I heard some people say that the mmrnmhrm and Chenjesu united to make a new race: chmmr, but the thought of the entire race just vanishing is an absurd thought to me.
I shall post to the forum if any results are made.

He does bring up an excellent point. I doubt that despite reports that "all chenjesu and mmrnmhrm" no longer exist, that logically there would still be several runaways from each race that would abhor the thought of being joined with an alien being with a totally different biology. Evolutionary development or not.

Well... answering the question in terms of preference and not merely combat ability..

*points at title*
Marauder for style, (of course!) because it has a brutally wicked style to it. Flinging dense metal blades at anything far away, and plasma-frying everything that dares come near it. It just has an aura of 'do not mess with me' to it.

Though for aesthetics, I'd have to say Slyandro Probe. It's probably the prettiest ship (well, technically not a ship but more an exploration satellite) I've ever seen.

Well, alright. Combat ability? Orz Nemesis, for the same listed reasons that all the other Nemesis fans in this post have stated.

Once you learn about Quasi-Space, time hardly becomes a constraint anymore. But before Quasi-Space, just visiting the Supox and Utwig alone takes an insanely long time. Providing you even know where to look for them in the first place.

I still hold out with the other guys who said it was entirely based on recharging your batteries while dying.  And the size of the blast that kills you.  And if it's a Tuesday in game time.  And the phase of the moon, solar magnetic radiation flux, mother's maiden name, and several other factors so secret you'd need to pay the Melnorme giga-Credits to find out.

You know, sorta like whether or not blowing on a NES cart makes it work.  The algorithm is totally NP-incomplete.  Trust me.  

Found another one: screaming out "Hallelujah" at the moment of death.

And blowing on a NES cartridge definitely helps; the effectiveness of using the actual cleaners they sold you for it on the other hand is completely obscure.

What the hell happened to the Syreen in SC3? They used to be beautiful babes once...in SC3 they had become ugly tarts...

[waits for the joke]

I suppose you could argue that the race is as varied as humans are, with both attractive and unattractive members of their species in existence. Though Hayes makes that point iffy with his commentry about the race as a whole:

Most raw recruits see the Syreen as nothing more than warm, breathing pin-ups.
Warm they are, and yes, they do breathe most magnificently but Captain, they are far more than simple joy units.

I remember a trick where you go to the Phunk home planet and they give you 4 ships, you could go back to SOL sell all 4, then return to the Phunk planet and they give you 4 more.  Repeat until filthy rich

Strange, I never managed to get them to offer any additional ships beyond the first 4, even if I visited them over a year later as I've been told you can do.
But you can also do that trick with Yehat rebels I believe.
Though by that point in the game I doubt you'd need RU that badly.

Yeah, I think we all instinctively went to the big stars first and lost a couple landers.  They're just so much BIGGER !  If only they didn't incinerate you.

You have to admit though, when you see the pair of Ruby Worlds in Alpha Centauri and their mega-sized deposits, it's really hard not to brave the hotspots to fill up your cargo holds. I usually self-impose a rule to make my gameplay 'fairer', which is to never visit worlds unless they've been referred to directly by someone I've talked with, and never reload a saved game after a failed mining trip.

Kohr-Ah, of course.
It sounds so wickedly evil and ominous.
The first time I played SuperMelee, I hadn't encountered Kohr-Ah in the Full Game yet, and I just thought they were so evilly cool.
I found myself praying that they were going to eventually be on my side.

They obviously weren't.

The Zoq-Fot-Pik ditty is cute as well, mostly because it's so seldom heard. But it's got that little bit of cutesy-lil-guys theme to it as well.

Star Control 3 wasn't HORRIBLE... it just wasn't very good. It doesn't hold a candle to the story and the RPG gameplay in Star Control 2. Star Control 2 sucks you into the story. I mean, I got to the Zoq-Fot-Pik to late and they were all killed. I was genuinely sad :-(

I remember the first time I played. I didn't even bother visiting Rigel or learning about the Zot-Foq-Pik until the Kohr-Ah started their demolition rampage. Then just out of random chance I wandered into their system and found their demolished civilization and I was thinking, "Neat, an abandoned alien city! Nice touch." Hehe, oops.  

Umgah Drones, i guess. The Umgah specialize in bio-technology, but  they don't really apply such technology in a Drone.. afterall, its just machinery (from what we see).

Not a very good fighting machine, anyways, but still a machine nonetheless.

Well, they do *shudder* plaster the insides with living tissue. Though I admit, a ship with biological capabilities would be rather interesting. I could imagine some sort of biological equivalent to VUX limpets, Mycon regeneration, or Chenjesu DOGIs... (though the last are mechanical and not biological--they still give off disturbing screams upon obliteration).

I'd have to say it's the fact that the Kohr-Ah and Kzer-Za managed to discover so many races all over the quadrant and destroy/enslave all of them, and yet they totally missed the Zot-Foq-Pik which have been sitting in their backyard for the last twenty years.

Then again, they might've dismissed them as non-sentinent life forms, which also explains why there's actual life forms still left on Arcturus and its moon.

Though that's another point of argument I have. I don't imagine it's particularly easy to shift out sentient and non-sentinent life from each other when you're conducting orbital bombardment. Why *did* the Kohr-ah leave so many planets with life on them? It's not like a clever race couldn't find a way to camoflauge themselves amongst the other life forms on the planet. Not to mention it might be a pain to have to return when said life forms reach sentience.

Then again, I suppose Kohr-Ah live to cleanse. Leaving non-sentient life alive is a way of ensuring that they have something left to do in several million years, I suppose.

Having never played 3D0, I'll have to go by the PC version.

Quasispace for its ethereality.
Yehat for sounding...inspirational.
Kzer-Za for being so ominous.

Hey..there is a suggestion... how about moving the locations of the Rainbow planets.. it would give old players a reason to explore again!

I also think randomizing Rainbow Worlds (and the quantity/locations/environments of all other Worlds/Stars) would put a bit of replayability into the game. Not a lot, but definitely some. For me, a lot of the original satisfaction of the game (beyond meeting races and gathering hints about what to do/where to go, which really can't be randomized) was exploring worlds for mineral content. It takes a lot of the satisfaction out of starting a new game if you already know precisely where to go to gather all your Melnorme Trading Credits and Exotic minerals.

I possibly couldnt agree more. I have played the original SC2 ONCE through with my 386/33 system. Then I lost the starmap and wasnt able to play it again .

Finally, I reinstalled the game with crack (remember, I DO have bought the game, just lost the starmap) on my p3/500 system, but unfortunately the graphics card (voodoo3) did not work at all, I just got blurred screen when starting. Might have been the crack, too

Same thing happened to me; it worked fine on my 386/33, but it fell apart on all pentiums I attempted to run it on, even when I tried to run it in DOS-mode. UQM is a rather welcome thing to know about.

I'd have to say Orz.
Ominous and diabolical as they likely are, I can't help but find their speech simply adorable. Even if it isn't intentional on their part.