The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

I wanna ask anyone which is protagonist side, Alliance of Free Stars or Ur-Quan Hierarchy?

The Alliance.

Just out of curiosity, why are you asking? Are you using Star Control 2 as a subject in a homework assignment?

Speak for yourself, filth.

:D

I was going to provoke a philosophical debate, but then I remembered that the Hierachy practice slavery on a massive scale. Also that you don't play as them in the story. So yeah, there's not much choice.

In a way though, every member of the Hierarchy are victims of slavery. Therefore, they might not be the villains that they appear to be at first glance.

The antagonist is not necessary evil. It is the entity which works against the protagonist.
The protagonist is the central entity with which you are supposed to identify, not necessarily the good guy.

So in SC2 the protagonist is the captain. As the question was about the protagonist side, I guess that would be the alliance, though this would be a rather pointless term.
The Hierarchy and Kohr-Ah are be the antagonists.

My comment was more trying to reword the statement, I was trying to look and see if there are any "evil" races in the game.

Why, the Ilwrath, obviously. They proudly proclaim their evil from the rooftops, and try to kill you if you dare suggest they might not be evil! (the Dnyarri probably qualify as well.)

Fair enough.

The Dnyarri.

I kinda don't get it though, the Ur-quan put a bunch of planets in slave shields, but those shields would protect them from the Khor-Ah, so why didn't people just set back and let it blow over?

The Kohr-Ah know how to crack slave shields, IIRC.

Well then that's stupid why would the Ur-Quan enslave everyone when they could use everyone's help? That drastic of an evolution wouldn't happen in a few years it had to have been doing on for a while.

The whole point of it is that it's the Ur-Quan's competing philosophies set against each other. The Kzer-Za said they'd enslave everyone, the Kohr-Ah said they'd kill everyone, so they went opposite ways around the galaxy to see how it went. If the Ur-Quan had then NOT gone around enslaving everyone, not only would it totally miss the point of the Doctrinal Conflict, they'd also have lied to the Kohr-Ah. Ur-Quan don't lie.

It seems sort of unlikely they used all those  resources to just "see how it went". I think the Khor-Ah made some point where they said they wanted all sentient life to be born as Ur-Quan, I don't see directly where it says they were competing, it seems more like the Uq-Quan wanted to stop them because they didn't want to go that far and they wouldn't have anyone to enslave if all the other species were dead.
With this new main antagonist though, the one on the original cover of the Star Control 2 box with the tentacles that's brown, I don't see what their main objective is. They modify life to their satisfaction like the Umgah, maybe the Umgah are something to do with them? Oh this reminds me, could I also be a writer too? The people involved with writing should get like kick or skype or something so it's cohesive.

The shields aren't there to protect races against the Kohr-Ah. The Kzer-Za are there to do that. The shields are to protect the Kzer-Za from the other races. It's to make sure that they won't be able to become a threat, even if they aren't outright killed to do so.

"Writers" are a common breed. You have to prove that you belong to the uncommon type that has writing skills, insight, understanding of UQM canon, imagination, work ethic etc. Bluntly, a few ideas and the ability to type one character after another is not enough.

We keep story cohesive by having someone watching out for it. Right now that guy happens to be me (unless the original "coordinator" returns to his post or I find a better one). If you have input on the subject of story, contact me. (kwayne.gsinko@gmail.com (http://kwayne.gsinko@gmail.com))

You just need to be a good writer you don't need to be some genius, I have a couple friends who are professional writers and one of them even happens to be a writer for a game company which I was thinking the same thing before, that in order to get hired as just a writer you'd need to be so ridiculously good at it that companies would like beg you to come on board, but it turns out writers are common but also a common need, and he mostly rights out different possibilities. Of course he's good at it, but really what you need to do is be able to spend hours looking at different possibilities and put time into thinking of good twists, you don't need to be particularly talented to do hard work, you need to be good more at analyzing and imagining, but many people just have some quick idea and they never see it all the way through, which is more likely who you're referring to. I'm willing to spend a couple hours a day just thinking of plot concepts and thinking of dialogue, it's good writers collaborate though I think, I mean sure there's one guy looking over it, but that's just one guy, all the writers should be sharing input and looking over each other's points. I think it would go faster too, I mean I wasn't really planning on just having to come up with everything myself, I'd imagine writers would discuss ideas, two brains is better than one, and 3 better than two and ect., the only limit when it becomes too hard to keep track of all the writers suggestions.

You didn't even start but are trying to set your own standards and underestimating the task. Not good. The requirements won't change just because you have your opinion about them. As much as I care, your professional writer friends don't exist. If you want to contribute, you're welcome to do so, but even if you outline an idea in collaboration with many others, the idea still must go through one person.

As I said, contact me.

I'm not imposing my opinion, it is factually better if there is more communication and at least a few more people making decisions,  it would save you some time if a lot of people were collaborating at once and actually talking with each other so that logical fallacious could be worked out faster and the plot can progress more smoothly, because maybe I have some idea for what happens at a certain event, but I have no idea if someone else already thought of that making my work on it a complete and utter waste of time, or if you already decided on another thing which again is completely wasting my time and the time of possibly other people as well, or if you already have the whole plot figured out or if you only have a bunch of random dialogue, how am I suppose to contribute something cohesive or worth any amount of consideration without knowing any of that? How is anyone? I'm not going to spend a few writing something just to have it get thrown in the trash and no one else should either.
There should be some kind of large skype-like chat room where everyone can see everyone's ideas and actually get behind and idea to make a decision or point out why it wouldn't work or ect as well as what you have in total so far. It seems like the game tries to be accurate in some respects. multiple people will have multiple talents, some people are better at math, philosophy, art, music, economics, diplomacy, all sorts of stuff, there could easily be something that's flawed in some way that other people don't notice, which is another reason why there should be a bunch of people collaborating.

I could continue arguing with you, but why should I? This doesn't benefit the project, but is rather wasting my time. I do agree with you in some of points but if you want to join, you adapt. It's not a matter of negotiation.

You don't get it.
There's nothing to adapt to because I have no idea where the hell you or anyone else is in the plot or what has already been worked on. No wonder it's taking so long, you're ironically like the Ur-Quan hierarchy.
There needs to be some kind of public contribution area where the writers can view what's already done and what other people's ideas are and what they're working on so that they know what the build off of an adapt to in the first place, it needs to be organized in some way.

Like, say, a wiki? With the entire project and most of the plans for it, on it?

If you want more than that, there are a bunch of developer emails, but most of that's meta anyway.

We usually discuss story -- though not as much I'd like to -- and there is a public documentation (a wiki) writers could check. Actually it can be accessed quite easily.

Well do you maybe think it's a good idea to show people that? And what about like a scheduled or organized chat room that's linked from this website or even on this website?
Have you tried facebook for publicity and to get people on board or kickstarter for some extra money to buy good software or "hire" a programmer even?

I think I figured out the story (though i was a while ago I just forgot about this site). At first there were brown ur-quan and Gg and ect and he precoursers, everything was fine, then the Dynarri or those Talking pet things came and enslaved he ur-Quan, there were probably groups split into different classes based on what the pets wanted to get down. Somehow, I don't remember how, the Ur-Quan broke the mind enslavement, maybe with some kind of taalo device and with Asked he Umgah to engineer them, which explains not only why there was an extra one at their homeworld but also why they were allies. But after that, they were all paranoid or something and decided to try and enslave every threatening race so that nothing like hat would ever happen again, only the dichotomy within the species lead to the destruction of the Gg and a couple other races, and this is when the precoursers decided to get the hell out of there, then over time other sentient races became more visible and grew larger to what is now seen in the game, only the dichotomy of the Ur-Quan still remained, though most other races were unaware as the Khor Ah's boundaries were more to the upper right and the Suppox and Utwig did not have as large territories.

Fair Warning: Spoilers galore below.


The Precursors inhabited our sector of space approximately 250,000 - 300,000 years ago, long predating any other known race.  They disappeared about 200,000 years ago, for reasons that no one has yet discovered.

The brown Ur-Quan reached the stars and joined the Sentient Milieu about 25,000 years ago, which is still long after the Precursors disappeared.

The Gg were an enigmatic planetbound race whose only extra-planetary contact was the Burvixese.  Both of these races were annihilated by the Kohr-Ah shortly before the beginning of Star Control II.  Neither one ever had contact with the brown Ur-Quan or any other race from the Milieu (except for the Melnorme, of course, and they don't really advertise their ancestry.)


If by "came" you mean "the Ur-Quan found them on their homeworld during a routine scouting mission" and by "split into classes" you mean "they genetically engineered the Ur-Quan into two different subspecies designed for specific tasks" then yes, this is essentially correct.


A green ur-Quan scientist byt he name of "Kzer-Za" discovered that the Dnyarri would release a slave shortly before its death, otherwise they would die as well.  This lead ultimately to  a revolution wherein the Ur-Quan would voluntarily mutilate themselves in a variety of ways, gaining momentary freedom in the process, and was the beginning of the Slave Revolt.


The Excruciator - a device designed to inflict agonizing pain on it's wearer and a key element in the success of the revolts - was a device of Ur-Quan design.  The greens later adopted the name Kzer-Za for their subspecies in honour of the scientist who gave them their freedom.

The Taalo Shield was something designed by the Taalo race to protect their allies in the Milieu.  The Taalo had a natural immunity to the Dnyarri's mind control and were endeavouring to develop a device that could extend that protection to other races.  Unfortunately, the Dnyarri destroyed them (via the Ur-Quan) before they had a chance to share what they had built.

Paul and Fred have since made comments in interviews with fans that suggest the Taalo are still alive in some vague and nebulous form, however they don't appear to be active in our region of space during the game, so this is presumably part of a plot thread they had planned for a sequel they never got the chance to make.


The Umgah are a species native to our sector of space and also to our era of history.  They were not around during the time of the Dnyarri Empire.  They work primarily with genetic material, where the Excruciator was (by all accounts) a technological device.

There was no Excruciator or any other ancient artifact on the Umgah homeworld.  The Taalo Shield was found on the Taalo homeworld of Delta Vulpeculae II-C, which is not even within Umgah space during the course of the game.  The device the Umgah had at their homeworld was a HyperWave Broadcaster, a very common device in modern times used to allow real-time communication across interstellar distances.  Thiers was a particularly powerful model, but otherwise it not really noteworthy.

Finally, the Umgah and the Ur-Quan are not "allies."  The Umgah chose to become Battle Thralls rather than slave-shielded Fallow Slaves when the Ur-Quan conquered them, but this does not mean they are in any way equals to the Ur-Quan.  Nor is there any evidence that the Ur-Quan have ever availed themselves of the Umgah's genetic engineering talents.


All of the races from the Sentient Milieu who were exterminated by the Ur-Quan were destroyed while they were still enslaved to the Dnyarri.  Of the three non-Ur-Quan races who survived the Dnyarri Empire, the Faz were slave-shielded by the Kzer-Za, the Yuptar were annihilated by the Kohr-Ah and the Mael-Num hastily escaped while the two Ur-Quan forces duked it out in orbit above their homeworld.  The Ur-Quan were indeed paranoid about the idea of being enslaved again after having thrown off the Dnyarri enslavement.

The Gg, as discussed before, were killed by the Kohr-Ah much more recently and long after the two Ur-Quan subspecies had begun their Doctrinal War.


Nope, as discussed above, that happened long before the Ur-Quan even existed as a star faring race, and no one knows the true reason for their disappearance.


The sentient races that currently inhabit our sector of space did indeed grow larger over time, however, they only managed to do this because the Ur-Quan were gone, off circling around the galaxy for the last 25,000 years or so.  The Kzer-Za only returned here a couple hundred years ago and began the process of enslaving all the races who had sprung up in their absence.  The Kohr-Ah arrived somewhat later (closer to the beginning of the SC2 game events), annihilating a few species on the way in, before they found the Kzer-Za and began the Doctrinal War.

Remember, the influence spheres for each race seen in game only represent the area of space each race currently occupies.  They move around and grow/shrink as a race's influence changes, so just because the two Ur-Quan spheres are where they are in game doesn't mean they've been there for the last 25,000 years.

Steve, I think he was talking about the Talking Pets, not the Excruciator.