Starflight: Final Assessment

I never did figure out what the hell this was all about.

         

Starflight
United States

Binary Systems (developer); Electronic Arts (publisher)
Released 1986 for DOS; 1989 for Amiga and Commodore 64; 1990 for Atari ST and Macintosh; 1991 for SEGA Genesis

Date Started: 4 September 2010
Date Ended: 12 September 2010
Total Hours: 24
Difficulty: Moderate (3/5)
Final Rating: 53
Ranking at Game #379: 364/379 (96%)

          

In Dungeons & Desktops, Matt Barton calls Starflight a "space exploration game" with "CRPG elements." A web site I visited post-victory, "Starflight: the Lost Colony," calls it an "open-ended simulation game." Though it's on both MobyGames's and Wikipedia's CRPG lists, and although I got addicted to it, I never really felt I was playing a CRPG. Aside from the title of my blog, I'm not sure how much I care. Starflight was a delightful surprise of a game--just the sort of game I started this project to find--and I had a lot of fun. Let's see if I come up with a score that reflects that.

This should be old news by now, but I'm using the GIMLET scale I outlined five months ago.

1. Game World. Absolutely top-notch. You have an entire galaxy to explore with a fascinating backstory that is sketched out in the manual but only fully revealed as you explore, find artifacts and messages, and talk to various races. The lore is unique and interesting, the final twist is amazing, and some mysteries persist even after you've won. Unlike almost every other game of the era, your actions measurably affect the game world and your relationships with the various alien races. I can't think of many games that do it better. Final score: 9.

This was a definite Sixth Sense moment.

    

2. Character Creation and Development. It's the lack of both that make me hesitate on the "CRPG" angle. Yes, you have up to six "characters," and yes, you can choose their names and races and incrementally train them. The problem is, once you load them into your ship, your characters cease to really exist as separate characters. They're just part of your ship, occupying its various roles. No one talks to them or refers to them individually. Although you can train them in various skills, you only really need to train them in the one skill that goes with their function, and you can maximize this fairly quickly. Except for the fact that you can't have Elowan and Thrynn in the same crew, and those races react to you depending on who you have, your choice of races affects nothing about the game. Final score: 2.

Going with a Star Trek theme just seemed way too obvious.

3. NPC Interaction. Reasonably excellent. You must establish meaningful communications with the various alien races to understand the game world, figure out the main quest, and learn the locations of planets and artifacts. The game gives you several "attitude" options when speaking to the aliens--hostile, friendly, and obsequious (there's a word you don't often encounter)--and you have to carefully figure out what works best with which races. The aliens only speak to you for a limited time, so you have to choose your questions carefully. Although you don't really have "dialog options" in the manner of the Bioware/Black Isle games of the next decade, the dialog in Starflight is more advanced than anything else in this era except Ultima IV. Final score: 8.

4. Encounters and Foes. The "monsters" in Starflight are unique to this game, fully described, and very interesting, with their own personalities and attitudes. They behave completely differently depending on who they are and what you've done to them. Oddly for a CRPG, you can get entirely through Starflight without fighting a single battle, so concepts of "respawning" don't apply. Final score: 8.

Hmmm...maybe I should destroy their home planet, just for kicks.

       

5. Magic and Combat. This being a science fiction CRPG, there's no "magic" in the game, but there is some combat. I suppose you could fight extensively if you wanted to. Destroying enemy ships allows you to loot them for their minerals and fuel, and you have several races that are more than happy to fight you. But the mechanics of combat are extremely weak. Once you raise your shields and arm your weapons, you just point and shoot, and the interface to do so is clunky and nonresponsive. The weakest part of the game. Final score: 1.

It's like sort-of point and sort-of shoot.

           

6. Equipment. There are two types of "equipment" in this game: ship upgrades and artifacts. At the beginning stages, it's very satisfying to progressively upgrade your ship with better weapons, armor, engines, and cargo capacity. Artifacts are strewn across the planets, but very few of them actually do anything. Those that are helpful are always found in fixed locations, never randomized, which doesn't reward open exploration. You have to take the artifacts back to Starport to "analyze" them, which is always satisfyingly cryptic: you get some idea what the artifact is supposed to do, but you don't fully find out until you employ it in the field. My biggest complaint: the best artifacts are found close to the end of the game when you no longer need them. Final score: 5.

A fully equipped star ship.

       

7. Economy. There are several ways to make money in Starflight: mining for minerals, collecting life specimens, destroying and salvaging enemy ships, and finding suitable planets for colonization. To me, mining was absurdly addictive, and even towards the end of the game I couldn't suppress feelings of delight whenever I stumbled upon a particularly rich vein of minerals. But you lose the need for money about halfway through the game, when your characters are fully trained and your ship fully equipped and your finding more Endurium than you know what to do with. When you win the game, you get 500,000 credits that serve no purpose. Final score: 6.

8. Quests. The game has a compelling main quest with a great twist, but there is only one outcome, no opportunity for role-playing, and no side quests. Unusual for the era, the main quest is on a time limit (which turns out to be plenty of time). Final score: 5.

9. Graphics, Sound, and Inputs. I had no complaints at all with the EGA graphics, but we're still in the "painful era" for sound, and I played the game with the sound turned off. The controls leave a little to be desired. You essentially have to use the number pad to scroll your way through the menus, which takes an annoyingly long time in combat (you're rushing to get from "communications" to "navigation" to put your shields up). It would have been very helpful to hotkey certain actions, as most of the keyboard is unused. Final score: 3.

10. Gameplay. The gameplay is utterly open-ended, allowing you to explore the whole galaxy (to the limits of your fuel, anyway) right from the beginning. The pacing is good: I got addicted to it quickly and wouldn't had minded if it had lasted a few more hours, but it seemed to end at the right time. On the other hand, there's virtually no replayability except to mine new planets. [Later edit: reader Max points out that one replayability option is to choose Thrynn crewmembers and make friends with that race, getting different clues and reaching the endgame through a different route. Point taken, and final score increased.] On the question of difficulty, it's tough to evaluate. If you try to engage in combat, it's too hard, but other aspects are too easy. For instance, the manual makes a big deal about the horrible things that happen if you lose your Terrain Vehicle, run out of fuel and have to make a distress call, or recommend a bad planet for colonization, but really you'd have to be an idiot to do any of these things. Final score: 6.

The CRPG Addict is no idiot.

Final ranking: 53. This puts it with Ultima IV but not quite as high as Might & Magic I. I don't know how well this reflects the game. Perhaps I need to add an "addictiveness" handicap to my rankings, because there's just something ineffably compelling about Starflight. From the moment I started playing it, I played it for a few hours every night.

In 83 more games, I'll be playing Starflight II. I look forward to it.

Starflight: Genocide!

Notice how there's no planet in my planetary view screen? Yeah.

"Hi, honey! Huh. Guess what I did at work today? I wore a bomb--a nuclear bomb--in a field of flowers. I could get lucky. Tomorrow, I could have a bigger bomb. I could kill more people. Maybe they'll be innocent people. Children, maybe." -- John Crichton, Farscape, Season 4, Episode 21, "We're So Screwed, Part 3"

This is my "won!" posting for Starflight, and it includes a major spoiler that you won't want to read if you plan to play and win the game yourself. Stop here if that's the case.

...

Okay, so I blew up a planet and killed an entire race this evening.

It started with the discovery of the Institute's old headquarters on Akteron-6, where in a long document related to "Project Teleport," I learned about the Old Empire's plan to teleport an agent to the Crystal Planet --the veritable "Death Star" causing suns to flare and destroy all life in their systems--and have him destroy it with a bomb. The agent, Commander McConnell, made it to the planet and set off the explosive, but it didn't do anything. Ultimately, the Institute discovered they would need three devices:

• A crystal orb to nullify the planet's defenses. This is what the Veloxi referred to as their holy artifact, the "small egg," and I had a clue from them about where it is.
• A crystal cone to identify the location of the control nexus of the Crystal Planet. The message gave me coordinates where I could find it, but noted that it was "deep in Uhlek space."
• A bomb. I already had one, and then I found a second one after getting a clue from the Veloxi about a planet on the "handle of the axe" (a reference to an axe-shaped constellation). It was apparently left over from the destruction of the Phlegmak.

I knew the planet that held the crystal orb but I didn't know the coordinates yet, so I set out to find the crystal cone first. But I kept getting attacked and killed by Uhlek. Finally, I'd had enough. Since I had two bombs, I could spare one. I flew to the Uhlek home planet (clue to its location received from the Spenim) and set off the bomb. As the Spenim had indicated, killing the Uhlek "mind ganglion" apparently took care of the entire fleet. No more Uhlek.

I retrieved the crystal cone and then followed some clues I'd received from the Elowan to some other Old Empire bases, where I found references to two other artifacts: a "tesseract," which turned out to halve my fuel usage (unnecessary at this point because I'd found a boatload), and a "red cylinder," which turned out to perform an amazing service: when in orbit around a planet, it pinpoints the location of artifacts. This allowed me to retrieve the crystal orb from the Velox planet (fortunately, I didn't run into any Veloxi again after that) as well as a "crystal pearl" from a planet on which the Spenim told me was a "city of the Ancients." All I found was the pearl and a bunch of Endurium laying about. (The pearl, by the way, teleports you away from battle if you're about to die. Handy, but it turns out I never engaged in battle again after this.)

This is supposed to be a "City of the Ancients." All I see is a ruin and a bunch of Endurium fuel...

 

It seemed I had all the artifacts I needed to engage the Crystal Planet. I first returned to Starport to get new armor for my ship and see if there were any final notices. If I hadn't just found a huge cache of Endurium, this one would have been a little annoying:

I smell corruption.

I headed off for the Crystal Planet at the coordinates given to me by the Veloxi. It was where they said it was. With my crystal orb, I evaded their defenses, and the crystal cone pointed out the location of the control center.

 

I found a ruin on the planet's surface with the remains and last log of Commander McConnell. It gives a hell of a twist ending. In it, he remarks on the lumps of Endurium found everywhere on the planet. He went ahead and set the charges and waited for them to blow. As he waited, he was contacted telepathically by the Ancients, who turned out to be...wait for it....the lumps of Endurium.

That's right. The Ancients haven't left the galaxy; they're everywhere, and we're burning them for fuel! Their extremely slow metabolism means that they live "in an entirely different time framework" and don't even realize that carbon-based life forms are sentient. They saw us as a virus to destroy. While expressing remorse for this revelation, Commander McConnell noted that nonetheless he hoped the bomb succeeded. "At this point, it's us or them."

Agreeing with this sentiment, I guess, I dropped the bomb and skedaddled. The rest was predictable:

 

Left unstated is whether humans are going to continue with hyperspace travel now that we know we're destroying sentient lifeforms to do it. Given what I've learned about Interstel in this posting, I'm guessing yes. Thus, I committed genocide twice in the same night.

So...wow. I won. It seemed to come awfully quickly, and I feel like there's a ton about the game that I never explored. I never figured out what was going on with the Minstrels or Mysterions, nor did I ever come to a meaningful resolution with the Gazurtoids (I would have liked to destroy their home planet but I never found out where it was). Consulting a walkthrough (which I can do after I win), it doesn't appear that I missed anything, though, save a third bomb located on one of the Arth system planets.

I created a YouTube account to try to record and post better videos, and below is the first one I uploaded, showing the process of winning Starflight. In the future, I'll record and narrate more videos during the process of playing each game.

Final reckoning to follow.

Starflight: Races

It loses something without the animation.

Tonight, I discovered something delightful. If you're in Starport and you don't move for a while, your character begins tapping his foot impatiently. This is an ancestor of the funny comments ("Booooring!", "I grow weary of standing still") that your Baldur's Gate characters make when you abandon them for more than a few minutes. I have to start tracking all of these "firsts" in a spreadsheet or something.

Finding New Scotland (which I was talking about at the end of my last post) was easy with some deduction. The clue was that the planet was the second one in the star system at the upper end of the "Staff Constellation." There were several constellations that looked like they could have been in the shape of a staff, but I noted one was a fairly quick flux ride from Earth. I figured anything called "New Scotland" would be easily accessible from Earth. (Incidentally, LordKarnov42 also used the same logic and tried to help me out in a comment. I'm sorry I didn't read his comment until after I had found it, but I'm also glad I figured it out on my own.) I was right. Landing, I found a lot of Ancients ruins with fuel plus a clue to go to a specific location. There were a number of newspapers referencing "Harrison," who appeared to be a space pirate based on New Scotland. I visited a couple of his bases and found a "rod device" and a clue as to another of his bases on a distant planet. There, I found a colonizable planet and an "ellipsoid" artifact that turned out to have been stolen from the Veloxi. Returning it made them my best friends.

Tonight, this blog is going to help me get my notes together. I spent a while talking to the Spemin, the Veloxi, and the Elowans, and among them I learned so much that I'm having trouble keeping it all straight. Here is what I know, at this point, about the various races in Starflight.

Humans

Humans discovered Endurium (the mineral that allows faster-than-light travel) in 2100 and began using it to explore the galaxy and colonize planets. The Old Empire was formed, and contacts were made with the Velox (2300), Spemin (2675), and Thrynn and Elowan (2770). Between 3000 and 3400, there was a galactic war between the Old Empire and four other races that seemed to result in victory for the Old Empire, but on the cusp of this victory, some phenomenon caused numerous stars, including Earth's, to "flare" and destroy all life in their galaxies. A group of scientists called the Institute initiated Project Noah to save humanity by seeding the rest of the galaxy with colonies and ships. Only one of these, on Arth, seems to have survived. (At least one of the others was sabotaged by Laytonites.) Even Arth collapsed into dark ages for 900 years after an alien bomb went off on the planet. Humans on Arth rediscovered Endurium in 4594 and began exploring again. So far, I have encountered no other humans in the galaxy.

Velox

 

The Veloxi are a hive-based insect species ruled by a queen. They are described by others as "isolationist and arrogant." They became allies of the Old Empire after a few misunderstandings and skirmishes. They claim that they helped the Old Empire when the "first wave" (Phlegmak and Numlox, who the Veloxi claim to have destroyed) attacked, but that the Old Empire refused to assist when the Veloxi alone were attacked. In response, the Veloxi refused to help against the "second wave" (Uhlek and Gazurtoid), dooming the Old Empire to destruction.

Some Veloxi were living on Arth during the collapse, but presumably they have more in common with Arth humans than their cousins in the galaxy (I have two Veloxi in my crew). The Veloxi demand Endurium from me every time I encounter them.

Their "Prophecy of the Egg" concerns the Crystal Planet that causes suns to flare. They think it will destroy all life in the galaxy except the Veloxi queen. It will then hatch, revealing an Ancient named Xpu, who will mate with the queen and create a new race.

They were the ones that put the probe around the planet I wrote about yesterday. Apparently, my answers were supposed to have something to do with multiples of six (the Veloxi holy number). My destroying the probe doesn't seem to have bothered them. They became my close friends immediately after I returned to them an artifact that had been stolen from them by a human space pirate named Harrison.

Elowan

 

The Elowan are a plant species that speak like a cross between Einstein and Hamlet. They are scientists and healers. They and the Thrynn hate each other for reasons so far unrevealed. Like the Velox, there were Elowan living on Arth during the dark ages that have lost touch with other Elowan in the wider galaxy. I have two Elowan in my crew.

From speaking to them, I learned that they are on their third homeworld, the first two having been destroyed by flares. They and the Thrynn are originally from the same system, and the Thrynn make war on them to find and consume their "headfruit," which bestow intelligence on the Thrynn (this sounds a bit like a Farscape episode involving the Scarrans). The Elowan know that the Thrynn's sun is due to flare soon but don't intend to tell them.

When the Old Empire first encountered the Elowan, humans didn't even know that Elowan were sentient because the Thrynn told them they weren't.

The Elowan say that Arth's sun will flare in the final week of the tenth month of the year.

Thrynn

 

The Thrynn are a saurian species that specialize in statescraft and oratory. They look like small dinosaurs and dislike the Elowan for reasons I don't know, although the Thrynn and Elowan stuck on Arth seem to have found a way to get along. A Thrynn captained one of the earliest expeditions from Arth and ended up destroying an Elowan ship. He came across as a bit of a jerk in the manual, so I decided not to include a Thrynn crewmember.

According to the Elowan, the Thrynn are a predatory and treacherous species who will soon be dead when their sun flares, although the Thrynn don't know this.

Either because I have Elowan in my crew or because I spoke to the Elowan first, or both, the Thrynn won't even talk to me. They attack when they see me.

Spemin

 

The Spemin are a bunch of blowhard slugs who worship a "blob goddess." During the Old Empire's war, they constantly switched sides to their own advantage. When I first encountered them, they claimed to be a superior species that could destroy me easily and demanded that I worship them. When I accidentally happened upon their home planet, they swarmed and attacked me, but after I destroyed one of their ships, they immediately capitulated and started kowtowing to me. In one encounter (I forgot to take a screenshot), a Spemin captain said something like, "WE SURRENDER! DON'T HURT US! HERE IS THE SECRET LOCATION OF OUR HOME PLANET: 82, 148. GO THERE AND DESTROY OTHER SPEMIN BUT SPARE US!" It was a riot. They also claim to have avoided destruction by the Gazurtoid by sitting in pools of water every time they encounter them.

Gazurtoid

The Gazurtoid are an octopus-looking aquatic species who believe it is their destiny to rid the galaxy of "air-breathers." They fly around spouting biblical-sounding verse to that effect. They were one of the four races who attacked the Old Empire, although they don't seem to have been working in concert with the other evil races. By some accounts, they hate the Uhleks in particular. The Gazurtoids fly in spaceships impervious to missiles.

Uhlek

I haven't encountered the Uhlek yet, unless they are the species that keeps attacking my ships without even hailing me. The Spemin and Elowan claim that the Uhlek are actually a single creature (a "mind-ganglion" according to the Spemin) that lives deep in its planet and sends "parts" of itself into space. Sounds like a good place to drop my black egg bomb.

Numlox

The Numlox were one of the races that attacked the Old Empire. I haven't even seen a description of them yet. The Mechans say there is an 84% chance they were completely destroyed in the war with the Old Empire, and the Veloxi claim they wiped them out.

Phlegmak

Same as the Numlox.


Mechans

 

Mechans technically aren't a race but are simply androids created by humans. The only group of them I've encountered were from the Old Empire and were guarding a colony world called "Heaven." There are Mechans on Arth, too, and you can choose them as crewmembers although their utility is limited because they can't be trained.

Ancients

The Ancients were a race that existed long before humans left Earth. Their ruins are found all over the galaxy, and they seem to be the first to have used Endurium for faster-than-light travel. Some races say they came from a distant galaxy and seeded this one with life, and that they will later return to judge the races. Others say that they created something called a "Crystal Planet," to which I recently got coordinates. No one seems to know what kind of race they were.

The Veloxi say that the Ancients were Veloxi, but the Elowans say that this is just "conceitful folly."

Minstrels

 

The Minstrels are a strange race floating about the galaxy singing, according to the Elowan, a "song about what was." I haven't been able to decipher their cryptic riddles. Also according to the Elowan, what we see of the Minstrels is the Minstrels themselves, not their ships--they apparently do not require any ships. They are also known as Delasa'Alia.

Mysterions or Unknown Morse Code Species

 

This is the species that transmitted what turned out to be Morse code for the telephone number (now disconnected) of the game developers. Technically, I suppose they could be Uhlek, Numlox, Phlegmax, or Ancients, because I don't know what any of those races look like, but I'm guessing they are "Mysterions." This latter term appears on the Starflight codewheel with all the other races, but I otherwise haven't encountered them.

Now, on the main quest and next steps. The Elowan claim that the Ancients created the "Crystal Planet" whose function is to "destroy all life," so I'm guessing this is what's causing the stars to flare. I have coordinates for the Crystal Planet from the Veloxi. I can't just head over there and drop my egg bomb because, according to the Elowan, it "unleashes a mighty force" that I need a "certain device," known to the Institute but not to anyone else, to protect me against it. I also need some "cone of crystal" to enter the "nexus of control" on the planet.

Fortunately, I have a lot of other places to explore based on my conversations with these races:

• The location of the Uhlek homeworld, which I might be able to bomb
• The location of the Elowan homeworld
• The location of the Thrynn homeworld
• Various clues that point me to the location of Akteron-6, where the Institute had a base
• A fabled City of the Ancients in a nebula near Spemin space (I actually found this planet, I think, but without specific coordinates I couldn't find any city, just ruins and lots of Endurium, and an artifact called a "red herring" which, predictably, wouldn't fit into my Terrain Vehicle)
• More Old Empire ruins on an ice planet
• Another set of Old Empire ruins in a yellow planet system
• The planet Sphexi where the Veloxi claim is a "magnificent hexagon" (a hive?) in which another egg bomb is stored

This game sure doesn't get boring. I feel like I'm on the right path, which is a good thing, because according to the Elowan, I only have five months to save Arth.

Starflight: Closer to the Main Quest

Wikipedia lists 23 people with the surname Layton. I'd like to think he was named after Turner Layton (1894-1978) who wrote the sublime jazz standards "After You've Gone" and "If I Could Be with You."

The lesson is: don't assume that just because someone only says a limited number of things on your first encounter, that's all they have to say.

Tonight, after screwing around the galaxy and wasting fuel for a couple of hours, I managed to run into the same "Noah 9" Mechans from the previous night. I spoke to them again, and they gave me all kinds of information that they didn't give me the first time. In fact, I had to speak to them four times before I finally seemed to have milked them for all their data. For all their promises that their databanks were open to me, they were awfully quick to terminate our conversations.

It would take a lot of space to write down everything I learned in subsequent visits, but these are the highlights:

• The Gazurtoid--the bible-thumping, "many-tentacled aquatic creatures" I already encountered--live in "tremendous colony ships." They are enemies of the Uhlex (whom I have not encountered, I don't think), and both of them were enemies of the Old Empire (Earth). The Uhlex have particularly powerful weapons.
• The Mechans believe the Old Empire's other enemies, the Numlox and the Phlegmak, were destroyed during the war. The Phlegmak had powerful bombs shaped like black eggs that destroyed many of the Old Empire's planets. (Anything to do with the Veloxi's "prophecy of the Egg?")
• The Old Empire allied with a particularly cowardly race called the Spemin. When the Old Empire first encountered them, they were in a pre-technological state, but the Old Empire helped boost their level. A fascist-sounding movement called the Secret Society for Spemin Superiority (SSSS) gained power and attacked the Old Empire with its own technology. When the Numlox and Phlegmak attacked, the Spemin begged the Old Empire for protection, which was granted, but they turned on the Empire again after the war was over. I'm guessing the Spemin are the egotistical slimes I wrote about at the end of my last posting.
• All those places on planets where I've been finding Endurium are ruins of the Ancients, not the Old Empire. Ancients ruins are usually found in Class M star systems.
• The Velox (the insectoids) were the first race the Old Empire encountered, and the Old Empire took much of technology from them. They are arrogant and isolationist.
• The Laytonites were a faction of the Old Empire, apparently led by someone named Layton, that believed the Empire was evil and should die. They were the ones that sabotaged Project Noah.
• The first Project Noah mission failed because a failure in a "ring device" made it impossible for the navigators to identify "continuum fluxes." I think continuum fluxes are the little wormholes that send you flying across the galaxy, saving time and fuel. I don't seem to have any problem finding them despite not having a "ring device."
• An Earth organization called the Institute--the ones also responsible for Project Noah--studied the Ancients. Two common beliefs were that the Ancients had originally seeded the universe with life and that they would one day return to judge mankind. The Ancients may have built a device called the "Crystal Planet." Don't know what that is yet. There might be some Ancients still living in Spemin space.
• There is a "Dead Zone," identified by the Institute, of flared stars progressing from the "coreward" (right) side of the galaxy towards the center. I have verified this through my explorations, noting that all the stars to the right of a certain point say "post-flare," those in the middle are about to flare, those slightly more to the left are "unstable," and the ones on the far left are fine. This would suggest that Arth has a limited time to live until I can figure out the cause. Notes in the Operations Room at Starport confirm this. I suspect this, then, is the main quest, and since the destruction of stars is progressing, it would seem I have a limited time to complete it.

My Mechan conversations gave me a ton of clues for exploration. Some of them were specific coordinates and planets (including direct coordinates for a station on Earth) and some were hints, like a fabled city of the ancients somewhere in a nebula near Spemin space.

One of the clues led me to a nearby star in which there were supposed to be some ruins on one of the planets. As I approached, I was challenged by a probe that shot a series of numbers at me and asked me to answer "yes" or "no." I tried to discern a pattern in the numbers, but I only got through three before I apparently answered wrong and the probe attacked me.

Does it have something to do with Rolling Rock?

I destroyed it fairly easily, landed on the planet, visited the coordinates, and damned if I didn't find a "black egg" artifact. Does this mean I now have the ability to destroy a planet? If so, I need to find where the evangelical octopuses call home.

The Earth coordinates looked to be in the Arizona area. (Incidentally, the coordinates I was given, 12N, 104W, doesn't correspond with actual latitude and longitude on Earth, which would be in the Pacific Ocean off Mexico.) Landing, I found a ruin where messages told me of the last days of Earth before the solar flare and the location of another base in a nearby system. There was also an artifact called a "hypercube."

150 degrees...Arizona...sounds about normal.

On Mars (which mysteriously has water), at the "Center of the North Pole" (which only makes sense if navigation is based on a Mercator map), I found the Institute's "Starflight Navigational Research Station" and a "ring device" artifact. If my conversation with the Mechans is to be believed, this should help me find fluxes. I'm curious what it will do that I'm not already doing.

I knew one of the two nearby stars was Mardan because I had clues about Mardan-2 and Mardan-4. One of the systems only had three planets, so by process of elimination I visited the other. On Mardan-2, I got just a bunch of cryptic messages about a lack of resources. On Mardan-4, I found (as was promised by the Mechans), a mining bonanza, including lots of Ancients ruins with fuel. I filled my hold and returned to Starport.

Most of the artifacts I found were worthless as usual. The ring device, the analysts confirmed, would help me find fluxes. The analysis of the hypercube seems to be screwing with me: is it a Rubik's Cube? If so, it's worth 15,000 MUs. I think I'll keep it just in case it does something important.

Definition of "easy victory": giving a Rubik's cube to a color-blind person.

Back out into space. "The richest and strongest planet of the Old Empire," the Mechans told me, "was New Scotland, the second planet in the upspin end of the Staff Constellation." One theory is that I have to find a clue as to where the "Staff Constellation" is somewhere else. But I noted that Earth was described as being in the "Pythagoras Constellation" which, true to its name, featured three stars in the shape of a right triangle. Does that mean I need to be looking for stars in the shape of a staff? If so, there are a lot of possibilities.

I think I'll try heading into Spemin Space next and see if I can abuse some intelligence out of the treacherous bastards and perhaps find this fabled Ancient colony in the midst of a nebula. Does this game ever stop being fun?

Starflight: Earth and Other Planets

Now this looks familiar...

Going into this game, I had this idea that Earth would be the big reveal, like the final quest would involve finding it or something. I guess I had Battlestar Galactica on my mind. So imagine my surprise when it showed up on my viewscreen already. When I last blogged, I had received another set of coordinates to check out. Arriving there, I found three stars in very close proximity. I explored all three. Two of them were small systems, but when the third turned out to have nine planets orbiting a yellow sun (albeit a sun that had "flared," destroying all life in the system), I began to get excited. Sure enough, the third planet brought me to the screen at the top of this posting. I tried to land somewhere in the New York/Washington DC area. I encountered a barren and blasted landscape with "muddy brown oceans"--a subtle environmental dig? I'm sure there must be ruins here to find, but I can't find them. Each planet is quite large, and unless you have a previous clue about where to land, there's simply too much territory to explore. I tried landing in the areas of Los Angeles, London, and Tokyo, too, but to no avail. Despondent, I returned to Spaceport hoping for a new message with a clue, but I didn't have any. Selling my minerals, I realized I had lots of money with nothing to spend it on. My ship, as you can see, is already maxed out with equipment, and my characters are already maxed out with training. So I decided to head out and explore random planets until something interesting came along. I only spoke briefly about planets before, so let me expand on that now. When you enter a solar system, you see a central star with several rings around it representing the orbits of planets. Somewhere within each orbit is a single planet. The stars are color-coded according to how hot they are, ranging from red (coolest) to dark blue (hottest). Since I'm color blind, I pretty much just have to guess.

A solar system with five planets.

If you fly over one of the planets, you have the option to enter the planet's orbit. At this point, you can have your science officer scan it. I'm guessing that the completeness of the scan depends on the skill level of the science officer, but since I elevated mine to his maximum skill very quickly, I've never had anything but a complete scan. In scanning a planet, you're trying to figure out several things:

• Can I safely land on this planet?
• Is it worth landing to search for minerals and/or life forms?
• Can I recommend this planet for colonization?

The sensors alone tell you part of the story. This planet is an immediate non-candidate for colonization because it doesn't have any oxygen in the atmosphere and doesn't have any water in the hydrosphere. On the other hand, the lithosphere (the physical surface of the planet) has some valuable elements, and the sensors say that the mineral rating is 46. This is one of the higher figures I've seen. I don't know exactly what it represents, but on other planets anything higher than 25 or so has provided me all the minerals I can handle. There is, however, absolutely no life. The "analysis" of the sensors tells you even more. In this case, the gravity of the planet is only 2% of Earth gravity, meaning not only can I land safely, it will hardly cost me any fuel to leave. Such a low gravity would also rule out colonization, though, if the lack of oxygen and water didn't already. Also ruling out colonization would be the "inferno" temperature of the planet. But the "calm" global weather means I can probably explore for minerals without risking injury or death to my crew. This, in short, is a planet that I strip mine for minerals but not much else. As you explore a planet looking for minerals and ruins, your Terrain Vehicle uses a certain amount of fuel depending on the gravity, terrain, and weather. If all three are to your disadvantage, you might only be able to travel a few kilometers from your spaceship before you have to head back and refuel. If all three are on your side, you can venture dozens of kilometers away. The longer you can stay out, the more exploration you can accomplish, and the more minerals you can collect. Here, on the other hand, is a planet perfect for colonization. The previous screen told me that it had an oxygen/nitrogen atmosphere. Its gravity is exactly that of Earth, it has plenty of life and minerals, and the global weather is calm. The only strike against it is the temperature, which is a little hot, but not too hot. I can claim this planet in the name of Arth, log it, and get a hefty reward when I return to Spaceport. (If you accidentally recommend a bad planet, you get fined upon return to Spaceport, so you have to be careful.) This planet, I can't even safely land on. The gravity would crush my ship. Frankly, I don't know what the cutoff point is, but I've been avoiding planets with higher than 5.0 (5X that of Earth) gravity. While I was exploring to capture these images, I ran into an alien species I hadn't seen before. It looks like a blob with antennas coming out if it, and it's too clever for its own good.

I've met the Gazurtoid. The Gazurtoid are old enemies of mine. You, sir, are no Gazurtoid.

Unfortunately, on the "friendly" setting, these fools didn't tell me anything except how cool they are and how I should worship them. I was just about to figure out how they would respond to "hostile" when they abruptly cut communications and took off. I'm sure we'll meet again, mighty slugs. So I'm out of specific clues unless I want to head back to Earth and try to explore every inch of it. I guess I'll just bop around for a while and see if I can find any more aliens. I have plenty of money for fuel, after all. More tomorrow.

Starflight: Clues, Quests, and Combat

Finally! Sweet, juicy data banks.

The evening didn't start well. Literally every thing I did led to destruction, either at the hands of Mechans or Gazurtoids (more below), always after I'd spent an hour or so filling my hold with minerals.

For some reason, I kept playing, and things got better. Tonight I "solved" what feel like two major quests.

First, the Mechans. They hang around a planet about 20 sectors from the Spaceport, destroying any ship they contact. There was a notice about them in the operations room at Spaceport. Every time I met up with them, they would ask a series of questions, and I would get the answers "wrong," apparently, and they would destroy me. Finally, after some trial and error and common sense, I answered their questions in a satisfactory manner (essentially convincing them that I was their long-lost master), and they gave me access to their databanks. From them, I learned:

• The Old Empire was attacked by a variety of races called the Numlox (seriously? Are we going to have a species called the "Baxpase"?), the Phlegnak, the Uhlek, and the Gazurtoid. The attacks started in 3400 and lasted more than 400 years.
• The Old Empire had an organization called the Institute, which was a society of scientists and intellectuals who believed the Empire was going to be destroyed.
• The Institute conceived Project Noah, filling at least nine "ark" ships and sending them to various worlds for underground colonization so they could outlast the destruction of the Empire and save the human race.
• These Mechans were sent in 3479 to secure and terraform the planet where a colony called Heaven would be located. They were supposed to be followed a year later by Noah 9, but they never came (because the mission was sabotaged by Laytonites, as I discovered yesterday; I still don't know who they are).
• While waiting for Noah 9, the Mechans followed their programming and defended the planet from other races. They were attacked 14 times, twice so badly they had to retreat underground and repair themselves.

Having imparted this information, the Mechans allowed me access to Heaven, which was full of minerals. I loaded up greedily, logged the planet (renaming it "Utopia"), and returned to Spaceport for a nice reward.


For my second expedition of the evening, I tracked the coordinates I received two nights ago of some aliens who had a stolen a cloaking device. These aliens turned out to be the Gazurtoids, who have some issue with "air-breathers"--and I'm talking a biblical issue.


These evangelist aliens were defending the planet at the coordinates in question, but I finally bested one in battle, destroyed him, and looted my first ship.

Boo-ya.

On the planet--which I christened "Gazurtoida" and logged as colonizable--there was a king's ransom in minerals plus a "shimmering orb" which turned out to be the cloaking device. I haven't had a chance to use it in combat yet. I also visited a ruin where I received cryptic coordinates for yet another Old Empire ruin.

This is what I call a planet!

I think it's safe to say that this game is the best discovery of my CRPG project so far. I had never heard of it before a couple of weeks ago, and now I'm completely hooked. My only complaint is combat. You have to go through the process of raising your shields and arming your weapons and then "entering" combat while enemies are shooting at you. Some of their shots are incredibly lucky--I've died in a single shot before. Even once you have your shields and weapons ready, you attack by turning your ship so that it faces the enemy and you fire missiles or lasers. But such maneuverability is very tough, and I've only successfully completed it once. I do expect it to get easier, though, and in any event you can flee from most combats if you're quick.

After combat, you have to engage in the process of repairing your ship and healing your crew. This is where the engineer and the doctor come in. Some repairs require certain minerals, so I've taken to keeping a small supply of each type of mineral I find. Unfortunately, I didn't have cobalt when the situation called for it.


Tomorrow night, I have to teach a college class, but I think there's a reasonable chance that class will get out early. After all, I have a new pair of coordinates to explore, and I love putting together all of this lore to learn about the universe. It feels good to be living up to my title again.

Starflight: Artifacts and Aliens

I just had to see what would happen.

In my last posting, I said that I had a clue about ruins on the third planet of the home system, but I couldn't find any even though I'd strip-mined the planet for minerals. Well, it turned out I had miscounted. That was actually the fifth planet. When I realized my mistake, I went back to the third planet, and boy were there ruins.

 

I landed at six locations on the planet and found three or four ruins at each site and pulled artifacts from each one. More important, many of the ruins had endurium, the mineral that powers spacecraft. From around 15 units when I started, I had about 147 when I left the planet. Since endurium retails for 1000 credits each, this was a heck of a find.

Unfortunately, it cost one of my crew members his life. The planet was subject to hostile weather conditions, and Rigel was killed in an electrical storm. A lot of my other crew members took damage as I explored, too. But I returned to spaceport with a full hold and had more than enough money to train a new communications officer to a full skill level.

Alas, the artifacts turned out to be a disappointment. I had two existing artifacts that the Trade Depot assured me were useful, one having something to do with communications and the other providing a shield for my Terrain Vehicle. When I came back, I had 16 new artifacts, including:

• 3 quivering lumps
• 2 ticking spheres
• 2 oval objects
• 2 pretty pictures
• 1 strange cloth
• 1 glowing disc
• 1 metal ball
• 1 frightening apparatus
• 1 pyramid device
• 1 mobius device

 

Unfortunately, the Trade Depot told me that none of them were anything more than "historical curios" and offered me a slight amount of credits for each one. That was a lot of exploration for nothing. Is the Trade Depot shining me on, or are these things really worthless?

You know what? You're "totally useless" to me!

Anyway, with as much fuel as I had, I figured I was ready to start exploring the galaxy. I decided to head to the planet referenced in the "Tribble" clue from two days ago. On the way, though, I encountered my first aliens: the insectoid Veloxi. These aren't the same Veloxi from Arth, you understand, but distant cousins.

Distant bastard cousins.

I didn't cotton to their demands for three of my hard-earned fuel cells, so I said no. They responded by cutting off communications and attacking me. While I tried to figure out the combat interface...

 

Well...bollocks. Starflight is a permanent death game. Not only does it kill you, but it corrupts the save files so you have to reinstall the game to play it again.

Faced with the choice of having to start all over (and, frankly, probably moving on to Swords of Glass instead) or restoring from a backup of my saves, I chose the latter, even though I technically regard it as "cheating." I mean, I could have done that with Wizardry or Rogue and just taken all the challenge away.

This time, I played the encounter a little smarter and gave up the fuel. As you speak to each alien race, the game gives you the choice to be hostile, friendly, or obsequious. You then have the options to make statements or ask a series of questions. As you speak, the game represents your dialog according to your disposition. Take a simple question like "tell us about your race." The variations might be:

• Obsequious: "Oh, please, mighty ones. Can you enlighten us as to the glories of your magnificent race?"
• Friendly: "We are interested in establishing contacts with other races. Can you tell us about yours?"
• Hostile: "Transmit data about your species or be destroyed."

These are, therefore, I believe, the first real "dialog options" in a CRPG (aside from being able to answer yes or no to a few questions in Ultima IV). I don't know when we see this level of immersion in dialog again, but it's not for a while.

I chose to be "friendly" with the Veloxi and found out some clues, including they have something called the "Prophecy of the Egg," live under the direction of a queen, and believe themselves descendants of the Ancients. They also gave me a set of coordinates where they said they had been receiving a distress call from the Old Empire.

This went a little better.

Stopping off at my original goal, I picked up a new Old Empire message with yet another set of coordinates.

 

So far, so good. I then went to the coordinates given to me by the Veloxi and found the ruins of an Old Empire ship in space, and an abandoned camp from said ship on a nearby planet. A message indicated that the ship had been the Lasthope skippered by a Captain Shelenuf of the "Noah 9" expedition.

 

I assume, then, that Noah 2, which established Arth, was one of only many colonization missions around the same time. The cryptic message alludes to a sabotage of Noah 9 by the "Laytonites." There was also a reference I didn't understand to "mechans," which I took to mean androids.

After that, things got weird and went to hell, in that order. Heading back to Starport, I encountered this WTF ship with its equally WTF message:

 

I don't know binary off the top of my head, but I used an online converter and got a series of numbers: 1, 15, 0, 65, 3, 1, 28, 33, 24, 15, 31. No idea what these mean. The ship eventually left without telling me anything more useful.

Then, close to Starport, I ran into a ship of "mechans" right in the place where a message in Starport had told me that androids were destroying ships. I managed to screw up dialog with them twice. The first time, they asked if my ship was from Empire technology, and I said yes. Then they asked if I was Noah 9, and I truthfully said no. They attacked. I fled, returned to Starport, sold my goods, and repaired my ship.

 

Eager to solve the mystery of the androids, I returned to the same area and met them again. This time they asked me if I was a follower of Layton. Believing that Shelenuf's message indicated the mechans were in league with the Laytonites, I said yes. Big mistake.

 

So, now I'm faced with the prospect of cheating again to keep playing and work out these mysteries. Or maybe I'll be true to my rules and start completely over. I'll mull it over tonight and decide tomorrow. It remains a fun game, and I can tell there's some interesting lore to uncover along the path to the main quest.

In the meantime, I'd appreciate any confirmation of my binary!