Let's Play: Star Control II: The Ur-Quan Masters

Iiiiinteresting. I can't remember my first course of action upon playing the game. I think I just headed straight to earth like the wussy wuss I am.

That 486 hyperspace music makes me nostalgic. Is there a site that has the original music? I have most of the UQM's soundtrack on my iPod, but I'd love to hear its roots again.

Official Next Update!

I'm kind of running out of things to say about resource gathering for now. To summarize: Don't gather crappy resources, don't be afraid to ditch low-value resources for high-value ones, pay attention to the fuel cost of landing on a planet, watch out for heat and weather, and don't gather more resources than you can hold unless you're topping off and aren't coming back.

The rest of Delta Centauri proved disappointing. Delta Centauri VII was a primordial world filled with base metals, which normally are just barely worth grabbing, but the planet had level 8 tectonics that made it more trouble than it was worth. Delta Centauri VII-a was a halid world, meaning low-value corrosives and nothing else. VII-b was worse; a chondrite world, which meant common elements, with level 6 tectonics. Doable, but not for that price.



Delta Centauri VIII was the cherry on top. An ultra-dense world, meaning high fuel costs, and one crappy dot of base metals. Still, overall Delta Centauri was a highly profitable system, between the radioactive moon, the noble world, and the treasure planet. Plus I picked up some biologicals.



Next I laid in a course for Beta Centauri. I'm doing alright for fuel. The crew's taken a bit of a hit due to the many safaris it took to clear the Radioactive World, but morale remains high.



Beta Centauri's a decent-sized system. Also, it's a green stare, which generally means good resources. The rule of thumb is that systems have more resources as stars get larger and hotter (as indicated by the game's star color scale, which goes Red (least hot), Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, White).



Beta Centauri I is a gas giant, and once again we're greeted by an orange moon.



Beta Centauri I-a was a low-value carbide world, and I-b an acid world, which is just as worthless as a redux world, but I-c, as expected, is a radioactive world. No signs of life this time, but you take what you can get.



At some point, Fred Ford and Paul Reiche III ran out of interesting planet names and just started naming them after their colors as viewed from space. They tend not to be mineral rich.



Beta Centauri III-a turned out to be a urea world. In addition to being tectonically unstable, it's filled with unpleasant-smelling creatures.



I'll confess to being cheap at this point. I saved the game here and made a couple of attempts at clearing this world, but these jumping green guys were too much when coupled with the high tectonics. I ended up leaving this planet alone.



Beta Centauri III-b was a metal world, meaning it featured a melange of mid-to-high value resources coupled with a lot of base metals. Plus, happily, this one was low-temperature, non-hostile, and fairly cheap to visit.



The rest of Beta Centauri was unexciting: a Luna-like selenic world, a cyanic world, and two more urea worlds. I set off for Zeta Centauri, hoping my luck would improve.

A small system. Worrisome.



But Zeta Centauri I-a was an Azure world, with a nice mix of minerals, some life forms, and tectonics that were on the high side, but not terrible.



Zeta Centauri I-a's native life turns out to be these obnoxious carousel beasts. They move slowly, but they pursue you relentlessly and do a lot of damage when they hit you. What's more, they take 15 shots before they turn into electric hamburgers. On the plus side, they're worth about a third of a lander of bio units. Still: a pain.



Zeta Centauri I-b rewards my persistance with the green spinny dudes by giving me a load of exotic minerals.



The rest of Zeta Centauri's inner planets were similarly profitable, and by the time I'd finished with Zeta Centauri II and its moon my two cargo bays were full to capacity.



Zeta Centauri III and IV only had base metals, and it wasn't worth dumping what corrosives I had to trade up, so I set course for Sol.



That's "Excellent work, Emperor Pants."



After filling my fuel tanks, I contemplate how to spend the rest of my RUs.



I've now maxed out the flagship's turning rate and max speed. I don't really want to make the ship a battle platform at this point, so I added another cargo bays and a few more fuel tanks. Now I can wander much further afield.

With our new fuel tanks we can now travel anywhere in the quadrant. Whether we can get back is an open question.



At this point, there's little reason to run any more resource gathering-focused missions; we can pick up what we need en passant as we follow clues and pursue plot hooks. I'll also probably exclude any future resource gathering from updates unless something really interesting turns up. Still, it might be nice, from a completionist perspective, to finish clearing out the Centauri constellation. You know. Just because.

On the map above, I've included what I believe are the locations that all the clues we've gotten so far have pointed towards. Where shall we go? Shall we polish off Centauri? Go meet these Pkunks that the Ilwrath are so excited to be killing? Lay a ceremonial wreath on the burned-out remains of the Shofixti homeworld? Return to Unzervalt and rescue the rest of the scientific mission that we left behind when we returned to Earth? Brave Androsynth territory to see if we can't locate the ruins of the ancient civilization Commander Hayes mentioned? Or shall we go browbeat the Spathi into joining our rebellion? The choice is yours!

I got a big passel of Star Control II music here. I'm not entirely sure that that's all the music, but I can't think of anything it's missing off the top of my head. Unfortunately, it's 1. in MOD format, which can be a pain to convert to MP3 form, and 2. the tracks are pretty disorganized, so you get a bunch of files named "Untitled" or "Star Control 2, Tune 4" or "Victory Ditty 9."

Choices, choices. I headed straight to the Spathi homeworld after makin some money on my playthrough, as that was the most obvious thing to do at that point (captain fwiffo was a constant reminder of this). This ain't a speed run is it? Let's explore a bit of the history of the universe and go see the Androsynth. I love a good mystery (and backstory).

I vote to head for Alpha C and then for the Pkunk. The stars and the spirits demand it!

Finish exploring Centauri, then go visit the Pkunk. If you're going to strip-mine a solar system, you better be prepared to go all the way.

Go visit the Pkunk, they seem to be nice guys. And the Ilwrath seem to be jerks.

After that, go see the Androsynth., I'm sure they'll be happy campers.

I heard a rumor that Fred Ford and Paul Reiche III are listed as designers in the credits of the Yaris game. Is this true?

Sorry for the lack of updates. We've had a houseguest the last few days and that hasn't been conducive to my playing computer games by myself. He went to bed early tonight, though, so my plan is to play the next excursion, take and cull screenshots tonight, then write and post the next update tomorrow night.

Actually, never mind. Update now!

Looks like polishing off the Centauri cluster then visiting the Pkunk is the unanimous choice of the audience.



Time to finish plundering the Centauris. I make a bee-line for Gamma Centauri. . .



. . . only to find it has a pathetic two planets.



I'll save Alpha Centauri, the famous Centauri, for last. Now it's Epsilon Centauri's time to shine!



. . . With its one crappy planet. Boo.



This Alpha Centauri had better live up to the hype. Unlike certain Sid Meyers games I could name.



Well, that's a good start.



Alpha Centauri I turns out to be a magnetic world, which means high fuel costs and a nice cache of Exotics. I perform a quick hit-and-run to grab the purple dot and get out before the apocolyptic heat can burn the ship.



Holy sweet bejebus!

At this point I formed a cunning plan to loot Alpha Centauri III of its precious exoctic elements. I would send wave after wave of my own crew down to the planet. As they were singed to a crisp, their charred remains would form a cooling ash, affording the next brave crew a marginally higher chance of not being killed horribly. I hatched the plan after skimming through Zap Brannigan's Big Book of War.



Alpha Centauri VIII was similarly exotic-rich. By this time my ship was running out of brave crew members, but fortunately I'd gained enough experience throwing prior crew members into the furnace to gather these exotics without any further crew loss.



Seriously, though, Alpha Centauri's one of the most mineral-rich systems in the game. It serves you well to be willing to sacrifice some crew to hot spots in order to mine this system, because it'll leave you well-set for some deep exploration right away. Check out the massive amount of exotics I picked up from this system alone.

Why, who's this fellow?







Man, I have been itching to visit the Melnorme for days, since I've had their damn song stuck in my head. And now I get to inflict it on all of you!

As a sidenote, this seems a rather hair-splitting answer. "Of course we are beyond currency! We long ago abandoned it. Instead, we barter for items of intrinsic value. When we receive such an item, we assign it a value according to a universal medium, which we then convey to you, and which you may then convey to us in exchange for our own items of intrinsic value. Obviously far superior to currency!"















I sell my alien collection into the Melnorme's hideous intergalactic freak-show, and wind up with 484 credits. Now it's time to spend. . .

Normally I just plough all my money into technology, then idly buy information if I have credits burning a hole in my pocket. The Melnorme's information, though, is really useful for figuring out where you should explore, and since this game I'm not going anywhere without first uncovering a reason to go there, I actually can use their non-technology trade goods.

Another sidenote: In most games credits are too valuable to waste on fuel. This changes completely when you try the Iron Man Triathlon of Star Control II playthroughs: the No Starbase Challenge. It's possible, though very difficult, to complete this game without ever visiting the starbase. To do so you rely on the Melnorme for all your refueling needs.









So many choices! Help me pick a major, Talking Time! Do I major in Engineering, Political Science, Biology, or History?

In my experiences, asking about Alien Races usually only gave me information I already had, or was fairly useless.

Then again, the only other aliens you've encountered so far are Fwiffo, a half-dead Ilwrath and that robot, so go nuts.

The historical information kicks ass, but isn't very useful to us right now. I'd suggest getting some "Current Events" and maybe spending some credits on an upgrade or two for the ol' ship.

I'm not 100% certain, because it's been a long time since I've paid much attention to the actual clues people drop, but my sense is that none of the information you get from the Melnorme is strictly necessary; it's more like a hint-buying service if you get stuck. Still, at this stage we've done so little exploring that anything they tell us will be news. Unless it's where to find the Spathi or the Pkunk.

it pains me to spend money on data so readily available on the internets, especially when there are hellbore cannons and shiva furnaces waiting to be bought.

But in the interests of your choice, go with current events.

Current events are fine for now, followed by some tech for your ship. Any theories on the purple thing? Or is it a devious trick to steal 12,000,000 million credits from curious innocents.

you're never given the chance to even look at the purple thing. the captain's got better things to do.

The UQM source code comes from the 3DO version of the game, where they changed the price of purple info. Apparently in the original PC version it was somewhere in the hundred thousands, but they upped it in the 3DO version. Maybe you could edit the value that stores your credit total to exceed whatever the original price was? In any case, there's nothing in the source code to actually open a dialog option to buy purple info even if you have the credits, so whether you could get the money or not is a moot point.

[wrong thread]

Ooof, sorry for the week-long radio silence. Between guests and travel, the last week was pretty bad for me. I'm back in New York, though, so updates should get much more regular now. Next update tonight (and tonight New York time, so three hours earlier than previous "tonight" updates!).

Then, sir, we will fight over "tonight New York time" updates! Although you may win because I will be distracted by anyone who signs onto XBL looking for a game of Ticket to Ride (or any other board game).

Whew! Okay, so, when I said "Tonight" what I actually meant was "The morning after next." I had a pretty painful time trying to get the save files properly transfered from the computer I was writing at and my home computer. But everything got resolved and now we're ready to pick up where we left off, buying things from the Melnorme.

Since votes were divided between "Current Events" and "Technology," I decided to buy 4 75-credit pieces of news and one 150-credit technology.







Already I'm glad I bought this information. The Shofixti are still alive. There are some males at Delta Gorno, some females at Alpha Cerenkov I. Also, there's a race out there called the Utwigs who apparently have some sort of large bomb. Make a note of it!



To punish me for pressing my luck, they follow up on their three-pages of Shofixti news with some short and obvious information about the Ur-Quan. Their fight is centered around Crateris, in much the same way that the continental United States is centered around Kansas (the Ur-Quan and Kohr-Ah spheres of influence are huge).





The Umgah are screwing with the Ilwrath using a fancy Hyperwave Caster. Also, the Ilwrath are kind of dumb and violent.

One more time! No whammies, no whammies, no whammies, STOP!



Huh. A portal to another dimension between Chandrasekhar and Columbae. Well, nothing says "explore me!" like a rip in the space-time continuum.

Now to upgrade my tech. . .



I got some new guns. Fusion blasters are pretty okay, I guess. I don't tend to use the flagship for fighting all that much, plus you eventually get better guns. They're better than regular cannons, though. The next technology is a bit more exciting, but now we're out of credits.



Onward to Giclas!

My God! It's full of . . .



Butterflies, apparently.











At this point, I decided to channel my inner Nixon and sock it to these no-good hippies.



Alright, getting serious again,





Alright, Gamma Kreuger I's the Pkunk homeworld.

My home planet needs me.







In terms of interesting planets in Alpha Giclas . . .



Alpha Giclas III is a pellucid world, which means a small deposit of valuable exotics.



Alpha Giclas IV is an iodine world with some life on it, but it sits on the cusp between worth exploring and too hazardous for the payoff. . .



I decide it's not worth trying with the skeleton crew I have available. Those carousel beasts are actually quite valuable and are generally worth going after, but they take a ton of shots to bring down and are deadly enough, when combined with the high tectonics and my fragile lander, to not merit the effort this time. I'd say I'd come back when I'm better equipped to handle them, but it's generally a waste of time to revisit stars in this game unless you're doing something else in the immediate area. There are just so many planets to explore that you're almost always better off rolling the dice on a new system.



Alpha Giclas VII-a also has life . . .



. . . which is also too much for me right now. Those purple squids move faster than my lander does and they make a bee line for me as soon as they spot my ship. They don't do much damage when they get to me, but there's really nothing I can do to hunt them right now.



Alpha Giclas VII-b, on the other hand, is another inhabited radioactive world. It's nothing but slow beasts and high-value minerals.



And VII-c has more life, this time urine-soaked.

I scouted it out, but being struck by lightning and surrounded by horrible tentacle beasts the moment I landed made me get out quickly.



To Gamma Kreuger!



Looks like I've picked up a couple of Smokeys.



Gamma Krueger has a lot of Pkunk ships. You'd almost think there was a war on.



This is what it looks like when you visit a homeworld. That configuration indicates that the number of enemy fighters is infinite. It's generaly not advisable to attack! under these circumstances.

Also note that you can't access homeworlds to strip mine them.







I decide to do the proper thing and announce myself.

I figure I'll play it cool for now.



Perhaps a Shatner impersonation will impress these avians?



Alright, enough of this.

At this point, the rambled on at length then kicked me out right away, so I couldn't grab the block text at the end. Sorry for the screenshot density here:















Awesome!

I remember as a kid actually feeling guilty asking for the Pkunk's help at this point. Here they are, getting their asses handed to them by the Ilwrath, and I come in and demand they sacrifice for my benefit.