The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

This probably belongs in the bug forum but when Talana shows her gratitude for you does it stop the game for anyone else?  The screen just sits there with the music playing and you are unable to do anything aside from closing the game.  Sure the sex must be great and all but isn't there a universe to save?  ::)  Is the only way to continue on with the game avoiding getting intimate with her cause if so I feel sorry for my poor Captain  ;D  Well not a whole lot really since he gets all the fun heh

Not that I particularly want to avoid this encounter, but it's too bad there's no way to avoid it. One of my female friends was sort of icked out when she got to that scene... It was the first hint (that she caught, at least) that her character wasn't a woman.

Can't we have a scene like in B5 when Ivanova is trying to seal that treaty, and the quote: "Next time, my way."
Of course, we'd still have some trouble with the last scene. Hrm. I guess Captain is male no matter what.

Lesbian?

The friend in question was not, in fact. Hence the ick. Anyway, the scene with the grandkids and the Mark II sort of screw that up.

Obviously it was someone else who was falsely claiming to be the captain.

I'm sure that the sequels will take that possibility into account.

On the other hand, it certainly explains why none of those grandkids look in the least purple. Wait a moment, no it does... er... wark wark. Now I know I'm confused: I'm talking like a chocobo.

You can avoid the Captain and Talana's... diplomatic session, but I think it has to be done to get the Syreen to send you starship captains. I did everything else with the Syreen, got back their ships, helped them kick the crap out of the Mycon, etc., and went back and said everything there is to say EXCEPT what triggers the sex thing, and no Syreen are showing up at the starbase. Oh well.

Well Scott the problem I find is if you do the sex thing the game locks up(can't handle the heat I guess?).  Which from the sounds of your post is necessary to be able to make Penetrator ships.  Guess it is a bug  :-/

I think that if you press Space to skip the audio, you can get through that sequence.

Daniel

Yes; Space Bar skips through the current discussion and goes on to your next set of questions/conversation finale.  That's been very helpful to me, not only in this section, but in the entire game, cause my computer has the exact amount of RAM needed to run UQM, and thus slowdown and crashes are rampant.  So it helps a lot to be able to skip through conversations ultra-quick when I already know what they're gonna say so I can hurry up and get to a point where I can save it.  :P

So did ya'll figure out if you HAVE to do the sex scene with Talana to win the game?  I can't remember.

And yeah, the captain is a male, unless he had a sex change at the end of the game  :o

But I agree, there is very little hint that he is male or female until the end of the game, if you can skip the sex scene, which IIRC, you kind of have to flirt and say yes to.  So you might want to ask your female friend what she was trying to do by saying those things in the first place ;)  I mean, its not like Talana jumps your bones or anything.

And I'm pretty sure you don't need Syreen Penetrators to win the game, I don't remember using a single one, ever to accomplish anything important.

I told her not to leave, because she wanted the ship. The only other option led her to the scene.

Kweh. I thought Syreen were blue, not purple. Anyways, the grandchildren would likely only be a quarter Syreen, what with Zelnick's child(ren) likely marrying Earthlings. Besides, it could be the lighting. In the ending scene, when Zelnick awakens from the coma, she doesn't look particularly blue (slightly but not verily) in the lighting.

Hrmm, I guess this screws over the Pkunk's portent that you'd die at an early age. Unless (dramatic music) you -do- die sometime in UQM2, and Zelnick's son/daughter finds some way to bring you back. That or the coma you're in for those months could be considered 'death' of a sorts, especially when you consider his inner monologue.

*hopes Zelnick censored some of his story for his grandchildren*

The Talana sex scene amused me; I can't really see why it would gross someone out.

WARNING SPOILER ALERT

To take note actually I believe you get to bulid Penetrators after the Mycon get soften up a bit from failed attemped to spread their Deep Children which was a ambush obiviously

I was 7 years old at the time.  Let's just say I was more than confused when that scene had come and gone.  I definately wasn't old enough to appreciate what was going on.  I mean, I thought cooties were gross back then!  I thought that scene was really gross, because while I knew what was happening, I wasn't old enough to think critically about it.

Well, it grossed someone out because she conceived of her character as female, and here Talana was, hitting on her.

Well, I guess it fits given that Syreen are predominantly female.

But of course that raises the issue of, HOW THE HECK did that population imbalance perpetuate for more than one generation?
IIRC, there were SOME male syreen survivors of Syra. So their children would be 50% male and 50% female.
Unless the dominant mode of reproduction is artificial (egg-egg combinations or cloning), they're relying on those males...
SO, unless Syreen gender determination is both wildly and radically different from humans' (quite believable), and species-suicidal (i.e. if no men around, produce fewer males).

I quote Talana:
The final population of our species [after leaving Syra] was less than ten thousand, with only five hundred males
So males comprise, at most, 5% of their species.

The Syreen joined the Alliance sometime on or soon before the year 2124. The Alliance lost the war around 2134-35, I think. Talana says:
We'd been searching for a home planet for seventy-five years and in the end, it was our enemies who gave one to us.
At 2155 it had been approximately 20 years since the Alliance lost the war and so about 95 years since the Syreen abandoned Syra.

So how long would it take for the male and female populations to get back to their natural ratio? I have absolutely no idea. But there may be long standing social cosntraints at work here. For example, we have no idea how the Syreen view childbirth outside of marriage, or if one female takes multiple husbands (or vice-versa).

Maybe someone who is more knowledgeable about such things could take a stab at it. =)

Unless something about the Syreen causes them to give birth to more females than males, there is no real reason the sexes shouldn't be more or less evened out by now.

The only reason they're not even is because FF and PR3 wanted the Syreen to be a race of psychic hotties. :)

Are they even psychic, if you don't take Star Control 3 into account? Sure they have 'psionic amplifiers' in their technology that are used in the Syreen Song, and the proper technology to keep captured crew in a docile state. It is just that I remember playing Master of Orion 2, and thinking that it had several notable copycat races. One that seemed based off the Syreen, the Humans seemed based off of Captain Picard, and one seemed based off of the Kilrathi. I was wondering if they 'always' had basic, non-technological psychic abilities, or if it was something that mushroomed from the Syreen Song, to Master of Orion 2, to Star Control 3 where they apparently are decidedly psychic.

Well... they're not psychic in the same way Professor X is or anything. I don't think they can really read minds, or anything. But it's certain that they can control people (you would think only humanoid males, but the Syreen Song works against everything from Mycon and Mrmnmhrm to other Syreen)... the Penetrator ships only amplify that ability. Considering how afraid of the Dnyarri the Ur-Quan are, it's surprising that they'd allow any part of a race with an ability similar (albeit much much much less powerful) live outside the slave shield. I mean... what if Talana had managed to build some sort of amplifier and strap it on (no pun intended :) ) to the starbase?

Considering how close Ilwrath space is to Human space, and given technology's tendency to choose to break down at precisely the worst time, I don't think I want to know what would have happened.

Erm, I'm not sure I follow you.  Plus, I was talking about the Syreen's starbase.

Sorry for the double post, but that brought something else to mind...

When you ally with the Syreen, why don't they start using their starbase to synthesize fuel and stuff for you? That would be mighty convenient since they're near the center of the quadrant.

With a huge emitter on the Syreen starbase they'd attract enough VUX to... Umm, what are VUX good for anyway?

They make excellent sushi.

Oh okay. My mistake.
And what I meant was that the Ilwrath would come flocking to the human starbase, willingly working side by side with humans, when the device would suddenly break down one day, and all of humanity would awaken to find themselves side by side with a whole bunch of also-awakened man-eating spiders.

Hmmm... How dangerous is an Ilwrath in the flesh I wonder? Sure, they are spiderlike creatures, but we don't really know anything about their size. they could probably win unarmed combat pretty easily, but someone carrying a blowtorch, or even a spanner might be more troublesome for them. They like to torture and maim, yes, but how good are they at the actual fighting? It all depends on what allies you have I suppose. The Orz could take them to pieces quite easily.

Well, remember that in the beginning of the game you need to move the precursor fabrication tech off of your ship and onto the starbase. So maybe they could refuel you somewhat, but be unable to rapidly produce more fuel...

That's something I wondered about as well. I was really disappointed when the Syreen Starbase just sat there, even after we became allies.... You'r explanation is good Death, but you should at least have been able to stock up on crew over there, and maybe create penetrators and other ships (this of course depends on how much of the shipcreating things you actually brought with you from Vela to start with)

Is it just me, or were those 500 Syreen males among the 10,000 people still left in their species really lucky?  I mean, imagine...  the only hope for the survival of your race is to make as many babies with as many women as you possibly can.  This is an endeavour I would gladly volunteer to take part in.

I don't believe the starbase needed anything from the Precursor ship to create fuel. The starbase's purpose was to make fuel.



And it wasn't different fuel from what they use for Hierarchy ships, because...

Yes, but it might be that the base produces it very slowly, so that they would only have, say, 100 fuel on hand (well, ok that's 2K RUs, not bad...). Note that I bet that even a Dreadnought gets better gas mileage than the Precursor ship, so that would go quite a ways...

Syreen ain't exactly the showfixti though.  While the little primitive may be quite happy to use repopulation as an excuse for a carnal rampage, the syreen may not be so willing to go for an apocalyptic orgy.  "Making babies with as many women as you possibly can" may mean "Having your testicles removed so we can distribute the semen more effectively".  

Killing the goose that lays the golden eggs isn't going to help... you want those testes intact.

Hey, if I have to make that sacrifice to be with thousands of beautiful Syreen, I will!  By the way, what's wrong with an apocolyptic orgy?  Nothing!  Well, except maybe a lack of futon space...

Well, the wrod apocalyptic in itself worries me a bit. Is this an orgy of some sort of biblical proportions, or simply the last orgy before the apocalypse? Either way, I'd rather you did not. After all, a Fot may have just a wee bit of trouble with all those Syreen. A sleek Androsynth however.... Except of course, I'm a ship. Doh.

Well, the Guardian is the second most Ribbed-for-her-pleasure ship in the game...

Well, if the syreen believe in complete fidelity in marrage, then those 500 males would have married 500 females, the rest would have built society. Now, those 500 breeder couples would have made lotsa babies, and they re-marry, and have lotsa babies, and by then the 9,500 syreen females would have all gone into retirement. However,  9,500 females building a society would make for a very matricharcial society. Hense, even tho by this generation the population, male to female, would have more evened out, the fact is that it's still a female run society. The men probably stay at homes, raise the children, and get the lower pay scale. And while a syreen pilot or captian may not be unheard of, they're breaking into a job market that was dominated by females. They'd be way rare.
I think that's the point I was getting at.

*covers eyes with hands and laughs* You are very bad boys.

I don't even wanna think about an old Syreen.  Aren't they beautiful their whole lives?  You're ruining that perfect, uptopian, blue image in my head!  By the way, do you think a female Syreen designed the Penetrator?  I think it would have to be a male Syreen, for obvious reasons... either that or the women drew from memory.

There ARE 500 male Syreen that can be used as models, you know.

Ribbed for her pleasure...heh....

Can't argue with a ship with as powerful a name as 'Penetrator'...

Is it just me or does Primat have trouble letting the pharse "ribbed for pleasure" go?  :D

Old syreen look just like young syreen, seeing as one fo their colony ships used to be a plastic surgery de luxe store, before they got it off Syra, minutes before the explosion.

[Begin quote dispite forgetting to hit quote button]
I don't even wanna think about an old Syreen.  Aren't they beautiful their whole lives?  You're ruining that perfect, uptopian, blue image in my head!  By the way, do you think a female Syreen designed the Penetrator?  I think it would have to be a male Syreen, for obvious reasons... either that or the women drew from memory.
[End quote]

Maybe they're just drop dead gorgous untill they hit 80 and then the ugly tree falls on them. Kinda like the chinese women. No serious. I spent 2 years in asia and I've only seen 2 kinds of chinese women. Younge and beautiful and ancient old aunties. I mean it's like one day their husband must roll over in bed and say "Uh! I expected her to catch up with me one day, but I didn't expect her to get so far ahead!"
Of course by then, the Syreen aunties wouldn't be politing ships or captaning bases. They may not even survive the instant aging process. Talnya was nowhere in site in that last animation on SC2.

Hey that's how I want to go.
Stay young looking my entire life, and then when I'm 60 let it all catch up with me--- and also die the same day.

Luki: Yeah, I know. I'm just feeling particularly frustrated (yes in that sense) lately.

The thought occurs to me that maybe ALL syreen are actually ugly, but thanks to their psychic powers, you'll never see what they really look like.  Kinda like a beer-goggle emitter ray, built in.

Yup, that seems likely to me too... I was wondering, however, why we would have, er, penetrated this illusion in SC3.

Because doing otherwise might have made the game even somewhat enjoyable?  :P  I mean, if you're going to fuck up every last storyline in the fiction over the course of the game, you're almost obligated to fuck up physical appearances, as well.

For the record, I thought SC3 was a thalidomide abortion.  The only saving grace was that you could turn off that stupid isometric combat view and fight top-down, as Fred intended.  :)

Edit:  0xFF posts!  I can quit now!  ;)

Yeah, that was a nother question I had wondered about... why red Spathi? Maybe they got so dependent on the slave shield that they sucked up its coloring on a genetic level?


Oye Nic, you can't quit now. 256? Feh, you can do better... go for 65536!