The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

After a long time away from Star Control, it's great to be back.  But I have a serious problem.  I'm _constantly_ under attack by Slylandro probes, and I can't seem to defeat them with any ship I have early in the game.  Even escaping immediately wastes valuable crew and fuel.  I almost ran out of fuel in deep space just now, managed to get away and get some from the Melnorme, and was then destroyed by more Probes.  What can I do?

Have you practiced in the melee game (set the computer to awesome, that's what it plays against you on in the game)with the ships you have available?  That would be the direction I would take.   Speaking of that, what ships do you have available at the moment?  Also, try putting a gun in the 2nd position on your flagship.

Not giving away too much of a spoiler here, but the probes CAN be stopped - several aliens you meet will talk about them and give you ideas where they come from.  The question here is if you get good enough to fight them and consistently win whether you want to stop them or not (550RU a shot helps).

Hope this gets you in the right direction.

You shouldn't be under attack by THAT many probes in the early game.  If this really is the case, your best bet is to head to the Centauri system and pick the ~10000 RU of valuable minerals in that vicinity, and then equip your main starship with enough thrusters to outrun the probes in Hyperspace.

With ships available in the early game, the Earthling cruiser can generally kill Probes with a loss of only 6-8 crew, which is not bad considering you pick up 550 RU.  As soon as you enter combat fire two missiles then turn around and run.  The second you've got enough energy turn around and fire the third missile to bake his ass..

The Spathi Eluder can do even better but it's long and tiresome to use it against a Probe.

The Zoq-Fot-Pik don't even rate a mention, the useless little tongue-flappin' worms..  FLAMING DEATH TO THE ZOQ-FOT-PIK!

Thanks for all the assistance.  Some years ago I played Star Control II for several weeks on a friend's computer, but the game had been borrowed and was lost when his hard drive crashed.  It's been great to have it back again 8), but the problems I've been having are frustrating.

I know about how to clear away the probes, having somehow found the way to do it back then (and found the Arilou too...I'm kinda puzzled how I got so far away).  I don't remember exactly where the Slylandro are, though.  (Don't tell me!  I'm not that desperate yet.)

I'm really not all that far into the game in terms of getting things done, but almost a "year" has passed.  Minerals that I can get without wasting landers are hard to find.  I had managed to ally with the Spathi, but not a great deal else; I wasn't even out of Spathi space.  There are not that many probes, but the situation is complicated by the constant stream of Spathi ships wanting to chat.  Every time we met, my ship was spun away from Earth and I had to turn around again while more ships closed in on me.  (Shame the Spathi won't attack the probes themselves.)

I guess I really do need to practice space melee.  I never was very good at it; my ships tend to spin in tiny circles when I try to maneuver.

You should be able to kill probes pretty easily with earthlings.  Like someone said, it only takes three missiles.  Practice in super melee.  One trick you may not know yet is manipilating the enemies movements by dodging back and forth over one of the screen boundaries and threatening with your ships facing.  If you arrange things right you can get the probe far away and confused as to what direction to attack from.  

Remember you can transfer crew around in hyper, so always keep the ships you prefer fighting with topped up.  I usually have no weapons at all on the flag ship and sell the one you start with immediately.  Its just a crew carrier with several spathi full of crew to back it up when it runs out.  This also lets it take some hits while warping out if it comes to that.

Okay, now more spoiler oriented hints which you may or may not know already.  So stop reading if your one of those weird sensitive people.  You can get a spathi ship before you even leave the Sol system the first time, just search all the planets for energy signatures.  Also, one of the first races you should "solve" is the Arilou.  You get something that lets you travel in encounter free quasi-space from them.  They are also quite close to the Sylandro and a couple quick rainbow planets.  The Melnorme have the details as usual. ^^

 ???

But Sun, the missiles never strike.  The probe dodges around until they vanish, then closes before I can shoot more and tears me to bits.

Use a Spathi Eluder. I never lose a crew in Spathi vs. Slylandro. Fly away from them and BUTT missile the hell out of them.

I think I read something on either this forum or the PNF forum that said that the code was written so that each game day there is a certain chance of a probe being generated--something very low, that increases as the game continues.  However, until you complete the first set of quests--getting the radioactives, restoring the space station, destroying the base on the moon, killing the Ilwrath ship, and convincing Commander Hayes to devote his starbase to aiding you in your quest to defeat the Hierarchy--until all those things are done, the percent chance of a probe being generated per day is 100%.  Usually the probes are pretty few and far between--annoying, but not crippling the way you describe--unless perhaps you waited a long time and did a lot of exploring before you completed Hayes' quests?  If that's the case, I recommend you start over and try again.  It won't take long, and as soon as it's done, the probe generation rate calms down to acceptable levels.

Ummm the early game isn't too hard, but if you're having troubles, just save and load, save and load. I never played the original SC2, and I just downloaded this version a month or so ago, but I found the early game to be pretty easy. I don't know what all these people are talking about when they say use Earth cruiser or Spathi. Just use your freakin mothership it takes like 3 shots to blow them out of space, at an average loss of 0 crew per battle.

I still haven't gotten the hang of using either the Eluder or the Earth cruiser, but after getting a few upgrades I'm usually able to take out a probe with my mothership with minimal loss of crew.  I can barely use an Eluder at all--I think I read something about bugs in the alpha, but it's probably just me--and with the Earth cruiser the missiles loop around and around and never come close to the probe because they're not quick enough.

I did indeed fulfill the early quests, but I do think I know what was wrong.  I wasn't getting my mothership upgraded fast enough.  I was running on one set of thrusters and it was taking me forever to get anywhere.  So I was still barely started and the probes were multiplying like rabbits.  I'm still not getting started fast enough to win the game, I think, but I'm getting better.  People have suggested I hop over to Alpha Centauri to pick up minerals, but it's just too hot.  The planets are so dangerous I lose landers there like mad.

If it helps, at the beginning make sure you have an extra planet lander and 60 units of fuel and an extra storage bay.  Throw everything else you have to the thrusters.
Start by gathering everything in Sol.  Throw all of this towards your thrusters...then take the trip to Centauri - the key to the tip given is look at the planets and look at the values of what you could have on each planet (some elements are worth the possibility of losing the landers, pick and choose)....you deal with the fire and everything by zipping down and right back.

In truth for mass gathering of minerals, your landers are insufficient, but the Melnorme can aid that for you greatly.

 ;D  ;D  ;D

Things are looking up.  I still am probably too late to win this game, but I've been to the Slylandro homeworld, and they told me of the locations of two rainbow worlds.  I've sold the info to the Melnorme on one already.  Also, I stopped by an innocuous star system on the way to Beta Corvi; it was large and I thought maybe it would have a lot of planets, but they were too hot.  Nonetheless I scanned the first one, and lo and behold...an Ur-Quan Warp Pod.  So now I have the portal spawner.

The key is knowing when to leave. Try to land as close as possible to the mineral deposit, pick it up and leave immediately. Don't linger and try to cross a planet full of hotspots to get another deposit. If you lose too many crew, call it a day. Also, you may notice that your lander does not land exactly where you selected. The landing site is shifted depending on the planet's rotation, axial tilt, and latitude of the landing site.



I never waste resources on an extra lander. If I'm careless enough to lose a lander in the first place, I reload the game. Also, I almost always save a game before conducting a planetary mission.

The missiles must be a HELL of a lot more accurate for you than they ever are for me...

I only hit ANYTHING about half the time with them if I have the ship pointing directly at whatever it is...and I ran a little test with the probes...that goes down to about 7 hits on missiles when I try to use those against the probes in melee (out of 16 probes).  Usually if I *have* to fight the probe with the cruiser, I use the point defense...

Needless to say, I got completely pasted when I tried to fight the whole melee game with the missiles.

Once I had upgraded my ship sufficiently, I stopped using the other ships almost entirely.  And it didn't take long--I quickly located two rainbow worlds and bought out the Melnorme's entire technology stock.  (A third rainbow world and a few organisms later, all they had left to sell me was fuel.)  When you have three hellbore cannons, three targeting scanners, and three Shiva furnaces, other ships fall apart quickly even for a poor fighter.  The only things that still worry me are Ur-Quan, Kohr-Ah, and Ilwrath (since my cannons won't target properly.).

I still haven't figured out how the point-defense laser is supposed to work.  It didn't seem to be doing anything, so I removed it.

It's looking as though I may win this one (or at least come as close as the alpha will allow) after all.  Once I had the portal spawner, the game sped up dramatically.  I'm in contact with everyone but the Yehat and the Kohr-Ah and pretty much everything has been done but the endgame.  It's not even 2160 yet.  (I think I will go start the Yehat civil war just for kicks; I have time.)  I admit, however, to using the fuel cheat more than once.

The point-defense laser is supposed to work just like the Earthling Cruiser's version; when you get real close to an enemy youcan fire it non-stop or something.  I never use it, so I'm not sure.

Put some Dynamos on your ship too.  As was talked about in another topic, the Dynamos don't become obsolete when the Shiva Furnaces appear; putting them together works pretty well.

Earthling Cruisers work well fo me against the Slylandro Probes too, but it's difficult.  Even though I do that trick (run away from them, then when they're chasing me turn around and fire two missiles), sometimes I'm too far for the missiles to hit them before they blink out.  Do the missiles go forever in the original? (AKA is it the collision detection bug again)  I can't remember.  Anyways, don't try to get too close to the Probes before firing your missiles; when the Probe starts using electricity, they'll just eat the missiles right up.  =/

You've contacted the Zoq-Fot-Pik and not contacted the Kohr-Ah yet?  Speaking of the Kohr-Ah, they're not to difficult with a main ship that spazzed out; one shot a piece takes like 20 of their crew.

No, they had a limited range in SC1 and SC2 as well.  Probably also SC3 but I don't remember much of that game.

The Point-Defense system can be handy if you know how to use it.  Any time you've got slower moving projectiles like the Orz or Ur-Quan raiders, let it take care of those.....Or when that odd asteroid decides to knock you into a planet.

On the topic of point defense for the main ship...

It is handy to have to deal with the asteroids so they don't push you around or impede where you want to go (and don't they always seem to do that - I've lost 100's of ships in melee to running into the asteroids while running away or getting bumped by an asteroid into the path of the ship or whatever).

Then the Orz and Ur-Quan don't launch their special little surprises when you have the point defense installed...so that helps.

The Ur-Quan fighters are the ONLY reason I install a point defense module.

That effectively eliminates one of their most deadly attacks.  They don't launch ANY.  So I only have one weapon to deal with, piece of cake.

Yep, same here.

PD also prevents the Orz from launching marines. So if you tick off the Orz, they make good RU hunting late game when your flagship's outfitted.

 ;D

Well, I made it as far as the Sa-Matra.  I couldn't destroy the thing, and not just because of the collision bug.   :-/  If I'd still had a spazzed-out ship I might have done better.  The Ur-Quan and Kohr-Ah who remained after the Dnyarri lured the rest off took out 11 of my 12 Chmmr Avatars.  Neither the remaining Avatar nor my mothership was maneuverable or hard enough to kill to even get off one good shot at the Sa-Matra.

Question: I've heard that there are several updates to the game.  Should my special weapons be working in Super Melee?  If so, then where can I find upgrades?

Oh, and while I did encounter the ZFP at Rigel, I never went out to their home planet to meet with them.  Early in the game I was too busy collecting minerals.  When I finally tried it, the system was crawling with Ur-Quan.  Eventually after talking to the Syreen I went there, fought my way through, and then while I was talking to them the game crashed.

I didn't try again when I reloaded.

Mixing dynamos and shiva furnaces is pointless. Both add battle energy regeneration... and shiva furnaces simply add more.

If you're having a hard time taking out the sa-matra, use Spathi instead of chmmr to take out the Kzer-za and Kohr-ah fleet. Much more effective - Chmmr is only good against these behemoths, while the spathi is finely tuned. For best results, hang out at extreme BUTT-range. You can tell it's that range because there's a particular zoom mode associated with it. Figure out what that mode is in supermelee, and you're set to cream any number of the beasties. I took out the entire fleet with captain Fwiffo.

As for the sa-matra, Pkunk are able to outrun the fireballs. Their side cannon is an excellent weapon for side-swiping the shield generators.
Once you've done that, the defenses will stop respawning. Escape with the pkunk (though you'll probably be toasted instead). Then warp in a single chmmr to destroy the remaining defenses, warp it out, and fly the main ship in.

oops, this wasn't exactly on-topic anymore, was it?

After years of secrecy, I can finally reveal my 1337 secrets for getting established in SC2 as quickly as possible.

Firstly, do a little mining so that you can beef up your ship. You need rear lasers and as much turn, thrust and damage as possible, everything else is needless. Then fly west into Illwrath space, go into one of the busier systems and start picking fights like a drunken Irishman.

The Illwrath cloaking device is useless, because you will always be displayed exactly opposite your opponent. The flamethrower is useless, because your guns have longer range. You need to practise until you can bob along just out of the range of the Illwrath's weapon, constantly firing shots backwards at him. This way you can junk legion upon legion of the fools for enormous salvage value without taking a single hit... then just head back to Earth and buy everything that it's possible to buy.

Once you have a three-way front firing laser with the guidance system that you can get from the Melnorme traders, there is pretty much nothing that can stand in your way. If you go picking a fight with General Zex you will have to quit the game, because none of his infinite armada will even be able to scratch you before you vapourise them with a stab or two of the fire button.

Not pointless.  If you have hung out here long enough you would know the developers explained this point very well.  Dynamos have different purposes entirely than shiva furnaces though both contribute to energy output.

Search back and you will find VERY DETAILED explanations of the functions of each.

Try bringing Utwig and Pkunk ships along.  The Spathi ship is possible as well, although it takes a lot more skill and trouble...just trade shots with the Utwig (use the shields luke!) and the Ur-Quan and Kohr-Ah go down very easily...

The Pkunk are fast enough to avoid all the weapons of the Sa-Matra, just strafe the generators and go from there.  If you cause the Yehat revolution, they'll even bring you ships after you fight the Ur-Quan/Kohr-Ah.  Great help from them. :-)

Well what is the difference then? As far as I can tell, there is no advantage of dynamos over shiva furnaces, because, as far as I can tell, all either of them do is regen energy, and the shiva does it much better.

I wouldn't call myself "leet", but in case anyone is looking in this thread for early game RU strategies, I recommend searching for a star in the Tauri group after mining Sol and some surrounding systems. (I forget the specific Tauri star, but I think it's white; it's been a while since I played, as trying to get this remake on a dial-up would be insane.) It has several planets with exotic minerals (sans heavy firestorms, unlike Alpha Centauri) and an Auric world rich in precious metals, and also biologicals you can sell to the Melnorme.

My early game drill is now to mine the Sol system, get some minerals from surrounding systems (avoiding dangerous mining in A Centauri) to get RU for more fuel, and then head to this Tauri system. I never have trouble with RU after that, and the Auric world can usually give me enough bio data to get a Melnorme tech.

Well as explained once upon a time, to put it in a nutshell, the dynamos effect the rate of generation while the furnaces cover the amount of energy generated.  Add dynamos, you increase your rate of energy generation - it benefits you to have 3 dynamos along with some furnaces.

Some info I posted once upon a time when the formula used within the game was posted by the developers:
============================================
Some statements I can make out of seeing the numbers (if my calcs were all right)  This is assuming plugging in the appropriate numbers and following the formula out:

1) It is useless to have more than 3 dynamos.
2) The system acts in this way.  The dynamos increase the factor.  The furnaces doubles this factor for each furnace added.
3) For 8 spots, doing the math, the presence of the 3 dynamos really add up, almost doubling the power refresh rate.  This is really an impactful change.

The stats - dynamo factors (assuming no furnaces installed): 0 = .1 1 = .125 2 = .166 3 or greater .25

The stats - furnace effects: 1 furnace on it's own is .2, 1 furnace and 1 dynamo is .25, 2 furnaces is .3 (should be enough samples for you to get the general idea).

Hope this helps.

As mentioned once upon a time, here's the particulars to make use of this info to get the highest energy regeneration:

< 4 spots available for energy generation - use furnaces.
4 is a tossup.
> 4 spots available for energy generation - make sure you have the 3 dynamos.

All right thanks a lot that's really helpful. :)