Characters / Space Rangers

Player character

• Adventurer Archaeologist: The player takes on this role in a few text adventure mini-games, solving a simple puzzle for a team of more traditional archaeologists.
• Ambiguous Criminal History: The Mercenary start in the second game will give you some pirate rating, along with a few damaged relationships, but the details of what you did aren't explained.
• Anti-Hero: You can go all over the scale, depending on what you do, down to being a Nominal Hero. Fully completing HD, in particular, requires performing some anti-heroic actions, as you won't be able to advance in the Pirate Clan otherwise.
• Becoming the Mask: Although the Ranger program encourages you to join the Pirate Clan in order to destroy it from within, it's extremely easy for you to become more of a menace than the rest of the Clan. The end of the storyline even allows you to become the Clan's baron, ultimately making it stronger than ever.
• Big Bad Slippage: During the Pirate Clan questline, you start as a regular pirate. By the end of it, however, you're given the option to become the baron, making you into one of the main enemies of the Coalition.
• Bounty Hunter: A few assassination quests task you with hunting down pirates and/or criminals using civilian ships, although some of these actually have the questgiver lie to you about the target's identity. The "Borzuhan" quest also has a side objective of capturing the titular Borzuhan in exchange for a small cash reward.
• Canon Name: Gref is the default name used if you start a text quest or planetary battle from the menu.
• Chest of Medals: Over the course of the game, it's entirely possible for you to earn over a dozen medals. For a Faeyan ranger, that would make for a rather busy chest.
• Contrasting Sequel Main Character: In the first game, the quests give you a more defined backstory, and you're allowed to engage in some rather immoral actions, along with being more of a Jerkass. In the sequel, however, your backstory is more vague, and you're generally nicer.
• Deep Cover Agent: Destroying the Pirate Clan requires you to infiltrate it as a pirate and rise through the ranks. This, of course, means committing numerous crimes and killing dozens of innocent Coalition pilots.
• Devious Daggers: The final text quest of the Pirate Clan line, which happens as you get promoted to the baron, has you use a knife as your starting weapon, unlike the other text quests, where you generally only bring a blaster (or nothing) with yourself.
• Everyone Has Standards: Even though being a Deep Cover Agent in the Pirate Clan questline requires you to kill many Rangers and Coalition soldiers, refusing to suffocate the entire hospital in the Thug promotion quest will be explained as you not wanting to murder everybody in there, as they're all completely innocent.
• Experienced Protagonist: Although you're new to being a ranger and a spaceship pilot, various excerpts from the text quests make it obvious that you had quite a life before the game's start, and have a lot of knowledge and experience in all kinds of skills. In particular, the "Commando" quest in the first game has you state that you served in a military, and received training with vehicles and artillery, "Diamond" makes it clear that you were a pirate until you went to prison, and "Energy" reveals that you studied quasiphysics in a vocational school.
• Forgot About His Powers: The text quests tend to be inconsistent on whether you bring your own blaster with you, often resulting in you going unarmed onto missions where a gun would be extremely handy. A few quests justify this due to you being prohibited from bringing a weapon.
• From Camouflage to Criminal: Implied in the first game, as you've served in a military, but were also a pirate before signing up as a ranger. The order of events isn't quite clear, however, as you also had five years of honest living before joining the Ranger Corps.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Over the course of the Pirate Clan questline, you go from an ordinary low-ranking pirate to being one of the most important figures in it, causing the current baron to become afraid of your power and try to eliminate you. You can then take it one step farther by becoming the baron.
• Handguns: Many of the text quests have a blaster pistol as your only/primary weapon, often having you start out with one.
• Hello, [Insert Name Here]: When starting a new game, the game generates random name for your ranger, appropriate to race you picked, but you're free to rename them according to your tastes.
• Hero with Bad Publicity: If you want to destroy the Pirate Clan, you'll almost certainly have to become this, especially if the Dominators were defeated, as the best way to get promoted is to commit crimes and take part in the war against the Coalition.
• Instant Expert: Many of the text quests have you doing something for the first time in your life (such as managing a ski resort), only receiving a few minutes of instruction, yet you often end up performing better than experts with many years of training.
• It's Up to You: Played With. The Coalition forces can easily liberate the systems captured by Klissans or Dominators without you, especially at low difficulties, but can't deal with bosses (Makhpella in the first game, and Dominator leaders in the sequel) without player being presented, and even then, they're programmed to deal reduced damage; on top of that, NPCs' chances to deal with them are further reduced by their inability to use Mental Communicator / anti-Dominator programs, which are only available to the player.
• Jack of All Trades: Besides potentially becoming a great pilot, technician, trader, and leader, the text quests make it clear that you're also good at many physical skills. Many quests also have you engaging in an extremely diverse array of tasks, from editing a video game journal to hacking computers.
• Living Legend: Defeating the Dominators and/or the Pirate Clan makes you a famed celebrity in the Coalition, as shown by the endings. This is deconstructed in the endings where you destroy both the Dominators and the Clan, as your fame allows the Clan remnants to track down and attempt an assassination on you, forcing you to fake your death.
• Made of Iron: The text quests that track your health allow you to take truly prodigious amounts of injury before dying, such as getting electrocuted, falling onto a pile of scrap metal, getting one's leg clawed, and then falling 25 meters off a cliff, all in one quest and without receiving any medical aid.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Or, rather, "My god, what I have almost done?", as approaching the airflow control panel in the Thug promotion quest gives you the option to refuse to tamper with it at the very last second, since doing so means suffocating an entire hospital just to get at one guy. You then cement your refusal by confessing the assassination plot to the hospital's administration, so as to devise a plan that satisfies the pirates and your conscience.
• One-Man Army: You usually end up as this in space gameplay, as allied NPCs often suffer from Artificial Stupidity or cowardice, and your ship tends to have better stats than most others. The text quests, however, tend to downplay this in regards to your personal combat skills — you can consistently take on 2-3 Mooks at a time if there isn't a significant disparity in equipment, but anything more will vary on quest-by-quest basis.
• Professional Killer: You can dabble as one in the assassination quests.
• Purely Aesthetic Gender: In Space Rangers 2, you can choose a female face for your ranger when playing as human, but it doesn't affect anything in the game — you're still treated as a male.
• Reformed Criminal: In the first game, you were a pirate in your backstory. After going to prison, however, you lived honestly for five years before becoming a ranger, and it's possible to avoid commiting any further crimes, while also destroying pirates and engaging in law enforcement quests.
• Returning War Vet: In the first game, you've served in a military prior to the game's start. An unspecified amount of time later, you then sign up as a ranger.
• Spanner in the Works: You become one in the final quest of the Pirate Clan questline, as you try to survive the siege of Rogeria, only to accidentally find out that the baron and the admiral are in cahoots with each other, and the siege was part of the plan to take you and other troublesome pirates out, then Take Over the World. This puts you into perfect position to kill the admiral and arrest the baron, thus ending the Clan and the evil plan in one fell swoop.
• Villain Protagonist: If so desired, you can be a loyal member of the Pirate Clan, making you one of the enemies of the Coalition. This can even escalate into you becoming the baron.
• War Crime Subverts Heroism: The "Bomber" quest tasks you with performing an air raid on a Human city just so that Maloqs can test their new bomber. While the quest is valid for pirates, it can also be given to warriors, making it possible for you, with a "Hero" status, to take part in an attack on civilians.
• Weapon Specialization: Blasters, typically in the pistol form. You start several text quests with one, and it's the most common personal weapon you use.
• Would Not Shoot a Civilian: Depending on your choices, you can refuse to harm non-combatants in some quests:
  • The "Bomber" quest can be refused right away on the basis of how amoral it is to bomb innocent civilians. This fails the quest, but you step away with a clean conscience.
  • Completing the Thug promotion quest in the pro-Clan way requires you to make an entire hospital suffocate to death, just to get at a single Ranger whose ship you blew up earlier. Upon realizing this, however, you can refuse to go through with it, exactly because you're not going to murder everybody, and simply confess the assassination plot to the hospital's administration.
• Universal Driver's License: Your ability to pilot a spaceship apparently translates to all other vehicles in the text quests, from foncers (future motorcycles, effectively) and automobiles (both antique and contemporary), to submarines and jet packs. The "Pilot" quest also implies that your driver's license is literally universal, as your goal is to get a license for piloting cargo ships (which you don't have), but you're allowed to pilot cargo ships in the actual game with no issue. The first game somewhat justifies your ability to operate anything, however, as you received vehicular training back when you served in a military.

The Coalition

The Coalition in general

The Coalition is a political and economic union, which includes all the planets of the five most developed civilizations.

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• Abusive Precursors: To the Dominators. Quoting a certain pirate: "If you were carpet-bombed with nukes and radiation-roasted for a couple hundred years, wouldn't you be royally pissed about that?"
• Aliens Speaking English: Or Russian, in the original version.
• All Crimes Are Equal: Mugged a couple of traders for their cargo and money? Four months in prison! Sold too much drugs at once? Four months in prison! Attacked and destroyed an entire military fleet, leaving a planet defenseless against killer robots? Four months in prison! That is, of course, if you manage to reach a planet in order to be arrested at all. Otherwise the system military will simply blast you of the sky.
• Chromosome Casting: All the Space Rangers are male, and so are all the ship captains and government officials you encounter. Female characters only appear in text adventures, and only in minor roles. Technically the Faeyans are Hermaphrodites, but in practice they are all treated as men. Space Rangers: A War Apart, however, introduces Special Agents, which are all female (and all human).
• Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: Maloqs are red, Pelengs are green, Humans are blue, Faeyans are violet and Gaalians are yellow. Additionally, female special agents are marked pink (instead of normal blue, which corresponds to humans).
• Fantastic Naming Convention: The Maloqs have a lot of R and voiced stops (b, d, g) in their names (and their planet names etc.), Pelengs have a lot of "ts", "ch", "sh" sounds, Faeyans have a lot of l, m, n, f, p and y sounds and Gaalians have a lot of doubled vowels (such as "Gaaldok", "Raalito", etc.).
• The Federation: Sort of.
• Foreign Queasine: One of the text quests involves a cooking contest. Quite a bit of "exotic ingredients" can be expected (beef steak, still bloody and covered with ash, for the Maloq; seafood decorated with live worms for Peleng, etc).
• Galactic Superpower: They occupy only one galactic arm, not the whole galaxy, however.
• Global Currency: The Galactic Credit is the human currency, but they've managed to convince all other races to use it as well. Some text quests still force you to use the local currency, however.
• Humanoid Aliens: Maloqs, Faeyans and Gaalians are humanoids, with only Pelengs standing out as anthropomorphic newt-like species.
• Men of Sherwood: Their military is a reliable ally in most campaigns, so long as you don't set the difficulty too high. While they're less powerful individually than the pirates and Rangers, they have the benefit of discipline, which makes them capable of holding and taking back systems without any cowardly behavior, even if they still need your help in order to deal with the bosses.
• No Biochemical Barriers: All five races can walk on any populated planet of other race without a spacesuit. You can sell food, medicines, alcohol and drugs from one planet to any other planet regardless of their races. There are text quests with cooking contests for all five races. Some races dislike some kinds of food (for example, Faeyans are mostly vegetarians) but it's not poisonous to them. The stimulants work equally on all five races. Also, on a pirate base you can transplant your brain to the body of any other race. There are some race-specific diseases, however.
• Planet of Hats: All five sentient races are quite widespread across the galaxy, so you'll encounter many planets with the same hat. The Maloqs' hat is being the tough and warmongering, Gaalians are wise and patient, Faeyans are awesome scientists, and Pelengs are the slimy spies, rogues and backstabbers. Humans are an average race in both attitudes and technology, while apparently being superior businessmen (after all, the galactic currency is the human-originated "Galactic Credit"). Subverted in text quests where you may encounter smart Maloqs and heroic Pelengs.
• Universal Universe Time: One of the most notable human successes was to establish universal time system (the other was the Galactic Credit).

The Maloqs

• Alien Arts Are Appreciated: Their stools are considered treasures of art. A true Maloq stool is supposed to be wobbly, have splinters that tear into one's butt and be heavy and unwieldy.
• Beneficial Disease: Maloq-only disease, The Great Malososus, makes the ship slower (due to your body mass increasing dramatically), but compensates for it with huge increase to trading and leadership skills.
• Death World: Maloq originates from the desert planet with highly dangerous wildlife, and deficit of water (to the point that they still consider liquids as good gifts).
• Dumb Muscle: They are physically strong, but are the least developed Coalition race, and tend to be... not the brightest bulb in the lamp. The game readily mocks it at every opportunity.
• Extreme Omnivore: They have a fair part of this too.
• Fantastic Racism: Played for laughs, most of the times. They see themselves as superior beings because they are so strong and dream of galactic domination. But they are the stupidest race of the five and it's unlikely they'll ever achieve their goals, aside from a few super-weapon projects.
• Fragile Speedster: Uniquely amongst Maloq starting options, Pirate start gives you tier-3 engine, and small and fragile ship.
• Gameplay and Story Integration:
  • Maloqs' culture and history affects what kinds of goods they buy or have on sell:
    • Maloqs despise luxury (excluding their stools), and always ban it, with only (traditionally rich) monarchic planets legalising it (and even they only legalised it in the sequel).
    • Maloqs find the alcohol foreign to their culture, and try to shut down trading with imported booze; in the first game, it's banned everywhere, while the second one has it banned on conservative monarchic and dictatorship planets.
    • Being the race with cult of strength and war, Maloqs never ban weapons, regardless of current regime.
  • Maloqs specialise in brute strength and compensate the lack of tech (speed, subtlety, etc) with sheer size and resilience. This applies to their ships, too: Maloq ships are typically bigger, which directly contributes to more hitpoints and carrying capacity, but reduces their speed. It's also common for them to have extra weapon slot unlocked, including all starting options.
• Gargle Blaster: Maloq booze is so strong, it's considered borderline lethal to non-Maloqs.
• Klingon Scientists Get No Respect: They don't respect anyone who isn't involved in war, with special disdain reserved for traders (to the point that you can earn their disdain if you put too much emphasis on trading, and too little on fighting).
• Mighty Glacier: Many Maloq ships are big and well-armed, but suffer from low speed.
• Our Orcs Are Different: They definitely have a lot of the traits of the "Blizzard orcs" archetype (personality-wise), although this time they are not in conflict with humans.
• Proud Warrior Race: Trading or killing pirates might end up with you being very unpopular with Maloqs — they do not appreciate activities that don't involve war, and they think of piracy as an honorable career. The Maloqs' way of greeting is to punch the other person in the face. Maloqs despise any luxury, and ban any trading in luxurious items on their planets. In fact, the only luxury items they allow for themselves are stools.
• Red Is Violent: Out of five playable races, Maloqs are the most violent and militaristic, and use red colour scheme for their ships, cities and racial logo.
• Social Darwinist: They considers weak being unworthy to live; for the long time, there was tradition to kill anyone old or disabled, and they never bothered to develop medicine. It's also why they're so tolerant to pirates: their culture sees nothing wrong with strong robbing the weak.
• Strange Salute: Their salute is punching the one being saluted in the shoulder. If you wish to show great respect for the saluted, you punch them in the jaw. Because Maloqs are physically very strong, diplomacy with other races can be bit iffy; in one quest, a Maloq purposefully holds himself back in order to not kill you with his punch.

The Pelengs

The Pelengs are the galactic gangsters; practically have no army, no law, no government. Scientific research is also absent, but nevertheless it is kept second from the end (stolen technology). They have at least a strange physiology (gills, four arms and the ability to change sex at will). In the old version, they had something like a trunk with two mouth-like folds, in the remake, the lower fold turned into a real mouth, and the upper one — into a pair of narrow nostrils.

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• Black Market: Their planets never have restrictions on any goods, be it weapons, alcohol or drugs; in fact, when you need to find cheep drugs, Pelengs are your go-to traders.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: Pelengs do have concept of "good" and "evil", it's just twisted up, compared to our standards; they don't see anything wrong with piracy for as long as no one gets killed, readily buy and sell drugs, cheat, scam, spy, steal... but see snitching as the heinous crime.
• Comedic Sociopathy: They think space pirates are good role models, don't see anything wrong with selling drugs in schools, and order hits on garbage transports just to piss off Gaalians. It's mostly played for laughs.
• Easy Sex Change: Pelengs can change their biological sex at will; it's considered being amoral, but it's speculated in-universe that the real reason is simply them being too lazy to change documents.
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • While Pelengs are generally fine with piracy (as is, extorting and robbing people), even they would get angry if you actually kill someone.
  • If you're Gaalian with New Molison disease (which renders food and medicine you touch toxic), even Pelengs would ban you from trading with those; and these guys are infamously okay with selling drugs and weapons.
• Fragile Speedster: Warrior start gives you tier-3 engine, but very small and fragile ship.
• The Friend Nobody Likes:
  • Pelengs are not liked by the other members of the Coalition, with everyone having at least one reason to dislike them (Maloqs for their cowardice, Humans for their piracy, Faeyans for their espionage, Gaalians for drug trading); Faeyans actually tried to push for kicking them out and even start a war against them, but it went nowhere, as the others found excuses not to go to war: Maloqs are buying stolen tech from them, Humans don't like an idea to start a war, and Gaalians claimed that they're "controlling" Pelengs and wouldn't let them go beyond petty piracy.
  • When you start as Peleng Mercenary, the game flat out states that no one likes you. And indeed, you would have neutral relationship with everyone except the other Pelengs (barring your from accepting quests until you make them warm up to you), and even Pelengs would start with reduced opinion on you.
• Gameplay and Story Integration:
  • Their society is highly unstable, with regimes changing semi-regularly, which affects the market.
  • Pelengs never ban weapons or drugs, as they simply don't see anything wrong with openly selling them.
  • Their respect to pirates manifests in gameplay:
    • If you kill a pirate, his native planet would get mad at you, for killing "innocents".
    • Whenever they give the peacekeeper quests (don't let any ship die in a system X for Y days), it includes the pirate ships; any other race allows you to kill pirates at will.
    • For as long as you don't actually kill anyone, you're free to rob people in Peleng systems for as much as you want: they wouldn't mind.
• Green and Mean: Pelengs, the resident jerks, cynics, rogues and opportunists, are marked with green colour (cities, ships, racial logo and even their skin).
• Horned Humanoid: They have massive horn on their heads.
• It's All About Me: Joint Human-Faeyan research of their culture came to conclusion that objective justice, moral duty or natural honesty are completely alien to their psychology. They also despise other races, thinking them below themselves.
• Lizard Folk: They are humanoid amphibians with vaguely newt-like appearance.
• Sneaky Spy Species:
  • Pelengs are infamous for spying on other Coalition races, stealing and reverse-engineering their tech, which they then produces themselves or sells to Maloqs. It's pretty much the only way they comes up with new technologies, as they're too lazy and nearsighted to work for the perspective.
  • When Pelengs aren't busy spying on the Coalition, they're spying for the Coalition; their intelligence service is the best in the galaxy.
• Space Jews: Much of this race is based on Jewish and Romani stereotypes (both in their behaviour and the others' opinion on them); they even have Jewish (Yiddish) sounding names.
• Space Pirates: They are a race full of space pirates (or at least they hold pirates, thieves and other professional criminals in high regard).
• Token Evil Teammate: Even compared to Maloqs, they're the most prone to piracy (in fact, they considers it to be respectful career choice), espionage, backstabbing, etc.
• Vertebrate with Extra Limbs: They have four arms.
• Walking Tech Bane: Peleng-only mental disorder, Sad Pelenosha, gives you whopping -10 to tech skill, potentially dropping it into negative and massively increasing the rate at which your equipment breaks, to the point that, before the patch, it was possible to break half your ship within one battle. It also drastically weakens your weapons. It's speculated in-universe that this disorder being so common can have something to do with Pelengs' quirkiness.

The Humans

Actually, the humans who practically do not differ from us living in the XXI century. Strong middle peasants, diplomats, however, inherited the most in the history of the Sleeve: they introduced their own chronology, standardized trade and introduced their own single currency.

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• Foreign Culture Fetish: Invoked and Exploited; Humans makes large profit (both financial and diplomatic) on tourists: Pelengs are looking for cheap and exotic fun, while Faeyans and Gaalians are interested in aesthetic alteration of nature and philosophy (with Gaalians also showing interest to poetry).
• Gameplay and Story Integration: Lore-wise, it's humans who introduced the other species to alcohol (only Maloqs are known to have analogue, but it's more of a ritual drink), and still actively consume it by the time when game starts. As such, they're the only non-Peleng race that never bans alcohol.
• Humans Are Average:
  • Their technology is better than Maloq and Peleng, but worse than Faeyan and Gaalian.
  • Several text quests that deal with racial gimmicks and involves multiple races at once (like Elections, or pizza competition), make humans the middle grounds between extremes, either in terms of how much you benefit from them, or their needs.
• Humans Are Diplomats: Sort of. The Coalition uses human currency and time system for a reason. If you're playing a human character, you can also receive the majority of the game's text quests and planetary battles, whereas other races tend to have a lot more quests locked out.
• Humans Are Warriors: Downplayed; Humans are one of the three races (other two are Maloq and Peleng) who can develop Holy Zealotry disease (renders the individual obsessed with fighting Dominators, and prone to rage outbursts), and never impose ban on weapons (excluding democratic planets).
• Humans Are White: Downplayed, while the government/station officials and most portraits for humans are clearly of European descent, there's one that appears East Asian, and a few Ambiguously Brown ones.
• Legalized Evil: Monarchist planets lift the ban on drugs (otherwise presented on any non-anarchic human planet).
• Private Military Contractors: One mission implies that the Faeyans don't have own militaries so they hire mercenaries which are all human, because the Gaalians hire mercenaries themselves and the Maloqs and Pelengs may turn their own weapons against them at any moment.
• Proud Merchant Race: They managed to make the economy of the entire arm of the Milky Way to revolve around themselves, this includes worldwide adoption of the Earth's credits and the fiscal year. In the sequel, they came up with and run business centers, which are simultaneously trading posts, banks, insurance firms and more. Humans don't really wear a hat and mercilessly exploit everyone else's hats for profit and diplomacy, but are otherwise honest merchants.
• Robot War: In backstory, humans have fought against murderous robots called simply "the bots", which were only defeated when the Rangers corps was established (which is where they got the idea to create the same structure against Klissans and later Dominators).

The Faeyans

The Faeyans are the second proud and wise race of the game. Thin, emotionless hermaphrodites with a strong technical bias. Neon and minerals are used in food, which hints at not quite traditional biochemistry, but due to the depletion of asteroid reserves, some members of the race have learned to use ordinary vegetarian food.

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• Beneficial Disease: Faeyan-only disease, Aka Sesiyanka, lowers aim and tech skills, but also boosts trading, which can be of some help to trader players who rarely go to frontline.
• Fantastic Racism: They have low opinion on Maloqs and Pelengs, finding them the dumb brutes, and dishonest scum, respectively; in fact, they were against accepting Pelengs into Coalition to begin with.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: The Faeyan Pirate start would render everyone but Pelengs and other Faeyans openly hostile, and even they would have reduced opinion on you (with Pelengs refusing to give you any quests, due to starting in "neutral" relationship). Description mentions that you're despised even your own kind.
• Gameplay and Story Integration:
  • Save for planets run by dictators, Faeyans always outlaws weapons: they're known Martial Pacifists.
  • Faeyans easily becomes addicted to alcohol, and often readily buy it. In attempt to fight with it, it's banned outright in first game, and banned on democratic/republican planets in the sequel.
• The Greys: They rather closely resembles stereotypical "greys": bald humanoids with grayish-purple skin, huge black eyes, massive intellect and general outlandish aesthetic.
• Legalized Evil: Faeyan planets, when run by dictators, instead of imposing any extra bans, lift the existing bans on drugs and weapons.
• Martial Pacifist: They don't like weapons and violence, and for a time lacked concept of warfare whatsoever. They only learned how to fight, and created some sort of army (or, at least, planetary defence forces) after making contact with the other races.
• My Brain Is Big: They have big heads and are the second most developed Coalition race.
• One-Gender Race: They are Hermaphrodites, although usually treated as male.
• Proud Scholar Race: They play the role of resident scientists and researchers, and while Gaalian technologies are superior, Faeyans generally have more involvement; notably, most science stations are stuffed by them (with some having Gaalian personnel).
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: They don't come along with neither Maloqs nor Pelengs; they actually once pushed for having Pelengs expulsed from the Coalition, so they can start the war with them, but no one supported them.

The Gaalians

The Gaalians, also known as the Children of Gaal, are tall, yellow humanoids. A distinctive feature is the third eye, a symbol of wisdom. The most highly developed race, can be genetically engineered. Even before the appearance of the rest of the races in space, they managed to colonize the entire Orion arm, fight with each other, cut massively, recover with the help of the very same genetic engineering, and even fly into the next arm on warp engines and quarrel with Machpella there. At the time of the second game, they are slowly dying out due to the massive use of drugs; therefore, the Pelengs are fiercely hated, just drugs and traders. Top management is endowed with biological immortality, and others do not need it.

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• Ambiguously Evil: On the one hand, they're the race of Martial Pacifists who always tries peaceful approach first, seeks the best in everyone (even Pelengs), and prefers to quietly meditate and study. But humans suspect that their philanthropy is actually a disguise for spreading the web of their influence. And then there's their practice of kicking out any dissidents or putting them into "sanatoriums", from where they never returns.
• Beneficial Disease: Unique Gaalian-only disease, New Mulizon (tied to their unique biology) makes trading with food and medicaments count as contraband (even on Peleng planets; doesn't affect stations, however), due you essentially contaminating them with toxins... but also boosts your aim and manoeuvring skills, often making it a blessing (especially if you rarely trade anyway).
• Burial in Space: Their funeral traditions include this, with the deceased placed into a pod and thrown into space. You'll see a slide of this if you die as a Gaalian.
• Condescending Compassion: They're not very liked by Pelengs: Gaalians look at younger races as some sort of "younger brothers" whom they need to guide, while Pelengs think of themselves as superior.
• Extra Eyes: They have 3 eyes: two normal ones, and one extra on their forehead.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: When starting as Gaalian Corsair, you would begin with "neutral" relationship with everyone but your own race, resulting in them refusing to give you quests due to your poor reputation.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: Selling them drugs is even more profitable than to other races (due to their mystics historically using them), but quickly deteriorates relationship with the planet where the deal gets done (drugs are never legal on their planets, unless they're in a state of anarchy).
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: Description of the Gaalian Trader start says that they're hunted by Maloqs for illegal luxury trading; in actuality, it's Pelengs who have poor relationship with you, while Maloqs are set to like you.
• Good Is Not Nice:
  • They give their share of assassination missions. They tend to mourn their targets though, and treat this sort of mission as very traumatic experience.
  • Their philosophy seems peaceful, and usually it indeed is... but they considers those Gaalians who don't follow it being "pathologically sick", and either kicks them out of their society, or puts them into "sanatoriums" to "cure", which is pointed as being equal to death sentence. And yet, they're the ones who generally pushes for making galaxy a better place for everyone (for example, they were the only one who stated non-selfish reasons to keep Pelengs in the Coalition).
• Higher Understanding Through Drugs: Their mystics can somehow improve their mental capabilities by using drugs, but this drastically decreases lifespan, which led to practice being outlawed, with only their leaders still using it (they have their biology altered, so they can produce it naturally). Some Gaalians are still willing to try, and since traditional drugs are hard to obtain, they just buys imported synthetic analogues.
• Legalized Evil: Gaalian dictatorships always legalize trading with weapons, despite their culture discouraging violence.
• Martial Pacifist: They don't like fighting, preferring peaceful approach, but they do have their own fleet, and are ready to fight if pushed. Notably, out of five starting options in second game, four starts without upgraded weapons whatsoever (with Warrior being the sole exception).
• Proud Scholar Race: The ancient race of philosophers and mystics pursuing enlightenment and understanding of the universe, with technologies which are often even more advanced than that of Faeyans.
• Rousseau Was Right: They believe that any sentient beings (even Pelengs) have potential to become good, they just needs a chance to realise it.
• Space Elves: The ancient race of mystics with weird philosophy and even weirder biology (mainly due to all the genetical experiments).
• Time Abyss: Their civilisation is the oldest in the galaxy:
  • It's known that the practice of using drugs for enlightenment was practiced for millions of years before it was outlawed.
  • Their current ruling institute is half a million of years old.
  • One of their current leaders was born 450 millions of years ago; he's the last one in some old dynasty.
• Too Good to Be True: Humans are wary of them, suspecting some ulterior motives behind their seeming peacefulness and philanthropy. There are hints that they may be right.
• Wrongfully Committed: They routinely sends their dissidents to "sanatorium", which was equalled to death sentence. It's likely based on USSR's infamous practice of "punitive psychiatry".

Organizations

Rangers

• The Cavalry: If you start a battle, they will often arrive a few weeks later to help you out, potentially turning the tide in your favor. Inverted if you're fighting for the Pirate Clan, as they will reinforce attacked systems in increasingly greater amounts.
• Dirty Coward: For this reason, the entire Rangers program sans you is a complete disaster. AI Rangers are tasked with preserving themselves at any cost, which is why they always turn tail at the first sight of enemies, only visit already freed systems to collect loot, and even under your command they have to be ordered every turn to do something other than running for them to not forsake the order immediately.
• Elite Army: While they have much smaller numbers than the conventional Coalition military, or the rest of the factions, they compensate for it by having better stats and equipment, with them usually being a match for 2 average pirate/military ships.
• Elite Mooks: To the Pirate player, they often serve as this, as they have better equipment that military ships, arrive as reinforcements if you attack a system, and sometimes travel in groups. This is also reflected in the Pirate Clan rank progression, as rangers are considered to be worth 1.5x as much as a military ship.
• Evil Hero: Pirate rangers take advantage of their status in order to rob ships, kill innocent people, and sell contraband. All while being in an organization dedicated to fighting the latest menace to the Coalition.
• Mildly Military: Though the Rangers are part of the Coalition's military structure, they don't actually have to obey any orders or rules, and it's impossible for them to be kicked out, even when they commit crimes. On the downside, this also means that they have to procure their own equipment, and they don't actually have the authority to order anybody around.
• One-Man Army: Every ranger is one. In fact, the Coalition created the Space Rangers to be this.
• Recruiting the Criminal: The Ranger Corps is okay with recruiting people with criminal records, at least if their crimes are minor, as the "Diamond" quest in the first game reveals that you managed to get in despite going to prison for being a pirate.
• Ultimate Job Security: Nobody gets kicked out of the Rangers, even if they commit crimes, attack military ships, or betray the Coalition in favor of the Pirate Clan. While joining the Clan (even as an undercover operative) does require you to renounce Coalition rank, it's easy to get reinstated, and you still retain the ability to use Ranger centres.

Pirate Clan

• Army of Thieves and Whores: All of its military force is composed of pirates who signed up under the clan's banner. They don't stop being pirates, and will rob anybody who passes through their systems.
• Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: To distinguish planets and ships belonging to Pirate Clan from those belonging to Coalition, they're marked with white colour on your radar and galactic map.
• Dirty Coward: Their warriors are much less brave than Coalition soldiers, and will often turn tail and flee if you destroy enough ships. Dominators, in particular, can sometimes make them flee without firing a single shot.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • They readily blow up not just military bases, but also business centres, rangers' centres and even science stations. But not even pirates would touch the medical stations.
  • Several of their members object to the Baron's collaboration with the Coalition politicians, feeling like doing so goes against the principles of being a pirate.
• Evil Counterpart: They're essentially the evil twin of the Coalition (with even the planets changing their look to reflect it), with duty and honour replaced with profit and right of the strongest.
• Klingon Promotion: A few of their quests operate on that idea - kill a member who failed the Clan, and then you'll get his rank. The final quest, in particular, allows you to become the baron by killing the current one.
• Legalized Evil: The Pirate Clan, being run by actual pirates, sees nothing wrong with mugging and even killing anyone who isn't part of the Clan (and may actually reward such behaviour).
• Mildly Military: Their forces and stations have a very informal atmosphere, with criminal culture replacing military discipline. They're also more cowardly than the Coalition military, and it's sometimes possible for individual pirates to fight each other with nobody caring about it.
• N.G.O. Superpower: The pirates, under their new strong leadership, managed to create a group strong enough to face both Coalition and Dominators, and win, potentially even conquering Coalition systems and installing their own government. They also developed several unique technologies, including special weapons which can't be produced by the Coalition.
• No Honor Among Thieves: The Clan's nastiness spreads to its members:
  • Warrior pirates will sometimes fight each other to the death, with no repercussions for the killer.
  • Several of the Clan's quests actually target those who objected to the Baron's collaboration with Coalition officials. As one of the targets tells you, this is a regular occurence.
  • Accept the "Honorary Ataman" rank, and you'll be frozen for it as an example to everybody else.
  • The siege of Rogeria by the Coalition in the final Clan quest was planned by the Baron in order to kill off any troublesome members, including you. Accepting his offer to become one of the galaxy's elites will just result in your death.
• Space Pirates: As the name suggests, all their members are pirates. In order to join them, you have to become one, too, renouncing your ranger status (either genuinely, or to become a double agent and help to dismantle them from within). Even the military rank gets replaced with new, pirate one, which puts less value on fighting Dominators, and more on selling contraband, robbing, killing civilian and military ships, destroying the bases, etc, in other words, acting like a pirate who wants to spread chaos and show the galaxy who's boss.
• The Syndicate: They're powerful enough to develop their own acryn technology, capture and govern systems, and use corruption to their advantage by creating hindrances for a Coalition agency created specifically to fight them. In fact, they even have allies among the most influential politicians and military officers of the Coalition, as part of their plan to take over the Coalition.
• Totalitarian Gangsterism: On the Clan's territory, any non-Clan ships are free game, and can be robbed or killed at will, with zero repercussions.
• Zerg Rush: The pirate clan lacks access to the Coalition's flagships and rangers, or the larger ships and bertors of the Dominators, and their pilots are more cowardly than either. However, as every ship of theirs is a combat one, they often overwhelm the Coalition via sheer numbers.

Enemy races

Enemy races in general

• Unusable Enemy Equipment: When you destroy another ship, some of its equipment is dropped intact. Klissans/Dominators often drop equipment that is only useful to them (like parts from their computer systems or inner workings) and largely useless to the player. Fortunately, these items can still be sold — and science stations pay extremely well for them.
• Hurl It into the Sun: They can easily be tricked into flying into the sun.
• Starfish Language: You need a Mental Communicator and Intercom to talk to Makhpella and the Dominators respectively.

Makhpella and the Klissans

• Bizarre Alien Biology: They are inorganic, and the Klissans are Makhpella's organs.
• Did We Just Have Tea with Cthulhu?: It's possible to talk to Makhpella using Mental Communicator. Once it's built, it can be used to diplomatically solve the problem and finish the war.
• Eldritch Abomination: It's revealed that all Klissan starships are Makhpella's organs. There are at least two more of them.
• Hive Mind: The Klissans are external Makhpella's organs.
• Keystone Army: If you destroy Makhpella (with or without talking to her), the Klissans will be instantly destroyed.
• Living Ship: They don't pilot the ships; they are the ships. This is the source of original conflict: they mistook our ships for local civilization, and us for infection.
• Mistook the Dominant Lifeform: Makhpella thinks that your ships are sentient, and pilots are just an organic disease infecting them. She is just trying to cure the infection.
• Organic Technology: They are inorganic form of life, however.
• Starfish Aliens: Klissans are the space-born species of the living ships (based on crystals), with Makhpella as the "body", and all smaller ships as its organs, sent to act autonomously.

The Dominators in general

An aggressive race of machines attacking the planets of the Coalition 300 years after the first part. Unlike the previous ones, they are not monolithic, but are divided into three subspecies, each with its own purpose. The history of the emergence of the Dominators goes far into the past, long before the emergence of the Coalition. They came half from the forbidden modular robots that were previously used by all races in wars, which the Maloqs who developed them last, because of their stupidity after the introduction of the ban, decided not to destroy, but to hide on Gralgar, half from Klissans.

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• Action Bomb: Kligs are poorly equipped and have a tiny hull, but they will explode on contact with an enemy ship, doing heavy damage to it.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: All of them have rebelled and are currently at war with the Coalition, albeit exact reason is different for each faction.
  • Blazer is on the mission to wipe out all sentient life other than it and its army.
  • Keller tries to study the universe... by destroying things.
  • Terron plans to assimilate all other sentient life into itself.
• Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: Blazeroids are red, terronoids are green and kelleroids are blue.
• Contractual Boss Immunity:
  • Dominator leaders, as well as all Bertor-class ships, are immune to anti-Dominator programs. The scientists would eventually research the programs tailor-made to deal with specific leaders, though.
  • Dominator leaders (and any ships involved in some scripts, for that matter) are programmed to not take damage from asteroids (they just pass through harmlessly). Given that collision damage from asteroids scales with max HP, without that adjustment, the potential damage would've been colossal (and they're big and slow enough to have no chance to dodge the asteroids).
• Enemy Civil War: They are divided into 3 factions that are as hostile to each other as they are to the Coalition.
• Enemy Summoner: One of the abilities of bertors is to create kligs.
• From a Single Cell: They consist of autonomous microscopic nodes, and thus can easily replicate themselves.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: Dominator equipment is compatible with every single micromodule, even race-restricted ones, because they're explicitly based on Dominator technologies.
• Mook Commander: Bertors serve as Dominator flagships of sort, with their field giving a buff to any nearby Dominator ship (damage for Blazeroids, repair for Terronoids, and shields for Keller).
• No-Sell: It's not possible to scan the Dominator ships, unless you have the Dominator-made scanner installed, and not just any, but of matching sub-faction (eg, Blazer-made scanner would only scan the Blazeroid ships).
• Ramming Always Works: Dominator kligs will aim to ram themselves into enemies, causing them to explode and do 100+ damage.
• Scary Dogmatic Aliens: Each series is obsessed with a specific goal, which they won't deviate from without the use of special programs:
  • Blazer wants to destroy every other form of life.
  • Terron wants to turn everything into terronoids.
  • Keller wants to study everything, even via destructive methods.
• Suicide Attack: The Kligs in Space Rangers HD are the lightest type of dominators, and their weapons are very weak, but they are quite dangerous due to ability to ram enemy ships, exploding themselves and thus inflicting considerable damage.
• Talking the Monster to Death: All three Dominator leaders can be neutralized peacefully, with two — without even fighting them.

Blazer and the Blazeroids

The Dominators of red color, "Destroyers", fight for the extermination of other life forms.

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• Absolute Xenophobe: Their ultimate goal is to destroy anyone who isn't one of them. When asked how it plans to do that if the galaxy is so huge, Blazer says that it's what makes the mission great: its scale and length.
• Action Bomb: In the planetary battles, Blazeroids is more likely to install nuclear bombs on some of their robots; not intercepting them before they get close can lead to serious damage.
• Brainwashing for the Greater Good: Blazer is the only Dominator leader who can be spared and reprogrammed to serve the Coalition. Unfortunately, its army self-desctructs after losing communication with the brain centre, instead of siding with the Coalition.
• Red Is Violent: Blazeroids are marked with red colour, and, out of all Dominators, they're the only faction which directly states that yes, they're planning to exterminate all sapient life in the galaxy (Keller has a goal, but is indifferent to casualties, while Terron is open for negotiations). They're also the group most reliant on brute force.
• Talking the Monster to Death: With the usage of special programs, Blazer can be contacted, and, after learning about its goal, convinced that it can't truly "defeat everyone" unless it kills itself, too; this makes it proceed to self-destruct, which gives the player a choice to either allow that to happen, or reset it and order to land on the nearby Coalition planet, while destroying the rest of the Blazeroids.
• Unskilled, but Strong: Blazeroids prefer to overwhelm their foes with raw firepower rather than any special tactics or technologies.

Terron and the Terronoids

Terron's core close up

The Dominators of green color, the "Converters", seek to recycle all the matter of the Universe into themselves. The only Dominator faction to have a fixed home base — at the system where Dominators were originally born.

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• Extreme Omnivore: "The final goal is to absorb all the matter in the universe into my species." One of the ways of defeating the Terron boss is to tell it to go eat a star, out of all things.
• Grey Goo: They want to turn all the matter in the universe to them.
• Hurl It into the Sun: One of the ways of dealing with Terron is to give it a program of transforming the star. Scientists say that it will probably melt within a year. However, it's stated that this can irreversibly damage the star itself in time.
• Load-Bearing Boss: When you destroy its core in the planetary battle, it leads to the destruction of the entire planet.
• Planetary Parasite: The scientists thought it was based on a some planet. In a talk to it, it's revealed that it is not based on the planet, it is the planet, which was consumed by it.
• Storming the Castle: One of the ways to dispose of Terron is deploying a small army of robots on its surface and destroying its core. Amusingly, it can easily be done with a single robot via manual control.
• Talking the Monster to Death: It's possible to defeat Terron without fighting by tricking it into transforming the sun; this would eventually destroy the star itself, though.
• We Can Rule Together: After learning about Terron's goal, it's possible to join in. This leads to a Non-Standard Game Over(with several randomly-chosen variants).
• Zerg Rush: Terron has preference for "strength in numbers" approach, both in space and planetary battles.

Keller and the Kelleroids

The Dominators of blue color, "Scientists", destroying all life for the sake of studying its atomic structure. The boss — Keller can be defeated either by following him into a black hole and persuading him to fade, or buy a special program on a scientific base that blocks Keller's recovery and destroy him in a black hole.

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• Back from the Dead: When defeated in a blackhole, Keller would reassemble back. Through usage of anti-Dominator program, it's possible to prevent it, ensuring that it stays dead.
• Contractual Boss Immunity: Exaggerated, Keller is completely invulnerable while in real space (it does take damage, but can't be reduced below 1 HP); when it takes enough damage, it retreats to blackhole, which is where the proper fight begins (the damage suffered does carry over, however).
• For Science!: They don't destroy the Coalition ships — they're merely disassembling them for studying. It's not Keller's fault that they cannot reassemble back!
• Hit-and-Run Tactics: Keller attacks from blackhole, summons a fleet and, if the battle goes south, retreats back into blackhole, so it can launch another assault somewhere else. Because of that, it's impossible to kill it in the real space; you have to follow h and defeat in arcade battle.
• Let's You and Him Fight: It's possible to get rid of Keller by sending it to fight Klissans.
• Mad Scientist: Their way of researching things is to take them apart and see what they are made of. Coalition races can't reassemble themselves after the process? Not Keller's problem!
• Stealth in Space: Smaller Kelleroid ships occasionally briefly disguise themselves with some sort of invisibility field, making it harder for the player to notice them and pick the target.
• Weak, but Skilled: Kelleroids lack sheer numbers of Terronoids, or raw firepower of Blazeroids, but compensate for it with unique technologies, like experimental stealth fields, or ability to strike at any place in the galaxy from the hyperspace, using blackholes to launch the assault. Additionally, Keller is the only Dominator leader who can't be just fooled into offing himself without a fight.

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