Fury

Fan-made image by VileRancour.

The Pkunk Fury is a colorful, flowery war ship which relies on superior mobility to outmaneuver and pick apart its enemies. It is also a wildcard, able to literally defy death at unpredictable intervals. While lightly armored and slow to recover its energy banks, the Fury can be very deadly with a skilled pilot at the helm and luck on its side.

Propulsion

The Fury is among the fastest known spacecraft to travel the stars. The ship's maximum speed is almost totally unmatched -- it takes special subsystems designed for a temporary speed boost or a planetary slingshot maneuver to go beyond that. The Fury's rate of acceleration is exceeded only by the Slylandro Probe and Arilou Skiff as well as certain subsystems on a few other ships. The Fury also boasts the fastest possible turning rate, equal to that of the Probe and Skiff.

Armament

Primary

The primary weapon is a triple-mounted minigun that fires forward and to each side simultaneously. Each of these miniguns can pump out super-heated metal pellets at an incredible rate, though over a very limited range. The pellets are rather large, so they are sometimes good for shooting down incoming ordnance.

Secondary

The Pkunk are peaceful beings which normally cannot bring themselves to kill unless they throw themselves into an emotional frenzy by continuously broadcasting insults at their enemies. Additionally, the psychic emanations produced by the Fury captain's frenzy will recharge the ship's energy stores in small increments.¹

Additional

If destroyed, there is a fifty percent chance the Fury will be reincarnated — fully crewed, with maximum energy. This is due to the Pkunk's divine heritage, or so the Pkunk claim.² Due to the random nature of Fury reincarnation, a lucky Pkunk can be reborn many times.

Tactical Overview

Being a fragile ship, the Fury does not usually hold up well in a head-to-head weapons exchange. However, certain ships with low firepower are susceptible to the Fury's high burst damage. Minigun pellets are decent at shooting down small enemy projectiles, allowing some head-to-head exchanges to end in the Fury's favor. The Fury will otherwise need to do a lot of dodging and weaving if it does not have the upper hand in terms of weaponry. Broadside attacks using either of the side guns as the Fury flies past its target are usually the best way to go about this.

While the Fury is capable of inflicting high burst damage, it suffers from a long downtime due to painfully slow energy regeneration. Additionally, it only takes half a second to run the ship's battery from full to empty. For these reasons the Fury is very much a "hit and run" attacker. The "Special" key is best held down for the entire duration of combat to maximize energy recovery.

There is a common firing pattern used by many Fury pilots known as the "Death Blossom". This technique is performed by holding down the fire button and a turn button while leaving the thrusters off. In addition to being visually impressive, the Death Blossom is good for laying down fire in every direction. However, higher damage output can be achieved in most circumstances by aiming manually during an attack run.

The Fury is the best ship in the game to use against the Sa-Matra. The Fury is fast enough to avoid the Sa-Matra's passive defense system which will quickly dispatch most other assailants, and the multidirectional firing pattern of the Fury's guns allows the ship to circle the Sa-Matra's protective barrier while pelting the shield generators. Combined with the Fury's reincarnation ability, a single Pkunk Fury is quite capable of knocking out all of the Sa-Matra's shield generators alone.

Notes and references

¹Star Control II manual, pg. 93 (PC)

²Star Control II manual, pg. 94 (PC)

3DO Pkunk Fury Basic stats Crew: 8 Value: 20 pts Battery: 12 Batt. Regeneration: 0 units/frame Armament Primary: Triple-Mounted Minigun Secondary: Insult Refire delay: 0 frames Refire delay: 16 frames Energy use: 1 units Energy use: generates 2 units Propulsion Max speed: 64 world units/frame Turn rate: 1 facings/frame Acceleration: 16 units/frame Mass: 1