The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

Hi all, _{this is my first thread.}

I've played SC, SC2/UQM and SC3 _{(even if sc3 is frowned on)}, and have a few thoughts.

SC2 begins with too much backstory.  Whilst this makes for an exciting first thirty minutes, it's frustrating - and I've always mourned the loss of having any interaction with the Androsynth who are continuity rich.

We spend too much of the game learning about what has already happened.  

SC does not allow the story emersion that SC2 does - the Alliance vs the Hierachy has a lot of potential to be fleshed out.  The story's concession is that most of the fighting occured after Earth was already under the slave shield... so there's nothing that humans could have done anyway.

Were the SC arc to occur in SC2 prior to Zelnick's return from Vela... there's tonnes of possibilities.

StarCon3
Despite its let-down - SC3 had some things going for it.

1) It forced you to use your fleet.  In UQM I use the earthling for the first Ilwrath... then it's basically the mothership until the Sa-Matra.  It's too easy to avoid using all the great ships in favour of the tracking Hellbore.  Of course the downside of this was that you lost the immense pleasure of upgrading your vessel.

2) The Precusor artifacts found on plants were good.  This could easily be used to spice up the mineral searches, which can tend to be too time consuming (help guides notwithstanding).

3) It allowed you to establish a presence beyond that of the starbase/colony.  Okay, the colonies caused more grief than they were worth.  But in UQM you should at least be able to move some humans to the moon... or haul a colony pod over to the Syreen starbase for some R&R.  Or set up a mine on a planet with huge reserves below the crust.  Install detection satellites...

4) It avoided the trawl through Hyperspace... okay!  Hyperspace was fun.  But you had control over the speed of the game.  IMHO Hyperspace should play at x4 speed until you pick something up on sensors - whereby it should then drop back to regular travel speed.

On top of this I would see the planet systems rotating with differential gravity for the size of planet.

Prequel

Give us the Sentient Milieu!  It would be good to play as either Taalo or Ur-Quan... or Keel-Verezy  ::)

okay, getting ahead of self.

what other improvements?

=w=

It's too late at night for me to fully analyze and respond to all of that, but it seems like you're trying to play the devil's advocate by pointing out things wrong with SC2 and praising SC3. But it's pretty obvious you feel the same way about the two games as the rest of us here.

hey id like some of those extras:D ,

Also wouldent it be good if a SC3 was to be made, but this time by toy's for bob.. imagine a hybride using the homeworld type engine for combat  :o makes me wanna have babies think of it  :P

It's just the scriptwriter in me coming out.  It's the balance between show & tell, or in this case do & tell.  SC never let you experience the Alliance vs Heirarchy war as it never had SC2's engine.

It just could have been better to expereince all that, rather than read about it, and yes, I guess it would be a mod.  They're just ideas/opinions from having played SC2 about half a dozen times and SC3, hmm, maybe twice.

=w=

So our general ideas so far are:

Sentient Mileu
During SC1, lots of combat scenarios

Did anyone think of what happens after SC2? Toys for Bob would have to invent a lot of new crap since the Orz are the only thing I can think of that seem like an unfinished plot line.

A homeworld-esque engine would be awesome for SC2, what with the precursor vessel and 12 support ships allowed. You wouldn't get the sport of dueling enemy ships 1 on 1, but commanding all ships at once in 3D would be a fair trade-off. The flagship would have to be huge enough to fit twelve capital ships inside it, so it would no longer look the same size as a Dreadnought. I guess it could still accelerate as fast as other ships with that huge engine, but its manueverabilty would be cut down to the point that you could no longer dodge around even the slowest of ships. It would be interesting to see a large group of Utwig and Supox face off against and defeat an equal number of Kohr-Ah Marauders.

I was under the impression that the 12 support vessels were alongside, carried along in warp field eddies. That's why size doesn't matter - they would be sloshing around in the field, and if you tried to put two together they'd keep smacking into each other (not that this has negative effects in combat...)

A colony building Master of Orion type game just doesn't mix well with a story-oriented space exploration game like Star Control. SC3's colony system just got in the way. What I would like to see is the addition of an SC1-type strategic mode that is separate from the main game. That would be cool, but it should be a separate mode.

And I really like the rich story of SC2.  It has THE best story for any game I have ever played, bar none...only Geneforge and Betrayal at Krondor even come close. I don't find it frustrating at all, and I think most people don't.

But one change I never want to see is a new combat engine. MAYBE a few tweaks (like multiple ships), but even then only after careful consideration. A homeworld-type engine, a wing commander-type engine, or a master of orion-type engine would NOT be Star Control! It's like trying to turn a first person shooter into an RPG - even if it's a very good RPG battle system, it's not the same thing.

As for using your fleet - yeah I think that fforcing you to use your escorts would be a good idea in a future star contorl game. Although nobody's making you use your flagship - you don't have to fight with it if you don't want to.

Well, part of it was how much dependence you had upon these colonies and how powerful they were.

The crew regeneration rate made no sense - two humans plopped down on a planet would become ten crew in the space of less than a year.

SC1 ignored this problem -- an Earthling Cruiser with one crew could found a colony which would re-crew it the next turn.

SC2 had a different solution - a finite crew supply, no colonies.

SC3 increased the detail, making the fallacies of SC1 that much more ridiculous.

SC3 (proposed) could take an entirely different re-crewing model, such as:
You re-crew only by having Talana 'recruit' Mycon. (I like the idea that the game be based on the idea of having several captains - main characters - whom you lead around and they interact and can talk with each other. One would be Talana, another would be Zelnick, another could be Fwiffo, and more would be found throughout the game. If any one of them dies, the dynamic of the game changes, but it does not end. An important aspect of this is that you can effectively be in more than one place at once. This would require that the characters have advanced precursor communication tech that doesn't give away position very much. Also, escape pods could be used to save a captain and crew while losing the ship -- could be useful under certain circumstances).

Another possible recrewing model could be that you find a precursor facility which makes robots fully capable of acting as crew...

Or you can return to a friendly colony to recrew, and aas you gather more support, more places will help you (essentially the same as SC2)

If you don't like words, play another game.  If you don't like thoughtful and elaborate conversations, diplomacy or creativity through speech, skip through the conversation scenes.  To me, SC2 is what you make it to be...  if you don't want to use the precursor ship all the time, then don't... what's stopping you?  If you just wanna battle or take in on the action, play SuperMelee...  the fact that you suggest the game should've been more "doing" is strange to me.  I'm glad SC2 didn't forfeit the story for more "action" or "doing" like SC3 did...  there is no way to understand what's going on.  The story, the originality... that's what appealed to me.  Taking that away strips the game of what makes it so amazingly fun to play.

I don't understand why you don't like the slave sheild idea. The game would definetly not be StarControl without it. There would be no point in mining or anything if it wasn't up. It is a necessity.

Perhaps it's the nitpicker in me coming out, but I don't know of any screenwriter that refers to themselves as a "scriptwriter." Yeah, there's a lot of dialog to go through in the game, but I think it works amazingly well for the game. Film and interactive games do definitely have similarities, but in this case I think it's something that works in a game which would not work in a film.

I'm being slightly misread here.  When I advocate more 'doing', I'm not doing so at the expense of story.  

I'm just saying that it is less statisfying hearing about all these recent events that occured in Zelnick's absence - and that this is intrinsically linked to SC2 position as a sequel; especially a sequel to a game that did not contain the same A-Z story emmersion, due to its simpler engine.

Kind of like - what if Peter Jackson started the Lord of the Rings at the same place the animated/liveaction one ended..?It makes me wish I could go back and experience them.

Would you for instance rather; fight the Sa-Matra... or hear the Thraddash talk about your victory in rhyming pig-latin?

On the other hand, Zelnick's return post-war perfectly poisitions him for the kind of exploration/first contact scenarios that occur in the game.

If I didn't love UQM then I wouldn't have suffered the download of all the components on a dial-up connection, nor would I have sought out a forum.  The game is great, but it's not perfect - and we shouldn't suffer for exploring reasons why.

So are you suggesting that we actually ADD stuff to UQM, or are these just ideas for another SC game?

This sounds like something a compulsive gambler UQM fan on crack might say instead of "Daddy wants a new pair of shoes".

Hey, we don't have a race whose stereotype is gambling!

Seriously though, if they're remixing the music the graphics just HAVE to be renovated, 3D and stuff!
you can't reincarnate half the game!

In other boards and personally I've wanted to do a project like this (probably using the TW engine) and have begun to develop my skills that direction. (Far from it at the moment, but I will be there one day.)
One problem is that I would really need to decide what goals a expanded storyline game would have. So asside from above, which ideas I really like, other goals would a full stragety game have to spice things up?
One thought is to rescue a pilot and carry it back to the starbase. Another would be to build 4 fortified mines. Or a timed mission where if you don't accomplish the task or find whatever in time the enemy recieves re-enforcements. Maybe just "defend the starbase until _____". (The original SC1 gave you the option of either destryoing the starbase or all colonies. Those would still be an option.)

Mmm... I could go for a pre-quel as well, one where you control the Ur-Quan, but unlike the simulation format of SC1, make it a first person format as per SC2.

The goal of course, would be to ultimately enslave the Chenjesu. The problem would be that you wouldn't have enough ships or resources to manage that, but you could encounter (battle thrall) alien races and subjugate them to add their forces (and resources) to your fleet.