Instead of telling you where to find it, I'll give you some hints, from which you should be able to figure out the rest yourself.

"Sa-Matra" is Ur-Quan for "Great Trophy" -- it is the trophy over which their Doctrinal War is fought, for the faction which possesses the Sa-Matra has the power to make their doctrine reality.

Few know much about it, for most of those who have seen it didn't live to tell the tale. Two of your old allies from the first war were brought down by the might of the Sa-Matra, and are now slave-shielded together on a planet under the star of Procyon. Seek them out and talk to them. Caution: They may be guarded by battle thralls (although these are very easily manipulated, if you know what motivates them -- you can use the same device to manipulate them as you can use to talk to your trapped former allies).

As for its location -- since it is the most treasured possession of the Ur-Quan, it is zealously guarded near the centre of their sphere of influence. To learn its exact location, you need agents that often travel in Ur-Quan space. The Zoq-Fot-Pik live in the outskirts of Ur-Quan space, and have small, fast spacecraft that they use in scouting and information gathering missions deeper in Ur-Quan space. If there is something in Ur-Quan space which is conspicuously well-guarded, they will be sure to know.

For least favourite, I'd say either VUX or Syreen.

We don't really get much of an insight into either culture, in my opinion. They're just not very well-developed, compared to some of the other SC races. The exception is the Supox, probably the race we get to know the least, but the premise of the Supox (sapient plants) makes them interesting nonetheless.

The VUX -- all we really get to know about them is that they don't like humans, they consider us ugly (which makes sense, by the way -- if you're a grotesque one-eyed squid monster, odds are you'd probably find other grotesque one-eyed squid monsters attractive, and not bald, bipedal savannah apes). They consider it a perversion to like humans, and they took Rand's Insult as an excuse to declare war on humans, because they're a bunch of bigots. That's about all we get to know about them.

The Syreen -- I liked the "space gypsy" aspect of them in the first game, but that hasn't really influenced them much, I think. It does make Talana's reluctance to join the cause seem sensible: They finally have a home now. I don't agree with the premise that a matriarchal culture would necessarily lead to a peaceful history -- and all we really get to know about them is that they have a matriarchal culture, their early agrarians outcompeted hunters (which, incidentally, is also what happened for humans), their home was destroyed by the Mycon, and their history prior to the war was mostly peaceful.  And, not that it has anything to do with the Syreen themselves, it was sort of disappointing that Hayes doesn't say anything about their return when you get them into the new alliance.

I hate the Druuge, and have been known to wait until the Kohr-Ah killing frenzy begins before finishing the game, so the Kohr-Ah will get to the Druuge first. But the fact that I dislike them so much means they're a success -- a bunch of murderous, greedy slave traders that use people for fuel are not really a race you're supposed to like. The aspect of having an entire society be one gigantic corporation which owns *everything* is as fascinating as it is evil. So the Druuge don't make my "dislike" list.

Where could I find a working link to those remixes? I've tried the ones on the Pages of Now and Forever the Fileplanet shows that the files are no longer there.

That's where I got them from, actually. I've been having some problems with Fileplanet myself, trying to get the SC2 Roleplaying Resource Guide and it says the same thing.

On Unix, you can use:

uqm --speechvol=0

I don't know how you'd do on Windows.

Now we're at the subject of heaping praise on the UQM remixers, I think I should probably mention that I recently checked out Precursor MarkVera / Jouni Airaksinen's page at mikseri.net, and was completely awestruck at the "Control the Stars" song. That was just great. I haven't really been listening much to electronic music since my days as an Amiga demo scene hangaround (I'm mostly a metal person), but that song was just great. So great, in fact, that I grabbed a bunch of tunes from that page (both old game remixes and original songs) and found that there's still electronic music around that I appreciate. Thanks.

Oooooh, Pkunk!

I can't wait to hear the Yehat one. I just love the two Yehat remixes by Rush and Mango, can't wait to hear the Precursor take on it.

Ooh, tough call. I like all of them, but if I had to pick a favourite it would probably either be the Arilou La'leelay or the Melnorme. I'm also very fond of the Yehat and the Mycon -- and few alien villain races in any similar science fiction universe are so understandable and fleshed-out as the two races of the Ur-Quan species.

I like the Arilou because they raise many questions -- including quite a lot they don't answer. I can't help but think about why they're so interested in humans (I'm not so fond of the SC3 explanation -- mostly because I'm not so fond of SC3 at all -- and besides, Ford and Reiche weren't involved in it, so I've decided it "didn't take place" ;-) ). Even though they're enigmatic, endlessly wise, ancient and possess unimaginably advanced technology, they aren't above playing tricks on other species. In this aspect, they remind me of Gandalf from Tolkien's universe (incidentally, my favourite character there): An unimaginably powerful, ancient wizard with godlike knowledge, who nevertheless likes playing tricks on hobbits and hanging out on hills blowing smoke-rings.

The Melnorme's literally knowledge-based economy fascinates me, as does the strange focus their species seems to have on colours. They all have colour names, they use a colour-changing weapon, and of course the 12 million credit question. But there's also their past. Reiche has confirmed that they're indeed the (descendants of?) the Mael-Num, an old Sentient Milieu race that evaded both the Ur-Quan, and by asking the Words, indirectly started the first Doctrinal War. Was that a planned outcome, or coincidence? How could the Mael-Num, even briefly, calm the vicious invaders, just with words? And what have they been up to all these years? Are they interdimensional, like the Arilou and Orz, since they seem to be able to see Verezy ships that are invisible to humans (even humans in Precursor ships that probably have Precursor sensor equipment)?

The Yehat I like because of their honour culture and because they seem, like another poster mentioned, like a quite believable alien spacefaring species. Even though I'm not sure how bird-like Pkunk can be a genetic offshoot from the pterodactyl-like Yehat. I suppose they might have evolved on the same planet, without necessarily being closely genetically related. But I very much like the story about the Yehat uplifting of the Shofixti -- although the Yehat are warriors and predators, they are also "loving parents".  Although it's fanfic and as such not canon, "Honour" (http://starcontrol.classicgaming.gamespy.com/scwc/fanfic/honour.htm) gave me a good view of a possible Yehat culture. You can just feel their shame and how they are a torn people over their Queen's ignoble decision, and the demise of their proud, beloved "Children".

As for the Mycon, it is the sheer alien-ness of them that really gets my imagination going. They're an engineered species, yes -- but who made them? For what? Why are they turning habitable worlds into destroyed Hells, if they're a terraforming construction? To what degree do they themselves know that they're an artificial construction? And the whole aspect of being possessed by long-dead fellow Mycon is as creepy as it is interesting.

I experimented a little, and found out that they'd be back where they were supposed to be simply if I restarted the game.

Unfortunately, I just deleted my saved games before reading your last post -- my game was going badly, so I decided to start over from a clean slate. :-/ If the problem shows up again, I will send you a saved game -- although given that the problem doesn't seem to surface after a restart of the game, I'm not sure how much help that would be?

Cheers,
Simon

Yes, that was my first thought actually.

In both Alpha Centauri and Delta Gorno, I went to all the planets, and performed biological/energy scans on their surfaces, in case my friends had decided to land somewhere.

But there's nothing there, in either of the planets.

My copy of uqm is a 0.4.0, compiled by myself on Ubuntu Linux. I suppose it could be buggy, but I can't really see why. There's some 0.3 version in Ubuntu's own package repository -- but it doesn't have the intro, and I don't know if any other neat stuff is missing from it, which is why I decided to compile my own.

Hello,

Excuse me if this isn't a bug -- I never played the original Star Control II, so I wouldn't know.

Anyways, it appear some of the aliens I meet disappear, making it impossible to talk to them again. For one thing, the Melnorme trader disappears from Alpha Centauri after the first time I meet him there, and I can't seem to find him. I guess it's possible that this is a deliberate part of the game -- I guess he has better to do with his time than hang out at Alpha Centauri waiting for silly humans to go talk to him.

But another one is with the Shofixti. I met Tanaka at Delta Gorno, and convinced him I was his new commander and that he was to guard the system. Then I went and got ZEX' nasty beast, and went down to the surface of his planet and got the Shofixti maidens. Unfortunately, when I returned to Delta Gorno, Tanaka was nowhere to be found. Is this a bug? Or am I missing something?

(Great game, by the way.)

Cheers,
Simon

EDIT: Ack, I just saw that bug reports aren't welcome here. I think this is as much a question as it is a "maybe" bug report, though, so I'm leaving it here.