The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

http://www.joystiq.com/2008/11/17/stardock-looking-at-master-of-orion-star-control-rights/#comments (http://www.joystiq.com/2008/11/17/stardock-looking-at-master-of-orion-star-control-rights/#comments)


Moderator edit: merged from Starbase Café

Sorry if this has been posted before, I looked but did not see it.

http://www.joystiq.com/2008/11/17/stardock-looking-at-master-of-orion-star-control-rights/

Thought the people on these boards might be interested in the news. :)

I'm not sure how I feel about this. Stardock is a great company, but if they can't somehow get FF and PR on board (and they probably can't), I'd rather there be no sequel.

Very interesting news! An Sc without FF or PR3 wouldnt be the same, thats very true. But I think its possible to get a great game even without their hands in it. Of course if theres a way for them to be involved, Id be super happy!

Of note:Given that Paul and Fred hold the rights to everything in SC2 but the name, making any such game would, by definition, require their permission and full blessings.

So, I could see this going one of several ways. Maybe Stardock doesn't get the rights, or gives up. Maybe they get the rights to the name, and try to skirt the edge between "like SC2" and "enough like SC2 to get sued". Or maybe - just maybe - Paul and Fred work out something with Stardock and their corporate overlords that lets TfB and this other company make the new Star Control game as a team.

I'm hoping for that last one, personally.  ;)

Gamasutra has the actual article (http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=20998).

Stardock's CEO seems to know what he's talking about; his position on SC3 is "We just pretend that never happened". That said, I'd rather see TFB do UQM2, but the additional interest from Stardock could help convince Activision that there's a business case for it.

I haven't actually played any of Stardock's games, but they seem to be big in the turn-based strategy genre. Whether this would translate to a good UQM2 is, to put it mildly, unclear (after all, Legend was a big player in graphical adventures, and look what we got).

Moderator edit: merged from Starbase Café

There was a Starbase Café thread (http://forum.uqm.stack.nl/index.php?topic=4324.0) a bit earlier. Merge?

Personally I am not opposed to a Star Control spin-off, with some guidance by TFB. It wouldn't have to be a "sequel" but rather just a "game" in the SC universe. I'm ok with that.

Stardock is a great company.  Their turn-based games are great (Galactic Civilizations I and II), but they also have awesome real time strategy games (Sins of a Solar Empire, although Sword of the Stars was only "ok."). 

But one of the reasons I really support Stardock is their position on copyright protection.  They don't mess around with CD keys, passwords, authentication or any crap like that.  I think UGM move from UGM and open source to UGM2 and Stardock would be a perfect progression.

Seriously, all of you UGM people should check out GC1&2 and SoaSE.

UQM.

Ur-G'nunk Masters!

Weren't some of Stardock's games MoO clones with the serial number filed off? If so, they have explored their own artistic vision, and might be willing to stay more true to the original with the MoO license. I've never really seen anyone do a truly faithful (next-gen jump) sequel though, so I remain skeptic.

2D Mario to 3D Mario wasn't bad. Actually, most of Nintendo's stuff seems to have survived the transition in good condition.

But Nintendo has made sequels steadily, so the mutation isn't as noticeable in many cases. We'll see how they'll treat Kid Icarus. There was a GB version but it's quite unknown.

I'd certainly buy another Star Control game, SC2 is my 2nd favorite game of all time.  It would be especially nice, in my opinion, if ALL the ships from all the games (including the new one & SC3) were available in SuperMelee (though not necessarily in the full game).   I'd love to see a Ship from SC3 or the new game pitted against a Yehat Terminator, Druuge Mauler, Ilwarth Avenger, or Thraddash Torch in SuperMelee (or whatever they choose to call it in a new game).

I fully support this! Stardock should be able to make something good! I hope they keep the exploration element intact. Not too many games seem to have that quality! We can't go to other star systems in real life, so I very much want to at least be able to do so in a video game!  ;D I just hope it's not PC only and beyond what my computer can handle. Maybe I'll have a new computer by then though.

Oh.... crap.... I kinda also hope it doesn't just end up being some MMO! I hate those because it's like a drug.... they get you addicted, then you're paying them for as long as you play. Unless the fee isn't bad. I wouldn't mind paying $25 a year, but most MMOs are quite a bit more than that.

I'm a fan of Stardock and I think they've earned their reputation as a good company, but giving them the go-ahead to make a Star Control game is a bad idea. Having actually played many of their games, it's obvious to me that story and dialogue are not strong points of theirs. Most of us would agree that good writing is the most important aspect of Star Control 2. Stardock can do a lot of things well but until they make some other game that proves they can create a deep and compelling story, I'd prefer they stay clear of my favorite series.

If I recall, quite a few of the SC3 ships were broken and not really that playable. The Stooge(?) Doog(?) for sure.. And a few others were badly designed. And if you were goign to leave soke out then you should probably leave all out, And beside, I think that it if it was TFB-sanctioned, then perhaps those SC3 ships wouln't be considered canon.

And besides, presumably a sequel will be just that, a equel to SC2, ignoring SC3. If SC3 is ignored then its ships won;t be included.

I agree that all the extinct ships from SC1 & 2 should be there for Supermelee though

SC3 ships were a mixed bag, mainly poor. Some had nifty concepts but were horribly balanced. The best of the lot was the Clairconctlar.
If there had been some bug fixes and relatively minor balance tweaks, the Harika/Yorn and Vyro-Ingo ships would have been good.
Herald was kind of decent. It flew very differently than the Ilwrath, so the repeat of the cloaking device isn't so bad.
The Owa were also respectable.

I am not sure that getting these five ships would be worth the difficulty. The others were so severely flawed I wouldn't even want to bother bringing them in without severe rebalancing that would change their feel. Perhaps I'm forgetting one or two other decent ships. I haven't thought about this recently.

I probably worded my previous post poorly w/r/t the SC3 ships.  I was thinking allow them in SuperMelee, but not in the main game.  I'm thinking of how the Androsynth, for example, was in SC1 but in SC2 they weren't there since the Orz are in their space, however you could use the Guardian in Melee.  There are a few ships in SC3 that I liked, and some I didn't.  I would think that whether or not they were used in Melee combat should be up to the players making their teams, by whatever agreed upon rules they have between them.

I do think that some of the SC3 ships could have been designed better.  I also noticed that the Kohr-Ah Maurader was backwards relative to what it was in SC2.  The thing I disliked most about combat in SC3 was the planet (it wasn't much good for gravity whips and if you brought your Chmmr Avatar too close, as well as many of the other ships, your engines would be too weak to overcome the gravity).  I didn't like the faux 3-d that it had as well, but at least you had the option to switch it to the 2D view.  Also the lack of the little screen on the side where you saw the people (aliens) actually operating their vehicle, which I always liked and thought was a nice touch.  Any sequel should remember that from SC2.

I'm not a fan of SC3 but I would like to see what it would be like to use a Terminator against a Ravager.  Another thing about SC3 I didn't like, all the ships from 1 and 2 should have been available in Melee.  SC3 was a big disappointment, and I would love to see a true SC3 as much as most of the people here.  I did like how in the main game each ship had an upgrade that could be found and researched for it.  I would have rather the Crusier got engines that put it in the middle of the pack speed/acelleration wise than the bigger battery that let you have more missiles on the screen as an in-game upgrade.  Would have worked for the way the Crusier is supposed to be used better IMO.

I'm glad that you agree that the extinct ships like the Avenger should be available in the Melee.  I do wonder what a Gg or Burvixese ship, or what their races, looked like for that matter.  Would be really sweet if the Creators designed ships that looked like the other members of the Sentient Mileu, solely for Melee, but I suspect they would be overpowered relative to the ships we have for the games.  Though the Melnorme isn't really, and aren't they the descendants of the Mael-Num?  Wonder what a Yuli, Drall, or Yuptar would look like, as well as how their ships would appear/perform.  I think there is a description of one of those three available somewhere.  Wouldn't mind seeing a Taalo ship either (though at least we have an idea of what they look like), would love to see one stand side by side to a Chenjesu.  Even the Faz would be interesting, if we got them out of their slave shield.

Correction: It seems that the first Galactic Civilizations is about as old as MoO1. Maybe it's partly convergent design, to make up a term for it. Of course, the later games may have borrowed from each other.

http://tgnforums.stardock.com/?aid=88762

That's why you say to stardock, that you plan on using the business model that Guild Wars is using.  Instead of charging a monthly fee,  just make a bunch of expansions.  Don't know how much money their sitting on from this plan of theirs but it must be working since GW2 is on its way.   Hell if you could just take GW and give it a spacelift,  you would have a damn good drawing board for your game and a base for mixing multiplayer and story together seamlessly in a way that would feel like "riding a bike" when compared to the flow of SC2.  When you consider missions that replay historic moments in SC2,  when the shoftixti blew up their sun...or the humans were first enslaved.

I think in order to make another Star Control that will survive they have to revive SC2 for the masses, with todays tech, but don't just stop there.  Add more to the story,   add the prelude to war......hmmm idea just popped in my head.      You come out with the first installment........in that game you have the prelude to SC2   all the things that happened before humans got enslaved, etc.   Let it run a year.   Then you come out with the SC2 expansion......let it run its course...then you follow it up with the hunt for the precursors, and what happened to them, what happened to the andosynth...etc.     But unlike GW, you need to have different starting points.....if I decide to play a thraddash, you don't want me playing the game from the same starting point as a human now do ya.

For the next game I would hope that you would have a better Precursor ship than you did in SC3, the one in that game outright sucked offensively though I thought it's version of point defense was decent.  The Mark II that was mentioned in the closing of the game (after you win), would be a nice flagship to have, but I think that the a new game would start with the ship not being in the best of shape, and needing you to improve it before you would use it in combat.  (That idea from SC2 is one of my favorite things about this game)

What would the storyline be?  How big of an area would you use for stars?  I would hope that they could include our sector and at least 1 other (an adjacent one would be nice so you could also go to Sol).  Whether it's the one that the Kzer-Za went through before reaching ours, the one the Kohr-Ah went through before reaching us.  It would be very interesting if in the Kohr-Ah sector there were some races that escaped detection by the Kohr-Ah. (much like how the Utwig, Supox, Druuge, and Pkunk weren't attacked by the Kzer-Za during the war)  Or a case or two where there were aliens that weren't on their homeworld when it was attacked by the Kohr-Ah,  Essentially a situation similiar to humans on Unzervalt after the Kzer-Za slave-shielded Earth.  Would be really nice to meet a Burvixese, or Gg.  One could also work with the sector that the Kzer-Za went through before attacking us.   We might find slave shielded worlds, as well as battle thralls that didn't know what happened with the Kzer-Za. 

Perhaps the Dynarri could have escaped before the ship blew up (taking the Taalo device with it), and be causing trouble as at least one of the quests needed to complete the next game. 

Wow.  I wish I'd checked here more often.  I was going to remind ya'll of the mod project that brings, amongst other things, Star Control into Sins of a Solar Empire, which happens to be one of Stardock's games.  Link below.

http://forum.uqm.stack.nl/index.php?topic=4119.0

This sounds quite awesome. as Stardock has the expierence to handle Sci-fi games.

I hope they can do it  :-\.