Terrific. No thought out "proper" responses for those who "jumped the gun." At least in SC2 they did have things that happened if you tried to do events out of order. Like rushing to free the Chmmr would result in a nasty Illwrath encounter. That's much better than having the game become unwinnable. Not to mention that SC3 seemed to have a few too many ways to get a game over. Geez! Lying to the Owa? Getting the Serum taken by the Harika? Oy!

~Ra'akone

13)  Muzak. The main two themes, one of them seems like something you'd hear at a funeral, the other seems like someone took SC2's "in the star system music" and sucked all that was good out of it. Ok, who's the orangutang responsible?

Blame this guy.

Actually, there were one or two good pieces in the game this guy composed. It's just you don't hear them that often. It's the "muzak of waiting" you hear, two songs that are depressing. The funeral and the muzakified-SC2 music.

Ok, my biggest gripes with the game....

1) Certain established spaceships, especially the Kohrah, have been made blockier. Sure, it's supposedly more 3-D, but at what cost?
2) Plot-holes
3) Especially, the Koh-rah subplot. What would have been cooler is if the Ploxis leader lied to the Koh-rah about saying "the Crux will eliminate all non-Crux races first, and then destroy ourselves." And then some Koh-rah are "taxied" via the Warp Bubble express to other worlds
4) "Colony Management"...need we say more? Seems like someone thought to incorporate that element from, say, Masters of Orion, apparently unaware that it's a completely different franchise and concept.
5) RUs? Cool. But how to spend them? Apart from the Doog subplot and "seed" resources to help a colony start more quickly....nothing.
6) What about Talana? She only gets a cameo appearance (and you find out she's with you aboard your ship) if...well....it's one of the more interesting ways to get a game over (hint: Go to Picus real early in the game and stay there, even if your tech team says to leave) You'd think there'd be the occasional mention of her a bit more often, since she supposedly is the captain's girlfriend
7) Planets are more similar to each other.
And the Rainbow Worlds aren't as psychedelic as they should be
9) The only "boss" ship in this game is just an imitator of your flagship!
10) Two words. "Landing" and "Pods."
11) Ok, normally such lists have 10 items, but....the ending. If your name isn't Yoko Ono or Philip Glass, then hearing minimalist Arilou music while watching the credits and hearing this short "feel-good" message is a total ripoff. Did anyone even care?
12) Methinks the problem is...things were rushed. Normally associated with a certain game company that's referred to by two letters, it seemed Accolade wanted to do the same thing. Rush it out. Haven't you heard of Atari's ET debacle of 1983? Those that don't know their history are doomed to repeat it.
13)  Muzak. The main two themes, one of them seems like something you'd hear at a funeral, the other seems like someone took SC2's "in the star system music" and sucked all that was good out of it. Ok, who's the orangutang responsible?

Sorry, had to get mes deux sous/la'u lua sene/$0.02 out of the way

~Ra'akone

I'm curious, do any of the races have different names in the Russian translation? I imagine the VUX = Very Ugly Xenoform doesn't quite work.....and if Orz is supposed to be a pun on "Or".....Ok, I imagine Orz speech will be yet another something interesting when translated into any other language.

~Ra'akone

WARNING:Incoming Spoiler
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Check the Gruis constellation!

~Ra'akone

There is an exception....the Slylandro Probe....its dots aren't crew....and they're colored grey to show this. It's immune to the Syreen's call, naturally.

SC3's ships make no sense....the Doog constructor...how is it you "repair" crew when Doogs aren't robots?

~Ra'akone

According to the diagrams in SC1, guesst, the balls on either side of the machine-gun are "decoys", and the ones on either side of the BUTT launcher are where the crew actually is...however, getting one of the decoys hit does count as a hit all the same! MAybe some Spathi figure that someone does know about the true crew pods, so they go into the decoy.....just a weird suggestion...or maybe if the decoy gets hit, Spathi die of intense fright.

~Ra'akone

Be glad it's the only SC3 reference I could think of. I have nothing against the SC3 races........only the stupid ending.
Any other SC2 related races that can be compared to those terrorists?

~Ra'akone

A terrorist in SC terms.......
They have the thinking and reasoning of Mycon,
The suicidal tendencies of Shofixti,
They wear masks like Utwig,
Bluster and threaten like Thraddash,
And engage in sadistic activities similar to Ilwrath,
While claiming to have the nobility of the Owa!

Good Luck!

It has nothing to do with scanning, and there's no way you're ever gettnig a lander down onto the planet. EVER! It's not an item you're trying to get...it's not something but someONE. Without that someone there, that planet would be COMPLETLY USELESS!

~Ra'akone

I don't want to spoil to much.....but yes, there is a way to stop them. And the solution is on the last kind of planet you'd expect to have anything of value. Also, the Zot-Fot-Pik may have a couple of clues about where to go.

~Ra'akone

Parts of SC3 are ok....but we can ALL agree that the ending was terrible...seems more like something lifted out of a New-Age book than something suitable for the ending of an SC game. But nonetheless....some elements of SC3 could be preserved for...the next SC (but the ending better be something cool along the lines of SC2, OR ELSE!)

Ok, some of my ideas.........
Hyperspace.....must exist. Traveling star to star is so much cooler than warp-bubbling. Of course, there'd be an explanation why you can't warp bubble....but maybe some enemy of yours CAN. And besides True-Space, Hyper-Space and Quasi-Space, maybe there's one or two other dimensions.
Also, maybe some portal opened up in the area that once had the Sa-Matra.

Sides....
Alliance: Isn't this obvious?
The Order of the Black Star: some mysterious group of races, they want power. And they came from another dimension.
Inner Ring of Destiny: Another group, not aligned with the Order in any way.  Possibly a fourth side? Oh yes, there's also the Koh-rah.....some aliens never learn!

Bosses......there would be a few boss ships. Now, like the Sa-Matra, you'd fight the escort ships first. BUT....you wouldn't fight around a planet, oh no...you fight around the boss ship...which you can't damage, but the boss ship may have one or two special abilities or weapons active, making things just a little difficult. You can't actually do damage until you've taken care of all the escort vessels, but get to close to it and it will damage you (of course, it won't do the same to its escort....unfair enough for you). Ideas? Hmm...maybe the Koh-rah tried to build a super-marauder.

Races: Of course, new races are a must. A couple of ideas....
Daktaklakpak: not my idea, of course....but they should return, they're so cool!
Miara: A race of opposum-like creatures. The captains, all female, are normally covered in young clinging to them (it's accepted conventional wisdom that you don't bring your children into battle wtih you...the Miara never heard of this) Their weapon converts the female's singing into a powerful wave-based weapon.
Hautua: Another humanoid race, they resemble polynesians in many ways, perhaps their ship would look like someone took a tiki-bar and slapped some thrusters on it. Their woman are beautiful, their men are handsome, their music is legendary, their story is tragic. They were conned into joining the IROD, supposedly because that was the only way they'd be protected from the Kohr-ah and the OBS.
Drall: Perhaps if one of those Mielleu races is still out there somewhere?

Not sure about the plot....but perhaps it would have something to do with those two sides that just "moved in" recently...the OBS and the IROD.......any ideas?

And one last thing......perhaps there'd be tunnels on some worlds that you could explore with a lander...yes, landers are cool, landing pods suck!

~Ra'akone

Since some parralels between the Mideast and Starcon have been drawn, I will draw a different angle...........

Mycon.

Unfortunatly, the way many of these Arabs...and for that matter the more fundamentalist Jews....are brought up....they are taught that...
a)things must always be done the way of their parents' parents' parents' parents' .......
b)The enemy is in the way, negotiating is wrong
c)That far beyond culture, what must be maintained are the "family honor" (TM) and "purity" (TM) and "Glory" (TM)....so they'll tell their children that their people are always right, even if they bend the rules that their culture supposedly teaches, they'll tell their children to only marry others of their own type, and that the highest honor is to die in battle...to stop fighting would be an insult to...well...the wishes of their parents' parents' parents' parents'......
Basically, they have a "Juffo-Wup" they want maintained at all costs. And what do the fanatics do to poor illiterate villagers? They brainwash them, or basically, "infuse" the "Juffo-Wup" into them. Of course, the signal-to-noise ratio has gotten extremly low. To a point where they don't care about what they do, nor do they know why things are that way.....but the fundamentalists want to preserve the Juffo-Wup....which they do by warping the scriptures (Koran in case of Islamic fundamentalists, Talmud in case of the extremist Jews)

So even if some resort to the level of Shofixti, in essense they are thinking like Mycon. Think about it.

~Ra'akone

I guess the Star Control universe isn't yet popular enough that people are doing nude fan-art of it.

Well, I guess you can just use....your imagination!

~Ra'akone