The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

I've just discovered a new dirty trick:

Equip ship with 1 double-size fuel tank and 15 crew modules.  Fill up with crew.
Sell 250 crew to Druuge.
Sell remaining crew back at starbase

Profit:
500*25 - 750*3 = 10250 RU.  Plus whatever you bought.
Losses:
Hayes' approval.  Oh, and maybe your immortal soul as well.  Neither of which are needed to win.
Practicality:
Limited.  The fuel trick will cost less to set up, bring in more profit, and not make you a "heinous slave trader".

Also, you're then stuck with an expensive crew cost for the rest of the game.  There are ways round this - really tedious ways involving the Syreen ship...

Anyone else have any dirty tricks?

Well, theres the Druuge fuel trick you didn't go into detail about.

*****SPOILER WARNING*****

Here it is for anyone who hasn't heard of it:

Fill your entire ship with high efficiency fuel modules (even taking out all crew pods If you didn't know you could do that) and put about 25 fuel in it. Go to the druuge and sell your Burvix caster to them, and you will get a free fuel refill. But of course, your ship can hold something like 16,010 fuel now so the Druuge will have to give all to you and go into coniptions. You get a little less than 40,000 RU from this trick I'm pretty sure.

WARNING: Selling the Burvix caster means you can never talk to the Chmmr again until you free them from the slave sheild, and so if this is your first time playing you should talk to them first to get greatly needed information.

*****END SPOILER WARNING*****

There's also some kind of lander cheat in the original PC version that is a bug in the game, but I don't know anything about it.

Wait, but there's a second 'Caster in the game, right? The Umgah Caster? That means that you could still do this trick and have a 'caster.

Unless when you get one the other disappears or something like that...I've never tried it.

No, you're completely right. You can sell one caster, and keep the other.

I think I tried talking to the Chmmr with the Umgah caster once and it didn't work... maybe it does.

Worked for me...weird. You have to be in orbit around their planet for it to work, though.

Both casters will work on Chmmr.

The planet lander bug was a wraparound error in the PC SC2, which the 3DO SC2 interface prevents from occurring. The long and short of it is you end up with infinite landers, thus, infinite RU. Doesn't work in UQM.

This trick isn't very dirty, but if you have an RU shortage and a Credit surplus with the Melnorme, they are only too happy to give you 1610 fuel at a go.

Ah, the other fuel trick.  1 Rainbow World->500 credits->500 fuel->10000 RU


Here's a super melee trick.
Beauty and the Beast:   (I'll let you figure out which is which)
Use the Vux ship to limpet an enemy ship.   When you can't even see the ship any more because of all the green gunk on it, it is sufficiently limpeted.
Crash the Vux into the planet, then send in the Syreen to suck all the crew out of the helpless enemy ship. ;D

Unfortunately there aren't a lot of suitable victims.  Kohr-Ah will toast its own crew out of spite, Chmmr is effectively unlimpetable, even the puny Earthling can beat the Vux, etc...  The Spathi works quite well here, although getting the first few limpets on it is a pain.   

Park a skiff next to a planet, keeping the planet between it and the opponent. Wait for opponent to start repeatedly crashing into the planet. Works extremely well against most big, slow ships.

Take the skift, for example, or a ship with good thrust. Park it next to the planet. The Druuge will fire at you, hitting the planet. The enemy ship burns its crew while firing. Once the Druuge is out of crew and energy, come around the planet and shoot him once.

If you can, I would recommend selling the Umgah caster as opposed it's companion, as the Umgah caster does not work as well.

For one, the little Ilwrath trick didn't work for me with the Umgah caster.

The broadcasters are identical in functionality, though you can only sell the Druuge their own caster back.

Really?  I mustve done something different or forgotten something when I was using the Umgah caster then.

The two casters are identical in functionality and identical in useability, in my experience. Both on original PC SC2 and on UQM.

The only diffs between casters is the description Hayes gives you, where you find them, what they look like and whether the druuge want to buy it or not.

I wonder if the druuge wanted the thing back so badly so that they could toss it into the nearest furnace or something. I mean, if I was the druuge, I wouldn't want evidence like that anywhere near me. "What, me set up a caster on a moon to cause another species' extinction thus saving my own sorry butt? What do you take me for, captain? Druuge?"

EDIT: the thought occurs that the trick the Druuge played on their extinct friends was a pretty dirty one as well...

Speaking of which, I have never understood why it was named the Burvix Caster if we all know it's Druuge technology. I don't mean to turn this into a "Greedo shoots first" thing, but would the developers consider renaming it?

Renaming it does not fit our goal of a straight port. There's another reason not to rename it though — when you find the thing, you don't necessarily know that it's created by the Druuge. You do know that it is found on the Burvixese homeworld's moon. And it makes a lot of sense to me that people refer to something with the thing that they most associate with it. The Trojan horse wasn't built by the Trojans either.