Back in college, one of my favorite games was Star Control for the Amiga. I spent many hours in my sophomore year playing Star Control melee with my roommate Chad and our friend Doug, in my dorm room (on the third floor of Hong-Lim House, Oakes College, UC Santa Cruz).

That year, I had also met Valentin Pepelea at a meeting of BADGE, The Bay Area Amiga Developers’ Group. BADGE was a users’ group (or in modern parlance, a meetup) for software developers who developed for the Commodore Amiga. Valentin worked for Accolade, the publisher of Star Control.

At some point, Valentin learned of my love for Star Control, told me that Accolade was working on a sequel, and asked me if I had any ideas for new ships.

I thought about it, wrote up a few ideas, and sent them off. And to my delight, some of my ideas made it into Star Control II.

In the years that followed, I never game it much thought, but I’ve recently come to realize that the Star Control series had a much larger fanbase than I realized. So for the sake of history, below is the email I sent Valentin. I don’t know exactly when it was sent (I don’t have the actual email archive, just the text I prepared), but it probably would have been Spring, 1991. Following the email is my analysis of what ships seemed to use what ideas.

---

Valentin,
     You asked for some ship ideas at the last BADGE meeting; I've come up
with four.

(Official notice)
I hearby waive all my copyright rights in regards to these four ship ideas.
They may be used in the original and/or modified form without any
obligation to their designer (although I wouldn't mind a mention in the
manual if you do use them; I'm not requiring it, though).

-----cut here------

Ship A:
-------
Shaped something like this (I'm only doing a diagram for the first ship,
since it's the only one whose shape really matters):
                           |     |
                           |     |
                           |     |
                            \ n /
                             [ ]
                             [_]
     This ship's primary weapon is the pair of prongs sticking out of the
front. These are electrical conductors; electricity builds up in one
prong, then jumps across the space inbetween the prongs. If there's a ship
inbetween the prongs when this happens, it gets damaged.

     The 'n' in the diagram is a tractor-beam generator. When the pilot
pulls back on the joystick, a tractor beam comes out of the 'n' and pulls
whatever it can lock onto (such as a ship) toward the ship's prongs, so
that when the enemy ship comes between the prongs, they can be damaged with
the ship's primary weapon.

Ship B:
-------

     This ship's primary weapon is a weak gun-type weapon, sort of like the
Shofixti's gun. It's secondary (defensive?) weapon is a omnidirectional
energy pulse. Basically, when the pilot pulls back on the joystick, a
circle of energy radiates out from the ship, getting weaker the farther it
travels (think of it as the sort of wave you get if you drop something into
a large amount of water). Ships, etc. get damaged/destroyed when the run
into the expanding energy wavefront.

Ship C:
-------

     Primary weapon: some gun of moderate strength (perhaps like the
Syreen's). The defensive 'weapon' is the more interesting of the ship's
capabilities: when the pilot pulls back, the ship is made 'transparent' to
surrounding matter. This means that it can pass through asteriods and
planets; enemy weapons won't have any effect on it, etc.

Ship D:
-------

     Again, the primary weapon can be whatever you want, as the secondary
weapon is the interesting bit of this ship. When the pilot pulls back, the
ship launches of a 'circle of confusion', which homes in on the enemy ship.
When it reaches the enemy ship, it surrounds it and causes the pilot of the
enemy ship to loose control of that ship for a period of time (10
seconds?); picture a ship turning and thrusting randomly.

-----cut here-------

Well, that's all I can think of for the time being. I'll let you know
if I have any more ideas.
-Dave Schreiber

---

It’s been many years since I played Star Control II, so I’ve had to use online Wikis and YouTube videos to refresh my memory as to what ideas appeared where. Let me know if there’s anything I’ve missed.

Ship A proposes a ship with a tractor beam, which the Chmmr Avatar has. The primary weapon idea wasn’t used, though the Avatar has dual “prongs” on the front of the ship (in a much reduced form).

Ship B proposes a ship with an expanding ring of destructive energy, which is the secondary weapon (the “Flame Corona”) on the Kohr-Ah Marauder.

Accolade didn’t seem to use any of the ideas with Ship C.

Ship D proposed a ship with a secondary weapon that disables the other ship. The Melnorme Trader has a weapon, the “stunner”, which seems to be based on this idea.

As I said at the beginning, Star Control was one of my favorite games. Though I never got my mention in the manual, that’s not important. I’m just delighted to have contributed to the series, and hope that Star Control fans had a lot of fun fighting with the Avatar, Marauder, and Trader.