a different game. I think the improvements we can put in the game shouldn't manipulate the gameplay too much, and if it must- so as least as possible.

And I really do think that we SHOULD improve things around the game to make it a bit more suitable to our times as long as we don't mess up what I said earlier.

I agree that "improvements" = new game.

A time limit would be okay for some fights, but don't have the one with the least crew die, that would be unfair. Arloo vs Urquan, time is the only ally you have. If after, say 2 minutes the Arloo had to get the Quanny's crew below his, forgetaboutit. So either say which one has perportionally less crew or re-enforcements show up. By the way, the reenforcements do nothing for determining the winner. When the ORIGINAL ship dies the reenforcements dispurse. Perhaps have them be Ai doppledangers of the original with matching crew that can deal damage but not take any. Esentally a bonus gun. Another two minutes, another reenforcement.

But this sort of play dynamic would best be implimented, I reiterate, in a different game or game type. Perhaps a melee modifier.

About the only thing I think I would chang eis the ability to
run away and run and run. I find with ships of about equal speed it
drives me up the wall the chase the computer for ... sometimes
insane amounts of time. The Podship, specifially, ususally
runs and regenerates crew, which makes it overly annoying.
I suppose one could get around this by putting in a time limit. If
the battle isn't over after a certain point, the computer just does
a direct attack or something.
Or... or I could let my ship die and bring in another one, but my PRIDE,
man.

"improvements" indeed = new game...

But the basic idea here is to try to scope out good 1.0+ improvements that would make melee "less annoying"...  The time limit idea, and removing the asteroids and planets are ideas I've heard as I've read this forum.

As far as a time penalty goes, I wasn't sure what would be a good result, but the catch for it is to try to address what Zeep-eep mentioned ("About the only thing I think I would change is the ability to run away and run and run.").  It's possible just to have a fight drag on forever and ever without a ship directly engaging another ship.  Basically hope the other person screws up by hitting the planet or what not...or you get a Spathi slap-fight that lasts forever because they keep trying to hit one another with BUTTs.  Basically just a way to try to stop the possibility of winning (especially in a 2 player game), by simple annoyance and lack of engagement.


Not really, I chew up an Ur-Quan and spit it out with an Arilou in short order (less than 2 mins)...of course the thing with the Arilou is that it's one of those ships that people can just run and run and run from and never engage the enemy with...another perfect example.

If anyone has any other ideas, please bring them out.

Well, if you want to limit the length of the game, you could do it a bit less suddenly. You could add those Sa-Matra style fireballs to the game, and add more the longer the game goes on. The better player will likely still come out better.

Yep, the basic idea behind the time limit issue is trying to find a way to stick a "referee" in there to make the two ships fight as opposed to have one run all the time (like in UFC, if I watch that, I notice every once in a while that the ref has to threaten disqualification for one of the fighters if he doesn't go after the other one).  I figured the time limit would be a good thing, but there's always other options, I guess.

Maybe that's another way to handle the issue.  Start maybe with very slow sa-matra balls and then speed them up as time goes on.  Of course it'll take some thought and experimentation to figure out how to best solve this issue.

Oh, I like the idea of getting saMatra balls in there. (Must.. not.. make.. testicle joke.) One each, each targetting one ship. Perhaps step 2 would be invincible saMatra fireballs too.

Remove the planet? Remove the asteroids? Worst ideas ever. You think a run away guy is anoying now, wait until you don't can't hope for a rock upside the head to slow them down.

Here's a new one, random quasispace portals. Of course, they wouldn't be exatcly random. More like if no damage is delt for a certian amount of time space starts to destabalize. Sooner or later you get sucked into a quasispace vortex and when you reappear you're snug up to your opponent, business ends kissing like that scene from FLCL. To make it interesting, how about the exit end of the rapidly increasing quasispace portals could have your pointed at each other or both rotated the same amount in the same direction. Could be pointed opposite directions back to back or side to side.

About Arloo vs Urquan, yeah, I tear it up on that one too. I was going to say Shofixti vs Urquan, but it didn't make sense in the discussion (don't remember why now) so I changed it. (And yes, I can take an UrQuan with a shofixti too, but it takes time.)

Though I was fond of Arilou v. Urquan matches on the Genesis, my bro is one of those crazy folks who mastered owning them with a Shofixti -.o I don't have the patience.  *laughs*

I do enjoy a good Arilou vs. Kohr-Ah battle heh heh

I don't know if I'm digging the time limit thing.  Yes, it can be annoying when someone just runs, but every melee game I've played has gotten resolved in fairly short order, and sometimes those long battles where you finally come out on top are just oh so sweet....

Removing the planets would remove the gravity whip we've grown to know and love. Removing the asteroids, and the Sylando is useless (how would it recharge?!). You could't have a proportially less crew win scenario after a timelimit, otherwise the Mycon (crew recharge) has an unfair advantage.

I'm all for small improvements, but I also think the basics of the game should be left as-is.

- Dean

Here's a spin off of the time limit idea. What if the ships in
Super Melee could warp out and return to the player's
collection? This would allow a person to switch ships
without losing a ship. It would also mean the running ship is
a sitting duck for a few seconds, which should prevent
players from escaping at a whim.

The ideas were to just try and remove some gripes that people have had (all would have to be by settable option if it were changed, I know I wouldn't change the classic game permanently).  I've covered the time limit one I think quite well.  As far as the asteroid and planet issue goes, it's not necessarily been a gripe of mine, but a common one in here over time that I can definitely understand.  They have a habit of deciding too many matches for my comfort - to the point I could assign point values to each of them.  My thinking would be to be able to turn them on and off to truly make something a battle of skills instead of a battle of luck.

where have we discussed this one before? And recently. I'll have to find that thread.

The short answer to this is "No." Melee is not like the game. If you can just take your losing ship out and throw in a better one you end up destroying the rock-paper-scissors aspect. You warp in ship A, I warp in ship B. Ship B will kill ship A so you escape out ship A and warp in ship C. Ship C will kill ship B so I escape out ship B. Round and round until one punches the other in the mouth and steals their wallet.

And don't go with "How about they just can't warp back in" because that's just retarded. if you can't warp a ship back in in Melee, how is that different from them being dead. It isn't.

I was much more eloquent on the other thread, which may have been on the other forums, I'm not sure.

.:EDIT:.
The only way I seeing this happening worth playing is if the Melee escape option were either (1) a warp point you had to get to, providing the other with the oportunity to guard it and spank you for trying to leave or (2) if you dumped half your total crew every time you used it, IE the second escape is insta-death (just add water) and returning back afterwards you have a cripple. If the crew were dumped into deep space so that your enemy could collect them would also be cool.

And funny for side commentary.

Captian: Did the escape drive work?
Crewman: Yes sir, but we're not all here. It appears half our crew fell out in the warp.
Captian: Which half.
Crewman: Everyone from B-deck and aftwards.
Meanwhile in deep space
Floating Crewman: Whuh-hu-hu-whu? What just happened? One moment I'm in the head and the next I'm here? Next time I'm standing up before I flush.

(Suggestions for improvinging that last line will be accepted.)

Here's another question that would go in my conception of "fair-play" options...should there be a settable limit placed on the pseudorandom functions within combat?  I'm specifically thinking the Pkunk resurrection, but I'm sure it could be applied to the Orz marines too (on a lesser extent).  Another one of the gripes I've heard (and have had - I had a Pkunk take out half of my ships in melee once because of it) is the occasional Pkunk Terminator that comes along that...JUST...WON'T...DIE!

This is probably the easiest one - I understand as it is now there's a 50-50 chance of it happening...I'd lower it by half upon each resurrection (50, 25, 12.5, 6.25, etc).

Hmm.. That gives me a pretty good idea, Guesst..
What about the following stuffs:

"Captain, when we warped out of battle, a glitch in the escape drive occured, which curiously caused a rare Precursor dataplate to appear somewhere in our ship! Unfortunately, though, the dataplate decided to materialize in a spot which was currently being occupied by a crewman's genitals, killing him in the process. Our technicians have already started cleaning and reading the dataplate, and have found out a software upgrade inside it which could boost our <insert engine/batt/batt recharge/whatever> by <randomnumber> %!"

"Captain, even though the escape warp was succesful, somehow a Zebranky -we always thought they were extinct!- entered our ship, killing 25 crewmen in the process! This makes me wonder, though... How the hell did those Zoq Fot Pik manage to kill those beasts? Maybe that's what Frungy is all about?"

"Captain, when we warped out of battle, somehow, all of the lights turned off! It took us a while to turn them back on, and when we did, we suddenly noticed that 20 crewmen didn't manage to survive this! We're currently looking into what caused this weirdstuffs.."

"Captain: Kowalski, status report please.. Kowalski? KOWASLKI, COME IN! KOWALSKII??? Err... Where's my crew? Aiie! They're all gone! Vapor! Guess that's what happened to them Precursors!"

"Captain: Main screen turn on!
Operator: Captain, somebody set up us the bomb! We lost 30 crew!"

I thought they couldn't do anything until lightning struck a mountian, carving out a round rock from it, and the flaming rock rolled down the mountian and crushed the zebranky. This event gave the Zot Fot and Pik fire, the wheel, and religion simultaniously.

That's one of my favorate parts from the game. That sort of comic genious I may never duplicate.


WOOT! Random "All your base" reference! Post score ++!

Wee! Post Score++! :)

Anyways, I have to correct you on the Zebranky and fire/wheel/religion thing, though...

Note the phrases which I have boldified..
So indead, the rock killed a Zoq, not a zebranky (which were already dead for a few thousands of years when that happened)....

Edit: to make this post semi-interesting:
"Captain, when we powered up the Escape Warp Device, somehow we got sucked into this quasispace-ish-portal-kinda-thing, which instantaneously warped us to the Zoq Fot Pik homeworld. Luckily, none of us got hurt. Unfortunately, it happened to be the day before the starting of this year's Frungy Championships, and 15 crewmembers have voluntarily resigned, just to watch this year's championship matches. One of them left a message, though, telling you to place your bets on the 'Meesenboo' team, for they use the best flaming wheels ever made."

No time limit, of course.
Some fights are just intended to be long and annoying...
And warps... no, I think. What for? It is a useful feature in game itself, when you need to save your ships for further encounters. The melee is a short skirmish with random duels.

And, PS:
"After performing the Emergency Warp, an incident happened on the board! While explaining something to one of the crewmen, Kowalski managed to say Mmrnmhrm correctly. 9 crewmen, heard this, and the shock was too strong that it killed them instantly."

So in the end your idea is no anything, eh?


And yet you join in on the joke. Aside from having little or nothing to do with the warp itself, I chuckled.

"I keep getting the feeling we forgot something when we escaped from that battle."

"We did sir."

"What?"

"Half the crew."

"Oh."

There are two easy ways to avoid contant swaping/warping
out of melee battles. The first would be to simply prevent
the computer from using the feature. The second would
be to impose a time limit, forcing a player to be in battle
for, at least, sixty seconds.

No time limits.
Yes Asteroids
Yes planets.
Go warp out jokes. lol.


P.S.
"Helm, status report."

"Helm, would you answer?"

"Sir, the main screen turned on and it was broken at the time, zapping him!"

"Well, what is that status report?"

"Well...... The main screen is broken, and we are currently fixing it."

"Why do you need to fix it? Like we'll be using it anyway."

"What do you mean by that, sir?"

"Well..... We aren't protanginists"

"And we're in an earthling cruiser, so there's no point."

I like the sumatra balls idea.  But the time limit should be like 5 minutes at least.  I also liked the proportional idea.  You could have the crew gradually die of boredom.....