Ships, again...

A big issue you have at this point is that you decided on weapons and secondary abilities without really considering how they relate tactically to ship design. If this were any game other than Star Control, this wouldn't be such a big issue. But the “uniqueness” of the ship combat that fans of SC perceive comes from the fact that at least one person involved with making the original Star Control games understood the tactics and ship design of this particular “combat environment”. They created that uniqueness intentionally.

The Mycon I have been mentioning a lot lately is a great example again. The Mycon was a “perfect” design within this body of tactical knowledge. It regenerates health, which is far too powerful of a capability. So they made it barely move, so any ship can easily catch up too it and shoot at it. Then they gave it a “Type-R Plasma Torpedo” (It's Romulan, you saw Spock's dad shoot one at Kirk in one of the best Star Trek episodes ever). This is a weapon that, more than anything else, “influences movement”. It forces you to run away from it. You see the dichotomy here? The “uniqueness” of the Mycon came from a perfect design within the tactics of the situation.

As the SCO ships stand right now, they have essentially been randomly assigned their weapons and secondary abilities. It was based on the lore, instead of using different types of weapons and ship designs to create ships that fight in singularly unique ways within the actual combat environment that exists. Like the Mycon was. A few of my suggestions this time around would involve replacing some of the current weapons or secondary abilities to achieve a similar kind uniqueness of ship design that the original Star Control games had.

The ships of Star Control achieve the uniqueness they are known for by intentionally violating the “laws of 2D ACM” in two directions at the same time. Like the Mycon above. The simplest example would be a ship that is too slow, but has a weapon that is too powerful for having such a long range. This is why I say your own Trandals is already a perfect design for Star Control, its Speed Boost is off-the-charts too good... but its weapon is so bad that it makes up for that.

So this weekend I am going to play SCO a lot and then sometime next week I'll reply to this post with some suggestions for all of the ships, making some of the ships work according to this “Star Control tradition” while also having some “straight combat” designs among them like the Tywom.  I'm also reading all the lore info from the founders updates so I get the "flavor" of the races better.