The best tactics for dealing with Slylandro Probes at the start

star-control-2

Is there a good way of dealing with Slylandro Probes at the start of Star Control 2?

"Start" means: you have Precursor ship (generally very weak offensively/defensively but loaded out with engines and half-loaded with turning thrusters), with no upgrades yet; an Earth Cruiser or two; a single Spathi ship and 4 Pkunk Furies.

The following tactics seem to NOT work:

  1. Run away in hyperspace:

    "No upgrades yet" means that Probes are at least as fast as your ship is in hyperspace, so you seemingly can't outrun them without moving 100% straight line, for LONG distances (which I can't yet afford due to fuel limitations).

  2. Escape every fight once it's joined

    Not very optimal as it costs 5 fuel per escape (and several crewmen while the probe hits you since escape isn't instantaneous).

  3. Try to fight every single probe that attacks you. But how?

    • your main ship

      The cannon is too weak and ship's turning too slow to use the main ship to fight.

    • an Earth Cruiser

      Seems too slow to keep distance, and the probe easily evades the missiles.

    • a single Spathi ship

      No plausible tactics I can think of

    • 4 Pkunk Furies.

      Marginally effective, but I can't get anywhere better than trading 2-3 Furies per one probe with my tactics. NOT scalable.

Please note that this question pertains to the game beginning, before you have good cannon upgrades on main ship (which is how I remember killing the probes before) and before you have enough range to go meet Slylandro.

Best Answer

The Earth cruiser, despite otherwise sucking pretty bad, is actually decent against Slylandro probes. Practice in quick battle mode for a while, just a lot of Earth cruisers vs. Slylandro probes, until you're good at it. The strategy I use against the probes:

  • Keep your distance. Basically stay as far away as the battle map lets you. The probes have no long range weapons, just the lightning thing that only works if the probe is right on top of you. Also, your missiles work better if they have a long way to travel (unintuitive but true!). 3 missile hits will kill a probe.
  • If it closes and blasts you a bit with the lightning, try to keep it away from asteroids. The lightning has a limited charge; a probe can't kill an Earth cruiser on one charge. It will recharge if it hits an asteroid, but it generally isn't smart enough to go get it. So once it's blown its wad, it sometimes just buzzes back and forth next to you without doing anything... as long as you stay away from the asteroids. Feel free to blast it with the point defense laser when it closes in, too.
  • The point defense laser can also be used to blow up asteroids, if you somehow beat the probe to them. Not sure how I recommend doing this.
  • Supposedly the probe will back off if you aim your guns at it; this allows the Spathi ship to be extremely effective with the BUTT missiles. I didn't know this but this source claims it is so.
  • Go visit the Slylandro planet as soon as you can manage it. They live in the north-west corner of the galaxy, on a gas giant planet. Prioritize fuel and speed upgrades until you can get there, and they'll give you the code to make the probes self-destruct. Alternatively, one of the exits from Quasispace is pretty close to the Slylandro planet, but you'll want to get the Portal Spawner first so that you can use Quasispace to get home as well. As an added bonus, the probes are the fastest NPCs in hyper (as fast as the Progenitor ship with 10/11 speed upgrades), so once you're fast enough to dodge them, you can run away from anything else in space.