Setting up new bases requires a colony lander, which you can build. The orbit screen lets you place colonies and inspect possible artifact sites. Alien artifacts are valuable finds - they may have a number of uses but initially most will boost ship performance for the various ship classes supplied by friendly members of the League of Sentient Races. As you meet up with more members, your fleet grows accordingly. Alternatively you can set up colonies of your own, preferably on planets with high resource levels for which you have a passenger race who likes the planet climate.
Extra bases are very important for harvesting much-needed fuel.
Fuel, races, and ships can also be selectively shown. Close Encounters Perhaps Star Control 3 's most endearing feature is the quality of the alien animations. Each race has its unique features, with well-filmed digitised sequences and quite clever speech styles. Some of the humour isn't that funny, but each race is very interesting to meet first time around. The Chmmr are my favourites, reminding me a bit of an old and very early Star Trek episode where Spock ends up in a mind meld with a living rock creature.