The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

(http://lparchive.org/LetsPlay/Star%20Control%202/Intro/06.jpg)

As you know, a skeleton starship was manufactured on Unzervault, but not enough building materials were present to produce a complete vessel. What would the ship have been like if there was enough to complete it? Indeed, where would the ship be in terms of sheer power? Also, can we get a measurement of how big this thing is?

I'm guessing it probably wouldn't be much more powerful than the starting Vindicator, but it would probably have better speed and maneuverability, much more cargo and fuel space, and possibly some specialized repair and support equipment. Remember, as powerful as the Vindicator can end up, it was originally classified as a Precursor service vessel and probably not designed as a warship.

Regarding the size, I asked a very similar question not too long ago over on star-control.com, and the answer I got seems to be that it's roughly 250~350 meters long, most likely.  Based on estimations made using this picture and others like it.

Regarding the power level, I concur with Draxas that it probably wouldn't have been all that powerful in terms of fighting ability.  It's a tugboat, not a battleship.  In that respect, Zelnick was probably lucky that it was only half finished, leaving him room to easily modify the armaments without needing to tear it apart first.

Perhaps the Precursor computers would have requested input at some state, asking which modules (probably not identical to Starbase modules) to start the ship out with. I'm guessing the Vindicator was probably intended to use modular equipment packs in the first place, the Starbase technicians certainly seemed to think so.

Doing it off the floating things, we get a width of the nose module of either 40 m or 80 m:

suppose the railings on the near one are 1m high (human scale). We get a disk diameter of around 8m. Transferring that up to the one closer to the Vindicator, it comes out to around 40 m.
Or they could be 2m high (precursor scale), yielding 80 m.

Based on the battle image "sis.big.0.png", we see that the aspect ratio of the main body is 8:47.
That gives either 235 m long or 470 m long.
Compare to the supercarrier Enterprise, around 209 meters. So it's pretty big either way. Not utterly gargantuan - a star destroyer is 1.6 km long, for comparison.

The main computer of the factory was brought along to the ship, all the info available was stored on it, so I think all of the modules you are able to build on the start of the game is all you could do even without resource restrictions.
On other hand, the starbase facilities might have not been on par with Unzervault's factory...


For the measurements I've taken the average height of humans in proportion to the landing skate and then did the ratio of it to the length. I don't remember what the result was...

Death 999 seems to have already deduced the measurements of the Vindicator. This is good.

I have an additional question. What could we produce if the starbase had facilities as good as or better than Unzervault's factory?

It clearly does, since the schematics for all those starting modules were aboard the Vindicator (same computer, remember?). So your answer is the kitted out, homing hellbore monstrosity of a combat ship we all know and love. ;)

Doesn't quite follow. It's possible the precursor factory could have had capabilities that were not possible with the starbase facilities - like, oh, building another Vindicator frame. You can't bring Hayes 50k RU or 100k RU and do that.

It's also quite possible the Precursor factory on Unzervalt wasn't just for the particular class of of service vessel/tug that the Vindicator belonged to. Perhaps it had last been programmed to build a merchant convoy, complete with huge cargo vessels, utility tugs, and light military escort, and it happened to have been stopped by its owners just before making a Vindicator class tug.

Then wouldn't the schematics for all that stuff be available too? If it was there, I would at least expect a passing mention of it from Hayes that it's beyond their capabilities.

But you buy all that more andvanced stuff from Melnorme.

So, I think that if the factory had had enough materials to complete the ship, it would just have been full of same modules it has in the beginning.

I think that buying technology from the Melnorme is there only for gameplay reasons.

Definitely, but that doesn't make it non-canon. It's quite possible that the Melnorme were able to improve on Precursor technology, or that the modules simply weren't considered useful enough for a tug.

Or that the Melnorme have access to precursor schematics not present in this computer.

Quite possible. They claim that they collect Precursor stuff all over the quadrant. I believe their role in game is very important. Without all those things they know, Zelnick would unlikely be able to blow up the Sa-Matra. I also believe that the Precursors were smart enough to scatter their knowledge around the galaxy so no one could get it in one piece on one place after they're gone.

It's already clear the Melnorme have access to extremely advanced technology, thanks to the 2418-B: Remote Self-Replicating Robot Explorer Probe. However, if the Melnorme were able to improve upon Precursor technology, why did they restrict themselves to making modules for the Vindicator?

Who said they were restricting themselves? By improving on the tug class modules, they make a profit. In any case, that was only one hypothesis. I think the other one I mentioned is more likely.

Well said. The Melnorme state it very clearly that to them the most valuable commodity is information. So in exchange of the biological and rainbow world location data, they give the captain what he wants. Both parties are very pleased with the transaction. The Melnorme simply have no need to make anything more fancy out of the Precursor technology.

I doubt anyone even actually CAN make anything "more fancy" out of the Precursor thechnology 'cause the Precursors are supposed to be far more advanced and intelligent than anyone else in the Galaxy. Since the Melnorme buy info on rainbow world locations, we can assume that's the where they get Precursor technologies from. Still, I don't get it what do they need biological data for.

Yeah. I'd bet that either a lot of schematics for weapons and whatnot weren't present in the Vela factory, or they were but even with a gifted human user, the colonists couldn't figure out how to access the more dangerous stuff. The Melnorme might have bought schematics for Precursor tug modules from some other race that traded it for precious biological data that would allow them to terraform their Uric worlds or something.

If you believe what they say, it's not about utility, but fascination. It makes sense that the rainbow worlds would fascinate them since their eyes are super-receptive to color.

It's certainly also possible, as Luki alluded to, that the Melnorme have other clients that are willing to pay something even more interesting to them in exchange for Rainbow world locations and/or bio data. Since the Melnorme are entirely unwilling to share their long term plans and goals (hence the exorbitant fees for them), it's all just speculation.

Hmm. Possible refinement on the size calculations:
1 cargo bay has a capacity of 500 kilotons of corrosives, which generally have roughly the density of water. The volume of this would then be 500 000 cubic meters.

The module section of the ship is 32 by 8 pixels on the combat screen (on which the ship length is 47 pixels). That means that each module is 2 pixels-on-the-combat-screen thick. Going to the outfit ship screen, modules are 24 pixels thick front-to-back, and the interior parts of the cargo bay modules are 38 pixels tall, which is around 3.2 pixels-on-the-combat-screen tall.

We then have a cargo module aspect ratio of 2 thick by 8 wide by 3.2 tall.
This 'flat modules' picture is well supported by the isometric cutaway views when purchasing modules.

We must also take away the spine, which is a cylinder 24 Outfit-pixels long, and 12  in diameter. Call that 1.5 cubic combat pixels, and take another 1.7 or so away for the walls and such, for a net volume of 48 cubic combat pixels.

With that size, we see that one pixel on the combat screen is 21.8 m. This yields a length of 1026 m

If we instead suppose that the density of stored material is instead the density of iron (7.87 tons/cubic meter), then we get a combat-screen-pixel as 11.0 m, producing a length of merely 516 m.

Which fits best?

We notice that the crew compartments are 4 fat floors tall, with a thin floor between the top two (not counting the dome). With the smaller scaling (and the crew compartment's slightly greater height), 10.7m * 3.5 pixels / 4.5 floors = 8.5 meters per floor. This is way too big for humans, but quite comfortable for double-scale precursors. The larger scaling would make this much too large.

Based on this second line of reasoning, I conclude that the length of the Vindicator is around 515 m long. This is in decent agreement with the earlier 'large' estimate of 470 m, and excludes the old 'small' estimate. I would note that the 470 m figure was actually going to be slightly less than the actual value anyway - the floating pod could easily have been only 91% of the way up to the Vindicator, which would explain the entire discrepancy.


Consistent with assembly image - CHECK (scale = precursor)
Consistent with crew compartment - CHECK (scale = precursor)
Consistent with cargo bay - CHECK (density = iron)

How close are we? The precusor scales are very rough, so we won't rely on them. If we suppose the bulk of the cargo is in base metals, the iron approximation is quite good - many metals have density close to iron; few are much less, a few a bit more, and iron is going to be a very common cargo, so it makes sense to calibrate against that.

If we take pixel dimensions not to be exact, then the largest - by far - source of error is the combat sprite. At 8 pixels wide, that gives us right there a +/- 6.25%. Shuffling the rest into rounding up to +/- 7%, this yields:
515 +/- 36 m