The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

Degenerate matter definitely doesn't have the same properties as sulfur, gold or hydochloric acid, so how exactly does it make sense that if you only collect gold and exotic matter than you can build everything else? Instead there should just be a simple check list of materials they need at starbases, like maybe one ship needs more iron than gold, or another sip needs more chlorine than degenerate matter, and each ship you purchase contributes to the specific materials used up. Perhaps it can be more category based to make it simpler, like a Chmmr ship would use .5 units of base metal, .1 unit of exotic mater, and .2 units of precious Earth metals and .05 units of rare earth metals, use the periodic table as a reference.

The Starbase commander mentions, in game, the RU system is just a rough guide, something they threw together on the fly,  to help track what you can produce.

Besides, It's the future. They probably have machines that turn gold into iron, or boron, or whatever.

It's a cool idea, but Star Control wasn't fun because it was "realistic"

I guess that's fair enough, it might not be as fun now that I think about it,

Starflight had this material segregation. The thing is, there are quite a lot of real elements, add the imaginary ones required for plot reasons and you'll have a huge list to track. It just wouldn't be fun. Then, to make it actually fun to play, you cut down the categories. Starflight stopped earlier, SC2 cut everything. 

Yep I think I get the idea already.

Yeah, this would probably just be a hassle. Especially if you track individual resources rather than type. Like "Get 20 Tzo Crystals" versus "Get 20 exotics."