The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

Tell me what your favorite ship is and briefly detail why it's your favorite. As both the resident melee expert and an all-around pessimist, I will explain why your favorite ship is in fact not good but actually terrible. I am willing to give multiple answers for the same ship so long as each successive post gives me something new to work with. Only one ship per person, please.

I don't get it...but I'm intrigued.

I guess my favorite is the Arilou Skiff, I think it's the most fun ship to play, although the drawbacks are huge and obvious.

Try giving me a drawback I don't know, for instance I understand that the ship is wildly overpriced and the weapon range is tiny, but what else is wrong with it?

What I find interesting about Arilou is its flanking capability.  If it's perfectly timed, any flank that you make against an enemy (except maybe Chmmr or something) is escapable assuming you don't waste all of your batteries.

Also, playing Mycon vs. Arilou is probably the most fun match-up if you're Arilou.

See, I like this. You already know that the Skiff is terrible before even finishing your post. That is commendable, but it seems you aren't aware of the ship's worst aspect: Its top speed. The Skiff can't go beyond 40 speed, or "Zoq-Fot-Pik and Supox speed" for those of you who don't know the stats (most of you). That's right -- Arilou is not even fast. Oh sure, the thing dies by a sneeze like a flanking ship would but it is not a true flanking ship.



Escaping after a successful flank as anything is really simple stuff. If you got in there without getting blasted then 95% of the work is already done. You definitely don't need an extra button to get away.



bleheheeheeheeeehahahaha

oh man

you probably think playing as Chmmr against Earthling is exciting too

I like the Intruder , just for the irritating limpets .

I like the Utwig because the computer usually can't hurt me if I use it.

My biggest complaint about the Skift is probably warping into weird places.... like in front of the enemy's gun or into the planet. I like taking the SKift and fighting Druuge with it. Putting the planet between the two ships pretty much acts like a sheld while the Druuge runs out of battery.

My all round favourite is probably the Yehat's Terminator. It's speed isn't all that great, but I like it's thrust, the shields and the double-dose of death that comes out the front.

That's an exaggeration, but I guess I asked for it.

Yeah, they're irritating alright.

These are the exact effects an individual limpet has on a ship's mobility when it affixes:

    * Turn delay increases by 1 up to a limit of 255.
    * Acceleration delay increases by 1 up to a limit of 255.
    * Acceleration increment decreases by 1 down to a limit of 4.
    * Top speed = Old top speed * (New acceleration increment / Old acceleration increment).
    * If a ship's acceleration increment is already at 4 or less, top speed will be set to 8.

Who thought this was a good idea?



This is a little too half-hearted for me to work with, though the inspiration for your claim is obvious. If you want to relive the magic of Spinsane, read this thread starting from here (http://forum.uqm.stack.nl/index.php?topic=4555.msg60049#msg60049) again. Incidentally, someone needs to bring that guy back. He was too much fun.



gum gum gum. i liek gum~



It's cool brah, you've made the only good claim in this thread so far.

The Vindicator, because it's awesome.

Sa-Matra. HA! No, I don't mean the crap we see in the game, I mean the true might of a fully armed and operational battle station.

Yes, the Vindicator is awesome. After the Melnorme transmit everything they know about ridiculous advanced weapon systems and tune it up for you. You know who should've gotten the special treatment instead? Fwiffo.



The crap you see in the game is all you get. As for the mythical Doomsday machine, that thing isn't much better. I confirmed its crappiness outside of the game with a Bayesian Utility Log-Likelihood (Subject to Holders Inequality) Test procedure.

The Mark 2!

Well, actually, Chmmr needs do little else than stand still to win that matchup, while the Arilou can easily get screwed by making one (albeit unlikely) mistake.

One ship per person + I have nothing to work with there.

Although I suck in SM against most human opponents and therefore any ship (probably) sux when I'm behind the helm I must say that I'm very fond of the Supox Blade.

I really like it because it's so fast in any given category - shooting, accelerating, turning and the only true drawback that I see with it is it's abysmal damage output. Other then that I find no flaws in it's design...and I do like Supox  as a species a lot^^

Let's strike where it hurts.

Druuge is probably the only ship that won't cause any boring stalemates. One can choose either a defensive or an aggressive playing style for the Druuge and the matches will still be very enjoyable in both cases. The main gun is something which always gives you a smirk when hitting it's target and the requirement for balanced crew sacrificing increases the tensions. It's a ship which can quite often end up winning a match against all odds and doing it with style. There's also something satisfying in flying a big ****ing space railgun.

Oh brother...



You casual players seem to have this idea in your heads that the Supox Blade is this Jack of All Trades. While other ships do indeed fill such a role, Supox would be more accurately described as a Jack of No Trades. It's not durable, it's not a heavy-hitter and it can't strike over a long distance. There is no amazing trick weapon that half the other ships in the game have to fall back on. Above average speed does not make up for these shortcomings. You know what the Supox Blade does? The Supox Blade shoots sunflower seeds while backpedaling. That's it. That's all it does.




Druuge doesn't cause stalemates because its secondary ability kills your own crew. I agree though, it's nice to be able to hurry a game along when you get tired of lobbing projectiles which won't hit their mark thanks to The World's Biggest Blindspot, ancestral enemy of the Druuge. The Crimson Corporation should take that thing to court.

So please describe, in detail, how the Marauder sucks. I'm curious, seeing as how you acknowledge it (if I recall correctly) as the most powerful ship in the game (of course, everything has its counters, but the Kohr-Ah have the fewest effective ones).

The range is immense, it can lay down tracking minefields, the secondary both abosrbs any incoming damage and dishes out massive pain. Sure it flies and turns fairly slow, but so do most big ships.

I like the Spathi Eluder, Very maneuverable.

How does one define "most powerful"? Kohr-Ah typically loses big when it goes head to head with Chmmr, so it's not top dog in that sense. Shofixti, being the cheapest ship, has fewer counters. Thraddash certainly eclipses Kohr-Ah in terms of cost-effectiveness, at least for those of you who are zany enough to play with that horrible little demon. It's true that I once thought Kohr-Ah was the strongest ship in a general sense. I still do. But in a game of counters, the top of the pile is often the bottom of the food chain. Fleets with no Kohr-Ah or Chmmr but many lightweights can and frequently do win at high level play.



Minefields which the Utwig can gleefully wade through to charge up their shields and become untouchable. It's like Bowser giving Mario an invincibility star. It's also littering.  >:(


Does the ship still smell like roses to you? Here's another fault: Kohr-Ah's AI script. It's abysmal. The Awesome Cyborg is apparently not awesome enough to pilot one of those. I would go so far as to say Kohr-Ah's AI script is a perfect demonstration of what not to do with the ship. The story game Marauder is essentially a Dreadnought with a weaker, slower forward weapon. And while the Dreadnought's secondary ability throws two of its crewmen out the airlock, misuse of FRIED conveniently empties the ship's battery for you.




And with Very Bad weapons to carry day the day!

So your big rip down of the Marauder is that the AI doesn't handle it very well? And your complaint about the Eluder is that it's weapon isn't very powerful. I thought you were going to provide some ripping good drama here. Maybe some points on why the ship would get completely owned in player vs player. Where's the passion?

I'm going to have to second Zeep. Your tear-down of the Marauder seems to be "Utwig can absorb the mines, and the AI sucks." It doesn't even look like you tried with the Eluder. We expect better from our resident fountain of vitriol!

Oh stop the frickin' whining about my Spathi response. Low-effort claims deserve low-effort responses. It certainly isn't the first time I've dismissed someone's challenge in this thread.


Draxas & Zeep-Eeep: My first paragraph related to Kohr-Ah is an honest answer that I would give outside of a gimmick topic like this. It's not hyperbole. Those of you who don't play PvP might not realize that 30-point ships don't reign supreme. The truth is that Kohr-Ah or Chmmr need to either win a mirror match by a comfortable margin or beat more than one ship in a row to earn their weight in points, and that isn't very reliable at high level play. Kohr-Ah is not rank 1 of 25. 12 of 25 or thereabout is closer to the truth. I'm saving material in case someone else brings up Kohr-Ah again.

And another thing -- not every ship has a terrible AI. At least one ship's AI plays better than 95% of players and I think you all know which one that is!

I shouldn't have used my one-ship-per-poster rule on my favorite ship to play, but instead should have guessed your favorite ship to play. That would make this thread more interesting. It may not be the most fun ship, but since you've obviously taken cost-effectiveness into high regard, I'd guess that your "1 out of 25" is probably the Androsynth Blazer (or Guardian). I'd like to hear what's wrong with that ship.

Off hand, I have no clue which ship the AI plays better than a human. The Druuge for sharpshooting accuracy? But the AI will burn Druuge crew like there's no tomorrow. The Yehat for better shield battery usage? The AI won't raise the shield sometimes. The Ilwrath because the AI actually knows where the ship is? That doesn't make the Ilwrath a good ship.

Not sure.

As for the ship I pick? Um, the Broodhome? But I know its weaknesses. Slow (though at least it doesn't have to fight getting caught in the planet's gravity well like it did in SC1), poor battery recharge, and half the time the DOGIs are either useless or an actual hindrance. Still they can tear apart a Druuge and ruin an Utwig's day.

Umgah. ;)

Your enthusiasm is astounding.



The Broodhome is not slow. "Slow" doesn't say it. The Broodhome is an obese sea turtle. The planet--which we in #uqm-arena often refer to as "Chenjesu's other counter"--is always a major threat to obese sea turtles, even with SC2's larger arena.



Chenjesu is more expensive than either of those. It has to pull off a multiple-ship killing spree to pull its weight. Unlike with Kohr-Ah or Chmmr, this virtually never happens. Those rare instances of success can be attributed to the fact that most players have no practice at dealing with the thing at all. The Chenjesu Broodhome is irrelevant to the competitive melee scene.





Yeah, exactly.



I have no favorite. #1 of 25 is a banned ship.



Umgah has one of the better AI scripts to be sure, but that's not it.

It's the Arilou, of course, where Fred and Paul admitted that they purposely had to make the AI stupid in order for it to be beatable. Then again, the AI flies Slylandro far better than most players as well, at least when it's not trying to infinitely chase an Eluder anyway.

The skift would be insanely difficult to beat if it had a better weapon. Imagine it with the Chmmr's laser.

Was thinking super melee Slylandro, distinct from the dumbed-down campaign variation. Arilou not so much. Arilou does that thing where it runs directly into the spot your projectiles spawn from. If you fire while it's there, that's a guaranteed hit. Slylandro AI does have a defect or two of this nature, but nothing as debilitating as that.

Sure, for my first post here, I'd like to order up a little abuse and take up the mantle of zaniness by claiming that the Thraddash Torch is by far the best return on investment of the bunch.  Often overlooked, but it's fun to play, fast, maneuverable, and its "flamescreen" attack serves as both an excellent offensive and defensive tool...plus it recharges pretty quickly.  Typically one of my personal best options against the Ur-Quan ships, too.

Have at me!  Fresh meat...

I quite like the Pkunk. Sure, it recharges slowly and deliberately, and it has a bad range, but it's pretty much the fastest ship available, and it has a chance of resurrecting. That's not to say it's good against anything (pitting it against Syreen would be better for the Syreen, I expect), but it's pretty good against a lot of things.

That's funny, I don't see any mention of the Mark VI Blaster in this post. It seems you know that the Torch is game-breakingly powerful, but you don't know why. Despite its status as a banned ship, #uqm-arena regulars sometimes let players such as yourself use Thraddash because it's clear you're not a threat in the first place. Let me clue you in...

The general idea of the Thraddash Torch is fun. The way it was implemented is not. The Torch's afterburner gives the ship the highest sustainable speed of anything in the game and its primary weapon outranges more than half of the game's entire line-up. Yes, you heard right, that stupid plinker gun is key to the Torch's abusiveness. A determined pilot can abuse these advantages to slowly pick apart a wide variety of different enemies, starting from the little Shofixti and going all the way up to Ur-Quan and Chmmr with only a few exceptions in between. Fights involving the Torch are infamously long, boring and frustrating. Thraddash is easily the worst designed ship in Star Control 2 and you are a bad person for liking it.



A no-respawn Pkunk Fury is godawful. You have a 50% chance of not respawning at all. Even when you get lucky you won't get any mileage out of the Fury unless you're pro with flanking ships. Conversely, even if you are pro with flanking ships there's that 50% chance of getting a dud.  Why anyone would ever rely on Pkunk in competitive play is beyond me, but it happens a lot.

Well, thanks... I'll just go cry in the corner now, okay?

That's because my aim sucks and I therefore tend to use weapons that either home in or just plaster the entire field with death.  Fortunately, I'm a better pilot than gunner usually...but you're probably right that I'm not much of a threat, either.  Thanks for the education...  :P


Thanks for that!  I laughed before I cried, though...  ;)

just because a ship is badly designed or imbalanced doesn't mean it sucks.

And Star Control 3 isn't a bad game. </godwin's law>

Well, it isn't a "bad" "game". It's a horrible abomination that should never, ever, be mentioned again.

That is such a cheap reply ;). You were supposed to tell us why the ship sucks, not how it was designed. :)
And I agree with you. Many ships aren't designed for supermelee, they are plot-devices so you can solve the game (see: Chmmr)

My favorite ship is the Ploxis Plunderer. I like it because it looks like a mouse and makes squeaky mouse sounds.

My favorite ship from SC3 is the flagship when I use a memory editor to lock the battery at full charge. Then I just hold down the button for the point-defense and away I go!

Character wise- the Yehat Terminator is my favorite but for this particular bait, ill go with the Transformer.  it is adaptable to different strategies, has homing long range weapons that are difficult to avoid for long periods, giving the ship a certain inevitability against many others.  The ship has a decent crew size so it can actually take a few hits from the heavy main guns of the big ships, but it has the speed and acceleration of the smaller ships.   Seems pretty cost effective.

Now as for SC3 i loved that game.  Sure its just a shadow compared to SC2 but ive enjoyed it everytime ive played it thru.  it compounded on and added to the universe  and ambience of SC that i like so much, and for me at least, it did not diminish its predecessor with its flaws, but enriched the experience for me with its new faces, the puppetry live video the new puzzles and adventures, and yes i even liked the colony building.  Who doesnt love those cute little XCHAGGERZ!!!

So in theory, who wins in  a fight of Thraddash vs. Doog ?  or does the battle never end?

Doogs win. Their crew replenishment is faster than Thraddash rate of fire, and the Torch isn't healing and can get hit once in a while.

Isn't this thread over with? I guess not.



"Adaptable to different strategies" is incorrect. There's one very boring play style that works well and several other approaches one can take which sound exciting but tend to fail miserably. What works is maintaining maximum range and spamming missiles. The Mmrnmhrm's laser form is kind of bad, really. It doesn't cover very much area, using it drains the ship's battery almost instantly and you can't line it up very well because the X-Wing-Form Thing has a turn delay of 2. Jousting with the laser against slower targets sounds awesome but rarely pays off. The laser form is bad enough that the flanking ships it's designed to stop frequently come out on top fighting against it. Missile spam on the other hand is amazing, and you should do it as often as humanly possible.



You know, that's nice. Good for you, man.

Is this topique still active?
It's strange that noone has mentioned the Androsyn Guardian so far. Which is clearly the best vessel above all!

Let's see the plus side:
- a main weapon which has practically an unlimited range
- if used correctly, you can force out your enemy from the Gravity Whip or you can stop him/her standing still.
- you can even defend yourself with the bubbles (effective against many ships which has only a short range weaponary, eg. Fury, Skiff, etc.)
- (if someone is stupid enough for doing that ^_^) you can surprise your enemy with a load of bubble if he/she tries to flank you
- in the Blazer form you can outrun everyone (excluding the Fury, the Probe and the Mauler - but you can defeat them in another way)
- you can elude everything in Blazer form
- you can flank many ships in Blazer form as well
- many vessels can be destroyed if you hit it in the Blazer form "once" on a right place (eg. Avatar, Eluder, etc.)
- no definite counter exists against it (even the Marauder can be defeated - tried many times in PVP! The Terminator can give it hard time but that's for 23 pts and that ship has more counters)
- in short: long range attack + fast + manouvreable + quick destruction (Blazer) ... all for 15 pts.

The minus side:
- takes some practice to fly it well, including ramming the enemy and not to get destroyed
- if your Blazer form expires you're vulnerable for a short while, no energy to attack and no speed. (But please, who ends up the journey of the Blazer in point blank range or right in front of the enemy?)
- and yeah, it could have 42 crew, 42 energy which loads in 1 sec, and fast as a pkunk and for, say, 7 pts. Yeah, sure.

Androsynth Rulez. That's it. It should have a value of 23. I think.

This is something I've never understood. Whenever I try to fight anything with the Avatar, I almost always die, especially against Marauders. They're supposed to be good against the Ur Quan but I have yet to see any evidence of this.
In fact, I couldn't finish the game at all until I got rid of my Avatars and loaded up on Juggers instead.

Why Juggers? Isn't Spathi much easier?

I can barely beat a Probe with an Eluder. I have no idea how you're supposed to do a Marauder.

I can't kill a probe without major damage to my Spathi, but kill off Kohr-Ah easilly...

Correction: they're supposed to be good against Ur-Quan Kzer-Za. The Chmmr had no idea the Kohr-Ah existed ;)
Indeed, think about it: the Avatar's ZapSats are excellent for picking off fighters launched by the Dreadnought. The Avatar is a powerful capital ship matching the Dreadnought (though that's also a weakness, as the X-form's mobility tends to be better suited for picking a Dreadnought apart from afar, and thus not sustain any damage). While it might sustain heavy damage in the process, the Avatar will almost always win in a dogfight between them.

Let's also keep in mind the other known craft Hierarchy races had...

The Avatar outperforms the Intruder (and its satellites render the VUX limpets completely harmless).
The Avenger and the Drone will be shot down before they can inflict any serious damage.
The Podship can do some damage, but the tractor beam stops it from keeping distance and gives it no time to resurrect crew.
The Discriminator is completely harmless.

In fact, the only vessel which poses a significant threat to it is the Androsynth Guardian (and the Dreadnought can inflict considerable damage, of course). But apart from these weaknesses, the Avatar is quite well suited to fighting any Hierarchy ship. Only the Discriminator and the Guardian in Blazer form possess a drive powerful enough to escape the tractor beam and the deadly laser which accompanies it.

Well that makes sense. The Avatar always seemed to be better against the Dreadnought then the Marauder.


Anyway, the Eluder vs Marauder battle was much easier then I thought it would be, although it's kid of irrelevant since I only had one Eluder at the time I was playing the game.
During Super Melee against 3 marauders with Good Cyborg as the AI, here are my results.

2 Juggers dead
2 Eluders dead
3 Avatars dead (and I got lucky in this fight)

I suppose you're laughing at this, but I'm new to the game and not that good at fighting.

I don't think anyone laughing - in fact, most of us are probably envious (I am) that you're about to undergo such a lovely experience.

Indeed. Most of us here have explored the game so thoroughly and so many times, we wish we could experience it fresh without knowing where everything is and the solutions to all the puzzles in the game.

Nope, I've already played through the whole game. (Although I had to use a walkthrough since I missed most of the clues.)

As far as I know, the only things I haven't done are the Sylandro quest and allying with the Thraddash.

Spathi Eluders are my personal choice for an Ur-Quan / Kohr-Ah killing machine (when my SIS isn't armed to the teeth).  Dart in, B.U.T.T., dart out, repeat.  Just don't travel in a straight line when fighting Marauders, or you'll run right back into those leftover spinning discs.

For the final battle, a Pkunk or two I find most effective.  Honestly, I've never had much use for the Chmmr Avatar in story mode.

In this case -
hahaha *points finger*


J/K

Or 6 if you're me.

I just don’t understand the Torch ban at all. The Thraddash Torch is the best thing ever! It is easy to see that a ship is good when your opponent would rather slam into the planet than face it! You know, I just absolutely ADORE anticlimactic hour long battles which involve firing hopelessly at an impossible to hit vessel while having crew members killed one at a time.

The Thraddash Torch, friend of video game masochists everywhere!

*Captain Kztkrmz enters the bridge of his Avatar*

XO Mrnkzt: "Ah, captain! An enemy vessel has jumped out of hyperspace."
Captain Kztkrmz: "What class is it?"
XO Mrnkzt: "It is a... Thraddash Torch, captain. I've already ordered the ship to engage."
Captain Kztkrmz: "No bother. Our engines combined with our highly advanced and shiny tractor beams won't be enough to catch it."
XO Mrnkzt: "The Torch is closing in fast! Are we going to retreat?"
Captain Kztkrmz: "Retreat from a puny Torch? Have you lost your mind?"
*BOOM*
XO Mrnkzt: "We are hit!"
Captain Kztkrmz: "Damage report!"
Tech Chmmr: "Our outer hull has been slightly scratched by a Torch Long Ranged Abuse Cannon. According to our calculations we won't survive longer than three years under this barrage."
Captain Kztkrmz: "I'm sure it'll run out of bullets before that. Or they'll accidentally hit that star seven light years away."

Gold! =D

Granted I haven't played PvP, but I've found the Broodhome to be surprisingly powerful against an array of ships. Against little stuff the frag effect of the crystal shard is a pretty effective deterrant, and when it fires and turns it is very tough to get close without getting smacked a few times with frag. Against a Marauder I've found it to be more than capable of defeating one, while taking only moderate damage. The full shard not only does 50% more damage than the spinning blades, but it can actually absorb one or two and still slam home for a full 6 points of damage, or if the Marauder isn't totally lined up you can still score 4 points releaseing frag right next to it (that long body is susceptible to more than one frag hit). Up close it will simply over power a Marauder.

Against a Mauler this is one of the best ships to choose. DOGI's will bug the heck out of it while you come in from the opposite direction, because its turn rate sucks when it starts to turn toward you the DOGI's come in and sap its energy, or force it to go on a random shooting spree to hurl itself backward to escape them. Either way it still looses a lot of energy. Against the Jugger it's a similair situation.

- The AI is quite stupid with the Marauder. Rather than taking a long-range defensive strategy (which the Marauder is well-suited for), kind of like the Earthling Cruiser, it instead behaves like a dreadnought, chasing down its opponent and shooting. This is very exploitable.

- A human player can use the recoil on the cannon on the Druuge Mauler to stay away from the shards while shooting at the Chenjesu. The game ultimately belongs to the Chenjesu, but with significant casualties.

While that is true the Broodhome is also well suited for long range engagements. Even if somehow victorious the Marauder would still be seriously hurt.




While it might be able to get away from the shard frag it still has to contend with fast moving DOGI's. It can use recoil to get away from them, but that sucks up valuable juice hitting nothing. One possible strategy is sit out of range and force it to deal with DOGI's, then while it is turned towards them (or shoots to get away from them) bomb it from long range with shards. It will bleed to death fairly quickly if done successfully. Once it is moving backward from recoil it becomes fairly easy to predict where it will end up going.

1. The Kohr-Ah blades stay in the arena, while the Chenjesu shards simply explode. This gives Kohr-Ah a MAJOR tactical advantage over the Chenjesu, especially in long range combat. The Chenjesu would actually have more of an advantage if it was closer, because it would be able to more easily land its shots.
2. The Kohr-Ah Marauder is significantly faster and less tubby than the Chenjesu Broodhome


DOGIs don't move that fast. A couple shots provides plenty of recoil speed to escape the DOGIs. But even if all the energy is drained, you forget that the Druuge Mauler is NOT required to sacrifice crew at that moment. It would be a far better idea to first wriggle out of the DOGIs, then turn around, sacrifice a crew, and immediately fire to get away from them. Like I said, this match does belong to the Chenjesu, but the Druuge has some opportunity to inflict significant damage before it's destroyed (assuming, of course, it has a reasonable amount of crew remaining).

Good points again. But what about the DOGI's? Can the Marauder outrun them?

Yes, via a gravity whip.