Star Control 2: The LP of Now and Forever

So it has come to my attention that some of you young whipper snappers in the Let's Play forum have never played, or even heard of, one of the greatest games ever made: Star Control 2.

It is time to rectify that problem.

But before I start, I thought I'd answer a few quick questions about this thing.

That screenshot up there looks old, what with the pixels and all. This isn't gonna be one of those games from like, a decade ago or something, is it?
No! Actually this game is from two decades ago! That's right, 2012 is the twenty-year anniversary of this little gem, which was released in 1992. Do we have any teenagers on the forum? This game was released before you were born.

I'm bored already. Is this going to be one of those posts where some old guy tells us that everything was better when he was young?
As true as that is ... no! I love modern games of all sorts, from RPGs to adventure games to action and strategy and others. Star Control 2 holds up. Trust me.

But video games back then were only made for Star Trek nerds! Not like today. I'm into girlish Japanese dating games. Surely this won't appeal to me.
I said trust me. There's enough in Star Control 2 to appeal to more than just the nerds and the CHUDs.

What's a "CHUD"?
C.H.U.D. Cannibalistic Humanoid ... you know what, never mind.

Fine. What is this thing then?
Here's a list of some of the stuff you can expect in Star Control 2:

• Intergalactic Adventure!
• Kinky Sex!
• Creepy Mystery!
• Alien-on-alien Tonguing!
• Arcade-style Action!
• Innovative...

Wait! What was that fourth one?
The tonguing? Yeah.

Tell me more about that one.
You'll just have to wait until we get there.

Okay I'm in. So this is a sequel right? What happened to Star Control 1?
Star Control 1 was released in 1990, but it was a much smaller game. It featured arcade-style spaceship combat and an old-school turn-based strategy game. There wasn't much story.

Star Control 2 kept the arcade-style space combat, ditched the strategy game, and added a sweeping, operatic narrative that takes place in the same game world. You don't really need to be familiar with SC1 to enjoy SC2.

You keep saying it's an arcade game. Can more than one person play? Did you and your friends both have to download a copy to play against each other?
Well yeah, the arcade part could be played against another person if you wanted to. We didn't download it though. See back when this game came out, none of us had internet access. So we shared it by copying it into a couple of 3.5" floppy disks...

Oh good lord, here we go
...and taking it to school to trade. And games with network support were pretty rare back then anyway. So what you'd do is, you'd go over to your friend's house and both of you would play on the same keyboard. Also, no one's computer had a mouse.

How did you use your computer without a mouse?
Windows wasn't invented yet.

Seriously?
Or none of us owned it anyway. But it's the single-player narrative that I will be LPing, so don't worry too much about the multi-player arcade part. That's just a small piece of the delicious pie.

Can I acquire this game myself and play along?
You can! And I think it would be awesome if you did. There are a couple of options. You can buy both Star Control 1 and 2 for cheap on GOG here. That's the original game, and it runs in DOS Box. I own it, and that version is where I pulled the screenshot above from.

But the better option, and the version that I'll be using for this LP, is the open-source version here. Back in 2002, the creators of Star Control 2 released the game code as open source. Fans took it and got it working in Windows. Technically, this game is titled "The Ur-Quan Masters", because the name "Star Control 2" is under copyright, but I can personally vouch that it is the same game. And not only is this version free, but there are some subtle UI improvements, and it's just generally more stable due to not running through an emulator.

Sounds good! Say, is there a Star Control 3 we can play after this is done?
We don't talk about that.

Okay, I'm ready.
Excellent. Let's begin.

And you'll let me know when we get to the tonguing part?
You won't be able to miss it.

Backstory time.

Okay, I'm human, I'm piloting a crazy alien spaceship, and I'm returning to earth after 20 years away to try to help them fight off some big evil aliens. Got it.

BAM



The game dumps you unceremoniously on this screen, with no other explanation about what to do. First order of business is to give our captain a name. Since I'm trying to make this game a little bit more accessible to you kids, I'm using the name of one of your heroes, someone you love and respect:



And for the name of my ship, I wanted something that could conceivably be space-themed, but also something that would appeal to the FEELS drama-lovers.



Captain Bieber of the starship Twilight. If this game doesn't give me a chance to introduce myself as "Captain Bieber of the starship Twilight" I'll punch myself in the nuts.

Okay in case you don't recognize it, this is our home. The solar system. And my awesome, mysterious alien space ship is...



...that tiny little guy right at the bottom there?

God. So. Slow. I barely accelerate, and turn like the second hand on a clock.

Let's see if I can make it to Earth.



Yep, that little blue dot, right there! But something's amiss:



I don't remember Earth being so ... red. And what's this little dot flying at me?



AHHHHHH!! SPACE OCTOPUS! WITH A SPACE TOAD TRANSLATOR!

Sidebar: Players of Star Control 1 would recognize this guy as an Ur-Quan ... a member of the evil alien race that's trying to enslave you. They fly in deadly green ships and are quite nasty. We don't like them.

So the enemy has caught me trying to get home to Earth! Luckily this one is just a drone, and I'm pretty safe unless it decides to tell on me.



Oh great.

Well, nothing for it. After he flies off, I head over to earth:





This is the screen you see when you enter and orbit a planet. Normally you can scan it for minerals, machines or lifeforms, but I can't do any of that here. Earth is glowing red, and I can't scan it, I can't land on it. Something's wrong.

Guess I'll head over to that space station in orbit around Earth:





Finally, a human.

What the hell am I looking at?

....Should I be worried for our sanity?
...
Yes, I probably should.

You know it's funny. I remember being confused about that the very first time I saw it too.

It's a screencap from the opening cutscene and it's supposed to be a spaceship that's half in "RealSpace", half in HyperSpace.

Meet Hayes. He's one of the few humans you will talk face-to-face to in this game. And as Joseph Heller said, he's good-natured, generous and likeable. I can't stand him.

Hayes is your "exposition buddy" on Earth, and he's easily the mold for later, more annoying versions of this character in other games, such as Carth Onasi and Kaidan Alenko. And compared to them, he ain't that bad. At least he doesn't take himself as seriously.

So Hayes informs me that the Earth is a slave planet now, and that life support is failing on the station.



Ha ha, Starship Twilight. Anyway Hayes, you said something about sending me out on a resource gathering tutorial ... er ... I mean, helping you get minerals to power your space station?



Okay, on it.

This opening part of the game is doing what even some modern RPGs fail at today; introducing all the game systems to you while still maintaining a decent story. NINETEEN NINETY TWO!!! (this is going to become my zen koan for this game). We've seen the "fly around a star system" screen, the "scan a planet" screen, and the conversation screen. Now it's time to do the "land on a planet and gather resources" screen.

I head to Mercury:



I scan it:



We've got minerals sir. LAND ON THAT PLANET, MUGS!



That little icon that looks like a 10 x 10 pixel bobsled is my planet lander. You drive it around, picking up the little globes of minerals, while avoiding planetary disasters such as fires, earthquakes and inclement weather. Mercury doesn't really have much to avoid, just the odd fire here or there, which makes sense since it's almost inside the sun.

If this reminds you of a top-down version of Mass Effect's planet lander minigame, it should! This was their inspiration.

After gathering up all minerals I can find, I head back to Earth, to power up Hayes' station.







Well, I guess introductions are in order (fingers crossed):



Yesssssss. NUT PUNCHING AVERTED.

I try to convince Hayes to start a rebellion and fight against the Hierarchy, but we're still in tutorial mode, so before he'll join up, he sends me off on another mission. This time learn how to scan for energy signatures ... I mean, to wipe out the evil enemy base that's been set up on the moon. When I get there, however, Mugs (my lander pilot) has something to tell me:



Hopefully you can read that okay. Blue text on black. Oh nineties.

So the moon base is abandoned, sending back some sort of recorded broadcast to make it appear inhabited. I guess it's back to Hayes.



See why this game is awesome? You can fucking lie, and it is hilarious.

So let's see. We've flown around the star system, scanned planets, talked to aliens. That should be just about it for the intro, yeah?



Oh right. Combat.



I hope I at least get to talk to whatever this thing is before it attacks me.



NEVER MIND. Just let me attack.

Meet the Ilwrath. Pronounced "Ill-wrath." Great name. Do you think they are friendly? Don't make me laugh.

You've probably noticed what a hodge-podge of sci-fi tropes this game is going to be. If you've read David Brin's uplift series, the Ilwrath are similar to the Tandu from that universe -- religious zealot spiders. They fly in ships that looks like Klingon Warbirds (complete with cloaking device). And they talk like someone from a Robert E. Howard novel. Like the Ur-Quan, the Ilwrath are members of the Heirarchy, and were a ship you could play in Star Control 1. Despite their fearsome appearance, they were the second wimpiest ship on that side, after the Umgah (who we haven't met yet).

There's not much point in trying to appease this douchenid (douchebag arachnid) with pleasantries, so it's time to power up the guns.



Next up, combat.

Wow....
This is amazing.
Take my money.

Are there any consequences for obvious lies? Because if not we should compulsive-lie full-stop.

Aw, but I like Kaidan. Oh man, this game. I have fond memories of watching my cousin play this game when I was a wee kidlet. Thank you for lping it!

Hell yes. I have so many good memories of this game. I can't figure out how to turn and fire at the same time without a mouse, so I shall be living vicariously through you.

Whoa, what's that weird blobby thing in the bottom right corner of the viewscreen?

Also, this game looks pretty cool.

By the Fetid Breath of the Dark Twin Kazon, why would you invoke theBIEBSandTwilight? *straight up flinched*

So, I am otherwise enjoying this immensely. Because SCIENCE and the like.

Oh yes, sometimes there are. Entire species can be wiped out by a single incorrect line of dialog ... but I've said too much already :).

Time to kick some goddamn alien thorax.



What hasn't been obvious up until this point is that my ship isn't travelling alone. As you fly around a star system, you only control one ship, true, but that one ship represents an armada. When you start a combat encounter, you can choose any ship from your armada to fight with.

Why not fight with your awesome Precursor flagship? It's powerful and deadly, right? Well no. At this point in the game, it is weak as a kitten. As you saw in the backstory, the ship is incomplete, and doesn't have much in the way of firepower. Helpfully, the game has supplied me with a single escort ship to fight with ... logically, an Earthling Cruiser, captained by a man named...



...Graeme. A good, wholesome, all-american name. Send him in!



Let me explain how combat works. Each ship has two types of weapon, a main gun and a "special" ability. Ships also have different turn, acceleration and weapon recharge rates. The green bar is the ship's health and the red bar is it's battery (whether its weapon is powered up). The asymmetry makes for really interesting gameplay.

In this case, I'm playing Graeme, who is flying the earthling ship which looks like the Starship Enterprise from above. I'm up against the Ilwrath (which looks like a Klingon), piloted by a spider named Targa.

Ilwrath typically have a cloaking device which makes them hard to hit, but in this case he doesn't, because Targa's ship is malfunctioning (also known as "the game is going to make your first combat a little easier". Also notice his low crew complement). His main gun is an extremely short-range flamethrower.

This should be a walk in the park, because Earthling has an extremely long-range missile which homes. The downside is that Earthling is pitifully slow, but hopefully I should be able to stay at range and kill Targa before he reaches me, and he can't cloak and avoid them.

Sounds like a plan:



Okay, a little closer than I'd like.



Ow.



OWWWW!



Hurm.



Guess it's up to Captain Bieber after all.



Luckily I start far enough away that I can blast him with my pathetic gun as he draws near. He does get a few hits on me before:



So the thing that you're missing from these screenshots is the speed at which the game plays and the truly awesome music. Seriously, I say that without irony. Go to Youtube and you can find clips of this combat music that people adore. In fact the music for this whole game is terrific.

Victory! Hayes is impressed:



This is the last tutorial of the intro section, so Hayes has no more doubts about joining my little rebellion. He commits to joining the cause, and wonders what my plan is:



There is always an option to be a dick. It's great.

Hayes has another suggestion:





RACK FOCUS on sinnick, his eyes widening in Chthonic delight.

You know what it's gonna be.



Euphemisms.

Hayes now needs to prepare the space station to be able to modify my ship for upgrades, and he expects it to take, well, Hayes, you were saying?



So that's it for the intro section -- we've seen all the different types of gameplay we're gonna have to deal with. The screen now fades to black, and two weeks pass, signalling the start of the game proper.

Hopefully I haven't spent too much time showing logistics of how the game works and the story is still coming through. In the future, I'll dwell less on screens showing me getting from place to place.
Next: Exploration, Mining and another alien encounter

Haha, mice are for the young and inexperienced! You can't call yourself a gamer until you've played using only the keyboard, seated shoulder-to-shoulder at the same desk as your friend while he frantically taps the very same keyboard. Also, Usenet.

TACTICAL SIDEBAR: For those of you playing along, if you are having trouble with the combat, let me know. I can give you some decent tips. A key thing to keep in mind is that inertia really matters in space. Learn to use your thruster to get yourself going in a certain direction, then lift off the gas and turn to shoot in other directions ... like directly behind you at the big bad spaceship chasing and shooting at you! We'll discuss the dreaded "gravity whip" maneuver in a later class.

But you just got poor Graeme killed! D:

Also, I'm curious, is there anything stopping you from giving yourself a female name? Does the game ever call you out as definitively being a dude?

Wow, this game makes me feel so young. No mouses, what kind of- what- how did you- I don't understand.

Pfff, I play text adventures - games so old that they don't even have graphics.

But yeah, this game came out the year I was born. It's a bit weird to think about.

So now that the game has begun, you can plumb Hayes for all sorts of information, much as you would ask a million expository questions of the first NPC you meet in an RPG. There is all kinds of historical background information and clues you can get from him, but I'm going to skip all that for now so we can get to the "action".

And by action, I mean scrounging up minerals for scrap!

Great?

But wait, there's a point!



Our ship is upgradable! I think I mentioned that. At the Earth Starbase, we have access to the Shipyard and the Outfitting center. In fact, using the resources that I gathered on Mercury during the tutorial, I can afford to do a little bit of that right now, so let's.



Is that incomprehensible to you? My ship doesn't really have much equipped right now, so what you're seeing is a bunch of empty slots. The little red nodules on the pontoons are thrusters. The green ones improve my turning rate. The center column gets filled up with different "modules" -- you can choose whether to put different types of pods there, to improve your fuel capacity, crew, cargo bays (for storing more minerals), or more guns. Right now I just have one of each.

Everything is pretty expensive at this point, and I have no money. You get money by scrounging planets for minerals. It's a virtuous circle -- scrounge for minerals, buy upgrades, which let you travel further and gather more minerals, etc.

For now, maneuverability is key for me, because oh God, my ship turns so slowly and it is annoying. So I grab some green nodule thingies. And because my present job is to gather a bunch of minerals, I buy an extra fuel pod and some cargo storage bays to hold it all. I spend the rest on fuel.



Now here's the shipyard:



There is space for twelve ships in my armada, not including the flagship (at the top). I would have one spot already filled, but ... ahem ... good old Graeme was just killed in action, so now I have all twelves spots free. Building ships to escort me is expensive, though, and I only have 19 bucks left. So for now I'm going it alone.

Time to head out and start mining!



I figure since I've already been to Mercury, I'll start at the center of the solar system and work my way out, stopping at each planet to grab its resources. First stop, Venus:





SO MANY BORING STATS. Fuck that shit, just let me probe the supple hills of Venus for her sweet, sweet bounty.



AHHHHHHHHH. Lightning. LIGHTNING!



Okay then.

So yeah, it turns out that even a page of boring stats is more than just flavour text in this game. See up there in the Venus scan screen, where it says "Weather: Class 8"? That's an indication that the surface of the planet features crazy weather that my planet lander cannot survive. Similarly, the Tectonics level indicates crazy earthquakes and the temperature indicates crazy fires. You always have the choice to try to land on the surface, but the worse the levels are, the more natural disasters there will be and the harder they are to dodge.

I think it was long after this game was released that Sid Meier said that a good game is a series of interesting choices. Landing on planets is no exception. I just lost my planet lander, cost: $500 -- and twelve crew, cost: $36 (life on Earth is cheap). It also cost me a unit of fuel to even land in the first place. Do you risk losing your gear and fuel for the possibility of picking up lots more in minerals?

Anyway, I need to head back to the station to buy another lander, and when I do, Hayes has this to tell me:





Oooh, Alien signals coming from a planet somewhere in the solar system. I'll have to keep an eye out as I'm mining.

So fuck Venus, I'm not going to try that again. I hit up Mars, which has a much more benign atmosphere than Venus, and has a decent yield:



Jupiter is a gas giant, which I can't land on (because it's made of gas), but it has several moons for mining:



Saturn, Uranus, Neptune are similar. No sign of any aliens yet.

Then I get to Pluto:



Hot jumping Jesus, it's an enemy ship!



Hey, he's shooting at me! Not the Liebermann Triplets! Noooooooo!

Time to confront this alien, whoever he is.

Nothing stopping you no. For the most part, folks won't really reference your gender. The game definitely assumes you're male though, and there are a couple of interactions where this will be more obvious than others.

I was afraid to read this because I thought it would be purely informative and full of facts that I would inevitably forget. Imagine my pleasant surprise when I turned out to be wrong! This looks like a fun game; don't think I'll play it because I'd feel bad getting my people killed, but I WILL WATCH YOU UNBLINKINGLY.

unblinkingly. <3

Guys, now you're making me feel old, and I'm only 25. :( For the record, I only played this game (specifically Ur-Quan Masters, the same version sinnick is playing) in 2008.

I still have my original fold out map that came with the game! You see youngins they used to ship games in boxes that had all sorts of treats in them like your fancy collectors editions, except these were just the only editions and we loved it. I should find that map again!

Yeah, they're doing that to me too, and I'm only a few years older than you. Actually, typing that just made me feel older.

I play text adventures too! Infocom games are pretty fun.

This came out before I was born, which is also weird to think about.

I LOVE this game. Absolutely right; one of the best games ever.

Also, I couldn't wait until you got to Pluto. One of my favorite races (with awesome music), and their ship...it's one of the most annoying ones to face if played properly. The butt missile is one of the the best weapons (with a great sound) ever.

So when we left off, a strange alien vessel was hiding out on the surface of Pluto, shooting at my planet lander. I get the lander back to the ship, and the alien hails me. ONSCREEN:





Fwiffo?

Okay.

Meet the Spathi! Another Hierarchy race from Star Control 1. They look like a cross between a preying mantis, a jellyfish, and Billy Crystal's character from Monsters Inc.

About the only thing Star Control 1 had to say about the Spathi race was that they had "cowardly crew". Apparently not just the crew is cowardly, but the captains are too. And the whole god damn race. Fwiffo stays true to form by, without any prompting from me, surrendering immediately and offering up his home world coordinates, and his planet's secret cipher, which is...



Huffi Muffi Guffi? Okay he's gotta be fucking with me.



God hates a coward right? Time to do the old "bad cop, there is no other cop" routine and intimidate this sumbitch.

(by the way, I love that the game gave me the option to say "Don't kill us!", but I can't bring myself to choose it).



Not likely! I press my advantage:



All right, all right, enough intimidation. Plus, if I kill Fwiffo, it would surely make MulMizu sad. Though he's obviously just placating me, I guess he can live. For now.





PASSIVE AGGRESSIVE MUCH?

So after some questioning, Fwiffo reveals that he was originally part of an entire legion of Spathi and Ilwrath ships who were stationed on the moon by the Ur-Quan (remember the abandoned moon base we found?) to keep an eye on Earth and make sure the Humans didn't try to rebel. The Ilwrath got bored of just sitting around not fighting, so they left. When left to themselves, the Spathi grew scared, so they gradually relocated to planets further and further away from Earth. Once they were on Pluto, all the rest of the Spathi ships had to relocate back to the homeworld.

However, Fwiffo does mention that his ship is staffed with hundreds of crew, and I should be very scared!



Did I say hundreds? I mean he's the only one there.

Now that the power struggle for dominance has been established, Fwiffo now seems friendly enough, so I ask him about himself.



Uh...that's okay Fwiffo, I don't need your life story.

Well, there's not much else to do other than choose to either attack Fwiffo or invite him to join me. Since my ship is weak and Graeme perished in the last Ilwrath attack, I guess Fwiffo can tag along and protect me for now:



Yay! My first alien ally! Even though I'm sure he'll switch sides the moment he's intimidated by someone else, Fwiffo's ship goes into my armada. It's that molecule-looking thing on the right, there:



Despite being lovable cowards, in combat Spathi Eluders (their ships) are surprisingly good. They have a medium range pippin gun as their main weapon, which is wimpy, but their special weapon is a little homing missile that pops out their rear end and sounds like a cat fart. In addition to this gun, they are really fast, allowing you to dart in, pop off a couple of butt shots and zoom away before your enemy can get you.

Even though Fwiffo has joined me, it's just him for now -- I still have to persuade the rest of the Spathi race to join. He has given me the location of his home world, so that's my next destination! Good timing, given that I've finished clearing the minerals out of the solar system. I head back to base to fuel up, and then for the first time, I open up the Starmap to see how to get to another star system:



Ho. Lee. Shit.

I don't know about you, but one of the most joyous feelings that I get from playing video games, particularly story-based adventure games, is the "Act 2 Reveal". This occurs after the brief opening sequence, when you've played your first dungeon or mission or whatever, and the game opens up to allow you to go where you want.

In Ocarina of Time, this happened to me the first time I left the Deku forest and saw Hyrule field spreading out before me. In Baldur's Gate II, I opened the map and saw all the different zones I could visit. And in Star Control II, it happens right now, when I open up the Starmap for the first time, and realize that every single one of those little points of light is a star, just like the solar system where I am now, that I can travel to and visit, potentially meeting something crazy.

Once you've met an alien race, their "sphere of influence" shows up on the map. Their home world will usually be found within that circle. As you can see, I've met the Ilwrath and the Spathi so far.

My current plan is to visit the Spathi homeworld and try to persuade the rest of them to join my cause. The light grey circle centered around my location is how far I can travel with my current fuel (46). Unfortunately, that's almost but not quite enough to make the trip to Spathi space and have enough to get back. So I need to find some more minerals and buy more fuel.

Having cleared out Sol, I guess it's to the next closest star, which happens to be Sirius, as you can see in this zoomed-in shot of the map (the cross is my cursor, the white diamond is my current location):



JUMPING TO HYPERSPACE!



Next up, a few surprise encounters while mining!

i'm so glad you thought of me. <3

Also, I am seriously considering naming my firstborn Fwiffo.

By the way, both Therlun and Eightball have mentioned the music in this game. The music is truly great. You can find it on Youtube if you're interested, although Youtube will naturally be filled with spoilers for this LP. I would describe the Spathi music as Danny Elfman meets Zamfir, with a beat. :)

Fwiffo is, by far, my favorite character in Star Control 2 / UQM. Hell, I just adore the Spathi in general.

Here, have a video:

I agree with this completely (if you play UQM, there's also an install option to add some fanmade music that's also quite good)... and I'd also throw out a mention to the VA work. Every single alien race sounds distinct, and there isn't a 'bad' voice in the set.

Honestly, you should all just play this game. Hell, this LP's making me want to reinstall UQM myself.

So I should mention that I'm playing with the voice-overs turned off. When I first played this game in 1992, it didn't have voice-overs ... those were only added in later for the 3DO version. When I heard them, they never quite matched what I had in my head, so I prefer the game without them.

Mission accomplished!

I love the music for this game. I remember recording the music for different species on my little portable cassette recorder so I could listen to it elsewhere, until I found all the music MOD files (trying to think of a way to explain these to the younglings. They are 4 track music files that originated on the Amiga) that someone had ripped from the game on a local BBS, so I could listen to them in my MOD player away from the game.

The fate of the galaxy is in your hands! No pressure.

Loser.

Twit.

Dummy.
.

Seconded! I will also say, one thing that will really shine through if you play the game is how gut-bustingly funny it is. This can be absolutely hilarious - Fwiffo here is just the tip of the iceberg.

I'm predicting a like explosion shortly after you encounter the

Also, mineral farming was one of my favorite thing about the game. I just loved zipping my lander around and scooping up gold and purple dots.

This game was a major addiction of mine in undergrad. Right up there with the original X-Com.

Fwiffo is great. I just want to pinch his little whatever-his-alien-equivalent-of-cheeks-are.

This seems like another game I'd be terrible at, but that's why LPs are fun!

When last we left, the plan was to cruise nearby space faster than Brian Rubin on crack, gathering up as many minerals as I can. Sirius is the closest star to Sol, so that's my first stop.

I arrive at Sirius which only has one planet orbiting it, and what should I encounter but a strange alien space ship!



Let's introduce ourselves, shall we?



I'm greeted by some crazy crystalline robotic thing, accompanied by what sounds like a chipmunk on a teletype machine. Things start promisingly...



...but quickly go downhill...





Huh. Some sort of malfunction. Note to self: don't try to befriend strange crystal robots in outer space.



There's only one of him right? I'd send in Fwiffo, but I just befriended him -- do I really want to send him into combat so soon? Also, I forgot to crew up his ship when I was back at the base, so he only has one health (himself), and won't last long in a fight. Must remember to do something about that later.

So it's Captain Bieber once more into the fray. Here's hoping this robot guy doesn't start the combat too close to me ...



Damn.

This is a Slylandro. They are not from Star Control 1. We don't know anything about them yet, except that they are crazy robots and/or crystals and that they say they want peace, but then they attack, unprovoked.

This robot is named 2418-B (of the New England 8-Bs). His ship is incredibly fast, and shoots lightning. His "special" weapon is really pretty shitty -- probably to compensate for how fast and deadly he is otherwise -- he has to fly around and "consume" asteroids to recharge his gun. This means that he can't just fly around me and kill me all in one go of it; every so often he has to dart away to recharge.

Even so, he's killing me.



Really killing me.

My ship isn't good enough to take on Slylandro ships yet. Luckily, back on Earth, Hayes installed my ship with an emergency escape warp for just these situations, so I hit it.



I make it out with literally only myself alive.

RUN!

Okay new plan. AVOID SIRIUS.

I head back to Earth, buy more crew, and head out to the second nearest star, which is Alpha Lyrae



Lots of minerals to be found, no aliens. And then after that I hit Canopus:



Bla bla, same deal.

Next stop is Rigel, and in addition to some minerals, another alien ship! This one's just a little guy.



I'm a little bit more hesitant this time after getting so burned in the last encounter, but what the hell, let's see what this new species has to say:





DAWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!! Look at the little guys!

Meet the Zoq-Fot-Pik. They're like what you'd get if your bickering Jewish grandparents were cute little aliens. That little guy on the left is the Zoq, and that guy on the right is the Fot ... I think.





This is how they talk all the time.

So it turns out this isn't their home planet. They've travelled a long way in search of someone who can help them.





Oh Fot. You're just like my Uncle Mitch.

These guys are cute, and I'm going to help them. But I can't help ribbing them a little bit. Why? BECAUSE I CAN. Ninenteen Ninety Two.







Their species is under attack! They describe being attacked by two different races -- one uses giant green ships which launch waves of fighters. These are obviously Ur-Quan -- I recognize the description from fighting them in Star Control 1.

The second race they describe sounds decidedly creepy; giant black ships which shoot spinning blades. We've never encountered anything like that before.

To hear Zoq Fot Pik describe it, the black ships and the green ships are locked in some sort of war with each other, and aren't really trying to kill anything else. But the Zoq-Fot-Pik's home is right in the warzone, and they are getting hit with a lot of collateral damage. Poor little guys.

Okay, enough kidding around. Did you think I was going to resist helping these munchkins?







Sadly I don't get any Zoq-Fot-Pik ships for my fleet. But now I have two alien home worlds to visit to try to recruit allies; Spathi and Zoq-Fot-Pik.