We just launched a new turn based, MMO, empire building, strategy game called Starpires (
http://starpires.com)
It's based on a very addictive BBS game from the early 90's called Solar Realms Elite, but brought back to life as a browser based MMO. It's my baby and I've put a lot of work into it over the past six months. So far the initial player responses have been great, but I'd love to get more feedback.
- Colonize planets and manage your global economy
- Acquire military forces ranging from troops to heavy cruisers.
- Wage galactic war against other empires through a variety of attack types.
- Deploy a wide array of covert operations against your enemies.
- Create alliances and manage diplomatic relations.
- Research new technologies and upgrades.
- Move up the player rankings to become the most powerful empire in the universe.
![[Image: screenshot2.png]](http://starpires.com/images/homepage/screenshot2.png)
![[Image: screenshot4.png]](http://starpires.com/images/homepage/screenshot4.png)
There is also blog with updates on the game development process at
http://starpires.com/blog
Hey there starpires. Welcome to SpaceSector!
I tried your game just now. I was intrigued. So apparently you colonize and abandon planets by buying and selling them. Some will provide you credits (mining and tourism), among all other sorts of things. Population also generates you credits through taxes. You also buy and sell troops, spaceships and stations. That's what I got in 10 minutes playing
I also found the constraints, that is, food, morale, mood and air quality, quite interesting. They seem to possess substantial depth.
I lack a starmap though. It's a so standard thing in space strategy games that I felt a bit lost in the first few minutes in the game I confess. But after a while I felt curious and started exploring. Great job on the tooltips by the way, they surely are important to quickly introduce players to the game.
One thing, is the game completely free or are there premium or microtransaction features? In other words how do you monetized, or plan to monetize your game?
I'll keep an eye on starpires. Good job!
Adam,
Thanks for checking it out...
Yes, you can colonize planets by buying them (or acquiring them in battle). There are 10 different planet types ranging (food, mining, supply, research), each of which do something for your empire. There is actually a fairly intricate economy underlying the game and a lot of the fun is just tweaking things and figuring out what grows your empire the fastest.
http://starpires.com/blog/2011/08/planet...-strategy/
Things like moral, civilian mood, air quality all play factor in. For example petroleum planets produce the most credits of the planet types, but are also heavy polluters. If your air quality goes bad, your population is going to get upset, and it will also affect your food production.
Here's one good example:
http://starpires.com/blog/2011/08/civili...opulation/
On the topic of star maps, I was actually going to write a blog post about that today. It's something I spent a lot of time thinking about and debating. What it came down to, is I wanted to build a MMO, where you could have thousands of players in the same game. A star map would actually end up being very constraining on game play in this scenario. One of the keys to making the game fun is you want to play with your friends, but what happens if one of your friends is on one side of the universe and another is stuck on another? It's not like many RPG games where it makes sense that you can just all move to the same place
But the game still maintains the concept of having a known universe within the entire game that expands as you "explore". When you your known universe is made up of your friends (based on FB connections and invites) as well as other players that started playing at the same time as you. You'll notice that you can probably see about 20 empires out of the 250 in the game at this moment. That way new players aren't overwhelmed by being surrounded by more vastly more powerful empires.
As your empire grows you discover new more powerful empires which are added to your "known universe". That way the game keeps getting more challenging.
I do plan on adding in some paid in game upgrades and premium features in the future, but the game itself will remain free to play.
While the game is pretty polished, it's also not meant to be a static game. We will be continuously adding features and tweaking the game play. I'm hoping to get a trailer and some video tutorials up on the site pretty soon.