YEAH folks! The latest alpha/preview version of the Star Control 2-inspired game, Space Exploration: Serpens Sector, is now released! I urge those of you who are interested in space exploration, Star Control 2, awesome games.....ah what the hell. All of you should just go check this out, NOW! PRONTO!
http://www.metalbeetle.com/spaceexploration/

nice to know, i had great fun playing The Ur-Quan Masters

I've never tried Ur-Quan Masters (there's a free remake somewhere on the Intertubes), but this looks interesting.

The Ur-Quan Masters is the free remake. The original game is called Star Control 2. It's more an update than a remake actually, but a brilliant game nonetheless.

It is. While the current build doesn't feature many encounters, it's got enough interesting events to keep you interested for one session. I didn't like Weird Worlds, but this is definitely more varied and interesting.

I just tried this, and I must admit its got the makings of a great game, but it still needs a LOT of work.
I found the scarcity of fuel to be a major irritation. Also, while the random nature of the encounters is a benefit in one way, it's a drawback in another. There's little room for bad luck. if you happen to start off with a row of encounters that don't net you anything useful, well then the game is basically over, through no fault of your own. Which is not a great incentive to keep playing.

Try to get a new drive coil, or a hyperspace generator ASAP. Even better is if you encounter a space gold mine. Yeah the luck plays a huge role. If you don't have an archaeologist, you basically have to survive on scraps

Yeah, and in the last game I played, I lost my only engineer almost immediately, which meant that I couldn't mount any new equipment. It's MUCH too dependant on dumb blind luck IMO.

Yeah, me too. This is definitely something I'm going to want to play in the future, but I'll wait a bit.
Though Weird Worlds could certainly also be criticized of depending too much on luck, and I still found that very addictive.

Not trying to defend the game, but personally I feel the luck is part of the game. In fact, having bad luck didn't make me feel bad because I knew that even with bad luck, the next star system that I explore may well happen to be filled with good stuff

Sure, but with just a bit of bad luck in this game, you may not be able to explore any more star systems.

Anything that gets compared to Star Control II earns my immediate interest. (What else do you expect from the guy with the Spathi avatar?)
The question is, will its races be as charming or interesting as SC's?

From what I've seen so far, don't get your hopes up. This resembles SC2 only in that you fly from one star system to another (you never get to see the system itself) and sometimes have encounters with other entities. There is none of the story, humor, conversations or diverse gameplay that there is in SC2.
Still, don't take my word for it. Go try it out for yourself. It's free.

Think of it as Star Control 2 lite, but way more varied than Weird Worlds