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Comment by danielodievich | Hacker News Reader

This game is my all time favorite because:

a) I played it obsessively with my brother in all combinations, giggling and swearing at the same time. Shofixti vs Shofixti or the Spathi farting and being chicken is awesome

b) It was one of my first programming projects for just myself. I wrote a random team generator and am still quite proud of it.

c) I got my children to play it on the modern laptop and they loved the Melee just as much as me and my brother did

The sense of humor, the complexity of the storyline, all the easter eggs, it is just a wonderful game.

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Shofixti vs Chmmr is still my favorite match up. The sheer terror for each person is hilarious. Desperately trying to get in close to detonate and hopefully take out his zap sats and cripple it. Meanwhile the chmmr pilot terrified to get in close to those suicidal maniacs. When the two get near, both people just scream until it’s over lol

Shofixti (without suiciding) and Zoqfot were always the picks among my friends to flex in supermelee. No greater shame than dying to the tongue.

Zoqfot is definitely the joke ship. Completely worthless. I can do some damage with a Shofixti at least

My friend and I would play what we called 'frungy', where you just have two teams of all zoqfot ships and you have to stay in the gravity well and can only use the secondary attack, no primary.

Getting Fwiffo (the Spathi) early was basically a cheat code for the main plot. Kills Slylandros, Kohr-ah, and Ur-quan with a bit of effort at a point in the game before your precursor ship wipes the floor with everything. Funny how he's supposed to be weak but is worlds better than any of the other early ships (earthlings, zoq-fot-pik, shofixti, umgah...). Pretty sure you can beat the entire game with just Fwiffo and your own ship.

Earthling cruiser can take out an Ur-quan. It takes some tricky gravity and speed management but you can usually do it.

I've never had much luck (or fun) with the Spathi. I guess you can just keep playing keep away and slowly butt gun them to death. I usually just try to get Orz or Thraddash as fast as possible. Thraddash is practically cheat mode. Agree that Umgah, shofixti, zoq-fot-pik are all worthless.

Earthling is risky because it gets owned instantly if you spawn too close to the dreadnaught. IIRC otherwise the ai would not pursue if you were moving away and shooting so you could keep going back and forth keeping them at a safe distance.

The Spathi are cowards, but not necessarily weak, if I recall.

"A cowardly, mobile clam armed with a howitzer"

The real cheat code takes a page from Spathi's book: the most deadly ship in the game is the main ship, with one gun put in the rear slot. Add that guiding module, add some power modules, and you can rain homing projectiles at the enemy who is chasing you, without any risk of getting harmed. I rarely lost a crewmember ever, if only for a random collision with a planet.

I have no idea of the game but from the outside

> a random collision with a planet

certainly sounds like a huge excuse for your own mistakes ;-)

The camera zooms in and out to keep both ships on the screen. If they are close together, you can have the planet appear on screen suddenly

I did the same thing when I played this game a long time ago. Also, I used Fwiffi a lot, because the same kind of tatic.

In the SC1 campaign mode, super cool with the orbiting stars, If you get a precursor artifact or two the Yehat never run out of power, always shielded, and are invincible unless they get limpet mined unluckily.

I encountered the original Star Control on the Sega Genesis (terribly underperformant.. I went back to play it a few years ago when I had my hands on the cartridge and a physical Genesis, and I did not remember the frame rate being that low).

I didn't even find out they had made a sequel until I got to college. Burned several weekends playing it. I can't imagine people having played through it back when you didn't have guides on the critical path... Playing so far in only to find out that the galaxy has a clock ticking against you must have been incredibly frustrating. But that was the style at the time, and it is a brilliant game.

also played on the Genesis and I definitely remember the framerate being low! compared to when I played Star Control 2 on PC a few years later

Original came with a huge map in the box and which showed all the regions of control as they were at the time the precursor facility was initially discovered. This would give you good inspiration on areas to check out.

Then you would very likely encounter the Melnorme as you searched for resources and they would give you the clues you need.

Then it’s just a matter of making notes from all the aliens you talk to and following up on leads.

My brothers and I managed to finish the game in 1992 with no guides.

Do you still have the source for your team generator?

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