Thoughts after finishing the game, yet again.

[gussmed]

I played Star Control 2 when it came out. A couple of times, because I'm pretty sure I lost at least once due to the time limit.

I played the 3DO version.

I have a pretty good idea of the plot, but I'd forgotten quite a lot, and I tried to make a point of playing it "straight," using only information gleaned in-game. Some things I of course remembered, like which constellation has the uber-beast that Vex wants, and what things I should really prioritize. I managed to win in June of 2158, about 18 months before the deadline.

I don't like the space combat. I was a lot more tolerant of it back in my 20's, when my reflexes were better, and I was accustomed to similar punishing coin-op games.

For a game that's about a wide variety of unique ships, remarkably few were worth flying. It was pretty much just the flagship and the Eluder for me. The Pkunk are invaluable against the Sa Matra, but that's about it.

The game would be better, IMHO, without the death-march deadline. If you don't know about it, it can catch you by surprise, since none of the dialog makes clear you're *really* against the clock. Sure, everyone's concerned, but you don't really know until it's too late.

It's a game that's largely about exploration. Exploration of worlds, and contacting alien species. The time limit, if you know about it, puts a damper on that. The fuel costs of travel before you get the Portal Spawner are more than enough cost for long distance trips, without the issue of the time cost bringing you closer to losing.

It's not a tight time limit IF you know what you're doing. The first deadline is that you must fix the Ultron by January 2159, and the second is that you must destroy the Sa Matra before January 2160. I blew up the Sa Matra in June of 2158, well before the deadline, and I avoiding "cheating" by looking up information online.

I did have to look up a couple of things because I'd failed to take notes. I thought I was being good about it, but I still managed to miss writing down things like the location of Syra.

I think the idea of the time limit was that you played a couple of times and lost, and used the information from your last, failed game to do better the next time. You don't have to buy information from the Melnorme twice, after all. It was originally released before the internet, so you had to solve everything without helpful online guides.

Save scumming is very much part of the game. In the early game, you WILL lose landers to planetary hazards.

The dialog is still great, but there are parts I missed this time around. I forgot that you really have to talk to some races AFTER they kick you out of the dialog. I didn't talk to the Umgah before the Dnyarri take them over, I missed important things from the Spathi, and I never did hear from the Pkunk about The Words.

The "Syreen are sex objects" stuff hasn't aged well, but conversations with the Spathi, Zoq-Fot-Pik, Thraddash, Utwig, and the like are well worth exhausting.

[gussmed]

Further thought: Star Control 1, which I also bought way back when and played, was the basis for the combat in Star Control 2. The problem here is that the strategic layer in SC 1 is very different from Story in SC 2, and this affects the value of ships.

In SC 1, resource costs matter for both sides. If you beat an expensive Ur Quan Dreadnought and lose a cheap Earthling Cruiser to do it, that's good. Cost effectiveness matters.

In SC 2, the enemy has a near-unlimited number of ships, and you don't. Losing a single Earthling Cruiser is a serious setback if you can't get a replacement without returning to base, and there are 3 more dreadnoughts coming. If you DO return the base, those dreadnoughts will all be back when you return.

SC 2 demands hard counters. Being cost-effective for the damage you do isn't enough. You have to win with little or no damage, because there's a bunch more where that came from.

You've also got a limited number of fleet slots, so you just can't afford to bring along a ship that's meant to be cheap and disposable, like the Shofixti Scout. The Glory Device is lousy even if you're killing ships on a 1:1 basis because of the slot limit.

[BlueOrange]

Originally posted by gussmed:

I think the idea of the time limit was that you played a couple of times and lost, and used the information from your last, failed game to do better the next time. You don't have to buy information from the Melnorme twice, after all. It was originally released before the internet, so you had to solve everything without helpful online guides.

One of the major income sources for publishers at the time was selling hintbooks, and having phone-in helplines. So that may have been part of the strategy behind this aspect of the design.

[gussmed]

Yeah, I remember those guidebooks. Not for Star Control 2, but I remember the really thick guidebook that was published for the original Civilization. It was a real doorstop.

[匿名的]

Originally posted by gussmed:

I did have to look up a couple of things because I'd failed to take notes. I thought I was being good about it, but I still managed to miss writing down things like the location of Syra.

3DO version (1994) forgot to record voice lines for the location of Syra (which you get from the Syreen?), and the location of the Mycon homeworld (which you get from the 'special' place? or maybe Random Mycon encounters). I guess that's why the ur-quan masters doesn't have that info anywhere in any races dialogue tree.

[gussmed]

The Syreen tell you where Syra was when you ask "What was Syra like?" At least, that's what it says online. I don't recall seeing it.

Tanaka tells you the location of the Mycon Special Place. I'm not sure who (if anyone) tells you where the Mycon homeworld is. You do have to go there to tell them about Organon, none of the other Mycon, including those at the Special Place, will listen.

[Azimuth]

The Syreen tell you where Syra was

You also get that information very early, either from Starbase Cap or Spathi (or Spathi Captain - I don't remember). They name the star system.

The "Syreen are sex objects" stuff hasn't aged well

This is ageless -) Ask BG3 fans .)

[rudygt]

Originally posted by gussmed:

The "Syreen are sex objects" stuff hasn't aged well, but conversations with the Spathi, Zoq-Fot-Pik, Thraddash, Utwig, and the like are well worth exhausting.

I doubt you're too young to know what Siren's are, and other reasons to not notice a similarity in game with the naming and the the ACTUAL SIREN CALL they perform.
YOU CANT CANCEL GREEK MYTHOLOGY ANY MORE ITS ALREADY CANCELED.

[gussmed]

Originally posted by rudygt:

I doubt you're too young to know what Siren's are

I'm not sure if you intended to write that, or intended the opposite.

If you intended to write "you probably noticed the obvious, that Syreens are Sirens," I'm not sure why you'd bother saying that and using ALL CAPs to state something you know I already know.

If you intended to write "I *don't* doubt," you're implying I'm awfully stupid. If you think I'm 10 or something, I suggest you re-read the first paragraph of my original post.

Regardless, it has little bearing on how tasteless the Syreen are.

[Mharr]

They are also playing into the general prevalence of women looking very much like that in all science fiction comics and television of the 1970s. It's not a great satire to the degree that it's just doing the same thing again while wearing a single lampshade.

[Soul Reaver]

Originally posted by Azimuth:

The Syreen tell you where Syra was

You also get that information very early, either from Starbase Cap or Spathi (or Spathi Captain - I don't remember). They name the star system.

No, nobody actually tells you the location in the voiced version. The only character who ever tells you the actual location is Starbase Commander Talana, and that was only in the unvoiced PC version of the game. That's why I had to make these:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3173795076

And just to continue the shilling:

Originally posted by gussmed:

The game would be better, IMHO, without the death-march deadline. If you don't know about it, it can catch you by surprise, since none of the dialog makes clear you're *really* against the clock. Sure, everyone's concerned, but you don't really know until it's too late.

Except there IS dialogue that makes this quite clear and can be heard pretty early in the game.... in the unvoiced PC version. It doesn't exist in the voiced version of Ur-Quan Masters unless you use my mod to restore it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12CxK3KG0t0

You also can't find out where the Mycon homeworld is without mods (or randomly exploring their region of Space) and can easily get it confused with Beta Brahe I (which looks JUST like a homeworld but is actually something different).

Originally posted by gussmed:

I think the idea of the time limit was that you played a couple of times and lost, and used the information from your last, failed game to do better the next time. You don't have to buy information from the Melnorme twice, after all. It was originally released before the internet, so you had to solve everything without helpful online guides.

When I played Star Control II for the first time, it was the MS-DOS PC version. I'd played Star Control I when I was a kid, and loved it, but never realised a sequel had ever come out. When I found out it existed, I played it as an adult, going in blind, pen and paper ready, and not knowing what to expect. I was blown away by the scale of the single-player story... and was particularly impressed with how the 'breadcrumb trail' plot carefully led you to everywhere you needed to go to finish the game. I won the game on my first attempt without needing to use any guides and with time to spare thanks to how tightly that breadcrumb trail plot was constructed (and due to realizing early on that I was on a time limit, and just how useful the Melnorme's info could be).

Then the 3DO version broke that breadcrumb trail plot by its stupid dialogue omissions, and that's the version that The Ur-Quan Masters is based on. I feel most new players will get the experience you did, rather than the one I did, and that kind of hurts me to know.

Originally posted by Mharr:

They are also playing into the general prevalence of women looking very much like that in all science fiction comics and television of the 1970s. It's not a great satire to the degree that it's just doing the same thing again while wearing a single lampshade.

I actually really like this aspect of the Syreen and thought it was one of the game's best jokes. It doesn't need a lampshade: the entire game's aesthetic is that of a 1960s-1970s pulp sci-fi novel. So when the metal bikini-clad blue-skinned space babes show up (who are all so lonely on that starbase, oh my, and with biology oh so compatible with ours for... handwavy reasons) it's BLATANTLY obvious that it's a satirical nod to that type of depiction of alien women in old pulp sci-fi. It's so on-the-nose that it's clear you're supposed to laugh at that old-school sexist depiction of yesteryear, not be offended.

Also, in typical Ur-Quan Masters fashion, there's more going on here. Despite quite intentionally being presented in the same way as the 'sex object' alien space babes of old sci-fi, Talana is among the top three most fleshed-out characters in the entire story (together with Commander Hayes and the Melnorme), and probably has the most complex motivations and character arc. So despite appearances as a two-dimensional caricature, she's actually got a lot of depth, in defiance of those old depictions.

[gussmed]

Originally posted by Soul Reaver:

When I played Star Control II for the first time, it was the MS-DOS PC version. I'd played Star Control I when I was a kid, and loved it, but never realised a sequel had ever come out.

I played both Star Control 1 and 2 shortly after release for the PC. I was in my 20's for both.

Originally posted by Soul Reaver:

I won the game on my first attempt without needing to use any guides

I don't remember, at this far remove, much detail of my first try at Star Control 2. I vaguely remember burning through so much crew that the cost started to climb, and getting the Shofixti was a huge relief, but that's about it. I know I played through it at least a couple of times, using knowledge of my prior runs to do things like shave off a lot of time by acquiring the Portal Spawner very early.

[Mharr]

Oh man, yeah I hadn't realized how much was lost in falling back to the 3DO version. Reaver, are your fixes installed by default in the Megamod build?

[Soul Reaver]

Originally posted by Mharr:

Oh man, yeah I hadn't realized how much was lost in falling back to the 3DO version. Reaver, are your fixes installed by default in the Megamod build?

I think only the Mycon fix is included by default, but both the Syreen and Melnorme fixes are available as optional selections during the install process. Just make sure they're ticked when you install and you're good to go.

[jbkilroy]

Something I just found out about the Megamod is that it allows you to completely bypass the parts of the game you don't like with optional cheats.

Don't like the time limit? Turn it off.

Don't like space combat? Turn on God Mode and become invincible.

Don't like the resource grind? Give yourself infinite resources and/or fuel.

I know it won't be for everyone, but as someone who last beat the game about 10 years ago, just the thought of having to go through space combat again and again and again melts my brain.