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

. . . Though even as a meek, nebbishy kid I thought this was a royal screw-job.











This isn't actually the end of the world. The trick with alliances is that they allow you to build the allied race's vessels at the starbase. It's nice in that you can have a potentially limitless number of the alien vessels, but not nice insofar as you have to pay for them.

With the Pkunk, you get four free ships right away. You can't build more, but if you revisit them later they'll periodically replenish and give you four more ships.

I did a lot more talking to the Pkunk, but since they kicked me out of their homeworld at this point it seems like this is an opportune moment to end this session. Next update tonight, for reals. The screen shots have been taken and wrangled, the next update is written, I just need to post it. The only reason I'm not putting it up now is because I don't want to overload on screencaps all at once.

I forgot about the Shofixti and "carnal gymnastics." That's awesome.

So's "Got any Fruit Loops? har har har har!"

Nothing throws up your defensive instincts like seeing dozens of ships surround you when you visit a homeworld. Sure encourages you to wipe your feet and mind your manners.

When we last left, the Pkunk had denied us an alliance, but given us four Pkunk furies as a consolation prize.

An aside on Pkunk Furies. They're one of the game's better lightweight ships. Their main (and only) weapon is a gun that fires three bullets at once, one directly in front of the ship and two at 90 degree angles from the front to the left and right. The gun doesn't do much damage, but fires rapidly and is fully automatic.

Unfortunately, the Fury is one of many ships with goofy energy recharge. The Fury doesn't automatically recharge enemy the way that most other ships do. If you exhaust the batteries it'll just sit there, empty, unless you use the Fury's secondary power. By holding down the secondary attack button, you cause the Pkunk captain to shout insults at the opposing captain. This negative mental energy is transferred into the ship's weapon batteries. It's all very thematically appropriate, but even holding the button down doesn't give you very fast energy recharge. What it all boils down to is that the Fury requires you to hold down the secondary attack button to accomplish the background battery recharge that other ships do automatically. On the plus side, you get to hear audio of the Pkunk captain calling the other captain "Loser!" "Doody!" and "Moron!", so it's not all bad.

But, really, that's just there because the designers needed to do something with the Pkunk's secondary attack button. The Fury's real secondary ability is resurrection. When a Fury is destroyed, there is a 50% chance it will instantly be resurrected with a full crew and full battery, while a chorus sings "Hallelujah!". The game flips the resurrection coin every time the Fury is destroyed, and each death has an independent 50% chance of resulting in resurrection regardless of how many times the Fury has already been resurrected. The luckiest I've ever gotten in this regard was having a Fury resurrect four times in the same battle.

Other than that, the Fury is very fast and super-maneuverable. Its battery capacity is low, as is its crew, but the resurrection makes it feel a bit more durable than other lightweight ships. With enough patience you can beat just about anything with a Fury; its high speed and sideways-firing cannons make it ideal for hit-and-fade strafing runs.

And now back to the Pkunk Homeworld. Please take this opportunity to enjoy the kicky Pkunk theme music.













At this point, I have the option to play along with Pkunk's New Age nonsense, an option I gladly avail myself of:



. . . Unfortunately the Pkunk have been soaking in it for so long that throwing random nonsense at them doesn't even phase them.



Pkunk fortunates are surprisingly accurate, but not actually very helpful, for the most part. They're very good at telling you where you're going to wind up, but not very good at telling you how to get there.

I still live by the Pkunk's advice on this matter to this day. Which is part of the reason why my updates are so sporadic.





Star Control II has some time limits. The game ends if you don't finish it in a certain amount of time. Some races disappear if you don't tend to their needs when they call for help. The implied time limit from this dialogue option does not exist. You'll never have to worry about the Pkunk getting destroyed by the Ilwrath. Which is not to say you don't have to worry about the Pkunk getting destroyed . . .





And that's it for the Pkunk homeworld. You can't explore the world itself, so at this point I set out to ransack their home system.



Gama Krueger III is a Radioactive World, which are always fun. No life on this one, though.



At this point I'm just looking to fill up the cargo bays before I head home. Having cleared out Gamma Krueger I somewhat arbitrarily decide to go to Beta Krueger next. Note that large portions of Pkunk space, including their homeworld, overlap with the Ilwrath sphere of influence. That means that either Pkunk or Ilwrath ships can appear when I'm in hyperspace. Real Ilwrath are much harder to beat than the one I fought earlier, and for right now I'd rather avoid the battles (though I do have a fleet capable of fighting them at this point).



Beta Krueger. Fortunately the game arbitrarily decided to stock it with Pkunk ships instead of Ilwrath ships.



Beta Krueger III is a xenolithic world. Xenolithic means "Alien Rocks." There are no aliens on this planet, but there are rocks in the form of precious metals.

Beta Krueger had little to recommend it, so I decided to finish my expedition at Delta Krueger.



The only really notable planet in Delta Kreuger is the first planet, a Noble World, which means higher-than-average value minerals and almost nothing hostile. Always a pleasure.

At this point, I'm going to give you all the dialogue you can extract from Pkunk ship captains once you've pseudo-allied with them. When you talk to a Pkunk they'll give you a greeting message:

From there, you'll have three dialogue options. First,









So we've now learned from the Pkunk for free what we paid the Melnorme to tell us in the last update. I mean, the Pkunk don't tell us it was the Umgah who set the Ilwrath on them, but you can intuit it from the location of the Umgah on the cosmic map and the characterization of the Umgah in the manual. As I've mentioned elsewhere, you can get pretty much everything the Melnorme tell you from alternative sources, but they are an easy way to get a clue to jumpstart a quest if you're stumped.







So, there are three artifacts which we may or may not need in order to do something. We have one of them. Another is somewhere in the Persei system.





Apparently Awkky Birdy is a furry. Although, if you're already an anthropomorphic bird, does being into anthropomorphic ferret-things make you a furry? I guess it's still alternate skin coverings. Anyhow, something about Draconis, possibly to do with the third of the three artifacts.

. . . And that's all you get from the Pkunk from there on if you ask for news.

Option 2:





Maybe all Pkunks are furrys. They should rename their ship the Pkunk Furry! Oh ho ho! But anyhow, interesting words to remember.





Useful advice in the general sense, but not in the helps-you-to-actually-accomplish-your-goals sense.





So the Melnorme hang out around all Supergiants, not just Alpha Centauri.

Option the Third:



So the Arilou are still around. Too bad we don't know where they are.





It's difficult to tell if this fortune is insightful, or merely self-serving. Perhaps a little of both.



So? I annoy rocks with lights all the time! I don't need a fancy bird to tell me I'm gonna do it again!





. . . and here we get foreshadowing for one of the game's more awkward scenes. I don't want to spoil the surprise, but let's just say that Emperor Pants I will get laid before his adventure is finished.





This is where useful fortunes end and the saga of the annoyed spirits begins.



I don't tell fortunes without a work order. You got a problem with that, you take it up with the union rep.



. . . And that wraps it up for the Pkunk. I'll be back if I need more furies, but that mostly wraps it up for them, plot point-wise.

Lay in a course for Earth!



Note that I've got four Smokies on my tail now. But with maximum thrusters none of them even come close to catching them. I should rename my ship the General Lee.

Back at the Starbase, the Commander makes himself useful:



Periodically you'll get news updates from the Commander. Most of the time he's just telling you about things you've already done, but sometimes he gives you information on things you should have done, but haven't. In this case, he wants us to visit Rigel.

The Commander has one other useful function: He can analyze new special items you get, like the clear spindle the Pkunk gave us.



Neat, but not directly useful.



Here's where the ship stands after offloading minerals. On the plus side, I have more resources than I know what to do with. On the minus side, nearly everyone who left on that last mission was burned to death on some God-forsaken rock. Fortunately the starbase is packed with loyal crew members eager to be hotspot kindling and beast fodder on the next expedition.



Here we are post-upgrade. I threw on a couple of fusion blasters and a dynamo, then added an extra crew pod. I probably won't be using the flagship in any battles, but it's nice to know those guns are there if I need them. Plus, any modules are essentially free, so far as resources are concerned, since I can always trade them back for 100% of the purchase price.

At this point, essentially the only reason we're collecting resources is to get more fuel to run more missions, so resource gathering will be a complete afterthough from here on out.

Now, the question arises: Where to next?



Here we have a map of interesting things close by . . .



And here's where the farther-out clues lead us. So what do you think, Talking Time? Do we investigate the hyperwave broadcasts on Rigel? Do we head back to the colony from whence we came? Do we try to make a love match for the Shofixti? Do we search Androsynth space for rare artifacts to put in our museums? Do we bludgeon the Spathi into an alliance? Do we investigate the weird rip in space-time? Do we try to find the sphere or the other thingee? Or do we launch a foolish head-on assault on the Ur-Quan?

How about seeing those Spathi sonsaguns?

They're good eggs.

The Emporer needs his pipes cleaned. Go get some Shofixti female ass, I say! Also, this LP has made me really really really want to play this game.

You should totally play along! It's fun, free, and legal, just get the downloader from here.

Why are you calling Awkky Birdy a furry if he's dreaming about screwing a sea of Pkunk females?

Normally, I head to Rigel, en route to Spathiwa around this time. So I vote to do something completely different... but what to do?

I vote to check up on our old buddies the Androsynth... and by "buddies", I mean "sworn enemies", but who's counting?

Hyperwave broadcaster, absolutely.

Wow. For some reason I read that dialogue about three times and each time mentally substituted Shofixti for Pkunk.

Set a course for Rigel.

I have, and I am! I just bopped by Rigel, haven't met the Pkunk yet, though.

Alright, I'm counting 2 votes for Rigel, 1 for Spathi Homeworld, 1 for Androsynths/Archaeology, and 1 for Admiral ZEX and the Shofixti females.

*Sigh!* And no votes for Space-Time Rip. You guys aren't making this easy on me.

I'll do the play-through right now and hopefully get the next update posted tomorrow night. Meaning Monday night.

Alright, the playing's all done. Now comes the fun part: Culling 973 (!) screen caps down to a reasonable number for an update. Or two. Or three.

dude, i'm all for the arilou.

this needs to come back to life.

It does, but by posting here, you made me think that it had returned.

YOU DECEIVED ME, MR.SHIVAM!

It does. It really, truly does.

Perhaps our brave thread leader drowned under those 93x screen shots?

A Pkunk Fury has a 1/2 chance of resurrecting.

In the meantime, everyone should download and listen to the soundtrack. It's so awesome. You can get remixes from the Ur-Quan Masters web site. All this was probably mentioned earlier in the thread, but it bears repeating.

...And we're back!

First, let me apologize for letting this Let's Play languish for the last... Gosh, four years. When I started this LP I was studying for the bar exam and moving to a new apartment, so the updates dropped off as the studying got more intense. Then right after the bar there was a two week family vacation, then intense furniture-buying and moving-related stuff, then I started my first "for reals" adult job, which was both stressful and time-consuming.

And now it's four years later. I'm unemployed, looking for work, but with some time on my hands. I feel I'm in a much better place to actually commit to finishing this LP.

Let me also preface this update by saying that I hope I'm not breaking the rules coming back to an abandoned LP like this. As I read the rules, abandoned LPs can be resurrected without having to wait in the queue, but this LP has been abandoned for a LOOOONG time, so I understand if this isn't kosher.

And one last bit of prefatory material. When I stopped working on this LP I had already played through my next update and gotten the screenshots, but I hadn't culled the shots or edited them to a reasonable format for LPing, nor had I written my posts. So, returning, I already had this entry half-done.

What I didn't have were my save files. This entry was originally played at least one OS upgrade and a couple of reformattings ago, and while I'm usually good with preserving files (and did save all my screenshots for this entry) I lost my saved games for Ur-Quan Masters. Fortunately, I found a slightly older save from this playthrough in an e-mail I sent myself back when I was running through this. So I went through and replayed from that old save up to the point where this entry leaves off. The transition from the end of this update to the start of the next should be fairly seamless; my current game got to the same point a few days later and with a few more resource units, but having accomplished all the same things. Also, replaying helped me refresh my memory of what I was doing when I played this four years ago and allowed me to grab a screenshot that was missing from the earlier LP. You can actually tell which one it is if you look carefully enough; the first reader to identify the newly-minted screenshot gets the honor of renaming the captain and vessel for the remainder of the LP.

This entry might be a little spotty in points because it's essentially been reconstructed from screenshots. While I'm sure of what I was doing 95% of the time, there are a few decisions that I made that I simply can't explain. Think of this entry as a sort of archaeological project.

Alright, enough throat-clearing and hand-waving! On with the show!

Here's the state of the ship as we set out on our next expedition:



The only difference from the end of the last entry is that I brought on new crew to fill up all the crew units, which I'd neglected to do before. I tried to please everyone who voted after the last entry, so the flight plan for this journey is to head from Sol to Rigel to check out the mysterious message we received, then swing up to the Spathi homeworld to see if we can't work out an aliance, then down to the Androsynth in the Vulpeculae cluster, then one last stop at Alpha Cerenkov to see Commander ZEX about the female Shofixti.



Off to Rigel!



Rigel has three planets and a crazy bug-like spacecraft. Let's see what that ship is up to?



A SHIP APPROACHES! COMMAND?



Theme Music

Well, this is fun. Not one, but three new alien races!

Alright! A new alien homeworld location. Be sure to make a note of it!

Gonna switch the format up a bit, just for the Zoq-Fot-Pik, because the recap text doesn't really convey the back-and-forth.

He is.

No, she is!

No, I'm not!

Yes, you are.

Cripes! We've been through this a million times!

That doesn't change anything. You're the Fot!

Faugh! Well, Captain, as you can see, this is a point of some contention.

Fot!

(This is kinda interesting, insofar as it seems to indicate that the Zoq-Fot-Pik have been a collective race for so long that they now forget which member race is which. Also, humor.)

Then we've finally found our saviors!

Maybe.

At last, our search is over! It is just as the great

Crystal ones promised!

(Great Crystal ones? Hmmmmmmmm)

They look sneaky. I think they're lying.

Quiet, fool! Can't you see our nightmare is over!? This ship is from the Great Crystal One's fabled Alliance... the Alliance of Free Stars!

(I'm not sure how she got "Alliance of Free Stars" from "Empire of Pants," but whatever.)

Maybe.

In our ancient past, four species evolved intelligence on our homeworld.

Simultaneously.

They were the Zoq...

...the Fot...

...the Pik...

...and the Zebranky.

We three, the Zoq, Fot, and Pik evolved in such a way as to acquire sustenance from many sources...