Star Control 2: The LP of Now and Forever

Star Control 2~! I remember failing so bad with the ships and Fwiffo~! Dang it, so hard to keep him alive when he's the only ship worth using for a while. Thankfully, I am a believer of save-scumming. Dang it, I just love all the races!

EDIT: FUUUUU Those things. I hate those droid things. They always manage to kill me, and I end up just avoiding them. Or, rather, having a huge trail of them following me like some game of Snake or something. Also Zoq-Fot-Pik EEEE~! They're pretty much like a bickering married couple.

Do you know how to get the secret ending?

Woah, I didn't even realize you could do that. And I've played this game a dozen times. We come in come in peace peace WE COME IN PEACE.

FRUNGY!

I still don't have enough minerals to afford the fuel to the Spathi homeworld, so more time mining is required. One planet contains something we haven't seen yet:



Non-sentient life! That little guy on the left is some sort of hopping orangutan, and the weird looking circle thing above him is I don't know what. These things just basically brownian themselves around and will hurt you if you touch them. You can fire your lander's little gun at them and kill them, at which point they turn into a little canister of biological data which you can collect. Not much we can do with the data at this point though.

Anyway, after some more gathering, I finally have enough to afford another fuel tank, and a trip to the Spathi homeworld:



Once you enter an alien race's sphere of influence, you will start to encounter them flying around in hyperspace, and the Spathi are no exception. That little black dot on the minimap you see represents an alien:



These Spathi aren't quite as friendly as my good buddy Fwiffo:





Mispronounce my name will ya? Well you lack opposable thumbs and you're ugly!







Good one. Point... Bieber.

Seriously though, these guys can't help me. They're too scared of the Ur-Quan. They won't attack me, but they reject all offers of peace. I need to reach the homeworld and speak to their elders.



Those Spathi are orbiting the planet, but when I land on it, I don't find anyone to talk to. So I head to the moon:



Ulp. That's a lot of Spathi.

*sigh*. Huffi Muffi Guffi.



Whoa. Not only are these Spathi also a cross between Jellyfish and Preying Mantids, but they dress like nineteenth century Italian clowns and live in a house designed by Dr. Seuss! Clearly an explosion went off at the costume factory when these guys were being designed.



I wouldn't say Fwiffo and I are friends per se. He's more like my loveable sidekick, but I'm not going to trust him with the keys to the crystallic fusion generator, if you know what I mean.



Truer words were never spoken.

The Spathi Elders come off as far more crotchety than your average Spathi captain. In fact, they're a little bit like Biff from Back to the Future:



It really is a pretty awesome bit of writing to accomplish that balancing act. They refuse to ally with me unless I can perform a task for them. You know...



You mean a quest?



Hmm. Sounds dire.

Hee hee hee, oh god, I forgot about this quest. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Oh, how I love the Umgah.

So it turns out that the reason the Spathi are living on their own moon is because these "Evil Ones" have driven them from the face of their own planet, devouring them wherever they flee.

When I was visiting their world earlier, I didn't bother to scan for life forms, only minerals. This time, I scan for everything, and sure enough...



...life forms.

Let's see what beast could be so fearsome as to drive an entire species from their planet!



The horror ... the horror.



Dun Dun Dunnnnnnn!

That's right, the "Evil Ones" are cute little teddy bears who sit there and do nothing.

I ... uh ... process them in time to make my after-lunch squash game and head back to the Spathi homeworld:



But guess what. Turns out the Spathi elders are a buncha turncoats!



So it's betrayal is it? I'm not sure I want these guys in my alliance. Cowards, liars, cheats?

But I do need ships.

Well, two can play at that game.



That does the trick:





Wooooo! My first alien allies.

Now that I have the Spathi on my side, I can officially build their ships in my shipyard. That's in case I want to have more of them than Fwiffo in my Armada. I very well might, because if I ever need to send a Spathi into combat, well ... I'm not sure I want to put my old buddy Fwiffo in danger just yet.

Hee hee hee hee. Man, now I want to fire up Hyper Melee, but I know I'll just end up taking a Chmmr or Utwig ship which will render the whole thing pointless. You can't step to the Utwig. Hell, you don't even really NEED the Chmmr in your armada, the Utwig are so devastating.

The trick to defeating an Utwig is to hit him with a Chenjesu or a Melnorme. If you can burn his battery, you can take him out after that. Arilou or Vux also can work, since you can fake him out by getting close but not firing, and he'll waste his shields without getting anything back.

But yeah, back in the day I could take out a Kohr-Ah with an Utwig pretty easily. They are pretty awesome. Mopey, but awesome. Spoiler alert.

But, that's the thing. You CAN'T burn his battery, if the player is good enough. Although you're right - if you can tempt them into burning all their battery without absorbing anything with their shield, they really are screwed, because the absorption shield takes a tiny little bit of battery power to use - so if they're dead flat, they're just dead, period. And now I'm remembering all the wonderful sound effects in that game - the Pkunk reincarnation, the Arilou teleport, the Utwig cannon, the Sireen call, the Orz marine deployment... arrrgh, so many wonderful memories.

I have no idea what you guys are on about but the prospect of looming awesome species to be introduced to is making me rather anticipate happy times. Also yeah, I usually forget that I'll fall for SPAAAAAAAACE things until stuff like this comes by and then I get all dorky. There was this one RP eheheheheh. Right but so like, I'm completely enamored.

I have no idea what you just said but it sounds awesome.

DIS GAME.

Though, one thing about those adorable teddy bears? If you run into them, they EXPLODE.

Hello *campers*!

If you don't listen to the remixes from this site (http://sc2.sourceforge.net/) while you *play* *spicy games* you are *silly cows*.

*Enjoy the sauce!*

Man, just looking at the title got the Hyperspace theme stuck in my head. Hands down the best music in the game.
Not that the other music isn't fantastic too.

Apologies for not posting yesterday, I felt like utter crap and hit the hay early.

So, after winning the Spathi over to my side, guess who I ran into?



Oy. These guys again. And once again, their priority is overridden and they attack. What's a guy gotta do to get some robot love around here? Hang on, don't answer that.



The good news is that every Slylandro I kill nets me 550 RU which is handy. It's getting easier too, because though I haven't mentioned it, I've been gradually upgrading my ship with additional boosters and turners(?) to make combat easier.

When I finally get back to Earth, Hayes has some news. We've been contacted by a previously unknown race!



Melnorme? Sounds like a brand of tractor.

So I was meaning to go visit the ZoqFotPik homeworld, but it's pretty far away ... much further than Spathi space. I need to upgrade my ship with more fuel containers before I can make that trip. The Melnorme have made a point of coming to Alpha Centauri to meet me, which is pretty darn close. So that's where I'm off to first:



I find their ambassador orbiting one of the planets.





Trade Master Greenish! Is he a fabulously colour-changing stuffed animal? Is he five marshmallows mashed together? Is he an easy chair with a big blue eye and a gaping mouth for a seat? You don't know!

The Melnorme are the trade merchants of this game. They don't have a home world or an area of control themselves, they just roam around selling technology and information ... the game's way of giving you hints.

Melnorme express emotions with colours. When he's feeling conversational, he's red, like you see above. However, if you want to see them turn blue, just threaten them a little, oh say, like ... this...



Ha ha. Hey Greenish, I was only kidding.



Luckily, I'm able to make him feel red again. I mean ... happy ... again.



So when Melnorme are ready to start trading, they turn purple. Why is that, you ask?



Oh. Well, how many credits do I even have?



Shit!

Yeah, remember that biological data I collected on Spathiwa? Killing the little creatures and turning them into little canisters you can collect? This is what that's for ... selling to the Melnorme for stuff you can't get anywhere else. So other than the all-important question of why he turns purple, right now I'm most interested in their technology, because I really need to improve my ship.

By the way, the Melnorme also are interested in buying something other than biological data:





Huh. Strange Rainbow worlds. Mysterious! I hope there are lots of them, because finding one particular planet in this galaxy will be like finding a particular needle in a stack of needles.

You got me playing again! And I finally got the shooting part to work properly.

I shall be stalking your LP in case you mention any good places to find biodata. Everywhere I've found is either full of especially murderous fauna or full of earthquakes or both.

So I'm still in gathering mode, and Hayes tells me that the best stars to find good minerals are the white ones. So I decide to take a trip out to Zeeman, which is a huge white star that's not too far from Sol.



Not coincidentally, I'm making this trip because Zeeman basically eclipses the much smaller star of Vela on the star map. In fact, even in hyperspace, they are basically right on top of each other, as you can see as I fly past:



What's so special about Vela? Well, you may remember from the intro, it's where I was born!

Doing reconnaissance on the planets of Zeeman reveals that the star is indeed hot. Too hot. All the planets are basically unlandable, even though they are rich in minerals:



I'm going to have to get landers that are immune to fire somehow. Maybe the Melnorme can help me with that.

Anyway, since I'm here, I figure I might as well stop by the old homestead and say hello to the folks:



Gasp. What's this? An UR-QUAN is orbiting my home planet! And it's got a SLAVE SHIELD AROUND IT!?!?

You'd better fucking explain yourself, Space Octopus.



Damn straight. How the hell did you find my home planet, when it had been hidden in Zeeman's corona for so long?







Nothing quite brings on the murderous rage in Captain Bieber as finding out that he is responsible for his parents becoming enslaved.

Time to die, six-eyes!

The thing is, my ship can't possibly stand up to an Ur-Quan yet. Have I explained what Ur-Quan can do in a fight yet? Their main weapon is fast, long and powerful (that's what she said!), but it's their special weapon which is most terrifying; they can launch their crew as tiny fighters which swarm your ship and destroy it in seconds.

I have enough boosters that I might be able to outrun the Ur-Quan ... but I'll never outrun his fighters.

And that's when Captain Bieber turned ... to Fwiffo.

"Er ... send in the Spathi!"



Because the little secret of this game is that Spathi are actually good against Ur-Quan because of the one thing Spathi are good at ... running away.



Lord 43's fighters are after me. But they can't catch me.

Unfortunately, Fwiffo ricochets off the planet and gets too close at one point:



Ouch.



One more hit and I'm done for ... but my butt shots are whittling him down. Finally...



Fwiffo is victorious! And it's a decent haul:



The victory is bittersweet, however, because my family is encased under a slave shield that I cannot pierce:



And now that I have officially met the Ur-Quan, their powerful army looms dark over the galaxy.



But they shall be defeated! Oh yes. They shall be defeated.

Fwiffo didn't die! I was worried for a minute there.

Same.

But hey, he's now proved himself to be a valuable sidekick. Do you ever get to speak to him again or do you just have the ship?

I've found that Blue, Green and Yellow stars seem to be the best for life. Eta Ptolemae was particularly lucrative.

so, is it really true that you can't skip a line of dialog if you finish reading it? the only option is to skip the whole text until your next conversation prompt? Because that shit makes expository scenes boring as *fuck*

No, you can skip individual lines. If you hit the right arrow key, it will skip one line. If you hit space, it will skip the whole conversation and show you your next prompt. If you miss a line because you accidentally hit a key and didn't mean to, you can see the whole conversation by hitting space when your next dialog prompt comes up.

There is also an option to increase the conversation speed, I believe (though I like it on its default setting so I haven't bothered looking for it).

well hot damn. thanks sinnick. I've played a bit of this when it came out originally, but somehow never much. That's getting fixed this holiday for sure.

So I've been spending a bunch of time doing the equivalent of grinding in this game ... visiting the nearby planets, picking up the minerals and biological data and using it to upgrade my ship. As you can see, I've bought several technical upgrades from the Melnorme, and I've filled out my thrusters and me turning jets:



I'm ranging pretty far afield for minerals now, including down to the Gorno system:



There are some pretty decent minerals and biological samples in this system ... but that's not all!



Ooh, a little ship! Let's say hello, shall we?



Daww, a little doggy in a spaceship.

A crotchety old doggy covered in battle scars, but a doggy nonetheless.

Actually, he's more of a possum than a doggy, because he's a marsupial. Meet the Shofixti! We know him from Star Control 1! They were the wimpiest ship in the Alliance, but they made up for that by being belligerent and numerous. They also have the most hilarious weapon of the fleet; their "glory device", which lets them self-destruct in a giant "divine wind" which does huge damage to their opponent if he gets hit with the blast -- but also kills them.

Appropriately, their role in the game is as cranky Japanese kamikaze pilots!

This particular Shofixti is named Tanaka:



Yes, I just said that.

Unfortunately, Tanaka's ship is malfunctioning so he can't quite tell who I am. The only thing he has to go on is the size of my ship:





Uh oh. Well, let's try to get him to listen to reason:



Huh. Well that didn't work.

I don't want to kill Tanaka, so I hit my escape device so I can try to talk some reason into him.



Let's try this again.



Pouchless! How dare you!





Hurm. He seems pretty intent on attacking me. Let's try again.



Pus-cup! Okay, now I'm getting annoyed.



Weren't Japanese warriors supposed to be noble and respectful of their enemies?







Turns out the key to getting Tanaka to realize you aren't his enemy is to insult the hell out of him until he realizes you're a good old fashioned human.

Turns out, the Shofixti were fighting with the Yehat and the Ur-Quan were gaining on them. To win the battle, the Shofixti destroyed their own sun, and the resulting blast wiped out his entire species along with a sizeable part of the Ur-Quan fleet.

Tragic, yes? Listen to how Tanaka describes it:



I guess when everyone on your planet is a Kamikaze, it's not so tragic?

Tanaka just happened to not be around when they exploded the sun, so he's still alive. In fact, he's the only one of his species left. As such, he won't join my fleet, but insists on staying to defend his home planet ... or what's left of it anyway.

Fight on, noble Koala!

Tanaka does have one interesting piece of information to give me before I go:





Ooh, a strange planet. Maybe I should investigate!

I was so hoping the situation would devolve into a battle of 'yo mama' remarks,

Hey now, don't sell this game short!

It still remains the best computer game I've ever played, and I say that having playing Ur-Quan Masters in the last year or two so it's not nostalgia as it with so many games from that era.

Why don't they make games like this anymore? :-(

Oh my God, I have so much to tell you!

So when my old buddy Tanaka told me about a strange planet orbiting Zeta Sextantis, I just had to investigate. If it is a rainbow world, it could be worth big money to the Melnorme, and I could trade in the information for lots of new technology.

On my way there, however...



Oh my GOD. I'm gonna have to do something about these jerks soon.

Anyway, after Mr. Slylandro has been rendered into space dust, I head down to the Sextantis constellation. On the way there, I'm waylaid in space:



Uh oh. I know these guys.



Meet the VUX! Another enemy race from Star Control 1. These hideous, cthuloid creatures fly slow, small, dinky ships with a powerful but short-range laser that would seemingly be useless against anyone. Except for their special weapon; limpet parasites. They drop little green blobs in combat, which inch their way towards you and attach onto your ship, reducing its speed and turning ability. The more limpets which get you, the slower you go, until the VUX Intruder closes and destroys you with his Gigawatt laser.

As a race, the VUX are like ugly Ministry of Transportation employees; snide, boring and unhelpful, and will likely try to kill you no matter how well you reason with them.

This dude's no different.





I just might do that. What's so special about Admiral ZEX?



Okay well, that's great and all. I'll have to pay him a visit, but right now I have a rainbow world to find.







See what I mean? VUX are pretty unreasonable.

My ship is advanced enough now that taking out a squadron of VUX intruders is small potatoes. I'm fast enough that I can stay away from their limpets, and my guns have a far longer range than their piddly laser does.



Onwards to the rainbow world!

When I arrive there, it doesn't look particularly rainbow ...y from space. And there are more VUX here.



But check out when I enter combat with them:



Oooh, colourful. And orbiting the planet reveals it's true nature:



Woo! One of the secrets of the galaxy is all mine.

I immediately head to one of the super giant stars for a rendezvous with the Melnorme:





WOW! With this many credits, I can now afford to buy almost all the Melnorme technology, including point defense like the Earthling cruiser, which will come in really handy when I'm up against more Ur-Quan or VUX, or any other ship which fires little dudes at me.

But since I'm in the neighbourhood anyway, I figure I might as well hit up Admiral ZEX. I'm curious what a VUX who likes humans looks like!

Admiral ZEX's home planet is on Alpha Cerenkov, if that random VUX captain I killed last week is any indication.





Huh? Well, what a nice surprise! A VUX who is actually polite for a change.





Shofixti Maidens? Why would I care about your Shofixti Maidens? I mean, I do know one Shofixti dude, and he's old and alone and the last remaining member of his species ohhhhhhhhhhhh.

Why does Admiral ZEX have the Shofixti Maidens, you ask? Well it turns out he's got a strange hobby. He owns a Menagerie of, well, as he puts it:



I feel a quest coming on!





I get ZEX to agree to let me find his crazy creature, and in exchange he'll give me the Shofixti Maidens. Woo! This will let me repopulate the Shofixti race! Well, technically, it will let Tanaka repopulate the Shofixti race, because ... you know ...

Why is ZEX so nice to humans anyway?



Uh...



Okay..



...so that happened. Is he hitting on me? Maybe the game will let me find that weird too.



NINETEEN NINETY TWO!

ADMIRAL ZEX!



Yes, he is totally hitting on us. WE MUST ROMANCE HIM.

...is this where the kinky sex comes in?

Also, if you put it to a vote I have a feeling I know what the forum would vote for.

There's really only one way for this to go, isn't there? Sweep that green fellow of his feet! Or whatever he walks on!

Well, BF seems to be reacting to Admiral ZEX exactly how I thought they would react to him. XD