Star Control 3 Walkthrough/Tips

written by Matthew Lam

Well, I won the game in about 4 days, + 1-2 hours or so. The game is great, and it took me a lot of non-stop playing to finish.

Table of Contents

Here's some tips:

Whenever you don't know what to do, consult ICOM. Ask him questions more than once, sometimes he'll give you a different tip. After he's told you all the current advice, however, he'll start repeating his messages over again.

I got stumped a few times in the game. When you don't know what to do next, either search unexplored star systems, or talk with all the different races, even the enemies. Sometimes they will say something that will let you progress in the game.

My Strategies for Building Bases:

From reading newsgroup discusions, I've noticed that some people are a little shakey on building and managing bases. The instruction booklet doesn't tell you a lot, so here's some pointers.

  1. How quickly things are done really depends on the number of people working on it. By moving the sliders, you change the number of people/aliens working on each project. This number is represented by the numerical value above the slider. Therefore, the more workers at a colony, the quicker things will be done.
  2. After you have a few bases, you should want them all to reach their maximum potential as quickly as possible. For this purpose, I put the sliders for Mines, Refinery, and Factory at the maximum (or close to it), and put everything else at nothing, or near zero. However, make sure to come back later when all of the factory work is done so you can have ships, fuel, and other stuff built.
  3. Some people have said they put about 30 workers on a new colony, others say 50 or more is a better idea. I think that 30 should be an absolute minimum, and 50 is a good number to average on. With the previous tip on building, 30 people will be divided up into groups of 10, which will cause the improvement of the colony to be very slow.
  4. At the start of the game, you start with people on your ship. I transferred them the main earthling colony just to speed up production. Also, I found that by keeping the number of humans on Helios 3 to above 200, I could come back there for research, fuel, and such, since it could be built more quickly. I kept it as my base of operations most of the game.
  5. One of the biggest follies I've heard players doing is trying to get ships to build as fast as possible. DON'T DO THIS!! Why not? 1st off, you won't need that many ships. Regardless of what the instruction booklet hints at, you don't need to leave behind any forces to guard your colonies! (They should have put that in the game, though) So, I found I only needed a few ships for the entire game. (I lost maybe 20 max. more likely about 10) My second reason for keeping ship production low is it will decrease the efficiency of the colony! When you build a ship, it is automatically crewed by the workers at the colony, thereby decreasing the population. Not good! I did that for one colony at the beginning of the game, and the colony ended up to be amazingly slow. The more ships that are produced, the longer it will take to make the next one. So what should you do with all your workers? Read on!
  6. Fuel. Fuel is the biggest factor in the game. Without, you're stuck! And waiting for enough fuel to go somewhere, and make a return trip takes forever! Until you near the end of the game, you'll never seem to have enough fuel. So, here's what I do. After following the 2nd tip on colony production, I wait until factory production is done. As in, there's nothing else to build. After that, I dropped the Refinery slider to zero, or a low number, and put Fuel Refinery to maximum priority.
  7. Also, landing pods aren't that big a deal. Sure, in the beginning of the game you need them big time. However, I found I only used about 30 max in the entire game. Some colonies where left with landing pod construction on a low level, so when I returned looking for fuel, by the end of the game I still had about 125 pods or so. What a waste! In case you haven't noticed, they don't get used up when you start a Precursor artifact dig. So when it comes to landing pods, at the start, build em, but once you have enough, go for fuel.

Your Guide to the Kessari Quadrant

  • Alien Homeworlds
  • Rainbow Worlds
  • Anomalies
  • Other Important Locations
    •

    Important Note: Not all of these locations can be reached at the start of the game. Only by gaining information by investigation or from other races can uncover the locations of some systems. Sometimes the passage of time is also required.

    Alien Homeworlds:

    League of Sentient Races

    The Hegemonic Crux

    Other Kessari Quadrant Races

    Rainbow Worlds

    Precursor Artifacts/Anomalies:

    Other Important Locations

    Important Note: Not all of these locations can be reached at the start of the game. Only by gaining information by investigation or from other races can uncover the locations of some systems. Sometimes the passage of time is also required.

    That's all the tips I can think of, for now. The following is more or less of a walkthrough/spoiler, so don't read anything unless you're stuck. No cheating!!!!

    Walkthrough:

    Here's a spoiler on races: which one's you can count on in the long run

    The Walkthrough - Here it is!

    I apologize for the delays to create the walk through. I was very busy with school work and it wasn't that simple to replay the game and write everything down. Also, the walkthrough was rushed, so a new, more organized version will be made later.

    If you still have questions (and/or comments), e-mail me mlam@borg.com

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    Disclaimer: I have no affiation what so ever with Star Control 3. Star Control 3 is produced by Accolade. I am only a gamer who has won the game.