The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

Does anyone else find it odd that the ZotZotPik ships have ten crew members? I always thought it should be a multiple of three, given the nature of the groups. It also makes me wonder which one is left when there's only one crew member on the ship.

I never noticed, but I guess it would make more sense if it had 12 instead of 10.

Is it possible to have odd numbers for max energy/crew? All the ships have even numbers.

It's probably possible. But I have no idea really.

Maybe 1 crew counts as 1 ZoqFotPik

You mean, 1 crew is actually 3 individuals, a Zoq, a Fot, and a Pik? It's a good idea, but what if there are humans and Shofixti aboard the Stinger? Is 1 crew still 3 individuals? That wouldn't be consistent with the other ships.

The ZFP are a union of 3 races, that make sure each race is represented equally on certain positions holding power, ie. in their goverment. Captaining a starship is also such a position holding power, so they have to be represented by all three.
However, working aboard such a starship as a red shirt isn't being in a position of power, so it's just a matter of selecting the best zoq's fot's and pik's for the job ;).

If there are humans or shofixti on a stinger they each take one slot. Zoq, Fot and Pik seem like relatively small creatures and work closely together. I don't see an inconstistancy... a unit of ZFP "crew" is always 3 individuals and for the other races it's one, no matter what ship they are on. So a Stinger crewed by 10 ZFP crew units in fact has 30 individual sentients aboard... if all but the captain are aliens then there are 9 aliens and 1 Zoq, Fot and Pik. This is consistant with the captain portrait (though the Earthling, Spathi and Androsynth already violate logic in that regard).

I think I have raised simular "concern" for Androsynth ship with 4 crew present on the pic and the Earthling , with two .

Why is damage marked with crew loss anyways? Normally it's hull and/or shield.

If it was mellee only , it could be just that - hull strength , but this was , I believe , to make the 2000 personnel of the starbase to be of real importance .

If we buy into the idea that the three beings combine to be shown as one crew unit, then the ZFP are sort of the Holy Trinity of the galaxy.

Nah the same principle applied in SC1

what about the slylandro's?  they don't have "crew"...

According to the interface, they do have crew. Which must mean there are little drones piloting the Probe.

I'm guessing to make the game less complicated. The ship designs are so different that it would be hard to make up a reason why one ship has higher shielding than another and what makes that shielding and why the Vindicator can't increase its shields. It would seem that a ship like the Fury would have virtually no shields and something like the Stinger would actually have high shields, but that would detract and add to the ship powers, etc.

Having hull or strength might also make the Syreens special weapon a tad hard to use. The Slylandro has grey crew that aren't susceptible to the Syreen song, unlike the M:bots. I'd guess that means that they can be seen as "hull" or whatever, while the others are actual sentient crew members.

Is the Maurader not manned by a single Kohr-Ah?

Yes it is. And the same goes for the green Ur-quan.
But I think that after being defeated the green Ur-quan will suspend the rule of 'only one ur-quan per ship' and start having multiples on each ship.

If they do that, they'll just start fighting each other anyway, so there's no real point.

I think that surely there will be some competition and some fighting, but I don't think they'll fight until only one ur-quan remains. The whole story about the Ur-quan achieving spacetravel, and after that gaining such a large following of battle thralls doesn't make sense if it was done -- in the beginning -- with just one ur-quan in each ship. Because that'd make them technically oneshottable.

I mean, their supremacy has to start somewhere and for that the Ur-quan must have had some sort of cooperation between them to achieve this. Just one ur-quan by itself can't build a spaceship or gain the technology to even start thinking about building spaceships :).

Therefore, I think the one ur-quan per ship rule was established quite a bit in the future of the Hierarchy, when enough crewmembers were available from the other races to relieve the Ur-quan of the risk that having 2 or more Ur-quan on a ship brings.. And with the Hierarchy basically gone, the Ur-quan will have to revert to their old methods of cooperation to have even the slightest bit of success in the future.

Then again, I'm open to an explanation how the Ur-quan achieved spacetravel by not cooperating with one another :)

Maybe the level of difficulty of killing 1 Kohr-Ah is equal to the difficulty of killing 40 men. Or maybe their bone pit counts as 40 people.

http://krejall-ontaris.deviantart.com/art/Star-Control-II-poster-120403813
In other words, I most certainly think so yes ;).

So, what are the Syreen pulling off of Marauders?

Semi-sentient robots or maybe Kohr-Ah are actually working closely together. They have no slave races and may actually be more capable of it than the Kzer-za since as laborers and warriors they would have been working together in closer quarters than the intellectual Kzer-za.

Granted either would be weird. Semi-sentient robots raises the issue of why not dumb robots (like those that fly the probes)? This is important since given their reaction to the Dnyarri on board your ship and the ease with which Ur-Quan were once controlled, plus the fact that Taalo are psi-immune and no other race even the Mrm or Chen is mentioned to avoid setting of Ur-Quan I tend to suspect the Ur-Quan are very sensitive to psi. A robot complex enough to think and thus be susceptible to the Syreen call is probably going to register to the Ur-Quan as another being even if it smells like diesel. In fact even if they can't subconsciously feel it's mind they'd likely be uncomfortable with something that independant. If dumb robots simply can't do the job and well contolled smart ones are preferred to rival Ur-Quan this could be a possible answer.

I say it's 40 times harder to charm a Kohr-Ah than it is a man. So each time the Siren Song is sung, the Kohr-Ah pilot's inhibitions are dropped by 1/40, represented by a loss of 1 crew  ;D

Doesn't work, because the Syreen also gains one crew (well, ideally anyway).

Does work - the sence of acomplishment makes all aboard work harder , represented by +1 crew :D

It's just game mechanics. The number of men on each ship doesn't directly correlate to the 'crew' value.

(http://wiki.uqm.stack.nl/script/images/1/19/Star_control_i_shofixti_scout_databank.png)
I mean, does it look like 6 shofixiti can fit in that thing?


Just a quote from the ZFP conversation, the Springy dude somewhat implies that Stingers have only a single captain and not  a triplet set.

So those things flying in space are actually 'powerups' ? :P

Fit inside? Certainly. Two in the cockpit and four more crammed in the rear making sure the systems stay working. Military submarines and modern spacecraft tend to be cramped and I imagine SC warships have similair issues. Of course... I can only justify technically fiting inside and operating the ship... I doubt they'd have much room leftover for food, air, medical supplies or even a toliet. Could almost believe those conditions if they were actual fighters but the designation Scout implies they use them for long term exploration. Maybe they cram them full for redundancy in combat and send out lone shofixti or pairs for normal scouting?

As for the Pik's quote, valid. Not conclusive but valid. Saying it would be a good captain doesn't nessicarily mean it's talking about an exclusive posistion, the statment "I'd make a pretty good game programmer" doesn't mean you expect to be the only game programmer on the team. The translator would have no way of communicating such a subtle difference in the connations of the word. The Pik's comments about commanding in battle give a bit more weight to the individual captain idea but it's still not certain evidence against the tri-captain theory. The Pik  may be assuming that it is such a hotshot that the other two captains would obviously defer to it in combat.

Amusing though it may be I don't buy the fractional willpower of the Kohr-Ah explanation and I am not satisfied with either smart bots or subservient Kohr-Ah...any other thoughts? .... maybe it IS the bone pit after all...

To be honest, i'm more for ditching the entire 'crew is hull' principle. That way, only one kohr ah per ship is viable and you won't have the problems with the earthling and androsynth remaining with 2 and 4 of them while crew has gone to 1 :).

This works well because there is no such canon principle. It's just handwaving by people who don't like the crew concept. The Syreen special, commander Hayes tale of serving on board a Scout, the difference between M:bots and Slylandro, the actual buying of crew in SC2, the plundering of crew from colonies in SC1 and so forth all indicate that it is actual crew.

There has also been a lot of debate on the number of Kohr-Ah on board a ship. The general consensus seems to be that since the Kohr-Ah were supposed to be the  Dnyarri workers and the warriors they may have had their territorial instinct bred out of them, unlike the green Dnyarri thinkers and organizers who they might have preferred to keep asocial so that they don't manage to organise an uprising. So there might be 40 Kohr-ah, or there might be sentient droids that need to be sentient to be advanced enough.

How does that work with the Syreen song?

I tend to think the Korh-Ah must have had the territorial instinct bred out of them. They don't take slaves and there are obviously a full crew on their ships. Otherwise, as others pointed out, the Syreen song wouldn't work. You can capture their crew and take them back to the starbase and sell them. Or trade them for Druuge goods. That would indicate real life forms.

Man, there should totally be special dialogs you can have with captured members of any of the races. It's a shame that would have been way too complicated to do.
Maybe for 2.0...  or maybe they're too mind-blasted to be responsive?

I imagine it would be very Doog-like, before getting to know them

Gameplay > Realism. Anything dealing with crew, in the game, just doesn't correlate directly to canon. The mechanics of melee and the special abilities are quite a bit of fun as is. There is no need to try and force a correlation when it's much more likely just a gameplay feature to keep combat simple. Thus, anything carried over from combat would also need to be simplified in the story mode.

It could be possible that 'crew' includes both staff and the hull of a ship. Who knows, if you dump a bunch of psionics into a Kohr-Ah, it may just flail about, knocking off pieces of its ship that are good enough for a penetrator to utilize. In other situations, as crew leave a ship, they may just be taking pieces of it with them, only to let go of them as they float in space. Is there any canon that says that the number of crew that a syreen picks up is 1 to 1 with the real-live staff on the ship?

The Tobermoon arrives at Sol with full crew, even though the Captain of the ship died.
The 1900 staff limit can be broken without Shofixti.

The Syreen special will still work and overall effectiveness of a ship will decrease when crew is lost, and thus making it easier to kill.
The commander hayes tale is still right, he DID serve on a scout. Ofcourse it is. He just didn't count as a hitpoint, but if he should die it would undermine the effectiveneess of the ship and therefore make it easier to kill.
The buying of crew in SC2.. same story, you need crew to operate your ship. Less crew means less effectiveness and no crew means your ship is defenseless and prolly self destructs.

I already imagine the job interview that Hayes had with the Ur-quan commander delegated to Sol.
"So... what did you do on board that scout?"
"Well.. not much. The ship pretty much only needs a captain to fly, and I just served as a hitpoint."
"A what?"
"A hitpoint. Meaning the shots from other ships would kill me first, and then the other 4 shofixti on the ship, and lastly, the captain upon which the ship would be destroyed."
"Ahh.. okay... well I guess being a hitpoint is sufficient experience to become starbase commander! You're hired!"

So all in all, crew does have an effect on when your ship will be destroyed, but the actual hitpoints of a ship are measured in hull strength, not in crew.

There has got to be something more for crew to do on a ship that haves an effect on its operation, except just being a red shirt.
For future star control games I'd like to have a system where the hull strength is influenced by weaponry, but additionally shots on a ship might kill crewmembers because they get burned, sucked into the vacuum of space etc ;).
When the ship is destroyed is determined by hull strength, but the actual crewmembers determine the overall effectiveness of your ship. For example crew working in the engine room of the ship could improve the speed, accelleration and fuel consumption of the ship. Or crew working in the weapons bays would improve the refire rate, energy consumption and tracking systems of the weaponry.




Still, it's impossible for a race (in this case the brown ur-quan) to become spacefaring, construct spaceships, gain technology if there isn't atleast some form of cooperation between them. And with the abscence of technology in the first few years of Ur-quan sentience, there has got to be some form of way that multiple ur-quan could work together.
Probably they DID work together, accepting all the risks that it involved. Probably there were a lot of fights and brawls in their first factories, and probably a lot of those fights resulted in ur-quan dying or severely getting hurt.,but it was neccesary to advance the race.

I don't think the logic was that they are hitpoints but that as long as you have crew you can perform emergency repairs and make do. Obviously hull strength exists, it's just totally abstracted in combat. Damage to the hull means people die and people dying means less ability to maintain integrity of the ship.

Of course any way you slice it, the fact that a ship with only it's captain is as effective (until it gets hit again) as a ship with a fully intact crew and hull doesn't make for much realism and is less interesting. Of course with SC1 being ancient and SC2 having been over budget and deadline anyway I can see why we haven't had such effects to date.

It would be very interesting if you could have crew, probably specialized skilled crew, boost various aspects of the ship while they remain alive. It would give you room to customize and improve the function of ship and make it so the ship actually perform more poorly once damaged.

Another similair idea I've had is to have it be possible for ships to loose systems from damage. Think of the first Ilwrath ship or Tanaka and Katana's scouts, a ship could be left with a reasonable amount of crew but have important systems damaged or offline. Figure out a system to determine such damage and apply penalties that reduce a ship's capabilities in exactly the opposite of the way upgrades and crew would improve it. Perhaps such effects can be caused (tactics crew targeting well) and mitigated (engieering making fixes) by effective crew.

I lol'd

I really like the idea of systems penalties/loss and it shouldn't be that difficult to implement as a mod . the targeting , on the other hand , is a whole deal harder , most likely impossible in this base code structure .

I actually meant the targeting of the homing weapons, not the targeting of the regular weapons ;). This should be easy enough to implement.

That hitpoint joke deserves to become a running gag on this forum.

Actually, the Ur-Quan certainly did manage to work together enough to create the beginnings of a space-faring civilization. This is from dialog with them, so it's canon.

I'm not sure if your arguing with me or not, but if you are you've misunderstood my post. I was commenting on the "There is no crew, there is only hull" concept that you were thinking of ignoring and agreeing with you. What the crew does I don't know. As I recall, the last time this issue was raised, back when someone else was making a mod, that was the main argument against there being crew on board; "What so each hit magically kills them and then the ship explodes?". I'd assume they seal damages and bulkheads, reroute power and whatever, just like you're apparently thinking.

While I applaud your efforts to make a more realistic melee, I'd also advise you to be careful. Part of the fun in melee is that it's simple, if you start adding crumple zone, tons of different efficiencies and whatnot you'll make it more complex. And once it's complex enough the illusion tends to break even more and people start nitpicking and demanding more realism, until you've got a space battle simulation, which might not be as fun as the original arcade battle.

Regarding the Ur-Quan, of course the original brown ones could work together. How would they have built a civilisation otherwise? They didn't like it though and had some problems with it, which is presumably why the Kzer-Za still avoid each other if they can. Or maybe their territorial instinct was strengthened just as the Kohr-Ah instinct was weakened?

I don't see why bureaucrats would have heightened territorial...

never mind.

Lukipela, I prolly misunderstood your comment about the crew thing :).

Anyway, about the realistic melee. My efforts are not exactly geared towards making the SC2 supermelee more interesting, but more towards making the single player portion of a future Star Control more interesting. One important thing I keep in mind is that.. not everyone can fly a precursor starship. Not everyone can command an entire fleet of starships, in fact, in SC2 the only one who did just that was captain Zelnick. And if the main character of a future SC game is not captain Zelnick or he flies a precursor starship, the game will have to feature something extra to make it interesting. These things could include modular upgrades, crew effectiveness, 'leveling up' etc etc :)

As far as overcomplicating melee, let me say a few things. I am imagining simple things for the most part and not occuring too commonly. No crumple zones, no special areas to target. Just occasional critical hits doing fairly simple things. Maybe your turning rate drops or your secondary goes offline for a while, nothing that radically changes the nature of the game. The kind of effects you see the results of with the first Ilwrath and the Shofixti scout in Delta Gorno. Would this be too much for some people? Meh, probably but I like complicated games.  Also I don't imagine it as a replacement for supermelee, more like how SC1 has Melee and Full game and TW has a ton of game modes. This would simply be another way to play, not a replacement.

I'd also like to see an upgraded strategy mode with things like exceptional crew members and modular upgrades, as well as hoping to see them in a new story mode. Me and some friends have been messing around with Timewarp in hopes of doing just that. Melee is fun and building fleets for it is interesting but sometimes I want something more complex and the storyline has limited replayability; the Full Game/Strategy mode really is my favorite and more advanced version would be awesome.

Speaking of TW: I really liked GOB with its modular upgrades :).

And you know, wouldn't it be great for a future SC based game if you could start really small.. perhaps in the smallest earthling fighter busting out pirates around mars, then getting promoted to captain of an old cruiser which is a pain to fly, and then working your way to the top of some battleship while in the meanwhile an intergalactic story unfolds? Space will be crawling with starships again because now a lot of races have been liberated, perhaps earth will have its navy, but also outcasts which behave like space pirats etc etc.
All the while having to work hard to keep your ship crewed, and you can upgrade it with certain modules to make it do better stuff.. Perhaps even work together with wingmen for a while, or keeping heroes on your ship that improve certain statistics of your ship, heroes who have their own motivations and might join you for cash or leave you when you do things that conflict with their interests/morals.

Thinkers and scientists is what I was thinking about, but good point. Maybe they have a very efficient filing system?

Yeah that's about precisely what I had in mind. In the later game you may be able to gather a fleet and even support colonies directly under your command. The Vindicator is cool, but it takes the spotlight off the other ships to a degree and nothing will drive home just how awesome it was than trying to cope without it's flexibility and massive capacities in both war and mining.

The upgrades as I imagine them combine elements from most of the SC games. The basic upgrades found in GOB and SC1 are around... but they ARE precursor artifacts, they are not readily availible and often expensive if you can buy them at all. On the other hand they can be fitted to any starship with ease. There would also be several upgrades possed by each race, these are cheaper, less powerful and often tailored to the ship(s) of the race in question. Scientist and/or engineering specialists would allow you to get around this and splice the technology of alien races together for a price. The more races and science you have, the more options you have for redesiging ships.

As far as module capacity, I was thinking in terms of giving each ship several slots in a few generic catagories. Combined with racial limitations these slots can balance things to make sure insanely powerful ships are difficult or impossible to produce. Of course the effects of upgrades in SC1 were generally not ridiculous it's something to watch for. GOB's solution of simply raising costs might also work instead. Not entirely sure.

Your heros/specialist crew would also work to provide small boosts and allow things you couldn't otherwise do (like splicing alien technologies), and of course your main character provides you at least one over whom you have total control.

Hmm... are we off topic yet?

I have just one question.

...what's GOB?

GOB is a storyless gameplay mode in Timewarp. You start with a Supox Blade and face a slow but steady onslaught of increasingly powerful enemy ships. They do not come one at a time either. You get credits for destroying asteroids and ships which you can use to buy upgrades, repairs, or another ship type at 4 different space stations. Each station offers a particular ship and upgrades and most ships have some unique upgrades. You can get any ship, or apparently hunt for resources though I haven't tried that, if you find the Rainbow Rift, which like the 3 non-starting stations is somewhere randomly in the play field. Unlike the stations it moves each time you find it.

You can find it in Timewarp or if you search for GOB here you'll find an offshoot consisting of just GOB that is more recent and updated.

So, basically it's a Star Control themed version of Space Invaders?

Maybe I should go look at Timewarp then...

...Somewhat. It's pretty far removed from that genre but Galaga would be a closer analogy. Outside of Star Control itself it's probably most like Escape Velocity in the way the map is laid out and the dynamics of the fights. It's hard to find an exact comparison but saying it's a Star Control based rogue-like actually is pretty accurate. If you don't know Rogue-like games are low-story RPGs with randomized maps and lots of combat, Diablo is a recent example. Diablo actually has a good deal more story than most.

No, I do know what a Rogue-like is; I've played both rogue itself and Nethack on occasion. Never got very far though.

Anyway, I think it's best to download TW-Light and play GOB from the Extra's menu :).
http://tw-light.berlios.de/

Yeah, I wouldn't mind seeing in a SC-clone:
Temporary engine shutdown (maybe a second or two)
Temporary drift (ship rotates a few seconds before you can steer again)
Weapon off line for a few  seconds
Special offline for several seconds
Weapon offline until next match
Special offline until next match
Rotation reduced until next match

This would make hitting and getting critical hits an important part of strategy, and might make some ships more powerful than they would otherwise be, due to the secondary effects of damage.

I've remembered the thing about "being a hitpoint for the ship", and it occured to me that is being a red-shirt in original series of  StarTrek all about - apparently main cast has two hit points :)