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Cargo Bay. Let your fleet do the fighting for now while you build resources for the inevitable ruination of all that oppose you. Speaking of which, get those resources at nearby stars to maximize efficiency of the round trips for now.
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Dec 12, 2015 17:00
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Man, I have so many things I want to say about this game. All of them will wait, though, except this: this is a really fun game, and it's free in its current incarnation. Prof already mentioned the project, but really, there's no reason not to go grab it from The Ur-Quan Masters site and try it yourself if you have a few spare minutes.
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Dec 12, 2015 20:55
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Robhol posted:My suggestion is: Yes, this. Here's one of the things I like about Star Control 2: resource gathering is generally dull as poo poo in this kind of game. (See also: Mass Effect.) Here, as Prof has just shown, it is dangerous, depleting resources you use for fights and exploration (crew and fuel), and involves some guesswork and estimation to make sure the trip is worth it. Especially right at the beginning here, where you need a ton of resources and don't have a lot of margin for error. It would be very easy for a new player to lose most or all of their crew visiting the planets Prof just did.
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Dec 14, 2015 03:34
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Well, since we're on the way to see the Spathi... here's Fwiffo's life story, which I think is a pretty amusing example of how the Spathi think. It's only available in that first conversation with him via options Prof didn't pick (although I did check with him before posting it).Zaphod posted:What about yourself, Fwiffo? Captain Fwiffo posted:Me? You mean me, personally? How nice of you to ask!
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Dec 15, 2015 00:28
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The combat in this game has a long and glorious tradition... because it is, fundamentally, "Spacewar!". So let's talk about Spacewar! for a minute. Spacewar! was one of the first computer games ever; it only narrowly missed being the first computer game, in fact. It WAS the first game on a minicomputer; it was originally written on a DEC PDP-1 at MIT in 1962. The concept of the game was simple; two spaceships meet in combat around a sun (generally referred to as a planet in later iterations). It was originally played using an oscilloscope as a monitor and switches as controllers; you activated one switch to fire, another for right thrust, and another for left thrust. The central sun has mass and attracts the ships, the ships retain momentum, etc. (Although a few of the physics options were modifiable by additional switches. I actually attended a talk a few days ago by a fellow named Scott Bradner who'd played the original shortly after it was released; he was a bit critical of modern games, since in HIS day you only got a limited supply of fuel and about seventeen shots in your spaceship gun. If you ran out of fuel before you blew up your opponent, you'd crash into the sun, and if you ran out of shots before you got him, you might as well. AI not being a thing in those days, you had to find another person willing to play with you, too, although at MIT in 1962 this was not difficult. Anyone who's played games has probably played, or at least seen, a version of Spacewar! at some point in their lives, because the concept is so simple and because it is largely free of entangling patents, etc. Star Control's version is a bit more generous on the resources and gives every ship its own set of special abilities, but otherwise is at least conceptually pretty close to the original. If you'd like to get an idea what it was like, there are various versions online; this one, for instance: http://www.masswerk.at/spacewar/
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Dec 15, 2015 07:00
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ProfessorProf posted:In the meantime, a question for the thread: This weekend, I'm heading across the country for the holidays. During this time, I will only have access to my laptop, which has sound card issues that result in videos with crappy sound quality. If you were following the first half of the Undertale thread, you may recall this issue. My vote is take a hiatus and enjoy your vacation. This game is over twenty years old. It'll still be there in a week.
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Dec 18, 2015 01:48
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ProfessorProf posted:[*]As usual, a strict policy of NO SPOILERS in the thread. If it hasn't happened yet, don't post it, don't allude to it, don't wink-wink-nudge-nudge about it. If I permanently skip something, then sure, talk about it then, but only once there's absolutely no chance that I'll run into it later. I think this is essentially it? We're not talking about a particularly unusual spoiler policy here. Anything that's been shown already is fair game, and anything that is now 100% impossible for Prof to achieve is fair game. The Pkunk ships have not yet been shown, and he was just handed four of them, so they don't fall under either category. idonotlikepeas fucked around with this message at 05:33 on Dec 20, 2015 |
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Dec 20, 2015 05:28
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We could talk about whether the Pkunk or the Spathi are more hilarious. I mean, it'd be a short conversation, because it's obviously the Spathi, but we COULD talk about it!
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Dec 20, 2015 06:01
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Or it could be that he doesn't want to explain the unknown ship's significance just yet for pacing reasons, so maybe chill out a bit there?
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Dec 29, 2015 19:59
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The majority of the Orz special phrases center around the same idea: hanging out with your buddies at a party. The *party* stuff, the dancing, even the jumping peppers and the sauce all tie together thematically. The Orz see the alliance with you as a big party where you're spending time with them (and then surprising things!!!). The fact that murdering people by tearing them to tiny pieces using their robot suits is considered normal party activity should probably give you some ideas about what you're dealing with here.
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Dec 30, 2015 07:58
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Zoe posted:I've redownloaded the game, but I also just noticed I'd picked up Starflight I & II at some point on GOG. Are those worth a play at all or should I just stick with this one? They're a bit primitive, but definitely worth playing through. ManxomeBromide posted:That's a fun point, and that fits well with the line "You think you *see* Orz, but Orz are not *light reflections*." That turns that into "You aren't seeing me. You're just detecting some photons that bounced off my body." That leaves open what their primary sense is. They actually referred to that a couple of times in their dialogue as *smelling*. We don't really know what it means to *smell*; it makes sense that a means of perception we literally don't possess would be hard for our translation computer to render into meaningful English.
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Dec 31, 2015 22:15
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Tax Refund posted:Since the anomaly is time-dependent, you may or may not be able to get to it in a timely fashion. So that you don't have to spend up to 27 days waiting around for it to re-appear after you just miss it, I vote for going to Procyon, Alpha Tauri, and the Anomaly in whatever order is convenient to make it to the anomaly's location by the 17th. Then go deal with the source of those probes before they overrun the galaxy. I vote for a modified version of this list: 2 Dynamo Units for 4000 RUs Front Fusion Blaster for 4000 RUs Rear Fusion Blaster for 4000 RUs to give us our own partial BUTT missile equivalent since Spathi ships are now a limited resource . Use any remaining resources to buy a mix of existing ship types. The spread beams are helpful, but they're a luxury right now; if we're going on a dangerous trip, more ships will help us haul health along with everything else. I also believe we should go visit The Chenjesu and Alpha Tauri.
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Jan 1, 2016 22:09
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ProfessorProf posted:I'll probably show it off eventually, but if someone else wanted to do it I wouldn't stop them. Stardate... uh, April 9th, 2155. Sorry, I'm kind of new at this. We have decided to explore Androsynth space to try to initiate diplomatic contact. In a world full of strange and hostile alien races, we feel that we should be able to make peace with one that is at least biologically close to human, regardless of our... unfortunate history. However, what we encountered was something very different, and much more alien than expected. After our initial conversation with the Orz, I broke off contact without engaging in any agreements, so that I could consider all the options. Here's what happened when I re-initiated contact:    The Orz posted:Do you like *parties*? We do several times, and so much the better. I felt obligated to consider that I did, in fact, like parties, but damned if I was going to admit that to a potentially hostile alien race!   The Orz posted:We can come and *play* at your *house*. That sounded more than a bit like a threat to me. You won't get the location of Earth from us, you parrot... fish... things!     Well... I admit that I could probably have handled that better.   I elected to exercise the better part of valor and try another round of negotiations with the Orz.  The Orz posted:Orz are think that *dissolving* is a better chance for you. Now, I'm not sure about these lingual best-fits, but *dissolving* probably doesn't mean anything good. I decided to try another approach. One with fewer threats.   The Orz posted:You are strangest *campers*, but Orz is understand now.  Of course, I still hadn't told them about Earth... because there was one more thing we really needed to find out before deciding if we could trust these things. One mystery that hadn't been explored yet.    The Orz posted:*Frumple* be *round* yet *lumpy*. So bad!!! That wasn't much of an answer. Despite the threats, we had to dig deeper.   The Orz posted:I will not talking about *silly* Androsynth, now is stop asking. I wouldn't call it "clear", but it's a lot less ambiguous than usual. Maybe with a less direct approach, though...      Diplomatic relations with the Orz unavoidably broke down on this date. I am afraid nothing further can be done with them; they just shout about dancing and parties or some such nonsense and open fire. It makes me *frumple*. End log.
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Jan 2, 2016 02:02
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Roland Jones posted:I really want to see how they react if you press them in the first contact conversation, where you have the option to just shout "drat you! What did you do with the Androsynth?!" but trying to look up Orz stuff only turns up friendly videos. The screen turns red as I showed in my last set of screenshots, except the dialogue is this instead: The Orz, pissed off about Androsynth stories posted:Nnnnnngaaaa!!!! I am *squeezing* the *juice*. And then you fight them. When you meet them again, their control room stays red and you are obligated to continue fighting them. (I picked the particular conversation route I did because it gives you the most dialogue - if you press on the Androsynth without being allies first they just crap on you right away.)
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Jan 2, 2016 03:40
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Roland Jones posted:Ah. Do they get weird voice effects or something when the screen changes, or is it just a visual thing? A little, but not much. I'll upload a video of it later.
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Jan 2, 2016 04:20
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Roland Jones posted:Do they get weird voice effects or something when the screen changes, or is it just a visual thing? It seems like an appropriate time for them to get even more unsettling, but, the screenshot looks like they just get the color change. Here, have some Orz: http://polsy.org.uk/play/yt/?vurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DZkUCghp9z-s
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Jan 2, 2016 07:01
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distactedOne posted:I suppose there's no way to reprogram the probes so that they work properly, instead of just making them self-destruct? That's a shame. On the other hand, if the Empire of Beeblebrox survives the current conflict, there will be a bunch of alien races that would be happy to visit the Slylandro and bring them whatever data they want directly, no probes necessary.
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Jan 7, 2016 05:17
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Alopex posted:Honestly, what turned me away from Niven is the amount of species that had, as a trait "yeah the females aren't even sentient they're just there for the men to breed with". Like, once, ok, that's weird but fair, these are aliens and odd gender roles should be expected, twice and it's well, all right, I guess this is different because one's natural and one just literally bred the sentience out of their women because of reasons and then it crops up AGAIN and now I'm like ok, this is definitely a theme here, should I be worried about him typing with one hand at this point? Let's just say you should dodge Niven's non-fiction writing as much as you can, especially anything he's ever said about politics.
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Jan 8, 2016 23:25
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Deceitful Penguin posted:What did he say? Is this going to be like Fables guy again or Frank Miller? He's not as impressively insane as Frank Miller, but he did assign himself and frequent collaborator Jerry Pournelle some credit for giving Reagan to win the cold war by helping develop the SDI program as a boondoggle to force the commies to spend too much money and break their economy. Oh, and he said that we could improve the health care system by convincing Latinos that hospitals would steal their organs (evidently so that illegal immigrants would stop stealing from the system), so that was cool. ProfessorProf posted:The Lathe of Heaven, Ursula K. Le Guin An amazing book, although she's wearing her Taoism on her sleeve per usual. If we're all pitching our favorites, I'll put in a word for Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light, one of the best novels of any kind I've ever read. Rappaport posted:Does the Superman and Lois Lane thing count? ...maybe. (For anyone following along, the article is called "Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex" if you're curious.)
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Jan 9, 2016 02:20
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ProfessorProf posted:Yeah, there are lots of ways to deal with Podships and Dreadnoughts. However, if you watch all the videos, you may uncover this LP's great secret: I'm bad at the combat in this game. Right there with you. I am awful with the skiffs particularly; I literally don't think I have ever won a fight with one against anything. I end up cheesing a lot of stuff with the Eluder when I play. Apart from those, we actually haven't seen the ships I'm best with. Pseudoscorpion posted:I always thought the way the Mycon talk was far more distressing than the Orz (the implications of extradimensional Lovecraftian horror aside). At least with the Orz you're having a conversation. The Mycon just sort of...talk. At no one in particular. I sometimes wonder if they even notice the communicator is on during most of those conversations, or if they just fly around space saying things like that ALL THE TIME. Apart from when they grow turgid, of course. Speaking of, it's kind of hilarious that a space mushroom basically told us it had a boner for killing us.
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Jan 9, 2016 19:44
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There are a couple of other ways you can find out about the maidens, too. I do agree it would have been nice to put a little more structure around it with ZEX, though. I mean, he could have mentioned he had them without explicitly offering them to you until you came back to ask him for them.
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Jan 13, 2016 06:14
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Roland Jones posted:They didn't "invent" the words, they spoke and it just deeply affected the Kohr-Ah. Their genetic memory means that this moment stuck with them through the generations, but the words themselves don't have any power, it's what they mean to the Ur-Quan. I always read it as the Ur-Quan understanding, on some level, that what they're doing really IS wrong. They've built up a lot of rationalizations for it, and they're too traumatized as a species to imagine handling it differently than they do, but when called out on it in the simplest and most straightforward possible way (literally "what you are doing to us is wrong") they feel compelled to justify themselves. Over the centuries, this has kind of built itself into a ritual.
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Jan 23, 2016 18:05
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Dabir posted:It's a bit dumb if you think about it, cause the war is over whose method is better, but the Kzer-Za are giving up the main benefit of their way, the battle thralls to fight for them. I believe their starship crews are canonically composed of battle thralls, so they did bring them, they just didn't bring the other races' fleets, which is probably for ceremonial reasons (and also because someone needs to watch the rest of the empire while they're busy). Alopex posted:
Oh my God.
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Jan 24, 2016 01:59
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