QuasiSpace Portal Spawner

The QuasiSpace Portal Spawner is a device constructed by the Arilou Lalee'lay for The Flagship as a favor to The Captain during the Star Control II time period. It is a variant on the Arilou's standard QuasiSpace Portal Spawners, devices which use Inter-Dimensional Fatigue technology to create a temporary overlap between the dimensions of HyperSpace and QuasiSpace, allowing the Arilou to jump into QuasiSpace without going to the trouble of finding one of the rare, intermittently active natural portals. The process of creating such portals is extremely energy-intensive and dependent on the portal's size; this is probably one of the primary limiting factors leading to the relatively small size of the standard Arilou Skiff.

In order to allow The Captain to use such a Spawner on the much larger Flagship, the Arilou have to amplify a standard Spawner's power using a Warp Pod scavenged from the wreck of an Ur-Quan Kzer-Za Dreadnought at Alpha Pavonis. The Captain's scientists were unable to divine the internal workings of this Spawner. Of particular concern was the fact that the Spawner contained a sealed power supply, which makes it impossible for the Humans at the Earth Starbase to service or to gauge the lifetime of the technology that converts The Flagship's antimatter fuel into IDF rays. Although the service lifetime of the component turns out to be at least as long as that of The Flagship — owing to the latter's destruction — with no way as yet to predict the reliability of hybrid Spawners in the long term, the possible usefulness of equipping entire fleets with them (assuming the Arilou agreed to do so) remains in doubt.

The Druuge offer to trade three of their ships and to fill The Flagship's ship fuel tanks completely for The Captain's portal spawner, calling it a "vortex spawner"; arguably he could make a good deal by coming prepared with 14 empty double-capacity fuel tanks on his ship (getting almost 1400 fuel in the process which is worth 28000 resource units - more than triple the value of mining the entire Druuge sphere of influence!)

Gameplay notes

Sources of information

The Arilou Lalee'lay on Falayalaralfali intimate that they use Portal Spawners to transit between HyperSpace and QuasiSpace and offer to engineer one for The Flagship if offered the Ur-Quan Warp Pod.

Acquisition

The Portal Spawner can be obtained from the Arilou Lalee'lay on Falayalaralfali if The Captain has the Ur-Quan Warp Pod in possession.

Note: If The Captain threatens to destroy the Arilou Laleelay then they will not talk to him afterwards, making acquisition of the Portal Spawner impossible.

Uses

The Spawner generates a portal to QuasiSpace from anywhere in HyperSpace at the cost of 10 fuel units. This enables The Flagship to travel much quicker, saving both game time and real time.