Monday, March 16, 2009

Heroine Rids Galaxy Of Threat: Uhlek Brain World Destroyed!

It was time to finally deal with those nasty Uhlek once and for all. Working on information gained from the Spemin (yeah, I know), I made my way deep into Uhlek space, jumping at every stray encounter. There was only one, and I was sure I was dead. But it was only a Minstrel. Pesky poety thing, shoo now! You scared me half to death! You should be ashamed of yourself. Anyway, on arriving at the Uhlek Brain World (not Brian World, as the codewheel program would have it), I scooped up as many creatures as I could. Let's face it: nobody was gonna see them in their native environment again any time soon. I dropped one of my black egg devices, then got back into the ship and lifted off.

Once back in orbit, I took a last look at the Uhleks' brain and waved farewell. I received a countdown from the black egg, and then... no more Uhlek! Do the happy dance with me! Due to technical difficulties I can't present a screencap of the fateful moment at this time (Silly VLC player! You do not play nicely with screencapping!). Now I don't have to worry about anyone brutally murdering me or my crew. 'Cos I can take the rest of the races in this game. Me an' my ship, bristling with weaponry. Grr. Next stop: the Crystal Planet!

Monday, March 09, 2009

My God ... it's full of ... cosmic junk!

It was more or less at this point that I realised I had too much crap in my inventory. There's a glitch or oversight that caps the number of items you can hold in your ship's cargo manifest. I have a cubic buttload of artifacts I've been meaning to pawn off on the Thrynn, a stack of messages recorded on various planets, and more lifeform data and specimens than I probably should. *Insert Data singing 'Life-forms!' from the TNG movie here* This, my friends, is what sadness looks like. A hold a quarter empty with too many entries for the ship's computer to handle, and a screen teeming with Spemin vessel wrecks. All that Endurium, wasted! *sob*

Speaking of Endurium, the City of the Ancients is a sight to behold. To a Starflight player, at least one who hasn't spent too much time smashing Gazurtoid to bits and getting really really loaded up on Endurium, the sheer amount of fuel in the City will take your breath away. Holy Hannah. I had to go back twice to pick it all up. Well, I used to have room in my cargo pods for stuff... oh well. Back to Starport!

Tuesday, March 03, 2009

Enter the Spemin

I spent some time mining and recommending colony worlds and harvesting the flora and fauna of neighboring worlds for a while until I could equip my ship properly. It was about that time I bumped into my very favourite race in Starflight. They're blue, they have antennas and an ego the size of the Cloud Nebula. They're the blobbies you love to hate: give it up now for the Spemin! The comic relief of Starflight, the Spemin are not much of a threat. After a while, if you're anything like me, you'll tire of bowing down to these wee blobbies and of listening to them spout off about themselves and how disgusting you humans are and just start smashing them out of the sky. A few encounters' worth of that and they'll come crawling to you: "Pleeeeease don't hurt us! Think of our little blobbies back home!" Or, my personal favourite quote in the entire game: "We were only kidding about blowing you to pieces. Smerg, smerg, smerg, wasn't that a funny joke?" I've been off travelling elsewhere in the galaxy, finding artifacts, making trouble, avoiding getting horribly killed by the Uhlek, and now I've returned to Spemin space in a ship bristling with weapons and devices that pretty much ensure the blobs have a snowball's chance in the heart of a Class O star of standing up to me.

God, it's fun to atomise them. I made an attempt to get onto their homeworld, thinking the City of the Ancients was there. While they're easy enough to swat, they call for a lot of backup, and though the backup is as easily dispatched, I could never seem to actually get to the homeworld orbit. I destroyed every ship I could see, moved off, and ended up outside orbital range again. Anyway, it turned out the City of the Ancients is not on the Spemin homeworld. Which is good, because I think the artifact located at the City is one you can't complete the game without.