I liked Elite, and Frontier as well (but the less said about First Encounters, the better), but I really don't think that gameplay style is suitable for a Star Control sequel. If anything, I'd like more strategy in a sequel.

That said, making a cockpit-view 3D game in the Star Control universe is not a bad idea at all. Such a game could be to Star Control what Privateer was to Wing Commander.

Hair, or feathers for that matter, doesn't necessarily have anything to do with keeping warm.

For instance, all spiders have hair covering their legs (and some, including all tarantulas, have it on the rest of their bodies as well). This hair has many nerve endings, and serves to give the spider a very sensitive sense of touch.

Some early dinosaurs (from periods in which it is likely that most or all dinosaur species were exothermic) may have had feathers. These didn't help them keep warm (both hair and feathers are useless for that in exothermic animals), but they may have had texturing and colour making them suitable for camouflage.

In humans, body hair is pretty much vestigial, and is mostly trait of sexual dimorphism. Even in a very hairy human male, the body hair gives no significant protection against cold.

In short, Precursors covered in hair doesn't necessarily imply they come from a cold climate.

....and of course, the less said about the SC3 Precursor story, the better.

MOO!

I could never understand why the Precursors were so big. It even seems unlogical to me that elephant -sized beings would be such intelligent: they'd be very busy eating a lot of food instead of inventing great things 

Well ... that is certainly the case for very large land creatures on Earth.

However, that doesn't really need to be a universal constant.

What if their planet housed large and extremely energy- and nutrient-rich lifeforms that could feed even a Precursor for a long time, and their digestive systems could take a long time to break such food down, continually providing the Precursor with energy in the process?

What if Precursors were exothermic (say, because they lived in a continually warm climate where endothermism was not a major benefit anyway)? Their hair could be for other purposes (camouflage, for instance, or socially-related, like sexual dimorphism) than keeping them warm. Even large exothermic creatures can comfortably subsist on very small amounts of food compared to endothermic ones -- keeping a constant body temperature is quite expensive. Incidentally, that'd also give the Precursors longer lifespans (and longer time to sit around and think about great inventions).

What if Precursors evolved, like blue whales and whale sharks, to feed on very large amounts of microorganisms? If their atmosphere was rich in mobile flitting microorganisms, then a filter-feeder could eat constantly, even while sitting around thinking about great inventions.

We still need to explain why a very large creature would benefit from high intelligence. If they were so large that they had no major natural enemies, then their intelligence would probably have arisen for dealing with increasingly complex social interactions (as in Earth primates, cetaceans and elephants), or for dealing with deception (as in some of the more intelligent Earth avians, such as corvids). Alternately, they might have evolved on a planet where *everything* is very big, where even the giant Precursors had to deal with gigantic, nightmarish predators.

Well.... Pretty much everything is way better than Drones, really.

The Slylandro knew them, and called them the "Shaggy Ones" -- so we know that much. Furthermore, the manual mentions that they're very large compared to humans.

I've always pictured them as gigantic towering humanoids, covered in hair. I've always pictured their hair as having basically warm, earthen tones, like brown, tan or green. Some similarity, like Valaggar suggested, to a Norse Troll or Jotun. For whatever reason, I've always assumed they had tails, looking somewhat like the tails of donkeys (which, incidentally, many modern artists and animators put on Norse Trolls). I've always imagined them leaning more towards muscular than fat, though.

I always had a weird mental image of their voices -- something like an Ent from LOTR with a more melodic pronounciation.

Heh. The second time I completed the game, I got hold of a single Druuge Mauler from them (I forget what I traded, but it wasn't slaves), and once everything was ready, I waited for the Kohr-Ah to start their killing spree and wipe out Druuge society. Then I attacked and destroyed the Sa-Matra, ending the game.

That way, I was indirectly responsible for destroying the oppressive and corrupt Druuge society, but preserving the race (in the form of the Druuge captain and possibly crew of my single Mauler).

....yes, I get a megalomaniacal streak in most games where I get to rule anything. >:-)

Heh, possible.

I made it through on the first try, but I gather that that was probably just me being extremely lucky.

Oh, yes, the ending. It was very poor -- pretty much the definition of anti-climax. They could at least have made an end animation, or even just a somewhat longer "what happened afterwards" story. Legend are not too shabby at pulling those off -- most of "the good ending" of Mission Critical is just a story about how electronic life and humanity work together in replacing Earth with a Dyson sphere, etc. etc.

The whole premise of "collecting sentience" seemed to me to not fit particularly well within the mostly non-magical Star Control universe. Which is really sort of odd, given that Legend have made several hard science fiction games (the aforementioned Mission Critical being a prime example). I suppose the story team of SC3 didn't do their homework.

*shrug*

Personally, I don't think SC3 is as bad as everyone pretends it is. It's nowhere near as good as either SC or SC2, but honestly, I've played games that were lots worse. I actually managed to complete SC3 without resorting to a walkthru and without the storyline grinding to a halt, but that was probably mostly a matter of luck, judging from other people's experiences.

I liked the colony management aspect, and a few of the new races (the Ktang, Owa and the Xchagger seemed to me to be fairly close to the general "feel" of races in SC2). I liked the Ur-Quan, and found it plausible that after a period of turmoil, they eventually joined the League and became one of its more loyal members. I didn't like how the Yehat and Pkunk had apparently merged into a single race, I didn't like the whole idea of Precursors being cows, and I think the original SC2 races were largely mistreated. The colony management aspect, while basically a good idea, suffered from the problem that it didn't really matter in the game.

My overall conclusion was that SC3 was a mediocre game with some annoying flaws, and that it wasn't really worthy of the SC name. It wasn't as bad as ET on the Atari or other abominations like that.

Also, Legend actually made some very good games. I loved Mission Critical, the only flaw of which (in my taste) was that it was over too quickly. I liked both of the Gateway games. They should probably have stuck to original stories or literary SF, though.

Actually -- just to pick nits -- the particular piece of tech that makes the Precursor vessel's weapon systems actually hit stuff is not human, it's Melnorme. And given the nature of the Melnorme, it's possible that they didn't invent it themselves, but either bought it from someone (the Keel-Verezy are implied to know a thing or two about weapons technology), or found it lying around somewhere. It's possible that the targeting system is itself a Precursor invention, discovered or bought by the Melnorme.

I'm 0x1B years old, although my 0x1Cth birthday is coming up in a couple o' months.

Seems likely. The Umgah are intelligent and have probably known interstellar travel for a long time. Also, a race such as the Spathi would be a great discovery for the Umgah: Paranoid and continually scared, and unlikely to retaliate, the Spathi are pretty much the perfect target of pranks and practical jokes. The Umgah seem to have a general history of playing tricks on the Spathi, including convincing them that they were under attack by The Grand Master Planet Eaters, Jud the Vug and Killmaster 18, and an incident where they clogged the life support systems of an entire fleet of Eluders with a stench agent. They've probably done many other things to the Spathi even before they became a technological species -- and it seems pretty likely that the Evil Ones are in fact an Umgah genetic creation.

This, of course, means that the Umgah pretty much accidentally uplifted the Spathi -- although I'm sure the Spathi are not exactly grateful for that.

You can't remove the Ilwrath fleet by force, but fortunately for you, Ilwrath are none-too-bright religious fanatics that are easily manipulated. There is another race, intelligent and mischievous by nature, which in the past has used the unquestioning and religious nature of the Ilwrath to trick them -- it may be wise to learn what they did, and copy their technique.

Simon's Law of Star Control Fandom:

The emotional intensity and general shrillness of any discussion about Star Control increases as one goes down the following scale:

Storyline,
Sequels and spin-offs,
Voice acting,
Utwig Voice Acting

PS: I also think this project is silly.