In effect, I have to play, at least minimally.  Otherwise I'd just sit back and watch and offer advice/history.

Let her start playing while you watch.  Tell her you'll take over if she needs help (ie: in combat, perhaps.)  Let her play until she asks for your help, and keep your fingers crossed that she doesn't ask. =P

Offer advice to keep her moving and hopefully avoid running afoul of the Death March.

The other thing to consider is whether you want her to play this game or whether you want her to like it.  It sounds like you're playing this Kefling series to please her but don't really like it.  I'd question how much she enjoys Borderlands 2, also.  If you just want her to play the game so that the two of you can spend time together, that's cool.  Just do whatever works to meet your co-op agreement.  If you actually want her to enjoy the game in and of itself, though, she needs to get into it on her own.

And you might want to think about how she'll likely react to the whole Talana/Captain scene.  Not exactly hardcore porn or anything, but it might be a bit awkward if you're both mostly doing this just to be with each other.

Kickstarter might work, but they may need to break away from Toysforbob. The Longest Journey just kickstarted. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/redthread/dreamfall-chapters-the-longest-journey

Well, that's exciting news.  Longest Journey is another of my all-time favourite games.
Anyone here who's never heard of it, I strongly recommend looking it up.  Great story, fantastic music, etc, etc.

As far as Star Control goes, I'd love to see a new official game made, just like everyone else here.  I'm guessing Paul and Fred aren't going to break off from TfB just to make it happen, though.  Making a new SC game is great and all, but I'm guessing they don't want to jump off the Skylanders bandwagon either.  Can't say I blame them for that. =P

Just a hunch, but I suspect you may have put more thought into this cosmology than TfB did when they made the game.

You're probably right about that.  Personally, I still find it fun to engage in these sorts of hypothetical discussions though.  I think it's a mark of the quality in the game tha tpeople ares till this fascinated with the fluff of the setting 20 years past its initial publication.

I'm not sure why you didn't just layer them flat. What does curving it onto a sphere actually accomplish here?

I think it's so that Arilou and Orz can know about each other. If it was layered then they would literally be dimensions apart.

I never thought of the Arilou as being native to Quasispace.  Their homeworld looks like it's in TrueSpace, it's just accessed via QuasiSpace (another "bi-dimensional portal," as the OP calls them.  The Arilou are unquestionably far advanced in the realm of inter-dimensional travel, so I imagine they've had plenty of opportunities to encounter the Orz, among other species from "other places," regardless of how the interdimensional layers are actually arranged.

In fact, I would be inclined to argue that the Arilou have probably been to *Below* once or twice and lived to tell about it.  If they can change our *smell* to hide us from the Orz, they can certainly change their own *smell* too.

Does anyone have any ideas why the stars in the eddy are red?

I had always chalked it up to the inter-dimensional equivalent of gravitational lensing.

I don't understand the Orz too much: they are barely aware of TrueSpace, they seem new to it, yet they do have knowledge about other types of dimensional beings (Arilou, Taalo). I think that means that their dimensions have to be closer related to *Below* than TrueSpace is.

I would agree with the assessment that the Orz are "barely aware" of TrueSpace.  I think that's more a matter of perspective than of them being "new to it" though.  I think that TrueSpace is something the Orz have known about for a while, but never really considered it worth investigating until the Androsynth got their attention.  Sort of like how humanity has known about the sea for ages, yet we've only just begun to scratch the surface of exploring what's *beneath* it.

I'm also not sure how much "distance" really matters between dimensions.  The portal that leads from QuasiSpace to the Arilou homeworld appears to go directly from QuasiSpace to TrueSpace, if the colouring is any indication.  There could just as easily be portals that go directly from *Above* to *Below* for all we know.

Of course I understand that the game creators didn't distance stars based upon real distance (hence Alpha Centauri, all 4 light years away, being relatively far in SC2,) but I just find it kind of funny how far away some of them are. Although this way, it is SO much easier to find stars (because of them being grouped by constellations.)

In-game, the explanation is that humanity re-named all the stars based on how the constellations appear in HyperSpace, after having been provided with maps of such by the Chenjesu.  So the star "Arcturus" in the game is not the same Arcturus in the real night sky.  (At least, probably not.)

In the Real World, the reason the stars in the game don't correlate to real life is because they originally used the locations of stars in-game as the copyright protection.  If the game mirrored real life too closely, it wouldn't have protected against copying very well.  (This was back in the days when saying "most people probably don't have access to a colour photocopier" was good enough to stop a statistical percentage of piracy =P.)  Also, probably, the programmers weren't that pent up about making sure everything was exactly right. =P

[incredible]

had they discovered space flight before? And what about the hyperdrive?

Hyperdrive is space flight technology for the purposes of SC2.  Unless you just meant sub-light space flight, like our shuttles.
Barring any mention of SC3's "bubble drive", I don't recall any mention of another FTL technology other than Hyperdrives.  (I'm not really counting Quasispace here, as that's like FTL^2 or something. =P)

We know that the Shofixti were uplifted by the Yehat. Humans in a sense were uplifted by the Chenjesu (hyperdrive technology). Are there other races who didn't achieve space flight capabilities independently?

The Slylandro were given their probes by the Melnorme, if that counts.

1. The Spathi gained space flight running away from the bears.

The Spathi went from bronze spears to FTL space travel in a little over 400 "Earth Years" according to some of the Spathi dialogue in-game.  That means these little buggers are capable of some incredible leaps in technology, when they apply themselves.  One presumes the only reason they're still stuck at a technology level comparable to the rest of us is simply because they're too afraid of the rest of the universe to go out too far into it.

---

We know that the Taalo were probably more advanced than even the Chenjesu. Given that the Milieu consisted of several species cooperating, did they have a shared tech level? Given that the Mael-Num and Ur-Quan both date back to the Milieu, do they have similar technology? Would it be possible that all the advanced technology the Melnorme outfit our ships with is basically Ur-Quan tech?

The Melnorme have been trading tech back and forth with various races they came across over the millennia.  While some of their tech no doubt comes form the milieu, some of it also comes from other sources, including potential Precursor relics.  The Ur-Quan, by all accounts, have been pretty focused on enslaving/killing all sentient life for the last 25,000 years, squashing anything that looks like a threat and wrapping uppity slave races in slave shields.  I'm sure their tech has improved somewhat over the eons, but it's probably still all based on their old Milieu stuff.

And did the Ur-Quan continue to develop their technology while being controlled by the Dnyarri? Would they have been more or less successful during this time period? And as they were roaming the galaxy, did they simply depend on their old Milieu tech?

The Kzer-Za sub-species was bred specifically for scientific research by the Dnyarri, so it seems likely that they did advance some technologies while they were enslaved.  Given the Dnyarri's overconfidence in their own control, I'm not entirely convinced they would have avoided weapons technology, either.  Better weapons makes it easier to kill anything that the Dnyarri can't command, after all.

As for after the slave revolt, the Ur-Quan have basically been at war with anything that can build a HyperWave Caster since forever.  While it's true (at least in human history) that war is an excellent motivator of new technologies, it's also true that the Ur-Quan are fairly set in their ways and may not have been concentrating that much on advancing their technology if it was already sufficient to put down most lesser species.  Like I said before, I'm sure it has advanced a little, but probably not too much overall.

---

In general, what species are the most technologically advanced? - excluding the Precursors. What species are the most ancient? Which ones have the highest intellect? Which ones have the most potential to become the Precursors Mark II?

I think any race has the potential to become the Precursors #2, given enough time.  After all, there was nothing really special about the Precursors other than the fact that they lived so long ago and left a lot of crap behind.  The only reason their technology is so far advanced compared to the races of the current time frame is because they'd already lived and researched it all long before any of us were born.

As for which species are most ancient, the Mycon were created by the Precursors and the Slylandro still have oral histories of communicating with the Precursors, so those two races are probably the oldest of those yet living in our sector of the galaxy today.  Even older than the Milieu.  The Mmrnmhrm's origin is unknown, so how old they are is anyone's guess.

Slylandro... Skylandro... Skylanders.... Coincidence?  You decide!

I do see mining as grinding. However, I do not see insider knowledge as a requirement - paying attention is a perfectly adequate substitute.

I concur.  The last game I played I managed to make a reasonable living off mining without even paying attention to the whole "colour of the planet is a tip about what's on it" business that Hayes tells you about.  Had I been bothered to pay attention, I imagine it would've been much faster.

Although I can also see the position that mining is not "pure" grinding if you're making an effort to explore at the same time.  Follow your plot threads and mine along the way; it's not quite the same thing as mindlessly grinding out RUs from combat.

IIRC, they still technically own the SC2 trademark (though it has likely lapsed due to non-use, if anyone were to contest it).  I wonder what will happen to it now.

I seem to recall reading something about a half-assed, bullshit Star Control game they were working on a couple of years ago.  It got "put on the back burner" pretty quickly, and was obviously just some bureaucratic mind game to claim they were still "actively using" the trademark.

Of course, these are also the people who bought up the Atari name in some pathetically transparent effort to make people pay attention to them without actually doing anything worth noticing. What a surprise, they're going under. =P

A firecracker. It goes pop.

Well put. =)

I get the idea that "real is cool," but I really don't think it makes much sense in this particular context.  Firstly, the number of players who are likely to even notice that the star field is composed of real constellations instead of just randomly placed pixels is probably pretty small.  So it's an awful lot of work for the programmers to almost no effect for the players.  Secondly, for those who DO notice, it would probably just break suspension of disbelief in the game.

After all, in reality, the stars only look like that from the surface of the Earth.  As soon as you leave this planet (let alone this solar system), they won't look like that anymore.  And the surface of the Earth is one of the few place you CAN'T go in this game. =P

I don't know about an alternate way to get the Ultron, but if I recall correctly, there is an alternate way to get the thing that you need the Ultron for.

You're probably not going to like it, though.

It was HyperSpace, by Riku Nuottajärvi.

Why am I not surprised that it was one of the Precursors? =P

Is it possible to give the player a chance to play and remove the no-win starting conditions? 

Please don't take this the wrong way or anything, but I think you just need a little more practice playing the game.  I remember the first fight with the Ilwrath being "difficult" the first few times I played this game, but I still managed to muddle through.  Nowadays I hardly even bat an eyelash as I blow up their half-broken ship.  It's not even invisible, for crying out loud!

Keep at it.  Take your time and get the hang of the controls.

I just REALLY doubt I'll have as much fun with my second playthrough.

I play this game through about once every 3-5 years, and I always have a blast, despite having learned everything to know about the game several times over.  The game is just so BIG that even if you've seen it before, you never remember exactly where that one doohickey is.

I won the first game I played (due to a friend showing me the lander bug), and in my most recent play through I ran out of time because I got caught up mining too much and lost track of time.  And I knew the end was coming!  Actually, I discovered some new things about the game for allowing the end to come on (which I never had done before), so I don't think you'll lose as much as you think of the experience by letting the game play it's course.

The beauty of this game is it's sandbox approach to game play.  You can go wherever you want, do whatever you want.  If you fear the second play through will be too repetitive, just make a decision to try a different tack!

[Fair Warning: Spoilers galore below.]

Fair Warning: Spoilers galore below.

At first there were brown ur-quan and Gg and ect and he precoursers, everything was fine,

The Precursors inhabited our sector of space approximately 250,000 - 300,000 years ago, long predating any other known race.  They disappeared about 200,000 years ago, for reasons that no one has yet discovered.

The brown Ur-Quan reached the stars and joined the Sentient Milieu about 25,000 years ago, which is still long after the Precursors disappeared.

The Gg were an enigmatic planetbound race whose only extra-planetary contact was the Burvixese.  Both of these races were annihilated by the Kohr-Ah shortly before the beginning of Star Control II.  Neither one ever had contact with the brown Ur-Quan or any other race from the Milieu (except for the Melnorme, of course, and they don't really advertise their ancestry.)

then the Dynarri or those Talking pet things came and enslaved he ur-Quan, there were probably groups split into different classes based on what the pets wanted to get done.

If by "came" you mean "the Ur-Quan found them on their homeworld during a routine scouting mission" and by "split into classes" you mean "they genetically engineered the Ur-Quan into two different subspecies designed for specific tasks" then yes, this is essentially correct.

Somehow, I don't remember how, the Ur-Quan broke the mind enslavement,

A green ur-Quan scientist byt he name of "Kzer-Za" discovered that the Dnyarri would release a slave shortly before its death, otherwise they would die as well.  This lead ultimately to  a revolution wherein the Ur-Quan would voluntarily mutilate themselves in a variety of ways, gaining momentary freedom in the process, and was the beginning of the Slave Revolt.

maybe with some kind of taalo device

The Excruciator - a device designed to inflict agonizing pain on it's wearer and a key element in the success of the revolts - was a device of Ur-Quan design.  The greens later adopted the name Kzer-Za for their subspecies in honour of the scientist who gave them their freedom.

The Taalo Shield was something designed by the Taalo race to protect their allies in the Milieu.  The Taalo had a natural immunity to the Dnyarri's mind control and were endeavouring to develop a device that could extend that protection to other races.  Unfortunately, the Dnyarri destroyed them (via the Ur-Quan) before they had a chance to share what they had built.

Paul and Fred have since made comments in interviews with fans that suggest the Taalo are still alive in some vague and nebulous form, however they don't appear to be active in our region of space during the game, so this is presumably part of a plot thread they had planned for a sequel they never got the chance to make.

and with Asked he Umgah to engineer them, which explains not only why there was an extra one at their homeworld but also why they were allies.

The Umgah are a species native to our sector of space and also to our era of history.  They were not around during the time of the Dnyarri Empire.  They work primarily with genetic material, where the Excruciator was (by all accounts) a technological device.

There was no Excruciator or any other ancient artifact on the Umgah homeworld.  The Taalo Shield was found on the Taalo homeworld of Delta Vulpeculae II-C, which is not even within Umgah space during the course of the game.  The device the Umgah had at their homeworld was a HyperWave Broadcaster, a very common device in modern times used to allow real-time communication across interstellar distances.  Thiers was a particularly powerful model, but otherwise it not really noteworthy.

Finally, the Umgah and the Ur-Quan are not "allies."  The Umgah chose to become Battle Thralls rather than slave-shielded Fallow Slaves when the Ur-Quan conquered them, but this does not mean they are in any way equals to the Ur-Quan.  Nor is there any evidence that the Ur-Quan have ever availed themselves of the Umgah's genetic engineering talents.

But after that, they were all paranoid or something and decided to try and enslave every threatening race so that nothing like hat would ever happen again, only the dichotomy within the species lead to the destruction of the Gg and a couple other races

All of the races from the Sentient Milieu who were exterminated by the Ur-Quan were destroyed while they were still enslaved to the Dnyarri.  Of the three non-Ur-Quan races who survived the Dnyarri Empire, the Faz were slave-shielded by the Kzer-Za, the Yuptar were annihilated by the Kohr-Ah and the Mael-Num hastily escaped while the two Ur-Quan forces duked it out in orbit above their homeworld.  The Ur-Quan were indeed paranoid about the idea of being enslaved again after having thrown off the Dnyarri enslavement.

The Gg, as discussed before, were killed by the Kohr-Ah much more recently and long after the two Ur-Quan subspecies had begun their Doctrinal War.

and this is when the precoursers decided to get the hell out of there,

Nope, as discussed above, that happened long before the Ur-Quan even existed as a star faring race, and no one knows the true reason for their disappearance.

then over time other sentient races became more visible and grew larger to what is now seen in the game, only the dichotomy of the Ur-Quan still remained, though most other races were unaware as the Khor Ah's boundaries were more to the upper right and the Suppox and Utwig did not have as large territories.

The sentient races that currently inhabit our sector of space did indeed grow larger over time, however, they only managed to do this because the Ur-Quan were gone, off circling around the galaxy for the last 25,000 years or so.  The Kzer-Za only returned here a couple hundred years ago and began the process of enslaving all the races who had sprung up in their absence.  The Kohr-Ah arrived somewhat later (closer to the beginning of the SC2 game events), annihilating a few species on the way in, before they found the Kzer-Za and began the Doctrinal War.

Remember, the influence spheres for each race seen in game only represent the area of space each race currently occupies.  They move around and grow/shrink as a race's influence changes, so just because the two Ur-Quan spheres are where they are in game doesn't mean they've been there for the last 25,000 years.