The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

Okay, now I played Starcon2, and didn't really play much of 3, for various reasons......all of which you probably know  ;)  (If not, I'll make a big forum post later.  At length....until you beg me to stop.)

Now, what gets me is the fate of the Precursors in Starcon 3.  Several friends of mine played all the way through to the end and told me that the mighty past race decided to de-evolve into cows.  COWS ?!?!?  Was this originally the plan (I find it hard to think so, as SC1/2 were so *good*)

They're not cows and they didn't de-evolve (quite the contrary actually, if memory serves me), they just... Well, they look like cows ;D

I finished the game back in the day - I found that the most difficult part of the game was to wait for the timed events to trigger. It wasn't an all terrible experience, no, but it certainly didn't hold up to SC2. Which is too much to ask of any game or any sequel for that matter.

I just beat sc3 again, for the 3rd time after seeing this page.  Each time it gets worse.  The game just seems incomplete, like there was supposed to be more, or it was supposed to be longer.  The precursors explain like everything to you.

The worst thing is the vux ship cheat.  If you hit alt-f9, and your flying a vux ship, the battle resets, and you are right next to the other guy, with your laser pointed right at them

i beat the whole eternal one intro fleet in like 1 minute.

sc2 was much better, much longer, and a better all around game.

the thing that pissed me off is, the story is so damn good, they could have done so much more with it.

Really?  I thought the story was terrible -- I took the whole "intelligence" aspect of it to be absurdist and borderline offensive; especially since there was very little "cleverness" about any of it, but maybe that was the point.  It still sat badly with me, however..

We are seriously expected to believe that an entire quadrant of the galaxy was conquered over a glorified dick-size contest over who was smarter?  And that all the paper-thin exploitations of the "slave races" were completely opaque to them?

Then again, I played it to conclusion exactly once, so my memory may be a bit spotty..

I mean the story over star control overall, not sc3 specifically.

As stated by Paul & Fred at the 1998 Creators Chat:

"About the Precursors: I thought the regression to cow form was a funny idea with some interesting consequences, but to answer your questions, No, that was not what we had in mind."

Hope this helps :)

I've only played the "Hypermelee" demo, which already shows great weaknesses. The victory ditties sucked, the ships were off-balance and the planet's gravity was too strong. Enough reasons to delete the demo.

Though the Daktaklakpak ditty is brilliant! :D

Starcontrol 3 had much potential.. the plot was ok nice and even the cow precursors were funny. But thing what made it horrible was the music and some other sounds lice icom.
I got headace when i listent that game music and i think thats a good indicator that something is wrong in it.

I thought "Star Control 3" was a better than decent game, just no where near a worthy sequel to Star Control 2.   It all could have been worse... they could have released the 3d shooter "StarCon" (what was going to be Star Control "4")  Thank goodness they didn't.

Overall, I thought that Sc3's plot sucked, and the interface could have used some work.

That said, I love the HyperMeele, and the dialouge is hillarious!  The first dialouge with Niffiwan alone makes me laugh for hours!  "... OK.  Bunnies."

I came to the Star Control saga in an unusual order.  First I played the Genesis version of SC1--rented it from Blockbuster.  I didn't get the chance to really get into the strategy aspect of the game, but I loved playing Melee with my little brother, and I slowly began to get a feel (from the in-game stuff and from the instruction manual) for the personalities and stories behind each of the races.

Then I received the demo version of SC2 with a computer game magazine.  I LOVED what I got to see of the game, which was very limited, since the demo disc limited you by removing your ability to go into hyperspace.  But I got Commander Hayes' whole description of the situation and the game setup, and I was very excited.  But I couldn't afford to buy the game myself, and Dad didn't share my excitement until much later (I don't think he ever really played the demo).  So we never got SC2.

Much later, SC3 comes out, and I hear about it.  Having loved my brief contact with both of the previous SC games, I convince my family to buy it.  My brother and I play through the entire game, and enjoy it thoroughly.  It is not until later that I find out that it was created by a different group of people, only loosely affiliated with the original creators of Star Control.  

Eventually, I was able to procure a copy of Star Control II, which everyone tells me is the only game that REAL fans have any respect for.  I still haven't been able to finish it.  I love the game, and it is indeed superior to SC3.  But SC3 is by no means a bad game, and not entirely an unworthy sequel to SC2.  Imagine if you had been given the setup that SC2 gives you, along with all the questions that SC2 leaves unanswered, and told that it was your job to answer them.  That's what the people at Legend did--They had to create a game that not only stayed true to the original Star Control games, but also answered all the questions of the universe that SC2 posed.  This is a monumentally difficult task, and I think they succeeded admirably.

Surely, some of their efforts were a little transparent.  The idea that every race in the entire quadrant worshipped the Precursors, and all seemed to be in competition over who was most like them was a bit of a stretch, I admit, as was the Daktaklakpak's "K'tang seeking missile" and the Vyro-Ingo/VUX combination, but many other aspects of the game--such as the explanation for the existence of the Rainbow Worlds, the history of the Mycon, and the intentional regression of the Precursors--all these were creative, interesting ideas.  Even the subtler things, like the inter-league accusations of treason--though heavy-handed--were excellent ideas.

So have a little respect for the creators of SC3.  They're just SC fans, like you and me.

Casey

What the hell happened to the Syreen in SC3? They used to be beautiful babes once...in SC3 they had become ugly tarts...

[waits for the joke]

I think you just played it.



OOOOOHH !  SLAM !  ;D

Just couldn't pass that up.

I kinda enjoyed SC3.  it was no sc2, for sure, but as a general game went, it was pretty cool.  and much much easier =)

Actually, the best part of the game were the voices.  I can't tell you how dissapointed i am with the sc2 orz voice after hearing the really cool version from sc3..

Some of the voices on SC3 were actually pretty good. I remember liking the Utwig, the Orz, and the K'tang. And the Daktaklakpak of course. If only the music was as good!

I didn't really enjoy SC3 nearly as much as 2 though. I really don't have any specific reasons why. I mean, SC3 was not that bad a game. It just didn't live up to 2, which I admit is asking a lot of any game. Oh well.

Matticus

the only things I liked about sc3 were the voices.  Orz, ur-quan and k'tang were good.  and the k'tang dialogue was pretty damn funny.  

But the rest of the game SUCKED.  What really gets me is that they re-used almost all of the dialogue!!!  Those classic lines from the spathi and pkunk (to name a few) were reused verbatim!  Yes making a sequel to sc2 is a challenge, but to reuse the dialogue! PLEASE

I suppose you could argue that the race is as varied as humans are, with both attractive and unattractive members of their species in existence. Though Hayes makes that point iffy with his commentry about the race as a whole:

Well, another possibility is that they have always looked like this, but use their psychic powers to render them attractive to members of all species. However, there is no forthcoming explanation for why you are immune in SC3 when you weren't in SC2 even with the taalo shield.

Starcon 3 was a alright but, the interface and trigger based linear plot made it annoying to play since if have to go some star and wait x amont of days if you mess up the game can become impossible and you have to start over again >:( The last battle is-climtic the Heralds are so easy to crushed with Syreen Pentanors in matter of fact I have defeated the whole armada with single ship! The Orz armada before it was easy to defeat with the Chmmr to top it the last part was to construct a device to safely collect some sentence from various races and to see sokme cheesy CGI animation afterwards and then it rolls the credits!

Hmm, lets see.  My first and foremost complaint about SC3 was it's joystick support.  I never especially enjoyed keyboard control for anything, but the joystick in SC3 just flat out didn't work.  It was always going directions you didn't press, or the ship would keep turning after you stopped and fly in a circle for a minute, and that ruined a lot of the game for me.

It's writing was largely inferior to SC2, though it did have it's moments (Hey, that's an Ortog! An ortog from my homeworld of unzervault! I didn't know you guys could fly starships..............."Mooooo")

I didn't like what the did with the IDF races though, at all.  The arilou hinted that there was a lot more to their experiments on earth then preserving DNA, but they just ignored that.  And the orz weren't sinister enough.

And some of the new ships were well designed, but there was no sense of balance.  A Doog could annihilate nearly anything, and come out of it at full crew to boot.

But, it was still somewhat enjoyable.  Not a bad game, but the bad joystick support killed it for me, and even with better support it was no StarCon2.

I suppose you could justify the unattractive Syreen leader's presence by saying that the Syreen intentionally put her in charge so that their interactions with the human commander remained strictly professional. This would keep the Kessari quadrant operation as efficient as possible. Although my explanation here sounds more like a suitable excuse than anything else, it does make a lot of sense.

I ratehr liked it. Exceot for the event thingy, that really frustrated me. But while not as good as SC2, it was on okay game in it's own. conversations were good too... I seem to recall a classic VUX line :

"We're harvesting resources"
"But there are no resources here!"
"Wow! Fancy that! No resources! Well, we'll just be moving along then!"

Well, I'm quoting from memory, so I may be a bit off, but that had me rollin on da floor!

The problem in SC3 was waiting around for things to happen.  You weren't as active in the events of the game as in SC2, for example.  I ahted waiting for research points, trigger events, etc.  I would've liked to see a more refined colony system and a better damn enemy AI for HyperMelee.  The game had potential, but it was squandered by unprofessionals.

Too bad, because some of those races were pretty cool...  (ie. Xchaggers and Doog)

Too bad the Doog ship was totally unbalanceable...

I remember reading Warlock's SC3 concept sheets, the first ideas proposed for the sequel to SC2.  He proposed a way for the Doog Constructor to be a fairer ship.  It involved reducing the tracking area of the ship's main fire to about 180 degrees out of the front of the ship, so that at least it would have to maneouver somewhat to hit the enemy with its bullets.  I never liked the idea that the ship was being repaired, because somehow the crew of the ship was growing.  You know, using the secondary weapon kept bringing back one crew, but this was described as 'repairing the hull'.  Yeah, this ship could've been good, but was made way too powerful.

Yeah, anytime you used a ship that did strafing rounds against it, by the time it came in for the next round, the Doogies would be up to their full numbers. Bloody frustrating. Still, it was fun to talk to them.

My way of balancing the ship would be that it has crew as usual, but it also has two armor plates (that act like crew). These armor plates can be rebuilt rapidly, but you can never have more than two of them.

How is that?

Star Control 3 had potential. I mean I found the hyper melee to be solid, and I liked a lot of the new races, specfically the XChaggers, Doogs, K'tang, Claircontclar and the Russian Ploxis. I did find the Doog ship to be to powerful single player, but in melee, send anything that does a lot of damage fast, like the Kzer-Za, Xchagger, Chmmr, Owa etc and the constructor is quickly pacified, but yeah it needs less crew. The Ploxis ship was horrible and the fact they didn't bring in a lot of the old SC2 ships into the game sucked. The storyline was also a bit weak, the Precursors turning out to be space cows...come on. The voiceing was good, espcially the Ur-Quan and the Orz. However waiting for events and the fact the Claircontclar Pinnacle is the only ship that is a challenge to fight made the game disappointing. The fact the league has the Kzer-Za, Utwig, Chmmr and later the Doogs, four "powerhouses" so to say vs crappy crux ships. As well, making colonies is boring and a waste of time, if it wasn't for clicking on the day bar to speed up time, this game would be unsalvagable.  :-/  6.5/10 is my rating.