READ BEFORE PLAYING: Guide on how to play Free Stars: The Ur-Quan Masters for the best experience. (NO SPOILERS)

This guide will share essential information you should be aware of before playing the game in order for you to have the best experience playing it. There's no story spoilers in this guide, it's intended for new players.

Part 1: TAKE NOTES!

The Ur-Quan Masters (or Star Control 2 as it was called) was released in 1992. This game heavily predates pretty much every well known open world RPG game which means all of the standard mechanics/staples of the genre you'd expect of a modern RPG are not here. This includes quest markers and quest objectives. This game will not tell you where to go or what to do, there is no handholding.

You HAVE to write down every significant piece of information that the game gives you, especially what is said to you in alien dialogue. Every piece of important or significant information an alien tells you is guaranteed to be useful information that you will need to know at a certain point. In order to progress in this game, you must look at all the information you have gathered and figure out what to do next. As I said, it's zero handholding and entirely brainpower. To complete the game, you must have access to all the information you have learned at all times, nothing must be forgotten.

We live in modern times, which means you can just open WordPad and type your notes there. However, if you want the authentic 1992 experience I recommend writing down notes on a physical piece of paper, especially a notebook of sorts. Write down every piece of significant information you hear from the aliens. Create a list for every alien you encounter and write down anything important they say or any important details about that specific alien race. If you're a decent artist, you can even draw illustrations of the aliens or other significant things. I'd definitely recommend doing physical notes because it's authentic to the game being from a bygone era where games used to require you to do that.

Polygon made a good video about it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PIp11iY0pw

Part 2: Non-Spoiler Resources

Manual:

The Ur-Quan Masters (or Star Control 2) came out in 1992 and that meant the game came in a physical box. The physical box contained a Manual which contains a Prologue Story that details the events of the story before the start of the game. It also contains information about the aliens that were present in the Alliance-Heirarchy War which is not considered a spoiler but for a fully blind experience you can ignore it. It also contains a plethora of useful gameplay tips which you may find helpful as you play. However I highly recommend you ignore the Hint Book section of the manual as it does contain spoilers as well as hints that you're much better off figuring out yourself.

The Manual can viewed in PDF format here[www.digitpress.com]

Non-Spoiler Starmap:

The physical box also came with a Non-Spoiler Starmap which you are expected to look at while playing the game. The Non-Spoiler Starmap shows the Starmap during the events of the Alliance-Hierarchy War (This is not a spoiler, the intro tells you about this.) The Non-Spoiler Starmap will be useful for finding out information about certain alien races. It also shows the shapes of constellations which may or may not be useful...

This is the Non-Spoiler Starmap that came in the physical retail box from the original 1992 game.

This is a fan-made version of that starmap which is easier to look at.

Wiki:

This game also has a wiki.[wiki.uqm.stack.nl] The Ultronomicon wiki is a great resource for hints and technical information about the game. The wiki is full of spoilers, but the links in the green box are spoiler free.

Part 3: Time Limit

Now for the most controversial aspect of this game... It has a time limit. I believe that the time limit is quite generous and if you know what you're doing, beating the game within the time limit is pretty easy. However for those who are on their first playthrough, it absolutely should be something you are aware of. There was a line of dialogue where you'd learn about the time limit in-game but it was cut from the 3DO version and it was spoken by an NPC you meet early in the game; therefore it's fair that you know of its existence.

At the start of the in-game year 2159, bad things start to happen. These events lead to a game over at the end of 2159. There is a quest in the game that delays these events by one year to 2160.

Also if you need to go AFK make sure you actually pause the game! You can pause the time by simply going into any menu (You can also pause the game by pressing F1). Don't just leave the game running normally because you'll end up wasting precious time.

The date is shown below your flagship information on the side of the screen, time will pass when you're ship is in hyperspace or moving around a star system. Time pauses when you open a menu, enter dialogue, enter a planet and when you're in combat.

Most people who go in fully blind may not complete the game on their 1st playthrough, it's very possible to beat it on your 1st playthrough but only if you quickly figure out the things you need to do. I know this may feel frustrating, but you'll be surprised how quickly you'll get through the game on a 2nd playthrough with everything you know. You are pretty much guaranteed to beat the game on a 2nd playthrough if you fail your 1st.

Part 4: Save!

A common tip that is true for many similar games.

Save often and in different slots.

There will be moments in this game where you may screw up and need to reload to an earlier save. Saving in multiple slots is important because you could end up making a bad save where you're stuck in a bad situation and you can't reload to an earlier point to avoid it.

Part 5: Combat

Some new players have difficulty adjusting to the combat in the game. If you ever have difficulty, I recommend returning to the main menu and opening up Super Melee mode. This is the combat minigame isolated into its own mode, where you can choose any alien ship in the game to fight with and against. This mode will allow you to get used to the combat as the game doesn't give you much of a combat tutorial. Be wary that this will spoil the appearance of the alien races, so I recommend playing the main game for a bit and using only the ships you're familiar.

If you don't like the combat you can enable Cyborg mode, which I will explain below.


If you want to play Super Melee online with a friend, you have to go through quite a complicated setup. There is a guide for it here[www.star-control.com] (Windows only)

Part 6: Menu Explained

The In-Game Menu displays 4 options. I will explain the menu and what all the options do.









Starmap - Self-Explanatory, opens the Starmap. The Starmap is explained in more detail in the next section.

Manifest - This option opens a sub-category of other options:

Game - This option opens a sub-category of other options:

Navigate just takes you back to the game.


Manifest:










Firstly you have Cargo which shows you a list of all the mineral types in the game and what they're worth. It also shows you how much of each mineral type your ship is currently carrying and how much space you have left. You can dump minerals by pressing enter on them, typically useful if you've run out of storage space and want to replace low-value minerals with high-value ones.

Then you have Devices. This is a list of important items you will pick up on your journey through the stars. Some of them can be selected and used for special purposes. All devices can be analyzed at the starbase where you'll learn more about them.

After that there's Roster. This shows you have much crew your main ship and all your escort ships have. This menu also allows you to transfer crew between your ships. A common thing you might want to do is fill your main ship full of crew and then use escort ships in combat. If your escort ships lose crew you can simply refill their crew with crew from your main ship using the Roster menu. Since crew is effectively health in this game, it means that doing this is pretty much "healing" your ships.

Game:












Save, Load and Quit Game are all self-explanatory.

Settings opens another subcategory with another set of options:














Sound and Music both turn the Sound and Music on/off.

Cyborg mode allows for an AI to take control of your ship during combat. You have the options of OFF (manual control), ON, ON+ and ON++. The plus controls how fast the combat happens. ON+ is double speed, and ON++ is instant (it rapidly does the battle in the background without even showing it to you at whatever speed your CPU can do it, generally so fast that it feels instant and you go immediately to the end of the battle).

The Captain and Flagship options allow you to rename your Captain name and Flagship name.

Part 7: Starmap Explained

The Starmap shows you the region of space that you can explore in the game. Every single coloured dot is a star system that you can go to and explore. As you discover alien races in the game, their spheres of influence will appear on the Starmap. This will show you what region of space they occupy and when you're in their sphere, their ships will spawn in HyperSpace and in star systems. Furthermore, there is a white sphere that appears which is centred on your current position. This white sphere shows you how far you can travel with your current amount of fuel.

(This map is blank as showing the alien spheres would be spoilers.)

There are a few controls you should be aware of. Firstly, you can zoom in and out the Starmap by pressing + and - (on the numpad). Some stars aren't visible at the default zoom level so it's useful thing to use from time to time.

Also you can search on the Starmap by pressing / and then typing the name of the star you want and then pressing tab. Pressing tab again will cycle through the stars in that group although it won't update the name of the star in the title bar, I believe this is a bug in UQM.

Part 8: Have Fun!

That's just about all you need to know before playing. I've purposely tried to avoid certain tips that might amount to backseating. You may still struggle at the game at times but that's something in common with all games. I hope you have fun playing the game, thanks for reading the guide!

P.S. After you've returned to Earth and done what you've needed to do, check out Pluto before you leave the Sol system. You wouldn't want to miss it.

[Varsk]

@diligentcircle Yeah I was made aware of this a while ago but forgot to edit it, fixed.

[diligentcircle]

The explanation of what the "+" and "++" version of the cyborg option do are incorrect, those adjust the *speed* of the cyborg, not strength, strength is always "Awesome Cyborg" (same as enemies).

"On+" is double speed, and "On++" is instant (it rapidly does the battle in the background without even showing it to you at whatever speed your CPU can do it, generally so fast that it feels instant and you go immediately to the end of the battle).

[Varsk]

@Nacho You're very much right, you can get through the whole game just save scumming with one lander. I guess some people may buy more landers if they feel like save scumming is well... scummy!

[Nacho]

question, why would i ever need to have more than one lander?

[Jo Li KMC]

*Jumping Peppers*! I see I'm not the only one who thought that most Orz dialogue would fit Spamton J. Spamton… This *spicy* comparison is a *pleasant combination* and very *fat* to a *happy camper* of both *playgrounds*.

I'm so sorry.

[Arilouis]

Oh this is perfect. The release on steam is making me want to play through it again and maybe even stream it for the hell of it. I feel this would make a good podcast game with all the mining and flying. I almost wanna link this guide in my review as a good place to start.

[Eliot]

I think the developers have been open about the fact that UQM is directly inspired by Starflight amongst other things. In fact, if you check the credits, you'll see the designer of Starflight, Greg Johnson, helped out on UQM as well. His contributions are listed here: https://wiki.starcontrol.com/index.php?title=Greg_Johnson

[Dado]

Me too have the original Accolade Pc Game Box, intact, and the Amiga Star Control one ! I would like to ask the creators how much of this fantastic game was inspired by Starflight (1986 Amiga), since many aspects of the game are similar ( es. lander collecting minerals on planets etc)

[Soul Reaver]

I need to add: anyone playing this game with voice acting will not be able to finish it without either a guide or random exploration. This is becuase the voiced version of The Ur-Quan Masters (based on the 3DO version) is missing some gameplay-critical dialogue that was present in the original PC version.

Either look those up in a guide/FAQ, or install my standalone voice fix mods. The mods recreate the PC dialogue by re-voicing a couple of the affected aliens (and just adding a missing line to a third).

My mods can be found here: http://www.warpstormstudios.com/uqmmod/
The ones you'll want to get are the ones for 'The Ur-Quan Masters (original)'.

The instructions work just fine for the Steam version as long as you find where Steam puts the install folder. By default it'll be in your Steam folder under "steamapps/common/Free Stars The Ur-Quan Masters"

[Varsk]

Made some changes, mostly based on feedback from @Eliot.