The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

-Firstly, i would add a log system which will keep track of everything, like Coordinates given to you by other species or from rainbow worlds, quests, like go talk to the spathi council and the lot. No more need for pen and paper and memorization.

-Fully 3D mass effect like exploration of planets with a hovering lander. Of course it will be more detailed. Minerals will take more than just running them over to acquire. Usage of an upgradable mining laser will be implemented.

-So far exploring planets might reward you with story only items. This should change. At some planets you will be able to find lost tech, weapons and many types of loot to use in your travels.

-Melnorme will no longer be the exclusive sellers of technology. A research and development feature will be implemented with which to acquire new tech for lander and modules.
Melnorme will still sell you fuel, info and unique or rare tech.

-Constructing modules should be a slower and more complex process. Depending on the complexity of the module it should take time to be made as well as require specific materials. After their construction is done they are stored on the starbase if not installed no to the ship.

-selling bio data to the Melnorme is not the only way to acquire credits anymore. A variety of quests given by NPCs will reward the player with credits

-Ship upgrades will not be restricted to modules. It will expand to include internal systems too. example a targeting computer and point defense systems will not be extra modules.

-the original front hull of the Vindicator should be more than enough to house 50 crewmen without needing an extra crew module.

-reconstruction of fuel management. either exclude fuel consumption completely in favor for upgrades on the  hyperspace core in order to travel farther or have the ability to harvest gases on gas giants and other gas sources to synthesize fuel, with upgrades for faster hyperspace travel and lower fuel consumption.

-Battles should include more ships with the ability to give general behavioral patterns as a whole or as individual units. they should also take place in open space without any planets around and must include more hazard types like electrical storms, black holes, solar flares and the lot.

Starflight 2 also had a feature that logged all alien conversations - this strikes me as a better idea then simply a screen listing coordinates you've been told about.

Different landers for different purposes - mining, exploring or hunting

From SC1 - mini-artifacts to boost abilities on any single ship. (perhaps found during ruins exploration)

Maybe, but the ability to create your own log entries with whatever content you want would be better still.

Also you'd definitely need a way to delete, trim, or search conversation logs, since 90% of their content is filler that doesn't contain useful information.

There are two changes I'd be interested in seeing with the Melnorme, though. One is a different way of purchasing technology, rather than forcing a specific order on you; the simplest would be allowing you to choose whether you get the next lander upgrade or the next module.

Ooh, sounds interesting! What kind of mod is it?

Will you document those tweaks as possible to implement them as addons or how to replicate them in the source code. Sounds cool none the less.

Is there an ETA on your mod? I'm looking to play again but was wondering if I should hold off if you were going to release soon?

There is something like this in my (unreleased, in testing) mod.  What I did was give each Melnorme a different selection of technologies and information (with a dozen or so new techs added); you need to visit them all to get everything.

Eh, dunno if I like that approach...

...I think the idea has merit.

The only one is alpha Eridani, which is not exactly deep in the territory of either. I think the idea has merit.

And damnit, Groombridge was supposed to be so out of the way it would hide an easter egg that few players would find on their own.

Well, there's Alpha Vulpeculae (not reasonable to expect a new player to always ally with the Orz), Alpha Apodis () which are in the territory of potential enemies (although not necessarily scary in the case of the Thraddash), and several others which are very far flung (I sure hope nothing good is stuck off in Alpha Aquilae, for instance). It would be good to have some sort of option (preprocessor #define maybe?) to disable potentially controversial features somehow.

And damnit, Groombridge was supposed to be so out of the way it would hide an easter egg that few players would find on their own. This idea practically requires you to go there. Like I said, just tagging the rainbow worlds is fetch-questy enough.

Well, there's Alpha Vulpeculae (not reasonable to expect a new player to always ally with the Orz)

Alpha Apodis

(I sure hope nothing good is stuck off in Alpha Aquilae, for instance).

I think one thing that would help wth these objections is if when a caster is used or you run out of fuel, the nearest Melnorme responds. That way you don't need to go all THAT close.

- Liberate Fwiffo!  When the Spathi bug out and hide under their
  slave shield, they take all their ships in your escort fleet with
  them

MY IDEAS:

- Single Chenjesu ship located in old chenjesu space to add to your fleet, however make it only fight on cyborg to keep it consistent with story of native captains pilots. Add some pick text to state the fact that it's automated or something.

- Androsynth ships located on Androsynth homeworld or old sphere of influence to add to your fleet. Some background story on how or why they survived. Since the ships were created by human clones, I see no reason why humans can't pilot them.

- Admiral ZEXs personal ship on planet after stoy to add to your fleet. Have it modified to be better than other vux ships ie faster, turn rate?

- Buy Probes, add to your fleet after probe story quest fully completed, Upgrade probe with missiles from Melnorme or have them already. Non repairable damage after battle

- No longer possible to encounter random Ur-Quan ships in the
  Zoq-Fot-Pik home system, like their dialogs say

- Show the name and value of biologicals  when picked up

- If the player ventures out into Hyperspace without rescuing the
  starbase first, the Probes he encounters are much tougher

- Add a "dead" slave-shielded world and starbase - various places - consistent with story

- Can explore a defunct Mother Ark the old Mrnmhrrm sphere of
  influence

- Can discover a defunct Precursor starbase - consistent with story

- Destroyed Zoq-Fot-Pik colony worlds

- Destroyed Ur-Quan(*) / Kohr-Ah(+) starbases located in battle area

- Starbases around all homeworlds

- Add a Syreen sphere-of-influence after rescuing their ships

- Add a Chmmr sphere-of-influence after finishing "The Process"

- Probes in planetary exploration

- Ur-Quan fighters will attack/destroy incoming projectiles and
  asteroids

- Orz deploys marines against Earthling.

- Ur-Quan does not launch fighters against cloaked Ilwrath.

- Utwig and Yehat use their shields to defend against the Androsynth blazer.

- Liberate Fwiffo!  When the Spathi bug out and hide under their
  slave shield, they take all their ships in your escort fleet with
  them

- Single Chenjesu ship located in old chenjesu space to add to your fleet, however make it only fight on cyborg to keep it consistent with story of native captains pilots. Add some text to state the fact that it's automated or something.

- Androsynth ships located on Androsynth homeworld or old sphere of influence to add to your fleet. Some background story on how or why they survived. Since the ships were created by human clones, I see no reason why humans can't pilot them.

No. The Androsynth disappearance was so mysterious, leaving some in would just ruin the effect I think.

- Admiral ZEXs personal ship on planet after stoy to add to your fleet. Have it modified to be better than other vux ships ie faster, turn rate?

- Buy Probes, add to your fleet after probe story quest fully completed, Upgrade probe with missiles from Melnorme or have them already. Non repairable damage after battle

- abandon Ilwrath ship or ships on moon - destroy or scavenge for money boost.

- evidence of spathi redeployment in sol system consistent with story

- black spathi squadron

The warp nullifier was a lie, intended to discourage Zelnicki from attacking. Still, if ZEX did get his hands on any genuine precursor artifacts, he probably would put them on his own ship - but the best Zelnicki would be able to do is extract them for his own use without a VUX captain.

Are we quite sure it was a lie? Still, even if it wasn't it could just be a Precursor artifact, as you said.

Yes. It's in his dialog if you fight him, escape, and then come back and talk to him again. ;)

In general I don't think it's a good idea to randomly add content like this. If it's notable and consistent with the story, like with the Precursor starbase, then maybe. Otherwise I think it's a bit pointless.

Why? It's clear that the Ur-Quan only put starbases around slave-shielded worlds; why would you change that?

Eh. I guess it would be nice to be able to have probes in your fleet... however, could you get enough credits? (We already know the cost of the Probes from the Slylandro.)

I think it would be nice to be able to "drop off" escort ships at the starbase even if you don't have an alliance with that race. So for example, you could get a Druuge Mauler and drop it off at the starbase, then come back and pick it up again later.

The warp nullifier was a lie, intended to discourage Zelnicki from attacking. Still, if ZEX did get his hands on any genuine precursor artifacts, he probably would put them on his own ship - but the best Zelnicki would be able to do is extract them for his own use without a VUX captain.

- If the player ventures out into Hyperspace without rescuing the
  starbase first, the Probes he encounters are much tougher

I don't like this idea; there's no logical reason why they'd be tougher. Granted, there's no logical reason why there'd be so many more of them, either.

- Add a "dead" slave-shielded world and starbase - various places - consistent with story
- Can explore a defunct Mother Ark the old Mrnmhrrm sphere of
  influence
- Can discover a defunct Precursor starbase - consistent with story
- Destroyed Zoq-Fot-Pik colony worlds
- Destroyed Ur-Quan(*) / Kohr-Ah(+) starbases located in battle area

In general I don't think it's a good idea to randomly add content like this. If it's notable and consistent with the story, like with the Precursor starbase, then maybe. Otherwise I think it's a bit pointless.

- Starbases around all homeworlds

Why? It's clear that the Ur-Quan only put starbases around slave-shielded worlds; why would you change that?

- Probes in planetary exploration

I thought this was already the case...

- Ur-Quan fighters will attack/destroy incoming projectiles and
  asteroids
- Orz deploys marines against Earthling.
- Ur-Quan does not launch fighters against cloaked Ilwrath.
- Utwig and Yehat use their shields to defend against the Androsynth blazer.

This is all ship AI stuff, so I'm not sure what to think of it.

- Single Chenjesu ship located in old chenjesu space to add to your fleet, however make it only fight on cyborg to keep it consistent with story of native captains pilots. Add some text to state the fact that it's automated or something.

This is an interesting idea, but there's a small flaw. The Chenjesu can penetrate their slave shield. If a ship was stuck outside, why wouldn't it end up getting to Procyon and joining them later?

- Liberate Fwiffo!  When the Spathi bug out and hide under their
  slave shield, they take all their ships in your escort fleet with
  them

Please no. This doesn't even make sense. Plus, I like having my Spathi stay around throughout the whole game.

- Androsynth ships located on Androsynth homeworld or old sphere of influence to add to your fleet. Some background story on how or why they survived. Since the ships were created by human clones, I see no reason why humans can't pilot them.

This is probably a bit much.

- abandon Ilwrath ship or ships on moon - destroy or scavenge for money boost.

...On a related note though, I'd like to be able to find a cloaking module for the flagship somewhere...

- black spathi squadron

No. It doesn't exist.

I was thinking the ship would be derelict, but playable on cyborg to get around the native ship captain rule. But then why would your crew be on the ship? This would need some plausible fleshing out.

Maybe you could claim that the stored ships are in suspended animation to explain away potential issues with the captains.

If you don't want to complicate things, it could just be a dialogue triggered from Hayes that shows that neither is happy about the other being there that doesn't actually have a mechanical consequence. "Captain, the Orz and Arilou ships have placed themselves on opposite sides of the starbase, and we can feel them glaring at one another right through us. The Arilou insisted that I pass on their warning that the Orz are not to be trusted and that we should break off alliance with them immediately for our own safety, while the Orz on the station have been stomping around in a huff muttering things about wanting to 'dance' with the 'quick babies' that are 'jumping in front'. Why they'd want them as dance partners when they obviously hate each other, I don't know. Maybe it's one of those love-hate things?"

That really sounds like something Hayes would say, actually.

I like the Destroyed ZFP colonies since they're explicitly stated to exist in the game but are not findable. The others...

Starbases were merely somewhat uncommon during the war, going by Star Control 1.

Yeah... (could you tell?)

Agreed. After thinking about it, maybe the player can't leave sol system until the starbase quest is done.

I don't understand why you would think it's pointless. I was thinking of the immersion factor. More things to find and explore help by adding more flavor and substance to an already great story.

I'm sure the spathi would tell other spathi just what they were up to? Maybe fwiffo sticks around and all others vacate. Gotta love fwiffo, he's so brave and loyal.

But does the game explicitly state where they are?

True, there were a lot of starbases in the first war. Still, those weren't around homeworlds.

Huh?

No. We're talking about reasonable additions in a remake. Filling these details in would make sense!

Point is, they shouldn't be that rare.

In any event, it won't be released before 0.8.0 comes out

Why? 0.7 is still fairly new, just a year old , and that took 4 and a half years from the time 0.6.2 was released. Unless development has picked up some incredible speed recently, making the commitment to wait for 0.8 is not a good idea right now.

Your choice if you want to go that route, but personally, I'm not interested any more if that's what you're doing, because I doubt it'll ever be released on those terms. Plus, there just isn't any benefit.

Why not release your mod, when it's done of course, and also release an updated compiled 0.8 exe as well? That way we all win.

- 360° rotation !!! this is the most important

- 360° rotation !!! this is the most important

- more than 2 ships in the same fight

- gradual zooming while flying in star systems

That'll require a big rebalance to help fast ships, which can now no longer slip in between firing angles. You will also want to tone down the Druuge, since they get the biggest benefit (fast-moving, long-ranged, non-tracking, non-mining, narrow shot)

That'll require a big rebalance to help fast ships, which can now no longer slip in between firing angles. You will also want to tone down the Druuge, since they get the biggest benefit (fast-moving, long-ranged, non-tracking, non-mining, narrow shot)

They tried that. It wasn't as fun. Having messed around with Timewarp a bit, I can kind of corroborate. These ships aren't really made for team battles.

When I've played Timewarp, which has 64 different angles, I could not play with Druuge. With SC2 12 angles, I just know the line which the projectile would fly, and can place precise long-distance shots while flying at high speed.

I think what most people dislike about planetside is that it's fairly boring, repetitive, and in general non-interesting. IMHO the Starflight games had the right idea about this - planets are all big places, as you'd expect them to be in reality. You get a genuine sense that you are exploring an alien world as opposed to a small, colorful rectangular slab. (Of course, the implementation is less than ideal, which has more to do with the massive technical constraints that game was under back in the mid-80s than anything else.)

I think there should be a way to get a Slylandro Probe off your butt.

True, but for most of the game mining is a necessary evil.

My point is that perhaps landing on planets *shouldn't* be a necessary evil, perhaps exploring alien worlds in search of vital minerals, clues, etc. should be something enjoyable and fun in its own right.

And why doesn't the Commander at the Starbase tell us the Thraddash or the Syreen are now our allies?

And what's all the whining about mining?  I have no problem with current mining techniques.  I would NOT want to be forced to stop without being able to fill my hold just because the last spot of mineral on the planet is bigger than I have room for.  Sometimes I just want to pick a quick 50 or 100 (depending on hold size) of whatever mineral is there and not care if I waste half a big spot to fill my hold.  Sometimes you need to get in and out quick because your landers are not up to staying on the planet long.

Import the EE features into the game: Might as well, since it's really useful and convincing for new players. Although at the moment, the HD version has some improvements of its own and it's also good for newcomers of UQM.

I think there should be a way to get a Slylandro Probe off your butt.  Once you have purchased all your engines, your precursor ship is faster than the probe but it always catches you when you enter and leave a solar system.  When flying through alien territory (enemy or friend) other alien ships appear.  Sometimes an alien ships dot merges completely with the dot representing the probe.  I think these two battle groups should pull each other out of hyperspace, since they are not ships of the same species. 

Hmm... what if there was more evidence of the Precursors on planets? Occasional smaller energy signatures, distinguishable from the "big" story ones somehow, that indicate smaller Precursor artifacts like the ones Hayes describes, stuff like dataplate caches, that then leads to resources or bio data. Maybe you could sometimes find thrusters compatible with the flagship lying around? So you drop down onto the planet and boom, a valuable speed upgrade without having to had to return to the Starbase. And if you were already at max speed, it gets converted into 500 worth of metals, say, or some combination of metals and radioactives that added up to 500.

7. Declined Talana's gratitude.

That being said, being able to keep track of where you've been and what you've done in the game would be nice.  I once went to get the smart talking pet and forgot that I hadn't gotten the Taalo device.  Ended up in the middle of UrQuan space talking to a pissed off Green!  That was fun!  Thankfully he was no match for my Precursor ship...

There are several other Starbases in the game.  The Syreen one and at the Chmmmr.  I think we should be able to sell minerals and add upgrades to our ships at ANY active Starbase.

Declined Talana's gratitude!?!?!  Why would you want to decline Talana???  Why in heaven's name would anyone decline Talana?!?!?

This is, in my opinion, the only really good idea you have here, though some of your other ideas aren't that bad. More information on the starmap might be alright too though; also I'd like to see the pre-war starmap incorporated into the game. It would help you locate the Ilwrath homeworld, for example! :P

No. Just no. This might be a good idea for a sequel, but it's a terrible idea for SC2.

Provided the new loot doesn't really give much of an advantage, I suppose this would be okay. Or if it's useless except as interest to the starbase scientists, that would be reasonable too. Really, I'd be more interested in additional story bits like the mod by 0xDECODE(?) added (but he also added a number of changes I dislike). Things that are mentioned by people you talk to but which you can't go out and actually visit, such as the Precursor starbase in Alpha Centauri.

I disagree with this. The Melnorme are presented as being a more advanced species willing to share their knowledge, and shifting the technology out to the starbase doesn't feel like something that's logically possible. They don't have the knowledge to make something like that, nor do they have the time to do the research required to obtain the knowledge.

There are two changes I'd be interested in seeing with the Melnorme, though. One is a different way of purchasing technology, rather than forcing a specific order on you; the simplest would be allowing you to choose whether you get the next lander upgrade or the next module. The other is, as someone else said, prevent the Melnorme from selling you information that you already know.

No. Too much realism means less fun.

How does this even make sense? Credits are a Melnorme currency, and they don't buy just anything. How would random NPCs even have credits to give you? And that's assuming the Melnorme even allow customers to transfer credits to another customer.

Why not? The targeting module might be quite a sophisticated computer. I don't see much of an issue with it taking a whole module. Maybe the module also contains a generator for an added power boost so that it drains less of the ship's energy. Perhaps it has space for some crew members to watch over it and make sure it's targeting the right target and so forth.

I don't think so. The front is where most of the navigational systems and control panels are. I suppose there might be some logic in expanding its crew capacity to 5 or 10 (assuming I recall correctly that it's currently just 1), but not 50.

This is a pointless change that doesn't really do anything useful that you can't already do. Why fix what isn't broken?

I would certainly like the ability to do space battles that aren't one-on-one, but I think it's too much of a change for SC2. Save something like that for a sequel.[/u]

Maybe, but the ability to create your own log entries with whatever content you want would be better still. Also you'd definitely need a way to delete, trim, or search conversation logs, since 90% of their content is filler that doesn't contain useful information.

What would be the point of this?

This might be nice, yeah.

I also agree with all the people asking for more rotation angles.

It might be nice to have an autopilot lander? It would land, gather up as many minerals and biodata as it can carry, and then take off again. I suppose it would also take off if it lost too many crew.

Speaking of which, if you run over minerals or biodata that's too large to fit in your lander, it'd be nice if the excess that didn't fit was left behind rather than lost.

I'd like a delay after you exit combat during which you can't be sucked in again, allowing you to escape the infinite ships problem as long as you have enough thrusters.

It would be nice if you could see in Hyperspace what kind of ship is chasing you. (The mod I mentioned earlier in this post does that.)

Um, that's all I can think of right now.

Finishing off the Mycon would be what I would have the Illrath do rather than kill our Thrad allies.

Actually once you become friends and/or allies with a species the convrsation does change.  And Fwiffo is the only instance where you could have a ship in your fleet without going to the homeworld and becomming allies with that species.

Even though no one responded to this suggestion the first time, I still think we should have a choice of which Hierarchy ally we should have the Illrath attack.  Why kill off a species that has become our friends?  Finishing off the Mycon would be what I would have the Illrath do rather than kill our Thrad allies.  For that mater, it only takes 2 Illrath ships to kill one Kohr Ah ship.  They would be a significant factor in that war if we could send them there.