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Topic: Project 6014 – Ur-Quan Masters mod (Read 199509 times)
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Kwayne
*Many bubbles*
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Communicating with other races might have some technological requirements, that's why I'd be hesitant introducing conversations with less developed species.
Great idea with rad-to-fuel conversion, and great counter point. Not that I'm sure to stand for including the tech, but my thought would be that Melnorme behaviour is not fundamentally about profitable business, but about the idea of equal exchange, through which they promote their agenda. So it might be not against their interests to supply a technology that would prevent the Captain "buying" fuel from them.
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Captain Trivates
Zebranky food
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Ok - maybe the Melnorme know how to do it but they wouldn't sell it because then Captain would stop getting him those precious little life forms ... (♫ where are you? ♫)
But there seems to be to be some discussion about the Faz and how the Melnorme don't want Captain dealing with them. Perhaps THEY will provide the rad-to-fuel tech in exchange for their liberation (I understand, they're initially to be slave-shielded?)
Orz Space sounds delightful. Doesn't seem to be included in the present release?
More thoughts on the Melnorme: it doesn't seem fair that the player can visit Zeta Sextantis and then the Melnorme won't pay for the information. It is not guaranteed that Captain discovered that system therefore it should be open to discovery unless at the outset, the Melnorme tell Captain that they know about it already. If he's visited it before he encounters them, they tell him right away and it is removed from the list of salable items. If Captain encounters them before going to Zeta Sextantis, they "save him the trip". Also, there is a Rainbow world theoretically missing. There should be one at Alpha Acoreus but there isn't. That system falls on the direct line that connects all the other rainbow worlds in P6014...
Some of the rainbow worlds are hard to see. They are so close to the star that they seem to "phase shift" in and out of reality. When the display zooms in, you see the world temporarily and then it disappears. Seems to be a glitch... but it does appear somewhat topsy-turvy. This happens Alpha Morpheus. |
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Wolframm
Frungy champion
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Yeah. And even if you lack such tecnology, the langauage still ain't a big deal. Similar examples have already took place. For instance, when Americas were discovered. It took a few months or so for Europeans to have some of their men learn a language of certain native American tribe. The problems can emerge when an alien you try to contact uses a different media for communication than one you use. And that media could be anything from mechanical and electromagnetic waves at specific frequency range to something utterly different.
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Alvarin
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To use syntax and language codes, they would need to be standardized, which is just not plausible. Otherwise it's still full language to decipher.
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Death 999
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We did. You did. Yes we can. No.
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It's possible to build primers that should be decipherable by anyone, given enough time. The case in Contact was definitely not the aliens making it as easy as possible.
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vok3
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So I wondered if anything had ever happened with Star Control clones, did some searching, and came across all this. I have been trying this. Here is my feedback, for whatever it is worth.
1) The writing is somewhat uneven. In some places it does feel like Star Control, in others there's too much current-day phrases and pop culture type references. I'm not saying this should be totally excluded, but a little goes a long way.
2) The art is very good. I like having variant portraits for the race captains, except that I like some of the portraits better than others and it bugs me when I get an ugly one.
3) The flagship is lame, can I have a better one. Its combat abilities are bad and generic enough that there is basically no point in ever using it in combat. Why implement a special ship if it's not interesting in combat? It could have had no combat abilities at all and I would fly it the same way - fight with escorts, or if I don't want to fight, pick the flagship and immediately Esc.
4) We get dumped into the story too suddenly with no background. A better way to start would be bopping around Vela or thereabouts with minor errands, getting a message about the distress call, then flying to Procyon yourself. That might require having a different flagship, or a different reason to have it. But I don't like that flagship and there is no problem with replacing it with something different.
5) The first time I tried playing this, I followed instructions. I just went flying out into space looking for little lost Shofixit. Very quickly started feeling the needle-in-a-haystack feeling. It was only after I said "f*k this" and went bopping around trying to see what sort of trouble I could get into back in known space that had nothing to do with the storyline that I found the additional clue that let me narrow the search area down. Some more pointers toward the immediate home neighborhood before sending the player off into deep space would be good.
6) Random Kohr-ah encounters are a potentially interesing situation. The thing about the Chmmr ships is that even though they can beat lots of things in a one-on-one fight, they 1) are not that subtle or interesting to fly, 2) tend to take damage, especially against heavy hitters, making them not good for more than one victory in a row. That also turns them into a constant crew (and thus resource) drain. In a long-run story type game, they're more of a liability than anything else. But none of the other starter ships are all that great against Kohr-Ah - Yehat and Supox are the two best, Supox requires lots of practice and really good aim, Yehat tends to take casualties like the Chmmr (although perhaps less so). Orz might be possible, I guess, although I tend to avoid trying to send marines through the FRIED. One of the keys to SC1 and SC2 was the individual ship-to-ship matchups that had huge advantages in some pairings that were totally negated in others - Spathi vs Kohr-ah being the most obvious immediate case. If you want the player to be regularly fighting Kohr-Ah throughout exploration, the regular combat has to be interesting too, not frustrating. Right now there isn't much in the way of such matchups with Kohr-Ah, and even less with the next item.
7) The Lurg ship is hugely overpowered. They are using basically the same weapon as the Androsynth in terms of functionality. The Androsynth was very carefully balanced so that you COULDN'T maintain a constant bubble screen. In SC1, getting a dynamo or two on an Androsynth made them superpowered, because of the very careful original balance. This ship is basically Androsynth-with-dynamo right off the bat, and it is too fast and maneuverable also. There is no finesse available in shooting this thing down. It can out-accelerate a Chmmr tractor beam, which should only be possible for the fastest of ships - even a Thraddash has to be careful with how it uses the afterburner to not make fatal mistakes. This thing needs to be totally taken back to the drawing board and rethought from the ground up, as it stands it has no business being in a Star Control game.
 The Lurg talk too big. That can work in the case of a deliberate Thraddash-style setup where the player then gets to smack them repeatedly. Instead what we have is a one-up game - "you thought the UQ were bad, WE'RE EVEN WORSE". This is the sort of thing that shows up in badly written fan fiction and bad episodic TV. The villain of the week does not always need to be bigger and badder than last week's villain of the week. Trying to do that is evidence of just a bad writer, and more importantly, it's annoying and not much fun for the audience. They have no distinguishing character traits except being Bigger And Badder. As currently written, they are annoying pretentious jerks and I don't want to play a game involving them.
9) Why aren't any of the Timewarp ships implemented? Many of those were much better balanced and interesting than what I've seen added here.
At this point I find myself wanting to go back to my Sword of the Stars game where I am playing as humans, fielding fleets of fission cruisers armed with 3 point defense lasers and a crapload of missiles, and my empire is named "The Free Stars", rather than continuing with this. It has potential, but needs a lot of polish and some thought into what the actual fun part of the gameplay is. Cruising on inertia from SC2 won't work.
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oldlaptop
*Smell* controller
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3) The flagship is lame, can I have a better one. Its combat abilities are bad and generic enough that there is basically no point in ever using it in combat. Why implement a special ship if it's not interesting in combat? It could have had no combat abilities at all and I would fly it the same way - fight with escorts, or if I don't want to fight, pick the flagship and immediately Esc.
Keep in mind that you had an awful flagship (at least for combat) in the beginning of SC2 as well. All that's in the demo is the very early game, probably comparable in actual plot advancement to exploring Sol thoroughly and discovering the Starbase. Who's to say we won't end up with something awesome by the end?
6) Random Kohr-ah encounters are a potentially interesing situation. The thing about the Chmmr ships is that even though they can beat lots of things in a one-on-one fight, they 1) are not that subtle or interesting to fly, 2) tend to take damage, especially against heavy hitters, making them not good for more than one victory in a row. That also turns them into a constant crew (and thus resource) drain. In a long-run story type game, they're more of a liability than anything else. But none of the other starter ships are all that great against Kohr-Ah - Yehat and Supox are the two best, Supox requires lots of practice and really good aim, Yehat tends to take casualties like the Chmmr (although perhaps less so). Orz might be possible, I guess, although I tend to avoid trying to send marines through the FRIED. One of the keys to SC1 and SC2 was the individual ship-to-ship matchups that had huge advantages in some pairings that were totally negated in others - Spathi vs Kohr-ah being the most obvious immediate case. If you want the player to be regularly fighting Kohr-Ah throughout exploration, the regular combat has to be interesting too, not frustrating. Right now there isn't much in the way of such matchups with Kohr-Ah, and even less with the next item.
If we were talking about human pilots (or even a good AI) behind those Kohr-Ah, this would be a serious problem. As things stand, Kohr-Ah is one of the SC2 AI's absolute worst ships, serving as a perfect example of how not to fly Kohr-Ah. As such, with a little practice it's possible to beat it with ships that aren't particularly good against it (Spathi was actually a particularly egregious example of this), with practice. A few Yehat are more than adequate to handle any random encounter, with some reasonable level of crew loss, and Zoq-Fot-Pik(!) can actually be quite effective, flown right.
7) The Lurg ship is hugely overpowered. They are using basically the same weapon as the Androsynth in terms of functionality. The Androsynth was very carefully balanced so that you COULDN'T maintain a constant bubble screen. In SC1, getting a dynamo or two on an Androsynth made them superpowered, because of the very careful original balance. This ship is basically Androsynth-with-dynamo right off the bat, and it is too fast and maneuverable also. There is no finesse available in shooting this thing down. It can out-accelerate a Chmmr tractor beam, which should only be possible for the fastest of ships - even a Thraddash has to be careful with how it uses the afterburner to not make fatal mistakes. This thing needs to be totally taken back to the drawing board and rethought from the ground up, as it stands it has no business being in a Star Control game.
Neither of those issues are really quite that bad. Firstly, the bubbles are not like Androsynth (although they look similar). They cause no damage, they just disable turning for a short time after impact, and take down some weak projectiles. They're nowhere near as effective of a defense as Androsynth bubbles, which is why there's more of them.
Secondly, the reason Lurg can mostly counteract the tractor beam is that, otherwise, a Chmmr could eat dozens of them in a row without breaking a sweat (even as it is, Chmmr is fiendishly effective against it). It's engines are actually roughly on par with Ilwrath (excellent acceleration, awful top speed).
As it is, Lurg is a fairly effective ship, roughly on par with Melnorme, Mmrnmhrm, Androsynth, or Pkunk. It's not meant to be a weak opponent, but it's still not nearly as strong as Kohr-Ah/Chmmr. There certainly are some valid design quibbles with it (it's much more defensive than any canonical SC ship, for instance), but bubbles and engines are not among them.
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« Last Edit: April 08, 2012, 11:01:52 pm by oldlaptop »
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Stardrake
Zebranky food
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The Lurg talk too big. That can work in the case of a deliberate Thraddash-style setup where the player then gets to smack them repeatedly. Instead what we have is a one-up game - "you thought the UQ were bad, WE'RE EVEN WORSE". This is the sort of thing that shows up in badly written fan fiction and bad episodic TV. The villain of the week does not always need to be bigger and badder than last week's villain of the week. Trying to do that is evidence of just a bad writer, and more importantly, it's annoying and not much fun for the audience. They have no distinguishing character traits except being Bigger And Badder. As currently written, they are annoying pretentious jerks and I don't want to play a game involving them.
A more likely explanation (and one that fits with having other alien races in the area) is that the Ur-Quan just didn't get to Lurg space. The Kzer-Za came down from the top of the SC2 map, the Kohr-Ah from the right, while the Project map is to the left and down - the Lurg and other species in the area may have been shielded by the Alliance of Free Stars until the resumption of the Ur-Quan doctrinal wars. The Lurg claim that the Ur-Quan knew better than to tangle with them could then be a literal case of talking big - the Ur-Quan simply never got around to them, but they claim that the Ur-Quan "wisely did to ignore us" in an attempt to intimidate the Captain.
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CelticMinstrel
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Neither of those issues are really quite that bad. Firstly, the bubbles are not like Androsynth (although they look similar). They cause no damage, they just disable turning for a short time after impact, and take down some weak projectiles. They're nowhere near as effective of a defense as Androsynth bubbles, which is why there's more of them.
Wait, they cause no damage? I've been avoiding them for nothing?
I'd have to agree with this, from seeing the dialogue video of the Lurg on YouTube. The Lurg essentially claim that the Ur-Quan knew better than to tangle with them, but the whole point of the Doctrines was that the Ur-Quan saw every other race as a potential threat to be neutralised - they're not going to back down because they meet something that actually is a threat, at most they'll stage a tactical withdrawal, build up until they're more powerful (or fetch the Sa-Matra, like they did with the Alliance) and then return to eliminate the threat.
A more likely explanation (and one that fits with having other alien races in the area) is that the Ur-Quan just didn't get to Lurg space. The Kzer-Za came down from the top of the SC2 map, the Kohr-Ah from the right, while the Project map is to the left and down - the Lurg and other species in the area may have been shielded by the Alliance of Free Stars until the resumption of the Ur-Quan doctrinal wars. The Lurg claim that the Ur-Quan knew better than to tangle with them could then be a literal case of talking big - the Ur-Quan simply never got around to them, but they claim that the Ur-Quan "wisely did to ignore us" in an attempt to intimidate the Captain.
Ah yes, it doesn't make sense to take what the Lurg say about the Ur-Quan as truth.
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