The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

So, I'm playing through with my kids. I pilot, I point out logistical issues, but they set the navigation, strategic goals, and conversation options.

So far:

We handled Sol system. Left Venus untouched. Learned of the Pkunk and their home cluster from the Ilwrath captain.

Dropped by Sirius, then headed down to Centauri. Mined the furthest ruby world at Alpha Centauri. Grabbed some stuff from nearby Centauri stars, came back without actually visiting the Pkunk. The life we saw was all in awkward planets and we let it be.

Built up all the thrust and turning jets, 2 fuel tanks, 5 cargo bays, an ion bolt gun, a crew pod. Have a cruiser and Fwiffo.

That's where we were before today's session.

They wanted to check out the Shofixti. So we're heading down that way. Lyrae cluster first (ruby world!) then on to Alpha Ptolemae. We're planning on hitting beta, gamma, delta Ptolemae, in that order, before heading on to Gorno. Haven't worked out which Gorno star to do first.

We have had 3 losses while gathering materials - 1 from a lightning strike on a world with a lot of noble gases (perhaps a noble world) and 2 on a planet with a bunch of midget clowns, big slow round tentacle monsters, and moderate earthquakes - the losses were to an earthquake foreshock that was right in front of us. We didn't clear out the bio-data since our lander is not fast enough to catch the midget clowns, they only yield 1 each, and the conditions are not ideal; we can come back for the last two later.

And that's where we are. We don't play regularly (they often want to do other things), but when we do I'll update.

(crosspost with scdb)

Kids with intellectually stimulating parents are so lucky....

You're living my dream, Death 999... I still have to wait a few years until my first child is old enough for the same project.

Hope for your sake that your kid wants to play it then. There are lots of other games with much more fancy graphics today, and kids aren't necessarily eager to play an old intellectually stimulating game. I tried to convince my sister's kids to play it, but they replayed that they just wanted to play simple games where you run around and shoot at things. Forcing your kids to play it is probably not a good idea either, but if you are smart I guess you can figure out a way to make them interested.

His kids want to play with him. That's why it'll take so long, as the kids need to want to play, and he needs to have the time.
And they stop when the kids loose interest.

Yeah, modern "casual gaming" also destroyed this kind of epic storytelling.

(I'll be following over at PoNaF-forums mostly.)


Q: How old your your kids? Maybe I should start with mine too, over the summer holiday or so.)

They're 7 and 10.

So, we had another two sessions. The first was short. We took a few mining losses and got a lot of minerals in Alpha Ptolemae.

The second, we figured we had filled up so much we wouldn't need to do the rest of Ptolemae if we wanted to actually locate any Shofixti survivors. So, we went straight down to Alpha Gorno. From alpha, worked our way around ccw to Delta. Took a bunch of mining losses, but the bays are 3/4 full.

Met Tanaka, blew a bunch of fuel trying to be nice but eventually got enough insults through. Saved immediately; the kids plan to talk to him again immediately when we resume.

We did another session over the weekend. They talked with Tanaka again. I took down the notes of what he mentioned (Zeta Sextantis 1 and Beta Brahe). Unfortunately, we were low on fuel by then and had to go home.

Were told about signal from Rigel. Built an extra crew pod and several cargo bays, which may go unused because we didn't get another fuel pod. Got a dynamo, though.

Went to Rigel, talked. Noticed that Tucanae is a rather long way off. There was an argument about what to do. At first they wanted to go to Vulpeculae just because it looked weird. Then they thought we could head through Spathi space to Tucanae after all, and maybe drop by Greenish in the supergiant on the way.

Met a Spathi, had a not-very-fruitful but non-catastrophic conversation.

We have over 200 bio credit and look forward to meeting Greenish.

Also, my son made some fan-art involving several new species which apparently share a ship:

(http://i.imgur.com/9EKlQVk.jpg)

We bought the cannon and lander-speed techs, and headed to the Spathi homeworld. Cleaned the joint out, made the alliance. They got it to stick. Heard about that funny vanishing star. Headed on to ZFP. Noticed we were low on fuel. Had to dodge a 'quan of some sort to get to them. Made alliance. Played Frungy. Headed home, got stuck, refueled, bought PDL tech.

Made it home, bought 2 eluders, upgraded gun to cannon, bought a third fuel tank, filled up. Not sure where to go next. Will think about it.

Layout tweak - we sold one of the cruisers and made a fourth fuel tank.

Upon reviewing the backstory, they wanted to visit Vela. So we did, and now we know where the Ur-Quan sphere is. Incidentally, the Raynet planets are JUNK.

Then they decided to head over to VUX territory. Scared of the Androsynth, so avoiding that until we have a decent counter. Saw a few sensor contacts as we entered the historic extent of VUX space, but they were out of the way. We just entered Alpha Cerenkov when time ran out for the session. No particular discoveries yet.

So we talked with ZEX for the first time, got the usual information. Didn't threaten him or anything. Got the hint that talking with other VUX might not be a super-awesome idea, though.

Headed directly down to Zeta Sextantis (skipping Beta along the way because unfriendly space) to follow up on Tanaka's hint. On the way, caught by a probe. Talked, blew it up with no losses (Spathi)

Reached Zeta Sextantis, mined it out, found rainbow world.

Thought we were near the Yehat, checked out Iota Sextantis.

On the way between planets, ambushed by another probe! Again disposed of it with no losses by Spathi, though it took longer.

Sapphire world!!!

And that was the end of this session.

So, we headed galactic East a little to talk to the Yehat. Made it to the next star system that way.

Had a nice conversation, and then a… less nice conversation. Managed not to claim that the Shofixti are back. Fought briefly, did no damage, ran away, getting out JUST in the nick of time.

Figured that wasn't going to work out. They changed their minds about not checking in on the Androsynth since the Vulpeculae constellation was so shiny, so we headed back up that way through VUX space.

Met some VUX in Alpha Sextantis. Apologized, didn't do any good. Blew them up with Spathi.

We found a noticeable amount of bio data across today's session, mostly in the form of purple squids mushrooms.

Two sessions.

Continued on to Alpha Vulpeculae to talk to Greenish. Bought a bunch of techs. Went to Beta Vulpeculae, barely dodging a probe. Met the Orz. Daughter doesn't trust them. Didn't press too hard, but did say they'd like an alliance. Took note of the antipathy with the Arilou.

Second session:

Headed around Vulpeculae clockwise. Visited Greenish for techs as we got more biodata. Asked a little about the Androsynth, but didn't press. Watched the definition of 'Frumple' in replay.

Filled up our storage bays just as we hauled Bukowski out of the lab. Bought techs up to but not including hellbores.

We talked about what to do next. Son wants to find Mmrnmhrm, even though I had just pointed out how the Chenjesu were the most powerful allies. Daughter suggested that 'Linch-Nas-Ploh' might be Draconis. Which they also noted is an UKNOWN on the historical map. Speaking of unknowns, they haven't displayed any interest in Pkunk, though maybe they'll check them out now that they have heat resistance and so are heading down to Alpha Centauri for the ruby worlds. Not that RU are a major issue now, what with our 7 filled storage bays and not being able to buy hellbores and shiva furnaces yet.

We headed back home. Planned to go check out old Chenjesu sphere to see if we could find them. Also planned to check for Pkunk.

25k RU! Welcomed the Orz to the base, got the warning about probes, and distress call from ZFP.

Built up ship with 2 tracking modules, 2 extra-large fuel tanks, forward and spread blasters, 3 dynamos, 2 crew modules, and the rest more cargo bays. Also bought 2 nemeses. Wow, somehow we lost 40 crew. Well, that should drop off now that we have all the lander shields.

Headed to ZFP directly, since that sounded urgent. Paused to let a probe catch up so we wouldn't possibly fight it near Ur-Quan.

Fought the Kohr-Ah at the ZFP with a Spathi, got the 4 free ships. Wondering where to go next now that we're here.

It happened to be the 17th when we were planning, so we saw the big UNKNOWN star in one of the directions we were considering going. I intervened to point out that it was more than 3 days away (more like 30) when they said to set a course for it.

So they decided to check out the Umgah, since they were in the general direction that the ZFP had said the probes were coming from, and also in the general direction of Draconis, with its own Unknown circle and also for being a Linch-Nas-Ploh candidate.

Hit Mu Orionis. Actually took an RU loss on mining up ONE magnetic monopole for 2.6 a whopping fuel (place was nasty enough did not stick around to get all the base metals).

Hit Lambda Orionis. Talked with an Umgah. They were acting their usual selves, nothing abnormal about them, yet. Suggested we could put aside our past differences. They said the Ur-Quan fealty oath was a pretty big deal to them and attacked, and we blew them up with a Spathi. Now we have around 30 battlegroups converging on our location. We'll probably just head out of the system and go somewhere less unwelcoming, but we haven't committed to that yet.

So are those the pre-mind-controlled Umgah?

Yes. Will edit to clarify

Pretty surely yes, the mind-controlling is announced through Hayes (when some starbase crew members simultaneously loose consciousness).
The Troglodyte over at SCDB-forum ran into this message, and interpreted it incorrectly. (http://www.star-control.com/community/viewtopic.php?p=25415#p25415)

Edit: heck, I should've checked for a new page before answering.

No, that's just from the Pkunk dying. I have gone through entire games without Hayes giving that message.

Ah, thanks.

Well, at least, I think so.

confirmed by examination of source code.

I remember from my first game that both happened around the same time, so I may have confused the messages.

Especially after having finished the game, and the Pkunk having been absorbed into the Yehat culture, and not having died, I dismissed the "wrong"-message as being part of  the Pkunk SOI disappearing.

Yeah, that aspect of it confused me, too. I guess a bunch of them probably did die, and that was wrong.

My interpretation was that it was the Pkunk, not the Yehat, who did something very wrong... given how different the Yehat are at the end...

This is interesting, I'm waiting for more updates

We had a bit of an interruption, as my son has shifted more towards Nexo Knights for the time being. He does keep asking things about SC at breakfast, say, so it's not dead. Just… waiting.

My oldest finished Nexo Knights a while ago.....

If you want to help him cheat, there are great online sites with nearly all "shields"

Left the system, hit a probe. Talked, nothing really new. Then didn't notice an Umgah in front of us and hit them too. Talked, fought, lost 7 crew on the flagship. Headed more in the direction the ZFP said the probes are coming from. Visited alpha, delta, and epsilon Mensae.

I am concerned that they haven't gotten the hint that the targets live in a gas giant, so we'll go RIGHT BY THEM and waste our time. Or they could be attracted by how close we're getting to Draconis and detour. If we don't head off to Draconis, we are likely to hit Alpha Pavonis. I will not aim them that way. If they alternately get detoured into the UNKNOWN, then they might pick up that hint about the probes's origin. Or perhaps a visit to Greenish at Alpha Apodis will yield the information, but probably not.

oh dang. Either you're amused or frustrated by your kids not picking up on hints.

Which hints? No one has mentioned the gas giant-ness of the Slylandro.

Hi,

I am new to both this forum and Ur-Quan Masters game... just downloaded it yesterday out of curiosity... so far frustrated at my landers being blown away while collecting minerals..

Your kids drawing is soo cute!... I wish my kid would be interested in this game... but the moment I showed to him he laughed at the graphic and then went on playing roblox..

Cheers.

There are dangerous places to land. You can tell by looking at the temperature, and the 'weather' and 'tectonics' gauges.

Anywhere with a surface temperature above boiling will have 'hotspots' which are deadly, and the hotter, the more often it'll have them. Weather will produce lightning. Class 3 is a gradual drain; higher is very nasty. On tectonics, keep an eye out for aftershocks and you should be okay up to class 4.

Mercury is not the best recommendation on where to go for the radioactives - Jupiter's moon Io is better.

Hope that helps!

Thanks... at least getting some RUs now...  ;D

Also, keep an eye on the fuel use of each trip. Most moons are really cheap to get down to, but some planets can be very expensive and not worth it. This gets to be a big deal once you're traveling to other systems.

Found lots of rare minerals in Alpha Centauri that makes me rich... also what is that energy thing on pluto? My lander explodes when it hits that thing.

Did it really explode?

How much crew do you have?
A fully manned lander should be able to break the dangerous contact (and survive), but the contact will be helpful for the game, if treated correctly.

(BTW, this thread may be the wrong thread for you. Death might post spoilerish information.)

Yes, really, you should probably start a new thread.

ANYWAY, Kids decided to divert over to Draconis. Hit Lambda Draconis, talked with and fought a bunch of Thraddash.

I advised them NOT to send the Thraddash at the Kohr-Ah for purely out-of-game reasons (you can't ally with them then, and this doesn't make game sense, so it's not a fair chllenge).

 Then Alpha Apodis, and bought the Hellbore cannon tech. Also visited delta Apodis.

~~ separate session ~~

Visited Kappa Draconis. Fought a bunch of Thraddash. They said the probes are coming from the direction of Vega. That got them to get back on the Probes theme, and they headed out.

Stopped just as we were about to leave Thraddash space in order to have two last fights… and the last one was them forming Culture 20!

Sadly, they did not elect to make them say stupid things. Ah well.

Epsilon Corvi, Vega, Beta Corvi… and we missed the true source of probes for lack of the required hint. Presently at zeta corvi, way off in the corner. Maybe they'll work it out from the 'Vega-wards from Thraddash', which really narrows it down a lot. There are, like, four systems that could be - seven on the outside - and we've been to most of them. It won't be long until we're out altogether.

Incidentally, we're a bit low on fuel, but we have lots of bio-data, so we can refill easily at Alpha Apodis. They might get some hints from the Thraddash when they return.

Yep, sorry for hijacking the thread... didn't mean too.. got carried away...

Looking forward for more updates of your game... cheers!

We're in the far northwest system now. There is a LOT of bio-data here.

The peak of the rainbow planet arrow should be in that area. Becoming friends with the Supox and the Utwig is also nice. The Utwig Jugger can take almost any starship if you know when to use the energy absorbent shield. How I wish I could go back in time, to when I played it for the first time.

No, that's northEAST.

you are right of course...  :-\

well. technically speaking there is no magnetic north in space, but according to the map.

Explored the next system south… not really anything interesting. Low on fuel and confused, headed back to Alpha Apodis to get fuel from Greenish.

On the way back, talked to two thraddash who told us about the Rainbow world and ZEX's Beauty, and fought a probe which started close enough we lost two crew in a battle which went on for a silly-long time after.

We had so much biodata we got the last tech, filled the tanks, and were able to buy current events info up to the point that Greenish pointed us straight at Beta Corvi. Which we'd already explored. He also told us about the Utwig Super-bomb (though not where the Utwig ARE), the Umgah subverting the Ilwrath, the dimensional portal, and the Dreadnought on Alpha Pavonis.

We reverted to save from right before we bought the information. Then we picked up the rainbow world and then headed straight for Beta Corvi… not even bothering to mine out the rest of Epsilon Draconis (tried the rainbow world but it was a bit dicey even with max shields. Lost two crew).

After wandering around Beta Corvi for 8 minutes, daughter finally suggested visiting the gas giant. Got a little explanation but then had to stop playing; didn't save, but now they know where the Slylandro are.

Dad's relieved. He doesn't have to hold in anymore.

:)

Yeah, really. Though if they'd given up and headed down to the Arilou they would have eventually spilled that they live on a planet with no surface, which would be a big hint.

OKAY!

We talked with the Slylandro, almost all the way. Didn't press about the glowy bits, didn't get details about their biology and ecology.

Headed down to Alpha Pavonis, took a while but found the dreadnought.

Headed down to the 2 blue stars the Slylandro mentioned. Got a good bit of mining / bio collection done (nearly filled tanks of good materials), and picked up rainbow world.

Headed down to where we expect the dimensional portal to open, got there on the 15th. On the 16th, an Arilou dropped by. Exhausted the first conversation tree.

Explored a little Quasispace. Saved and reloaded a few times to explore. Found the Ilwrath portal and the Utwig portal, then finally noticed Fayalaralfali and went there. Had one conversation, got the spawner. Took the nearest - which was to near the center portal - then found the home portal. Went home, saved before docking, noticed that we got some Arilou ships, and we could have gotten more if we'd ditched some stingers first. So we didn't save after that, so we can do it better later.

Back at it again! First we sold off some ZFP ships to make room for the Arilou we were about to pick up.

Then we found out that the Spathi left!

Then we set our fleet to:
2 Cruisers
3 Eluders
2 Nemeses
3 Skiffs
1 Torch
1 empty

We also bought 2 hellbore cannons and 3 shiva furnaces, displacing the 2 blasters and 3 cargo bays (leaving 3).

10k RU left over, so we're basically done gathering RU.

Rather than, say, visiting Epsilon Gruis and the Spathi, we headed down to check out those Pkunk the Ilwrath had referred to before. Epsilon Giclas, then Beta. Passed up base-metal mining. Met the Pkunk, and were forwarded to their homeworld. Visited, got the clear spindle, one Fury, and some fun conversation.

Portalled and went exploring. Ended up near Arcturus. After a long debate over whether to go exploring or not, they headed to Arcturus and found the Burvix civilization, and the caster, and a lot of bio data. Took some losses gathering it up (almost entirely from lightning).

How long until the Death March starts?

It's June 26, 2156. I think that means we have quite a while.

It was interesting, I hope more updates, do not abandon the project!  :)

They discovered Subway Surfers. Between that and Nexo Knights, Star Control has been put on the back burner. My son periodically refers to it, though.

If I was you, I would create a program for setting the weekly budget for different games. This would be easy to do in Linux. You could just use crontab to check every minute which games are active. For educational games, such as SC2 or Kerbal Space Program, I would set a large weekly budget (for example 100 hours a week), while for less educational games I would set a smaller weekly budget (for example 2 hours a week). When they have exceeded their budget, I would just kill the process running the game, and write a message saying: "Sorry, you have exceeded your weekly budget for this game, please wait until next Monday".

If you give your kids unlimited access to candies, they might not eat dinner.

We limit their game time, definitely, but we let them pick which games freely.

I don't see how we'd justify rationing specific games.

You don't need to make it into a dictatorship. If your kids think they should be allowed to have a larger budget for one of their games, allow them to present their case. If their arguments are good, give them a somewhat larger budget for the game. This will also make them think more about the value of what they are spending their time with, and it will probably be a healthy family activity to discuss these things with your kids anyhow.

My son (9) decided to start his own game from scratch, actually flying the ship himself almost all the time (I handle fights other than the intro Ilwrath fight, still).

He lost against the opening Ilwrath on the first try because it shot down his first two missiles.

And it took a while for him to get the controls under his fingers right. Even though he's got maximum maneuvering and speed, he still moves like he's afraid to miss planets - very slowly, a puff of thrust and then drift. He could now miss and make it back with no trouble because the ship handles so smoothly. You can almost fly it like it moves forwards and slips a little as it turns, as long as you're not turning too quickly. Ah well.

Plot-wise, he did a loop through the Pkunk, then headed up towards the Spathi. We didn't face any Ilwrath there, but we did find a probe.

I'm glad your back, it's so fun to read!

They had a combined session again, and it was a big one!

Having just gotten the Burvix caster, they hit quasispace and struck out for an UNKNOWN (we're using HD, so it notes where the explored ones go). Their random choice was the Druuge portal, and they chose to go to Zeta Persei (no prompting). They weren't terribly impressed by the Druuge, and explored Quasispace again. This time they came out near the Spathi. Which was kind of what they were hoping would happen when they set out at the beginning of this voyage, yay! So they went to the slave-shielded Spathiwa and then the moon, and got the caster and note.

The Umgah caster put them in mind of the Umgah, so they flew north. Were creeped out by the weird Umgah behavior. Made it to the Dnyarri, and ended up being sent to seek death at the hands of their enemy. Spent a long time arguing about how much to tell the Ur-Quan, ended up not asking why they should say since they'd just be attacked - just said what they knew in serious terms. After released, portalled out and went home, got the reports about all the new goodies.

My son resumed his own session and reached Vela. He saved, and tried to face the Ur-Quan flying the ship himself. This went poorly.

So, he spent the next two days in Supermelee trying to train up. At first, he was having trouble beating a goldfish (i.e. human player with no one flying). His sister took the other human controls and is still having trouble, but supermelee is their big thing now.

Unfortunately, yesterday had a big meltdown because of a Kohr-Ah vs Spathi matchup that was just too tedious, plus he (Kohr-Ah) lost, plus I was advising her (Spathi) how to fly it since that's what you need in the campaign mode (and he was flying it roughly indistinguishably from a Good AI level except for the occasional double fire ring for no reason due to wrong key presses).

It came out that he didn't realize the blades were long ranged. Maybe he'll do better tonight now that I told him he can hold the key down.

He's been spending most of his video game since trying out supermelee. Quite a bit of it has been rather useless for learning to be better, like human vs human with him at both controls just shooting things and seeing what happens.

Still, he did eventually manage to go back and beat the Ur-Quan at Vela, losing a cruiser but keeping Fwiffo alive.

He also found the Taalo shield, and realized that could help out in their other save file.