Started a new game. Went to Venus and did the planetary battle tutorial. Well, sort of. I couldn’t do the first part, so just won the level without any tutorial messages. Might try that again some time, then. Hard to control with a trackpad without knowing any shortcut keys. Might see if I can find if it installed a manual when I downloaded it from Impulse.

Anyway, after the planetary battle, I decided to go and help the military take on the evil Dominators. Except my ship was far too slow and I was only a third of the way to the rally point by the deadline. I heard, though, that there was a black hole about to open up in a nearby system, so went there. Either it had been and gone or I couldn’t detect it, though. Not seeing any sign of a black hole, I decided it might be nice to go and scavenge some stuff from a system the Dominators were invading.

So I jumped there. Picked up some nice equipment… then realised that I had a problem. FIrst, I noticed that the Dominator invasion was over – and they’d won. No friendly ships or planets in the system. Just me. Alone. Second, I realised that I used all my fuel travelling to this system, so couldn’t jump out again.

No fuel. Nowhere to refuel. And a ton of Dominator ships bearing down on me.

Game over.

(I’ve also realised that I can’t remember how to unlock areas of the map that are blanked out when you start. I thought if I got close to them they’d be uncovered, but that’s not the case. Hmm.)