Identify MS-DOS 2D space adventure game c. 1992

Question

Please can you help me identify a game I bought and played on my first PC around 1992?

It was a 2D, top down game with a small spaceship that you controlled and remained centre-screen. It was a story-driven adventure game with more emphasis on arcade elements. Between encounters with other ships you traveled around a huge open space map that you could easily get lost in. Progress was made by learning coordinates through conversations and battles, then you could fly to the next area of the story. I think there was some kind of 'warp' drive acquired to travel faster between coordinates.

The first half of the game came as shareware. I completed this, then sent away for the second half which came to me on a floppy via mail order. It seemed a very similar distribution model to games like Wolfenstein, Commander Keen etc from that time, but I have looked through lists of games by iD and Apogee and not found anything.

Answer 1

It sounds very much like Star Control II, but given the shareware aspect, it must be a game inspired by it, Solar Winds.

Answer 2

It reminded me of Starflight.

Things going against it being a match:

• It was released in 1986 with a sequel in 1987
• I don't know that it had shareware, but being huge success in 1986/1987 it's possible it would be in a bargain bin or have a shareware release available in 1992
• It had less emphasis on arcade elements

Things going for it being a match:

• Huge open space map
• Progress was made by learning coordinates through conversations and battles, then you could fly to the next area of the story
• I think there was some kind of 'warp' drive acquired to travel faster between coordinates (there were wormholes you could discover as shortcuts between areas of the map)

Other things that might help identify it:

• A big part of the game was collecting biological and mineral samples and artifacts from exploring the planets
• 800 huge procedurally-generated planets in 270 star systems, it could take hours to explore a single one fully so the coordinates learned through conversations played an important part of finding story elements, though it was technically possible to run into them randomly
• Different officers you could hire at your base and their skills affected gameplay. For instance if your communications officer's skill wasn't high enough, a lot of text in conversations with aliens would be garbled
• It's copy protection mechanism was a wheel where you would have to rotate elements into the right position given a few pieces of info to reveal an answer