Submission #6492: artbreeder's Genesis Star Control "Melee mode, Alliance" in 01:43.10

Star Control. Melee: Alliance.

Star Control is a game hybrid borrowing elements from Asteroids and Archon. The game mode in this run is called melee. In the melee mode the goal is to destroy all spacecraft of the enemy faction. There are two factions, Hierarchy and Alliance. Both factions have 7 unique spacecraft. Each spaceraft has a normal attack and a special attack. Each ship also has unique rules for fuel consumption and fuel regeneration.

I choose Alliance because after some testing it seems faster. I choose Chenjesu as my champion because it has a very strong weapon with practically infinite reach. A direct hit delivers 6 damage. Each crystal fragment deals 2 damage. Some spacecraft have a large hull, so many fragments can hit at once. The maximum damage that I can deliver with a single shot is with five crystal fragments exploding close to the hull of Vux, for a a total of 10 damage. Opportunities for a shot like that are rare. In the heat of the battle it is often better to do a direct hit or even just a small fragmentary hit. I never use the special attack of Chenjesu because it deals no direct damage and wastes all my fuel which regenerates slowly.

The special move of Ilwrath is invisilibity. It does not work this time because I know where it is.

This is the hardest battle. The enemy is very strong and can easily kill you. We take a lucky position for sniping. Look out! Asteroids!

Lucky to get Mycon spawn this close to me. Often it spawns at the other side of the starfield. I also get a friendly asteroid that interrupts Mycon's attempted escape. Very lucky battle.

Vux always spawns close to the player. It is an ambush spacecraft.

Spathi is very afraid of the shots. That is why I need to wait before shooting. Otherwise Spathi escapes.

I predict the spawn coordinates and immediately hit Umgah with a normal crystal shot, direct hit. Then I snipe the last remaining crew with sniper fragment shot.

Very hard to get good spawn location for the enemy.

slamo: Given the clunkiness of maneuvering and the limitations on the firing angles, I'm satisfied with the optimization of this run. We can consider Melee to be an individual game because it's independent from other game modes and has a well-defined ending. You mentioned that using Alliance is faster than Hierarchy, but both runs can actually coexist. We consider each of these choices to be separate game modes because the opponents are completely different (ship choices are still limited to whichever one is optimal).

The feedback wasn't that great, and I thought the run was a bit repetitive despite being fairly short, so this can't be put into Moons. Thankfully because we've established this run as a separate game mode, this is still Vaultable. Accepting to Vault.

fsvgm777: Processing.