The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

Yep, you heard right. I just discovered that there's a way to defeat the Androsynth with the Orz. The awesome AI does not go on the offensive until you, a cannon shell, or a marine get close to it. This leaves you as much time as you need to find a planet. Set your cannon to backwards, then do so. Gravity whip off the planet as hard as you can and launch a marine. The Blazer will comet when the marine gets close, but now he will not be able to catch you. If he gets behind you, pound away with your cannon. This is pretty much the only way you can hurt him without dying, so re-gravity whip as many times as you need to. As long as you've got a space marine deployed, you're no longer safe so staying "whipped" is a necessity. This strategy is far from consistent in getting wins, but it's worked for me several times.

Now, if only I could beat that bastard Arilou...

Nice one!

Hey maybe you can give me some pointers.  I have to fight a fully functional Chmmmmr Avatar.  I am piloting an Earthling cruiser.  Please send help!

The best tatic I've heard to use (kudos to BioSlayer!) is to charge.  Try to come in at an angle, ie NOT in the laser's path and get your head inside the ZapStat's radius.  Fire off both nukes, point-blank.  This actually does more damage than the point-defense would.

What?  Oh, you actually wanted to defeat the thing, not just damage it?  Sorry, I don't think that's humanly possible.

Using the planet vs Androsyn(th) has been obvious for some time. This isn't an unwinnable matchup.

Anything short range (Ilwrath, Umgah, Pkunk) or Earthling vs Chmmr, however, is pretty difficult. If not for randomness (planets, asteroids) it would be possible - although a real pain in the ass - to beat Chmmr consistently with Spathi too. Toasting Arilou with... most ships (go Shofixti) is excrutiatingly annoying and difficult - but it was worse in SC3 where Arilou would run away if you had the 'right' ship for the job. Speaking of SC3... Fortunately, it's -possible- to beat Utwig (and Yehat) here, as one in 20 or so shots seems to go in.

Druuge 4L

--
Chris

Umgah does quite a bit of damage to Chmmr if you can time the zips so he's away from the main laser....

And I am about 50-50 on destroying Chmmr with Pkunk...the key is getting in behind him and letting all your shot off...you usually end up with either none or one damage by doing that...the zapsats go for the shot instead of you...

The Slylandro are a pretty big problem for most of the ships in the game. The precursor vessel could put these suckers down in droves, but it's actually quite difficult to take these out with most other vessels. And don't forget the Melnorme! They are monsterously frustrating thanks to their high accuracy and confusion ray. Has anyone even tried to play as either of these ships?

Unrelated update: Okay, I just beat a Chmmr with a Kohr-Ah. The trick is to fly away from him at an angle while shooting out blades and releasing them immediately. The Chmmr will follow you into the little surprises you leave for him. The Marauder is horribly slow ship, but this can be pulled off. Can anyone beat an Avatar with a Dreadnought?

The Sylandro are indeed difficult.  Actually I think it's because of the speed - basically it's a really big fast moving target...I've found success with anything that can throw out a lot of damage in one spot...although if the converse happens, basically I go down with the Slylandro if I end up in front of the ship....speaking of ships I can beat with a Slylandro, I can usually do a pretty good job with the Ur-Quan Enslaver, Spathi, and Chenjesu...basically when I play this one I see it as a hit and run ship...use your speed to get in behind ship, hit them a few times, and then run either when power is gone or when they spin back around to be able to hit you...I'm not consistently successful with this ship (and some of them are devastating lethal against the Slylandro).

The Melnorme ship is one I'm really starting to like playing and am getting good enough to take out a few of the good comers, like Yehat, Utwig, and Chenjesu...I can also occasionally handle both Ur-Quan and the Chmmr OK...the key with playing this ship is you have to be completely dead accurate at full speed (slow down to be accurate you get hit)...the big problem I have right now is controlling the ship...it has a lot of thrust but very little control, much like the Mrrnmhrm Y-Form...it's best as a prusuit vehicle truthfully - exactly what a trading vessel would be like...basically you stun the ship, while building up your shot...you hit them with your shot and then play keep away while you recharge your batteries...often times the recharge coincides with the stun wearing off, so you need to stun the ship again and try to recharge....either it's this pattern (with the bigger ships) or firing off "junk shots" at the smaller faster ships (long series of smaller shots).  My main problem as I said is control and being accurate enough to hit my shots....between not having enough control to not get hit by blades (as an example), and getting hit anyway by a stunned ship, I usually don't last long right now.

Shiver:  ANY of the "capital" ships can take out ANY of the other capital ships (except the Utwig sometimes).  Very often its a matter of who gets the drop on who.

Of course, I have the horrible luck that about 1/5 of the time Dreadnaughts seem to have the VUX intruder device installed - that really doesn't help.

But yeah - Dreadnaught vs Chmmr is a little tricky - you want to get perfectly lined up so you can begin firing earlier - and so that your shots will block the laser. This is tricky, but if it works you get a CRUSHING victory - and if it fails you pretty much cancel.

Actually, I believe I've heard that it is possible to beat Chmmr with Supox or Earthlings.

Earthling: The PD is supposedly ever so slightly longer ranged than the zapsat. I'd guess it's kind of like killing a cruiser with a skiff.

Supox: If you move toward them at full speed, 1 or 2 seeds can get through the zapsats. The trick is to keep doing this until you've killed a zapsat, at which point the rest of the battle is much easier. I think you can also do this with Spathi, but it's lots harder.

I haven't actually done either of these.

Supox vs chmmr is a little tricky but quite certain - the reverse thrust is nearly powerful enough to keep away. When you get a little too close for comfort, push hard to the side then release special to loop around and gain distance, then try again.

Save your shots for when you have a full battery, and line up with the side on which the zapsats are coming instead of going. Then shoot and you'll get one or two shots in on that zapsat. If possible, keep track of it and concentrate your fire. Once one of the sats is down taking down the ship is easy easy easy. Still, you need to KEEP OUT OF RANGE...

Today I managed to beat the Sylandro with the Spathi in game. At first I baited it so the probe would follow me and laid off the speed, once following I released BUTT missiles like there was no tomorrow, when I ran out of energy advanced to the rear so to speak, and repeated. I think I lost about 5 crew.

But any human player worth his salt wouldn't allow his androsynth to be beaten by an orz like that.

Guess that means I'm not worth much salt... :(

I really don't like flying the Androsynth Guardian.  Actually, I didn't really think the Orz-Andy match-up was so one-sided.  I'm fairly shocked to see people having so much trouble to defeat Andies using the Nemesis.  I just lure the enemy into my tailpipe and unleash some marine and cannon fury...  anyways, maybe I'm just battling bad opponents, which is usually the case because I enjoy winning.   ;D

It's so good to be able to finally discuss effective strategies with other good players out there, since generally I was able to easily defeat anyone I played.  :)

Back when I played the game regularly against my friends, my favorite ship turned out to be the Utwig.  Not only does it pretty much dominate every opponent you face in the single player game, it is very effective against most ships in the game.  However.... I'll let the secrets out here.... the most difficult/annoying match-ups for the Utwig.  (against my Utwig playing style at least).

Androsynth:  The comet can't be shielded, making this fight very tough.  From what I remember, this one is anybody's fight and the winner usually barely comes out on top.

Chenjesu:  This is the most difficult match for the Utwig by far IMO.  If the Chenjesu can get out a DOGGIE probe at the beginning of the match and keep them coming at the Utwig, eventually one will hit.  Since the Utwig's shield power doesn't regenerate, once it is all drained it is pretty much helpless.  Plus the normal shots are difficult to shield if they shatter near you.... you don't know for certain if one of the shards will hit you and quite often you end up wasting your battery power attempting to shield them.

Melnorme: Annoying fight since the rainbow shot prevents the Utwig from shielding.  In addition to that, this ship's shots are faster than most other ships', making them more difficult to shield against even if you haven't taken a rainbow shot.

Orz:  Yes, this CAN be a tough fight for the Utwig if the Orz player knows what he is doing.  I remember getting into the situation several times where my choices were to try to shield to keep the little invader guys from entering my ship (thus wasting my battery power) or simply letting them in.  Shielding while the invader guys hit you simply bounces them off of you and doesn't give you any battery power back.

Shofixti: Ok I'd usually win this fight, but it was annoying anyway since I couldn't shield the self-destruct and would usually lose half of my crew.

Slylandro: This one was really freakin' tough since the lightning shot only does 1 crew member worth of damage... it was almost impossible to even maintain the same level of battery power.  I would always leave this fight with less battery power, crew, or with a blown-up ship.

Syreen:  Very annoying fight.  Can't prevent your crew from being sucked out, and you have to get close to be in weapon range.

Utwig:  Self-explanatory.  One of you is going to die!


Against any other ship, the Utwig should be able to come out taking NO damage in the fight.  They'll be my favorite until someone shows me some more effective techniques for taking them out.

Ah, The Utwig.

The counter to the Utwig is the Dreadnought.  Why?  Fighters.

What you do is as soon as you start, launch two fighters and run away.  You ALWAYS want to have one or two - not more! - fighters on the Utwig.  If the Utwig shields, he'll lose more shield energy than he will be regaining.  If he doesn't, he has one/two fighters plinking away.  Eventually he will die.  Just keep away, use the planet, whatever.

I'd like to point out that the Utwig posses on of the best anti-fighter weapons in the game, so I don't know how well that would work against a human oppenent.

That being said, I never really used the Jugger, as by the time I got it in single player I was proficent with my other ships.  Also, I rarely react well enough to use the shield to it's full potentional.

-Will    

Gauge: I'll see what I can do. I know how you feel because I feel the exact same way about the Orz Nemesis. But since I've mastered the Nemesis to the point that I can beat anything that isn't an Arilou, I'll give the Jugger a try. I'll update this post with my findings against the tough spots.

Androsynth Guardian: The shield does help to some extent, actually. It blocks the damage the comet does, but does not absorb anything from it. If he's crashing into you with a lot of fuel left and you know for sure he's going to kill you, turn on the shield so you can last a little longer. Now, I've never played SC2 against someone else or Timewarp at all, but I can beat awesome AI Androsynth as Utwig with some consistency. Just like with the Orz, you get all the time you need to find a planet and gravity whip. You won't be able to launch a marine at him as a taunt, but if you gravity whip just past him and fire as you fly by, he'll waste his starting fuel trying to collide with you. It's best if he follows right behind you so you can nail him, but he doesn't always do that. Plan ahead to be near him when his fuel runs out so you can start blasting him as early as possible. It's not an easy fight as the Guardian definitely has an upper hand in raw damage. While I was playing, I got lucky and beat him without taking a single hit while using the gravity whip follow-me trick. The one time I got nipped, I shielded.

Orz Nemesis: I can't judge this one. The stupid AI won't use his marines against me because he thinks my shield will eat them. It would be nice if the AI would be altered here. I suspect that this battle is virtually impossible as the Nemesis can outrun the Jugger and have marines flying at you from all sides.

Melnorme Trader: I REALLY hate fighting this ship. It's almost as bad as Arilou (which the Utwig performs well against). I just tried Utwig vs. Melnorme once and I'm not doing it again. The Jugger is too cumbersome to avoid the confusion pulse, so you're pretty much screwed. Still, it's possible to win if you successfully hit him every single time you face him while you spin.

Syreen: This match is frustrating because neither side can be particularly successful against the other. Your guns match the range of her song, so she's pretty much guaranteed to get shredded if plays aggressively like the AI. She's fast enough to play keep away and use her peashooter against you from outside your range, but that tactic isn't particularly good at winning battles. There's really no way to save yourself from taking heavy casualties, but at least you still win.

Slylandro Probe: I don't have any amazing revelations here. There's no way to avoid damage, so it's better to just hold down the fire button and try your best to keep pointed at him. You'll win, of course.

Chenjesu Broodhome: It has now become painfully obvious that there is something wrong with the AI, because I have little trouble beating the Chenjesu. He'll start by deploying a DOGI, which you should avoid by going the opposite direction from it that will lead you to the Broodhome. Once you get close, he won't face you and try to launch full crystals, even if your battery is drained (which it probably is). He'll also continue deploying DOGI's even after you've lost your energy. If you're caught without your energy at a distance from him, you're screwed, but otherwise this fight isn't that hard. I imagine it's completely different against a person.

Shiver:

Here's how to win the Orz (Human) vs. Arilou (Computer) matchup - I haven't tried this with UQM yet, but it worked in SC2.

Strategy 1

1. Launch 1 marine then go for the planet rotating turret backwards as you do. Launch another marine only if you can't make it to the planet before the Arilou catches you to get him off of you.
2. Establish orbit around the planet and take pot shots at the Arilou if he gets within range. If he gets too close, gravity whip and launch a new single marine. Re-establish orbit around the planet as soon as you can.
3. As you're taking pot shots, the Arilou will jump away if your aim is good enough. Since the destination of the jump is random, there is a small probability that the Arilou will reappear too close to a space marine. Eventually, a marine will get aboard the Arilou ship and then if you're lucky the single one will take the ship out, otherwise you'll have to get 1 or possibly 2 more aboard to destroy the Arilou.

Keep launching marines to increase the probability of him jumping too close to one of them. It is important to make sure that you don't launch all 8 of your marines if you can help it - try to keep a spare to get the Arilou off you if he gets too close.

Use your cannon to scare the Arilou off if he gets too close, but your aim must be really good for this to work. The likelihood of you hitting the Arilou with your cannon is pretty low, but you may hit him if you're really lucky.

If you find that all your marines are starting to bunch up, try to get the Arilou to chase you towards the planet and perform a 180 around the planet. If your marines are close enough, they'll split the planet (half go around one way, half go around the other) and disperse, allowing them a chance to confuse the Arilou enough to possibly get one aboard, or if they don't at least they won't be bunched up anymore.

If you have to bug out of planetary orbit, re-establish orbit as soon as possible and continue the strategy.

This strategy requires some patience and the skill to navigate near the planet repeatedly. You'll find that if you can get the right orbit, you'll be able to use the planet to shield yourself from the Arilou's shots as he guns for you and you'll suffer pretty minimal losses.

Strategy 2

This one works perfect if you're an Ur-Quan Dreadnought (with some damage), but if your an Orz, you'll probably suffer damages of at least half if not more of your crew.

1. Fly straight at the Arilou and attempt to ram him with your turret.
2. Once you are at point blank range, fire, launch a marine, and run away. You'll suffer some damage from the Arilou weapon, but the marine will make him jump away from you.
3. Repeat step 2, but this time your shot will be for the kill. Hopefully you won't be killed before you kill him.

With this strategy, you have to basically wait until your turret is touching the Arilou before you fire, but before the Arilou recoils from the impact. If you time it perfectly, the Arilou will not be able to jump away as it won't be able to react fast enough. If you fire too soon, the Arilou will jump away unharmed.

This strategy works a lot better with a ship that can kill the Arilou in one shot (Ur-Quan Dreadnought, Chenjesu, Druuge) or one that has a large crew capacity (haven't tried it with the Spathi, but maybe it'd work), but causes you to lose crew by letting the Arilou shoot you a bunch of times.

Well, good luck, hopefully one of these strategies will work for you!

Matt

Whoa, thanks! I always thought that winning Orz vs. Arilou only happened because of freak accidents. And as it turns out, that's entirely true. But if you wait long enough, a freak accident will happen. Luckily, it usually only takes one marine to wipe out those pansies.

Your second strategy doesn't work for me because the little bastard always flies to my side right away, but I don't really need to pull it off if I got the other one working.

Okay, I got it to work. Arilou aren't much of a problem anymore.

1 question, Dave Morse, where in the game do you have to fight an avatar with a cruiser, i've never heard of that.

The reason slylandro are so difficult to beat is because when they unleash their stupid lightning bolts on you, your ship continually spins. And it even if you get a lucky shot in when it runs out of energy, you're still screwed because unless you're a precursor vessle, you dont have enough crew to back it up. Slylandros are VERY fun once you get the hang of the controls. You just have to keep pressing right or left, and they will move in a choppy circle. Very nice ship.

Supermelee, that's where. That's also the only place you get to fly the Chenjesu, Mmrnmhrm, and Androsynth.

Here's my anti-Utwig stuff.

Androsynth: Do NOT ram him, there's a much better tactic. Instead, launch a slow stream of single bubbles one at a time. Because they track so eratically, even the most trigger-fingered Utwig pilot will lose a little fuel shielding unnecessarily. Once you deplete his batteries, then let him have it with a full tank's worth of bubbles. If he gets close to you, comet away. This has worked well against the computer and my brother. I think the androsynth is one of the best if not the best anti-Utwig ships, but I'm a bit biased cause it's one of my favorites.

VUX: The Vux also does well against the Utwig.  Run away at the start and send a steady flow of limpets at him, and keep limpeting him until he's really gunked up.  Then get behind the Jugger on an empty fuel tank. Hold down the fire button, the stuttering laser is near impossible to shield against without losing fuel or crew.  Once you've drained his batteries, then unleash the full fury of your gigawatt laser.

As has already been said, the Chenjesu and Melnorme, and to a lesser degree the Syreen and Orz, are a good match for the Utwig.

Also, any ship that can outrun the Utwig and outrange the Utwig with a weapon that does only one damage (such as supox, shofixti, thraddash, zoqfotpik, and a few others) can win if you're patient. The trick is to stay out of range and fire one shot at a time. Try to make it so that you shoot barely out of your maximum range so that the shot JUST falls short. Sometimes he'll shield without getting hit, and you will slowly wear away at them. Even if it does hit his shield, it won't add anything to his fuel batteries. This tactic leads to long and drawn-out battles, but it works. The Mmrnmhrm and Spathi can also take advantage of imperfections in their seeking systems to trick the Utwig into shielding.

Overall, I think the Utwig is overrated. It's good (particularly at killing the big guns), but not as good as a lot of people think. I prefer the Yehat over the Utwig, am I the only one?

BTW, has anyone found something the Umgah is good for? I've tried to find a good use for it, but I can't.  I have thought for a long time that it's the worst ship in the game, and I still.  The only ship it can beat consistently is an Earthling cruiser, and even then it will lose that battle if the cruiser can get to the planet.  It can beat an Ilwrath or Vux sometimes; I think that Umgah vs. either of those ships is a pretty even matchup.  The cone is just too short ranged. The retro thrusters do not compensate enough for that because when it zips up to an enemy, it still has to turn around. That takes a while, long enough for the drone to be blasted by a big ship or for a small ship to escape.  

The Yehat Terminator is a surprisingly fun ship to fly. I don't have a lot of experience with it, but I have taken down both Ur-Quan ships with it a few times. Not much else to say about it, but I might try using it more later.

From my experience, the Umgah Drone is a piece of crap. The AI isn't too bad with it since it zips back and turns a little bit to catch you, sometimes succeeding. It might be useful with a lot of practice, but certainly not any better than that.

in SC1 the antimatter cone was much bigger. This made defense and sideswipes much easier. It could be that the cone was so wide that it made a too-perfect defense against too many ships from SC2 and they dropped it...

Also, the bubbles vs utwig technique is the one I use. VERY effective against Human and AI.

The Yehat Terminator wasn't the "backbone of the Alliance fleets" just for nothing, you know.  It was the original shielding ship, one which (if flown by a good enough pilot) was very good at eliminating the incredible Dreadnought in Star Control 1.  It was, in my opinion, the best ship on the Alliance of Free Star's side, and made up for alot of their negative, "runaway-tactics" ships.  So much fun to fly, too!

Okay, I was just wondering if anyone could pilot it effectively. On paper it could be good against small, fast, short-ranged ships (like the Pkunk) because it could zip when they tried to flank it, but I've tried it and it doesn't seem to work that well.

BUMP!

I have a friend whose father is an umgah expert. He would wipe out teams of 1 of each in SC1 the moment he got his Umgah.

Is this on one of the 8-bit versions of SC1? In my experience, the Umgah Drone is the most powerful ship in the 8-bit versions of SC1, simply because all of the ships move like they're stuck in treacle (or molasses, for US readers). This makes it dead easy to eradicate all of the Alliance ships with a single Drone.

If this is on the PC, Amiga or Genesis, I'm quite impressed.

It was on a PC. The man trained for hours.

how bout shofixti vs chmmr, try and get out of that one.

Planet-Fu, that's the secret.