The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

Let’s say you are a captain during the war and for some reason had to surrender, which race would you surrender too?

I would go with either the Spathi or Fight to the death or The Ur-Quan. The Spathi would be far more inclined not to kill me outright and I'd doubt they'd be into torture. All other races listed would see me to an untimely demise:

The Ur-Quan: They'd probably make me serve aboard there vessel during the First Alliance War or kill me if I'm found outside the slave shield of Earth during the New Alliance of Free Stars.

The Umgah: More than likely I'd die from a practical joke gone wrong.

The Vux: They'd be too repulsed to even consider taking me prisoner. I'd die of disgust if they did. ;)

The Mycon: Considering the environment in which they thrive at, my survival of Juffo Wup would be null.

The Ilwrath: Out of all the races listed, These would be the ones I'd least likely surrender to. Torture by they're hands doesn't sound like all that much fun.

Fight to the death!!

I'd surrender to the Spathi and assimilate into their culture :)

Since this is in the context of the Hierarchy War, why are the Androsynth not an option? Other than that, I'd expect the results to go something like this:

Ur-Quan - They would stuff you aboard some temporary prison until the rest of humanity is subjugated and then put you with the rest of your species as either a combat thrall or Star Base maintainance guy.

Spathi - They would turn you directly over to the Ur-Quan. The Spathi may be the only sympathetic species within the Hierarchy, but they won't risk their own asses to hide members of a rogue species.

Androsynth - The result would be the same as with the Spathi, but these guys would be smirking a hell of a lot due to the symbolic victory over their old slavemasters.

Umgah - The Umgah could do damn near anything so this would be a roll of the dice. This would be my choice because if you're at the point of surrender you're screwed anyway.

VUX, Mycon, Ilwrath - A fate worse than death.

When I wrote this up in word I had the Androsynth as an option. Apparently I missed copying them over. They are there now.

In fact, Spathi won't accept your surrender. Who knows what diabolical tricks you may have prepared...
But if they, somehow, would, I'd surrender to them. Then attack them with vegetables, anything, and take over their ship.

Else, fight to the death is a good option - rather than slavery or torture.

Surrendering to the Mycon, too, may be something... intriguing. With their advanced biological skills, they'd implant spore sacs in your brain and make you part of Juffo-Wup - like they wanted to do with Zelnick to thank him for revealing the location of the world in the Organon system.
High temps won't be an issue - they must be able to build some decompression room.

And VUX, of course they won't accept them to surrender. That's why they're fighting you - to get your ugly appearance out of their minds. With you on their ship... YUCK!

Hmm, I said 'fight to the death' at first, but the more I think about it, the more it seems like being taken captive by the Umgah could be interesting. Theyd totally trick my body out, with like tentacles and everything!

The way I see it, you have only 2 races on that list that amount to anything more than "surrender = death (or worse)". The Spathi, as Shiver said, would immediately turn you over to the first Ur-Quan they came across; they may not kill you immediately, but they wouldn't stick their (already endangered, thanks to the Ur-Quan's warnings) necks out for an enemy, especially not a sneaky, devious Hunam. Other than that, you could surrender to the Ur-Quan themselves; considering that they see all other races as their inevitable slaves, they would likely accept. Chances are, you would languish in a brig, or be put to work in a slave crew, at least until Earth was slave shielded (whereupon you would likely be deposited underneath the shield like everyone else).

Every other race has ulterior motives that would make your fate considerably less pleasant. The Ilwrath have voiced their appreciation for human prisoners many times; an extremely slow, painful, and torturous death awaits. The VUX would blast you rather than accept your surrender, because there is no way they would ever tolerate a human on board one of their vessels, even as a prisoner. The Mycon likely would implant spores in your brain, assuming they didn't just "void" the "non" right off the bat; this would alomst certainly result in death from your perspective, though your memories may join the Mycon's collection of ancestors (perhaps this is what they mean by becoming a part of Juffo-Wup). The Umgah would almost certainly use you as a part of one of their pranks, and considering the casual disregard that the Umgah show for life during their pranks, this does not bode well for you. And the Androsynth would probably behave in a similar fashion to the VUX; they despise humanity too much to even accept your surrender, and would leave no trace of your existence.

Depending on the circumstances, though, maybe fighting to the death would be your best bet.

Definately the Quan. I think the Spathi would probably not take the risk
of having captives and the rest would mutilate/torture captives. At
least with the Ur-Quan, you have the choice of being earth-bound.

It's very likely that the Umgah would use you for pranks, but you could be in on them. As Hayes says "It's unfortunate that the Umgah fell to the Ur-Quan so early in the War because I suspect we would have gotten along well with those big blob creatures; at the very least it would have been entertaining."

I don't think it'd even be surrender. An Umgah has you in its sights, ready to anti-matter you to oblivion, just say "Hey, wanna pull a prank on the so and so" and you're in the clear.

I'd join the Umgah if I had the chance because, hey, free tentacles.

I'd probably say the Spathi would probably be the easiest to surrender to- just convince them you're harmless/crippled, and then once you're on their ship, whip out a gun at take over. At least, that's what I would do.  ;)

I think this assessment is just about right, only that the Androsynth may decide to kill you instead of turning you over to the Ur-Quan.  Like Commander Hayes says "Deep down in our hearts we all knew that the Androsynth had a damn good reason for hating us,  Our grandparents kept them as slaves for nearly 50 years."

I'd say either the Spathi or Ur-Quan if continuing to fight meant certain death.  If I had a glimmer of hope of surviving the fight, then fight on would be my option.

Overall, I feel that my best bet would be with the Ur-Quan. They're the most consistent of all of the races listed, and they have no fatal quirks. The Spathi would be a good second, but their irrational fears could lead to a bad end. Virtually anyone else will likely result in my death: With the Ur-Quan, I'll most likely just be thrown into prison until the war ends; then they'll toss me under a slave shield. With other people, though, I could end up being dismembered (slowly and painfully), blasted into atoms, converted to serve Juffo-Wup, or blasted into atoms in a "humorous" way.

So, yeah. Ur-Quan all the way.

By the way, a "fight to the death" option seems tangential to the subject. This topic would be better if the urge to say "I would FIGHT to the DEATH and take as many of them WITH ME because there's A MAN COMIN' THRU, HELL YEAH" was not present to tempt readers into lowering the level of discourse.

How come there is no 'Flee your ass the hell out of the Sector' option?

Because the idea is that you are either surrounded or out of fuel.
Plus, everybody would have voted that option.

And go where? You'll run out of fuel eventually.

For the same reason that "fight to the death" is bad for the topic.

Look like I'm a little late for the party. Oops.

...Well, this is an easy question for me to answer, so I think I'll just go through all the other options too and share with you why I didn't pick them. You know, just to make it interesting.

"I would fight to the death!" : I'm not very comfortable with death. Oh sure, this might be the "brave and heroic martyr" thing to do, but I value my life just a liiiiiiittle too much to go this route. Plus, the Kzer-Za's idea of slavery is pretty darn cushy, all things considered.

The Androsynth: This wouldn't end well.

"I've talked it over with my crew. We've decided to surrender to you, Androsynth captain."
"Yeah, about that... Remember that time that your grandparents used us as slaves, genetically castrated us, persecuted us, and basically treated us as lesser-than-second-class citizens?"
"We kinda thought you'd have, uh, forgiven us for that and let bygones be bygones by now."
"..."
"Does it help if we say that we're really, really sorry?"
"...No."
*BOOM!*

The Ilwrath: The only people who would surrender to the Ilwrath would be the clinically insane. I don't know about you, but I don't like the idea of being strung up by web-fluid, scalded, and slowly cut open while conscious and then messily eviscerated until my intestines are all strewn about the room and I've been drained of all blood. Or worse.

The Ilwrath don't take prisoners, they take sacrifices.

The Mycon: The best case scenario is that you are Voided for being Non. The worst case scenario is that they find you useful in some way and force you to become part of Juffo-Wup. I have a really scary and horrible mental image of this. Living, yet not...

The VUX: Taking prisoners is not an option. Handing you over to the Kzer-Za is not an option. They will kill you, but at least it'll be a quick death. After all, they don't want to have to look at you longer than they need to, right?

Of course, you could always surrender to ZEX. I'm sure he'd treat humans very, VERY well. ;)

The Spathi: Surrendering to a Spathi seemed like a tempting idea to me at first, but unless you handled the situation carefully there's a strong chance that it'll all go wrong. What if you made them nervous and they accidentally hit the weapons button? What if they didn't trust you enough and fired upon you to defend themselves? What if they called for help from another, more hostile Hierarchy race? What if you scared them so much that they went into a panic long enough for renforcements to arrive?

I love those little guys, and they might mean well, but they're not the most reliable people when it comes to stuff like this. Look at what happened to the poor Algolites, for example.

The Umgah: Even if you surrendered to them, what makes you think that it's going to go entirely in your favor? The Umgah love making trouble and spreading chaos. Humans, I'm sure, aren't an exception from this. They may take you in now in order to pull a hilarious joke on the Kzer-Za, but what's to stop them afterwards from...oh, I dunno...genetically modifying you into a human/VUX hybrid and setting you loose on the VUX homeworld? "Har! Har! Har! Funny joke!"

The Kzer-Za: This is the option I chose in the end. They're true to their word ("Human. We Ur-Quan never lie. NEVER! It is a weakness to lie and, as you have noticed, the Ur-Quan are not weak!") and quite fair, really. They'll take you prisoner and, when they win the first war, will ship you off back to Earth and slave shield the place. As long as we don't try to kill ourselves, escape the shield, or form a resistance, they basically leave us alone.

It's much nicer than being dead.

Edit: Oh man, this looked so much shorter when I was typing it up. Sorry, guys.

I'd surrender to the Mycon on the .0001% chance that the fungus was telling the truth and unity with juffo-wup is the way to spiritual enlightenment.

Of course, if I could surrender to ZEX personally, well, that would be a little more interesting, if a little more mortifying, than death itself =P

In fact, it's indeed best to surrender to the Mycon. After all, you WILL be happy and more fulfilled... lack of knowledge means lack of unhappiness. It's better to be a happy fungus than a sad humanoid.

I grow turgid with excitment....wait, wait that came out wrong...

Tsing doesn't seem to be around so here I go:
<Vietnamese accent>
Juffo-Wup fills in my fibers and I grow turgid. Violent action ensues.
</Vietnamese accent. Sorry, guys! That's all!>

U-Quan:
I probably would surrender to Ur-Quan, if they would take me to my homeworld (which is probably  under the slave shield (As a human, my homeworld shold be..))

Umgah:
Why not. If they're not going to kill me, they're probably going to 'play' with me and my body parts, so it might be fun (assuming that I wouldn't feel any pain)

Spathi:
Actually I don't think that they would kill me. At least not right away. But as coward spathis, they would 1) bring me to the ur-quans 2) Kill me while I'm sleeping - they don't want to take any risks..  so I wouldn't surrender to Spathi

Vux:
Hell no! They would kill me anyway.

Mycon:
I would most probably surrender to mycon. I agree.. Besides you will have a long life :P

Ilwrath :
If I would surrender to Ilwrath, they would sacrifise me to dogar and kazor -> pain -> no thanks

I would fight to the death

Androsynth:

Hmm. Maybe I would surrender to them. If they kill me, no can do, if they torture me, shit happens but maybe I could make them not to hate humans so much, if they don't kill me right away


sry for bumping this old (?) topic but it was just so interesting that i had to answer. After all, topics like this will never die!

I'd have to surrender to the Spathi. Certainly, there are risks of doing so, but I have a plan that would raise my chances of success. Basically, you'd have to manipulate them and exploit their fears. Build up something else as being terribly evil and scary (when really, it's a sheep or something) and promise to defend all of Spathi from this menace as their personal bodyguard. They would probably be eternally grateful to you for protecting them and would not turn you over to the Ur-Quan. On the off chance they DID turn you over to the Ur-Quan, what's going to happen to you? You'll be put back on earth under a slave shield, which is as pleasant a Plan B as one could hope for in this situation.

The Spathi are cowards but they're also highly intelligent. If you try to spook them while you're their prisoner, they'll probably just kill you.

Highly intelligent? Explain "The Ultimate EVIL" situation to me, making them sound highly intelligent.

They went from being one step above cavemen to a space faring race in like 50 years according to they story. That = highly intelligent.

Aaahhh you both look the same so I thought  Shiver was talking to himself

I guess I might as well weigh my options too. This should be a funny read.

Vux:

Pros: I might be captured by ZEX, and get tentacles in places I don't feel comfortable with. Hey, it's better than dying. Unless those tentacles can go rigid. Ow. Alternatively, I can open hailing frequencies and spam them with images of humans, and while they're busy puking over their control panels, I can escape.

Cons: I might not be captured by ZEX. Obviously the last thing i'll see is a big flash of green light. That would be cool, I guess.

Umgah:

Pros: They're pretty funny, and just as long as their transplant operations don't hurt, getting tentacles in all sorts of places would be pretty fun, especially if they let you go afterwards if you promise to do pranks. And then never come back. Har! Har! Har!

Cons: They don't let me go, and instead they decide it'd be totally funny to rip me apart and then graft my limbs onto their bodies.

Androsynth:

Pros: I could slick my hair, dress up in a grey suit, wear a triangle badge, and then tell them i'm really an Androsynth that went undercover to secretly steer a Human ship into Androsynth territory so they could get revenge on my crew. My crewmen? Who cares. I'm the captain, the games are about me.

Cons: They didn't buy into that last bit and decide a blazer comet is too quick a death, so they fire the acid bubbles.

Ilwrath:

Pros: If I had the hyperwave caster, I could just convince them it was an illusion the entire time, and that their sensors had gone haywire and they were really attacking the ship of Dogar and Kazon. They'd be so embarassed that they'd commit whatever fun version of seppuku they have.

Cons: If I didn't have the hyperwave caster, I guess I might as well eat a lot before I die, so they get a nasty surprise when they cut open my intestines. Splat.

Ur-Quan Kzer-Za

Pros: "Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?"

Cons: "Your independence is too dangerous for us to tolerate. You shall be punished."

Spathi:

Pros: I could just tell them my ship was really invincible and we just went into a low-power mode to get really close to them, and if they didn't run away i'd activate my super weapon. They'd fall for it.

Cons: What cons? This isn't even surrendering. I instantly win.

I picked Spathi.

>They went from being one step above cavemen to a space faring race in like 50 years according to they story. That = highly intelligent.

If you told a Spathi you had a monster on board your ship that would eat him, he would believe you.

 Gullible =/= highly intelligent, sorry.

Okay Einstein, I'll spell it out for you.

Middle ages -> Space travel in 50 YEARS demonstrates incredible intellect.

So as cowardly as they are, you can't just manipulate Spathi into doing whatever you want by refering to the boogieman. Furthermore, you are greatly exagerating their cowardice; Spathi Eluders were used in the Hierachy-Alliance war to great effect. If the Spathi can serve in a military capacity then they aren't completely crippled beyond hope by their inherent weakness.


And use a much better example if you're going to talk down to me, newbie.

Oh good, an internet tough guy. <rolls eyes>

If Spathi were so highly intelligent, it makes no sense that they would be sitting around like cavemen geniuses one day and just suddenly decide to build starships.
More likely some other event, such as contact with another race or the acquisition of new technology fell into their laps and triggered this rapid advancement.

I don't exaggerate Spathi's cowardice; it's their defining characteristic. They are also incredibly gullible, which again demonstrates they are not highly
intelligent. How long was that Spathi waiting cowering inside his ship because he was told something scary was outside? Wasn't it 12 years or something? lol...
Also, the Spathi's ship is built to be most effective when running away and firing its rear weapon, once again demonstarting the dev's sense of humor and their
intention to make everything about Spathi cowardly. I'm sorry you're not in on the joke.

Did you even play the game? The Spathi made that technological jump because a natural predator to them appeared on their homeworld. They advanced rapidly to avoid these creatures. The Spathi also replicated the Ur-Quan slave shield in a year's time, another feat humans couldn't hope to hold a candle to. It's brilliance with a catch alright, but still brilliance.

It's not necessarily innate intelligence. Think about the Spathi captain that uttered the Words at their first meeting with the Kzer-Za without knowing anything of them.
It's the adrenaline-equivalent pumping through their body, greatly increasing their psionic and mental capabilities. This happens, of course, continually, since they are continuously frightened.
Maybe that adrenaline-equivalent even flows instead of blood through their veins. That would explain their supreme cowardice.

- adrenaline normally gives a "Flight or Fight" choice, but the Spathi reveal that they only have a "Flight" choice.

>Did you even play the game?

Yes, I beat it several times back in 1994-1995, not since then though. So you'll have to pardon me if I don't remember fine details.
But I still don't think the Spathi are highly intelligent, looks like we're going to have to agree to disagree on this one.

You misremember: he was assigned to stay in his ship because the rest of the contingent got bored. He was coerced by his government, and if he had gone home, he would have had something real to be afraid of.

Furthermore, he was the least impressive Spathi in the Earthguard fleet, as judged by the spathi high council (see comment re: holding a vegetable to his head), so even if his degree of inability is impressive, that doesn't really say much about Spathi on the whole.

As for the words, want to bet that the gist is all that matters, and the talking pets translate nearby phrases that way every chance they get, just as a microscopic revenge? The alternative is psychic spathi, and I haven't seen anything else to indicate that.


I doubt *Pepper*'s trick would work. It might even backfire.

For being the biggest reject in the Spathi military, Fwiffo sure was an unstoppable killing machine after he joined the Vindicator. I dunno if what the player does can be considered canon, but I'd venture a guess that the majority of the people who've beaten Star Control 2 used Fwiffo in such a fashion.

No. Look:
1) The Spathi don't know what is the translation the Talking Pet feeds to the Ur-Quan.
2) The Spathi Safe Ones say clearly: "anyway, in a moment of panicked genius, the Captain blurted out
`Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?'"; exactly the Words.

I'd surrender to the Umgah. At least my incarceration would be brief and (terminally) funny.

The Spathi don't speak English so even that "exact" phrase is just an approximation made by the Vindicator's translator system.

... a system which somehow doesn't understand 'hunam' to mean 'human'.

So there Fwiffo is, left alone for many years. He's a frightened little spathi with no distractions, no one to stand in front and protect him. What if the Ultimate Evil showed up? What if the Earthlings broke free? What if an Ur-quan came by to check on the status of the EarthGuard, and decided to execute its sole member?

Anyone think he did not spend a lot of time on his combat simulator?

Oh crap, I didn't think of that.

Not to mention the various other nuances that the translator catches - Umgah grammar mistakes, Ilwrath word capitalization, proper names, "Dill Rats", "Doggone and Quasar", "Dwe" etc., other stuff like that.

The translator is a very fine device, which is no wonder since it is Precursor of origin.
So the Spathi have some weak psionic abilities, similar to the humans showing high esper ratings - i.e. those 6 crewmen at the Starbase who fell unconscious when the Pkunk were "assimilated" by the Yehat - or rather the Yehat were assimilated by the Pkunk.

This brings up an interesting point (which might be moot if I recall incorrectly). Is the translator on your ship standard issue? Or is it a Precursor tool, more advanced than say, what Spathi and others use?

And on top of that, it recognizes that once you've changed the ilwrath language, irrevocably and forever, it begins translating from that changed language back into proper English. Truly a powerful tool.

Such an unexpected weakness in the translator (it translates everything else just fine and only here it fails) would be nonsensical. Also, if it can remember to translate the Words the same for Melnorme and The Safe Ones, why wouldn't it remember to translate this?
I'd rather say that it is either a discrepancy or the Ilwrath are too stubborn to change their language.

No, it's a strength! You changed their language. Period. The translator figured this out and changed its dictionary to compensate.

I always thought the Ilwarth either had a very short attention span, or were just paying lip service to Dogar and Kazon until they finally command them to kill someone else (or perhaps, they get so excited by the command to kill someone else, that they quickly forget about minor language changes).

Wow, mental images there.  I'm sure there are many fine intertubes sites on that very subject....


Yeeaah... I kind of get the feeling that no matter what they're told, they just do what they want anyway, unless they're forced out of a course of action (the Kzer-Za stopping them from going to Earth to try to kill everyone).  So they follow directives to have more sacrifices, or go attack the Thraddash, but they don't care about the language thing so they don't do it.