I am not a fan of the space combat, but barring that this is a fantastic game that I discovered very late on in my adulthood. The sense of adventure and exploration is unmatched IMHO.
I played the Sega Genesis game with duels and you actually used all the abilities of every ship in the various matchups. In this game, 90% of the ships are worse than your flagship, like so much worse it isn't even fun to experiment with them.
Yeah, it's either crushing everyone with an invincible upgraded flagship, or mastering the delicate art of the Secret Spathi butt-torpedo strafing run and save-scumming whenever you accidentally lose your 1 Spathi ship.
I loved the melee mode in the original Star Control for the combat, and I love Star Control 2 for the exploration and the story.
Ah, interesting, yeah that's fair tbh, most of them are pretty terrible choices.
I typically enjoy using all of the mushroom guys, the spathi, the one really advanced race that's not the ur quan, the ur quan and the pkunk? But even those, most of them yeah just aren't very good.
Splattercatgaming: Starsector Is the King of Sci Fi Open Galaxy RPGs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvrkZxyayO8