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Author Topic: Winning "impossible" melee match-ups  (Read 8906 times)
EldritchEvil
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Re: Winning "impossible" melee match-ups
« Reply #15 on: March 14, 2003, 09:05:03 pm »

Ah, The Utwig.

The counter to the Utwig is the Dreadnought.  Why?  Fighters.

What you do is as soon as you start, launch two fighters and run away.  You ALWAYS want to have one or two - not more! - fighters on the Utwig.  If the Utwig shields, he'll lose more shield energy than he will be regaining.  If he doesn't, he has one/two fighters plinking away.  Eventually he will die.  Just keep away, use the planet, whatever.
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Re: Winning "impossible" melee match-ups
« Reply #16 on: March 14, 2003, 09:52:40 pm »

I'd like to point out that the Utwig posses on of the best anti-fighter weapons in the game, so I don't know how well that would work against a human oppenent.

That being said, I never really used the Jugger, as by the time I got it in single player I was proficent with my other ships.  Also, I rarely react well enough to use the shield to it's full potentional.

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Re: Winning "impossible" melee match-ups
« Reply #17 on: March 15, 2003, 07:44:09 am »

Gauge: I'll see what I can do. I know how you feel because I feel the exact same way about the Orz Nemesis. But since I've mastered the Nemesis to the point that I can beat anything that isn't an Arilou, I'll give the Jugger a try. I'll update this post with my findings against the tough spots.

Androsynth Guardian: The shield does help to some extent, actually. It blocks the damage the comet does, but does not absorb anything from it. If he's crashing into you with a lot of fuel left and you know for sure he's going to kill you, turn on the shield so you can last a little longer. Now, I've never played SC2 against someone else or Timewarp at all, but I can beat awesome AI Androsynth as Utwig with some consistency. Just like with the Orz, you get all the time you need to find a planet and gravity whip. You won't be able to launch a marine at him as a taunt, but if you gravity whip just past him and fire as you fly by, he'll waste his starting fuel trying to collide with you. It's best if he follows right behind you so you can nail him, but he doesn't always do that. Plan ahead to be near him when his fuel runs out so you can start blasting him as early as possible. It's not an easy fight as the Guardian definitely has an upper hand in raw damage. While I was playing, I got lucky and beat him without taking a single hit while using the gravity whip follow-me trick. The one time I got nipped, I shielded.

Orz Nemesis: I can't judge this one. The stupid AI won't use his marines against me because he thinks my shield will eat them. It would be nice if the AI would be altered here. I suspect that this battle is virtually impossible as the Nemesis can outrun the Jugger and have marines flying at you from all sides.

Melnorme Trader: I REALLY hate fighting this ship. It's almost as bad as Arilou (which the Utwig performs well against). I just tried Utwig vs. Melnorme once and I'm not doing it again. The Jugger is too cumbersome to avoid the confusion pulse, so you're pretty much screwed. Still, it's possible to win if you successfully hit him every single time you face him while you spin.

Syreen: This match is frustrating because neither side can be particularly successful against the other. Your guns match the range of her song, so she's pretty much guaranteed to get shredded if plays aggressively like the AI. She's fast enough to play keep away and use her peashooter against you from outside your range, but that tactic isn't particularly good at winning battles. There's really no way to save yourself from taking heavy casualties, but at least you still win.

Slylandro Probe: I don't have any amazing revelations here. There's no way to avoid damage, so it's better to just hold down the fire button and try your best to keep pointed at him. You'll win, of course.

Chenjesu Broodhome: It has now become painfully obvious that there is something wrong with the AI, because I have little trouble beating the Chenjesu. He'll start by deploying a DOGI, which you should avoid by going the opposite direction from it that will lead you to the Broodhome. Once you get close, he won't face you and try to launch full crystals, even if your battery is drained (which it probably is). He'll also continue deploying DOGI's even after you've lost your energy. If you're caught without your energy at a distance from him, you're screwed, but otherwise this fight isn't that hard. I imagine it's completely different against a person.
« Last Edit: March 15, 2003, 09:54:36 am by Shiver » Logged
Matt Caspermeyer
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Re: Winning "impossible" melee match-ups
« Reply #18 on: March 15, 2003, 11:44:24 am »

Shiver:

Here's how to win the Orz (Human) vs. Arilou (Computer) matchup - I haven't tried this with UQM yet, but it worked in SC2.

Strategy 1

1. Launch 1 marine then go for the planet rotating turret backwards as you do. Launch another marine only if you can't make it to the planet before the Arilou catches you to get him off of you.
2. Establish orbit around the planet and take pot shots at the Arilou if he gets within range. If he gets too close, gravity whip and launch a new single marine. Re-establish orbit around the planet as soon as you can.
3. As you're taking pot shots, the Arilou will jump away if your aim is good enough. Since the destination of the jump is random, there is a small probability that the Arilou will reappear too close to a space marine. Eventually, a marine will get aboard the Arilou ship and then if you're lucky the single one will take the ship out, otherwise you'll have to get 1 or possibly 2 more aboard to destroy the Arilou.

Keep launching marines to increase the probability of him jumping too close to one of them. It is important to make sure that you don't launch all 8 of your marines if you can help it - try to keep a spare to get the Arilou off you if he gets too close.

Use your cannon to scare the Arilou off if he gets too close, but your aim must be really good for this to work. The likelihood of you hitting the Arilou with your cannon is pretty low, but you may hit him if you're really lucky.

If you find that all your marines are starting to bunch up, try to get the Arilou to chase you towards the planet and perform a 180 around the planet. If your marines are close enough, they'll split the planet (half go around one way, half go around the other) and disperse, allowing them a chance to confuse the Arilou enough to possibly get one aboard, or if they don't at least they won't be bunched up anymore.

If you have to bug out of planetary orbit, re-establish orbit as soon as possible and continue the strategy.

This strategy requires some patience and the skill to navigate near the planet repeatedly. You'll find that if you can get the right orbit, you'll be able to use the planet to shield yourself from the Arilou's shots as he guns for you and you'll suffer pretty minimal losses.

Strategy 2

This one works perfect if you're an Ur-Quan Dreadnought (with some damage), but if your an Orz, you'll probably suffer damages of at least half if not more of your crew.

1. Fly straight at the Arilou and attempt to ram him with your turret.
2. Once you are at point blank range, fire, launch a marine, and run away. You'll suffer some damage from the Arilou weapon, but the marine will make him jump away from you.
3. Repeat step 2, but this time your shot will be for the kill. Hopefully you won't be killed before you kill him.

With this strategy, you have to basically wait until your turret is touching the Arilou before you fire, but before the Arilou recoils from the impact. If you time it perfectly, the Arilou will not be able to jump away as it won't be able to react fast enough. If you fire too soon, the Arilou will jump away unharmed.

This strategy works a lot better with a ship that can kill the Arilou in one shot (Ur-Quan Dreadnought, Chenjesu, Druuge) or one that has a large crew capacity (haven't tried it with the Spathi, but maybe it'd work), but causes you to lose crew by letting the Arilou shoot you a bunch of times.

Well, good luck, hopefully one of these strategies will work for you!

Matt
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Re: Winning "impossible" melee match-ups
« Reply #19 on: March 15, 2003, 01:35:22 pm »

Whoa, thanks! I always thought that winning Orz vs. Arilou only happened because of freak accidents. And as it turns out, that's entirely true. But if you wait long enough, a freak accident will happen. Luckily, it usually only takes one marine to wipe out those pansies.

Your second strategy doesn't work for me because the little bastard always flies to my side right away, but I don't really need to pull it off if I got the other one working.

Okay, I got it to work. Arilou aren't much of a problem anymore.
« Last Edit: March 16, 2003, 02:04:15 am by Shiver » Logged
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Re: Winning "impossible" melee match-ups
« Reply #20 on: March 16, 2003, 07:14:42 pm »

1 question, Dave Morse, where in the game do you have to fight an avatar with a cruiser, i've never heard of that.

The reason slylandro are so difficult to beat is because when they unleash their stupid lightning bolts on you, your ship continually spins. And it even if you get a lucky shot in when it runs out of energy, you're still screwed because unless you're a precursor vessle, you dont have enough crew to back it up. Slylandros are VERY fun once you get the hang of the controls. You just have to keep pressing right or left, and they will move in a choppy circle. Very nice ship.
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Re: Winning "impossible" melee match-ups
« Reply #21 on: March 17, 2003, 07:01:46 pm »

Supermelee, that's where. That's also the only place you get to fly the Chenjesu, Mmrnmhrm, and Androsynth.
« Last Edit: March 17, 2003, 07:02:20 pm by Death_999 » Logged
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Re: Winning "impossible" melee match-ups
« Reply #22 on: March 17, 2003, 10:07:44 pm »

Here's my anti-Utwig stuff.

Androsynth: Do NOT ram him, there's a much better tactic. Instead, launch a slow stream of single bubbles one at a time. Because they track so eratically, even the most trigger-fingered Utwig pilot will lose a little fuel shielding unnecessarily. Once you deplete his batteries, then let him have it with a full tank's worth of bubbles. If he gets close to you, comet away. This has worked well against the computer and my brother. I think the androsynth is one of the best if not the best anti-Utwig ships, but I'm a bit biased cause it's one of my favorites.

VUX: The Vux also does well against the Utwig.  Run away at the start and send a steady flow of limpets at him, and keep limpeting him until he's really gunked up.  Then get behind the Jugger on an empty fuel tank. Hold down the fire button, the stuttering laser is near impossible to shield against without losing fuel or crew.  Once you've drained his batteries, then unleash the full fury of your gigawatt laser.

As has already been said, the Chenjesu and Melnorme, and to a lesser degree the Syreen and Orz, are a good match for the Utwig.

Also, any ship that can outrun the Utwig and outrange the Utwig with a weapon that does only one damage (such as supox, shofixti, thraddash, zoqfotpik, and a few others) can win if you're patient. The trick is to stay out of range and fire one shot at a time. Try to make it so that you shoot barely out of your maximum range so that the shot JUST falls short. Sometimes he'll shield without getting hit, and you will slowly wear away at them. Even if it does hit his shield, it won't add anything to his fuel batteries. This tactic leads to long and drawn-out battles, but it works. The Mmrnmhrm and Spathi can also take advantage of imperfections in their seeking systems to trick the Utwig into shielding.

Overall, I think the Utwig is overrated. It's good (particularly at killing the big guns), but not as good as a lot of people think. I prefer the Yehat over the Utwig, am I the only one?

BTW, has anyone found something the Umgah is good for? I've tried to find a good use for it, but I can't.  I have thought for a long time that it's the worst ship in the game, and I still.  The only ship it can beat consistently is an Earthling cruiser, and even then it will lose that battle if the cruiser can get to the planet.  It can beat an Ilwrath or Vux sometimes; I think that Umgah vs. either of those ships is a pretty even matchup.  The cone is just too short ranged. The retro thrusters do not compensate enough for that because when it zips up to an enemy, it still has to turn around. That takes a while, long enough for the drone to be blasted by a big ship or for a small ship to escape.  
« Last Edit: March 18, 2003, 04:45:33 pm by JWJ » Logged
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Re: Winning "impossible" melee match-ups
« Reply #23 on: March 18, 2003, 04:34:56 am »

The Yehat Terminator is a surprisingly fun ship to fly. I don't have a lot of experience with it, but I have taken down both Ur-Quan ships with it a few times. Not much else to say about it, but I might try using it more later.

From my experience, the Umgah Drone is a piece of crap. The AI isn't too bad with it since it zips back and turns a little bit to catch you, sometimes succeeding. It might be useful with a lot of practice, but certainly not any better than that.
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Re: Winning "impossible" melee match-ups
« Reply #24 on: March 18, 2003, 06:51:41 am »

in SC1 the antimatter cone was much bigger. This made defense and sideswipes much easier. It could be that the cone was so wide that it made a too-perfect defense against too many ships from SC2 and they dropped it...

Also, the bubbles vs utwig technique is the one I use. VERY effective against Human and AI.
« Last Edit: March 18, 2003, 06:52:36 am by Death_999 » Logged
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Re: Winning "impossible" melee match-ups
« Reply #25 on: March 18, 2003, 08:24:52 am »

The Yehat Terminator wasn't the "backbone of the Alliance fleets" just for nothing, you know.  It was the original shielding ship, one which (if flown by a good enough pilot) was very good at eliminating the incredible Dreadnought in Star Control 1.  It was, in my opinion, the best ship on the Alliance of Free Star's side, and made up for alot of their negative, "runaway-tactics" ships.  So much fun to fly, too!
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Re: Winning "impossible" melee match-ups
« Reply #26 on: March 18, 2003, 04:57:20 pm »

Okay, I was just wondering if anyone could pilot it effectively. On paper it could be good against small, fast, short-ranged ships (like the Pkunk) because it could zip when they tried to flank it, but I've tried it and it doesn't seem to work that well.
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Re: Winning "impossible" melee match-ups
« Reply #27 on: March 19, 2003, 05:56:15 am »

BUMP!
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Death 999
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Re: Winning "impossible" melee match-ups
« Reply #28 on: March 19, 2003, 07:20:53 pm »

I have a friend whose father is an umgah expert. He would wipe out teams of 1 of each in SC1 the moment he got his Umgah.
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Re: Winning "impossible" melee match-ups
« Reply #29 on: March 19, 2003, 08:12:19 pm »

Quote
I have a friend whose father is an umgah expert. He would wipe out teams of 1 of each in SC1 the moment he got his Umgah.
Is this on one of the 8-bit versions of SC1? In my experience, the Umgah Drone is the most powerful ship in the 8-bit versions of SC1, simply because all of the ships move like they're stuck in treacle (or molasses, for US readers). This makes it dead easy to eradicate all of the Alliance ships with a single Drone.

If this is on the PC, Amiga or Genesis, I'm quite impressed.
« Last Edit: March 19, 2003, 08:12:53 pm by Novus » Logged

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