Stars!

Stars! is a turn-based 4X strategy game set in space. It was made for Play By Post multiplayer; as such it uses Simultaneous Turn Resolution (simultaneous phase-by-phase, and with AI-only combat) and optional dedicated server executable.

It was made for Windows, but doesn't require capabilities beyond very basic; as such it runs flawlessly on other x86 under Wine ^[1] - or in Windows 3.11 run under DOSBox, for that matter (though this may be not so easy to set up from scratch).

Officially Abandonware. The only not quite free part are serial codes (you need one per human player in a game, except those on the same computer), and those are given for small donations on the server maintenance. See "Get Stars!"

Tropes used in Stars! include:

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• Action Initiative: Counted per weapon slot. It rarely matters much, but sometimes it's possible to tweak design for the first strike. Short ranged weapons shoot before their longer-range relatives. Naturally, shield sappers have the best initiative and shoot before all other weapons on the same ship. Battle computers improve initiative, which makes them somewhat useful even on beam ships.
• After Action Report: All fighting is done by AI on the host, but you get to see Battle Reports.
• All There in the Manual: "Guts of" (formulae and algorithms) cloaking, bombing, mineral packets, etc.
• Arbitrary Maximum Range: Weapons either function at nominal efficiency or don't reach.
• Attack Pattern Alpha: Battle Plans.
• Awesome but Impractical: Many MT parts look awesome, but at TL they need there are conventional components of the same types that make them lackluster choice, unless you are Min-Maxing very hard or trying to circumvent some limitation imposed by traits (e.g. a mediocre overpriced penetrating scanner is still better than no penetrating scanners at all).
• Boring but Practical: Colonizer hull, Privateer hull.
• Death From Above: Mineral packets
• Deflector Shields: Shields recover only between battles. Shield generators are very light, but far weaker than armor of comparable Tech Level - of course, often slots are shield-only or armor-only anyway. Beam weapons have lesser range, but are light (allowing greater mobility), always hit and have greater damage - which shields absorb point by point. Conversely, torpedoes are long-ranged, miss a lot, but shields absorb only 1/2 of their damage (plus 1/8 of damage from missed ones); heavy missiles have much lower hit rate (though by that time you probably have better computers to improve it) and deal 2x damage to ships without shields, thus in late game shields become necessary for survival.
  • The shields are weak per component, but are stacking from the whole "token" (all ships of the same type in a fleet), thus if a ship type has shield and if there are enough of them, it takes 2x as many hits to destroy the first one even with missiles. When there are few ships, shields are inferior to armor, which in turn usually is inferior to mounting more weapons (General Purpose slots allow all these components and more). This have obvious strategical implications: e.g. 1x shield + 2x torpedo destroyers are cheaper, faster and stronger than their 3x torpedo counterparts... but only if you keep them in big enough packs. For a destroyer placing another torpedo in GP slot gives 1.5x damage; a lone destroyer with shield has about 1.1x more total dp, which is not as good; but in a large stack destroyers with shield have 2x dp - and ability to last 2x longer is better than dealing 1.5x damage. Also, shields help patrols used against fleets too weak to kill them anyway (lone missile-armed Privateers, etc), as they reduce damage, thus repair time, which allows to build somewhat less of these ships.
    • How many are enough? With TL 0 shield against TL 0 torpedo (though hull and armor at Construction TL 3) it takes minimum of 18 ships to fully use this advantage - and neither you nor enemy are likely to churn out such fleets before a better design ^[2] is available; with shields on the same TL 3 (in Energy) it's 12, and with everything at TL 6, it's only 9 ships. Later in the game both shields get better and fleets grow, which is why missiles become the main weapon again, despite introduction of both missile jammers and "shield sappers" that inflict even greater damage, but only to shields (and fire before other weapons, of course). But beam ships require less minerals and are lighter, so they also can maintain high speed for longer and are more gateable, as such they remain more useful for smaller mobile fleets (minesweepers/minesweeper killers/raiders).
  • Regenerating Shields lesser racial trait gives shields 40% greater full capacity and regeneration 10% of the total each round (unless drained to 0), but value of armor components is halved (hull dp is not changed). Combined with shield stacking it can be ludicrously strong against beams, but low armor makes means missile performance is the same as it would be without RS and shields. This also means RS works better in early game (torpedoes and armor are still weak anyway), for players with strong jammers (cheap Electronics advances help), Inner Strength PRT (exclusive jammer components reduce threat of missiles; Fielded Kelarium uses armor slots yet also adds shield value, allowing smaller stacks to have enough of shield strength without reducing other capabilities by taking general slots; Croby Sharmor, Langston Shell and Multi-Cargo Pod add to armor dp value as well as shield, but since they are not Armor type components, this "bonus" armor is not halved) and War Monger PRT (early rush to make good use of Weapons tech advantage, exclusive tougher hulls later). It weakens starbases badly, since there's only one (Improved Starbases LRT can compensate by allowing tougher hulls, and for Alternate Reality PRT it's worse, as their starbase is the colony). Shield sappers can still chew through RS, but it will take longer, ditto for capship missile splashes.
• Design-It-Yourself Equipment/Socketed Equipment: Ships and starbases. But the total number of designs in each category is limited to 16 slots, and upgrade is possible only for starbases. Thus you need to recycle old ship types just to free their slots.
  • Unfortunately, AI upgrade seems to work slot-by-slot, leading to suboptimal designs: torpedo destroyer with 2 Manoeuvring Jets (in Mechanical slot it's okay at low tech, though it could take a fuel tank, but universal slot could take another weapon or shield instead), beam cruiser with a capacitor (increasing beam damage) in one Electronics slot and computer in another (which in this case only improves initiative by 1), torpedo galleons with Overthrusters in 3× slot and cargo expansion in 2× slot, and so on.
• Easy Logistics: Only mostly. Ultimately, minerals can be created with Mineral Alchemy, but it's expensive. Antimatter is produced endlessly by docks, Fuel Export hulls and scoops, but you may still need some monkeying around.
• Fan Remake: CraigStars!, FreeStars (and clients Frontier Project, Étoiles, My Own Stars!, ZStars! and GStars!), Stellar Legacy, Stars! Nova and HxNova, plus Thousand Parsec engine.
• Final Solution: It's not MoO2, one species per planet only. Bombs, mineral packets, troops or de-terraforming, your choice.
• Gatling Good: 4 weapons, though only 2 available for everyone. Hit all targets in range, also 4× mine sweeping rate.
• Imported Alien Phlebotinum: Mystery Traders offer exclusive components and ships built of them. Most of this stuff is awesome, but tend to have multiple and high Tech Level requirements. Many are combinations of different component types - most not as good as common components you'll have on those tech levels, but due to using a slot type different from some of the common equivalents allow greater optimization and can be used on hulls normally unable to perform a given function or inefficient at it.
  • Alien Miner (Mining): Weak, but light and still much better than Mini-Miner. Secondary benefits are of dubious usefulness for a miner ship, though not completely useless: not being noticed in the first place is the best defense, as miners remain slow even with these robots; and since most of the time they're orbiting and only visible to penetrating scanners (in shorter range), cloaking about 50% for Mini-Miner hull gives a good chance near enemy territory; jamming isn't much against a proper war fleet, but may help against weaker raiders.
  • Enigma Pulsar (Engine): It's a Warp 10 engine with built-in maneuvering jet. What could be better for beam ships? And a weak Cloak. The last common engine is more economical, but Enigma can be built with much lower tech levels, is cheaper and runs up to warp 5 for free.
  • Genesis Device (Planetary): Removes everything except population and generates the fresh planet randomly. Maybe habitable, maybe not.
  • Hush-a-boom (Bomb): Just a good bomb, but more importantly, very light.
  • Jump Gate (Mechanical): Allows equipped ships to gate even from deep space (limited only by receiving stargate). Good for IT because they have less limited gates and this increases mobility, good for everyone else because now they can gate cargo^[3].
  • Langston Shell (Shield) gives Cloak, Jamming, Armor, Scan.
  • Mega Poly Shell (Armor): Cloak and Jamming (usually would need specialized components in Electrical slots), plus Shield and Scan. Lighter than any normal armor except Organic. Get more jamming without taking Electrical slots from computers (one armor stack on starbase gives 73% jamming). Good enough to use even on RS build.
  • Mini-Morph (Hull): A smaller, cheaper cousin of Metamorph with 10 General Purpose slots. Too flimsy for warships, but very good for utility designs, like minelayers.
  • Multi-Function Pod (Electrical) aside of combining Cloak and Jamming effects gives you Movement bonus (normally only two Mechanical components do).
  • Multi-Cargo Pod (Mechanical) gives Cloak and Armor (otherwise extra dp are provided only by things that go into Armor and Shield slots).
  • Multi-Contained Munition (Beam Weapon) has weak effects of a cloak, guidance system, mine dispenser plus decent penetrating scanner and bomb, with very modest mass. It's slightly weaker than beam weapons you'll have at its level, and a bit too expensive for "chaff" fleets, but now you can stop making ponderous bombers beyond their primary function useful only as expensive mobile fuel tanks, and instead build bombing warships - light enough to use stargates, tough enough to not be easy prey for cheap interceptor fleets and even when not bombing they still scan, lay mines (at least you won't need to use up one more design slot for a dedicated minelayer), and sweep enemy mines!
  • They also circumvent component restrictions from racial traits: Langston Shell, Mega Poly Shell and Multi-Contained Munition are penetrating scanners you can build despite No Advanced Scanners LRT. Alien Miner is outperformed by the 2nd mining robot, but still performs 2.5 time better^[4] than the only component available with Only Basic Remote Mining LRT.
• Jack of All Trades: A Primary trait allowing extra population and free scanner automatically upgraded to your Tech Level in any ship built with either of 3 small "scout" (Scout, Frigate, Destroyer) hulls, and a boost to starting Tech Levels.
  • Generalized Research lesser trait allows to allocate only 50% of research spending on the chosen field, but gives 15% into others, i.e. adds up to 50%+5*15%=125% total research points from the same resources. As such, it has cost between minor negative and minor positive values.
• New Tech Is Not Cheap: Each item becomes cheaper by -4% per Tech Level exceeded in all prerequisite fields (if it has any), until its resource cost drops to 24%.
  • With Bleeding Edge Technology lesser trait the cost of a new technology is 2x until its Tech Level is exceeded, but improvement is -5%/level with 20% bottom. This sucks on highest-level items, however, since there's no room left for improvement, thus you're just stuck with double cost until the end.
• No Recycling: Painfully averted. You will have to scrap old ships. There's even Ultimate Recycling lesser racial trait that increases efficiency of mineral recycling and allows to recover some Resources (added to the planet's Production points on the next turn).
• Organic Technology: Biotechnology field gives all mines, all smart bombs, all penetrating planetary scanners, two lighter types of armor, two types of cheap scanners and some other things. And all terraforming technologies - Total Terraforming needs only Bio levels, though higher; it's cheaper and eventually allows to change parameters twice as far.
• Overdrive: Any engine, even if it's Tech Level 0 and rated for Warp 5, can fly at Warp 9 (81 ly/turn) without damage. They simply consume more and more fuel the faster they go, thus even ships carrying a lot of fuel can't exceed their nominal speed much for more than a few turns, especially with cargo.
  • Ramscoops have lesser (for their Tech Level) nominal speed and collect more fuel than spend up to even lower (by 1-2 more notches) speed; they also have consumption curve raising even sharper, so exceeding the nominal speed wastes too much fuel to cover any significant range. This affects logistics and design, especially on larger maps: ships that commonly need short bursts of speed to intercept enemies (patrols also need nominal speed, to catch up with evading targets on tactical map) or mineral packets have "classical" engines, and are refueled by slowly following supply ships (scoops, or even caravans with big fuel tanks) between short bursts of high speed. Far-ranging (scouts) or overweight (miners) classes need acceptable guaranteed minimum speed, but almost never go overdrive, so they get scoops.
  • Traveling at Warp 10 with an engine not rated for this, however, has 1/10 chance of destruction every year of travel (for each ship separately, and not dependent on the number of engines)
• Our Wormholes Are Different: They allow instant travel, but drift and are not entirely stable (though if one end of a wormhole is on your scan, you can see its current stability level).
• Planet of Hats: Every race has one Primary trait. Though "Jack of All Trades" is included. Most have exclusive ship/starbase components and multiple bonuses related to their area of expertise.

1. Hyper Expansion: 2x reproduction, colonize easier, but 1/2 population cap and no stargates. Starting ships: Smaugarian Peeping Tom, 3x Spore Cloud.
2. Super Stealth: masters of sneaking, ships start 75% cloaked^[5] for free. Starting ships: Shadow Sleuth/Smaugarian Peeping Tom, Shadow Transport, Santa Maria.
3. War Monger: better offensive capabilities, but only basic planetary defenses and no mines. Starting ships: Armed Probe, Stalwart Defender/none, Gadfly/none, Santa Maria
4. Claim Adjuster: masters of terraforming. Starting ships: Smaugarian Peeping Tom, Santa Maria, Change of Heart.
5. Inner Strength: better at defense and repair; no advanced bombs. Starting ships: Smaugarian Peeping Tom, Santa Maria.
6. Space Demolition: everything related to mines. Starting ships: Smaugarian Peeping Tom, Santa Maria, Little Hen, Speed Turtle.
7. Packet Physics: lobbing mineral packets and reaping various advantages from this. Starting ships: Long Range Scout, Santa Maria. The second starting planet with Accelerator Platform starbase and another Long Range Scout (in universes > Tiny).
8. Interstellar Traveller: masters of stargates, but mineral packets are subpar. Starting ships: Smaugarian Peeping Tom, Mayflower, Stalwart Defender, Swashbuckler. The second starting planet with Porthole to Beyond starbase and another Smaugarian Peeping Tom (in universes > Tiny).
9. Alternate Reality: live on starbases^[6], can build better starbases; travel kills some colonists). Starting ships: Smaugarian Peeping Tom, Pinta.
10. Jack of All Trades: nothing outstanding, but free penetrating scanners on 3 small hulls, greater pop cap and higher starting Tech Levels. Starting ships: Armed Probe, Long Range Scout, Santa Maria, Swashbuckler/Teamster, Stalwart Defender, Cotton Picker.

• Point Build System: Custom races. The costs are not static and some lesser traits may vary not only in value, but sign (Generalized Research, Bleeding Edge Technology, Regenerating Shields, No Ram Scoop Engines, in part due to Min-Maxing resistant adjustments and built-in trade-offs: No Ram Scoop Engines is ostensibly a disadvantage, but allows to have Warp 10 engine earlier, Regenerating Shields are great, but come with weaker armor, but also that's less of a disadvantage in an early rush, etc).
• Portal Network: Stargates - an Orbital type component (i.e. can be used only for Starbases). They have range and mass limits (only the sending gate matters, not destination), which you may exceed up to 5x each, but gated ships may be damaged (it's not enough kill a ship, unless it's exactly 5x... or it was already damaged) or vanish (which is not the same as fatal damage), but it's indicated immediately upon adding the waypoint ^[7]. Also, cargo can't be gated and is dumped at the sending colony (except for Interstellar Traveller).
  • Interstellar Traveller primary trait among the other perks allows to transport minerals and colonists, reduces damage and chance of disappearance when exceeding safety limits and later allows to build exclusive stargate components, up to ∞/∞.
  • Hyper-Expansion primary trait prohibits building stargates.
  • Jump Gate (MT component) allows the equipped ships to jump from deep space, with cargo and still not using up any fuel^[8]. In this case the destination stargate's limits apply rather than the sender's. You may need to move away from the colony for 1 year before jumping, however.
• Ramscoop: There are almost as many Ram Scoop engines as non-scooping. The scooping ones are rated for lower nominal speed (which affects fuel consumption and combat mobility) than normal engines of comparable Tech Level, and they produce surplus fuel when moving another 1-2 notches slower than this. The differences add one more way to break off Easy Logistics on big maps, creating niches for solutions like chains of fuel depots (which scoops also help to resupply).
  • On the upside, ability to sustain moderate minimum speed for unlimited range makes scoops most useful for ships that can't carry enough fuel to reach objectives in reasonable time (unless the map is small) - scouts need to go far by definition, same applies to mid-game colonizers on big maps, while remote mining ships and bombers are too massive for their engine number and fuel reserve.
  • There are trade-offs: lower combat speed (matters mostly for beamers and scouts), fuel consumption raises with warp speed much steeper than for normal engines, so usually only ships with particularly large fuel capacity can exceed their nominal speed for 2 turns in a row; Space Mines inflict more damage to ships with scoops and their fleets. They tend to be heavier (which matters on smaller ships, and in fringe cases interferes with gate-ability or reduces combat speed further) and more expensive.
  • This applies even more to Radiating Hydro-Ram Scoop, with lowest Tech levels of commonly available scoops; it also kills some transported colonists in the same fleet unless the race got rather high radiation optimum (not even maximum) value. This means not only freighters with rad-scoop are limited to hauling minerals, but e.g. armed escorts with scoops would have to dance around a transport or colonizer as a separate fleet without merging.
  • No Ram Scoop Engines LRT makes scoops unavailable (except special engines from traits and MT), which means greater dependence on big starbases (that developing colonies cannot build before dozens of turns) and later Fuel Export ships (expensive and fragile). Though can be compensated with Improved Fuel Efficiency LRT (it gives a weak scoop early on, and two of the best engines much later). Usually taken along with "Improved Fuel Efficiency", for the obvious reason (it also gives Fuel Mizer scoop engine, which remains available).
• Space Mines: Three types - Standard (the lowest safe speed limit), Heavy (greater damage and hit probability, but the highest safe speed) and Speed Bump (no damage, only stops ships, even greater hit chance). Minefields attack enemy ships traveling above certain warp speed and thus prevent a sudden invasion—an important part of the game. Ships equipped with Ramscoop engines suffer more damage; those that aren't tend to rely on fragile fuel transports, and since mines deal damage like missiles (Shields only absorb half), unarmored ships are killed easily. All swept by any beam weapons with range>0. Most races can build only one standard mine dispenser, Inner Strength can also build the weakest Speed Bump, and Space Demolition have access to all.
  • Space Demolition PRT specializes in mines and have everything related to mines improved. They have all types of dispensers, specialized minelayer hulls that double output of all mine dispensers, can drop mines on the run, have minefields double as scanners, and are much more capable both of surviving mine attacks and using their own mines offensively. They also use minefields as detection arrays—if used correctly, this makes sneaking up on them almost impossible: move fast and get blown up, or move slowly and be detected early. Or run into normal and heavy mines, have surviving ships stopped by speed traps and detected—unable to repair without blown up supply ships or even run away due to still being stuck in the middle of 3 overlapping fields. War Monger PRT can't build minelayers at all.
• Spiritual Successor: Very likely to be inspired by VGA Planets - it uses many of the same concepts, but has a fairly competent AI, rather than being PvP-only.
• Starting Units: There are several hardcoded starting designs chosen depending on PRT and LRT.
  • Starbases: "Starbase" - Space Station hull half-full of weak shields and lasers^[9], given mass driver or gate for Packet Physics or Interstellar Traveller, but otherwise not upgraded to the higher tech levels no matter what; Packet Physics has it equipped with mass driver and Interstellar Traveller with gate; "Accelerator Platform" orbital fort with mass driver on the 2nd planet for Packet Physics; "Porthole to Beyond" orbital fort with gate on the 2nd planet of Interstellar Traveller; "Starter Colony" empty orbital fort created when Alternate Reality race colonizes a planet^[10]
  • Ships: "Santa Maria" colony ship - everyone have one, except those with other colonizers: Alternate Reality ("Pinta" - the same, but with AR-specific colonizer module), Hyper Expansion (3x "Spore Cloud" mini colony ships) and Interstellar Traveller ("Mayflower" - exactly like "Santa Maria" except chosen picture, possibly at some point was intended to be something else). "Smaugarian Peeping Tom" basic scout; advanced scouts are downgraded to Peeping Tom if they don't meet tech level prerequisites. "Long Range Scout" - exactly like "Smaugarian Peeping Tom", except chosen picture. "Armed Probe" - scout with beam weapon (Weapons 3+, or downgraded to Peeping Tom). "Stalwart Defender" hybrid destroyer (Construction 3+). "Teamster" - medium freighter with chain and ball armor (Construction 3+). "Swashbuckler" - hybrid privateer (Construction 4+, or downgraded to Teamster). Shadow Transport (Super Stealth exclusive) - small freighter with shield and cloak. Shadow Sleuth (Super Stealth, Electronics 5+, or downgraded to Peeping Tom) - scout with cloak. Gadfly mini-bomber (War Monger, Construction 1+, Weapons 2+). Change of Heart orbital terraformer (Claim Adjuster exclusive). Little Hen and Speed Turtle mini-minelayers for normal and speed trap mines (Space Demolition exclusive). Cotton Picker - basic mini miner (Jack of All Trades)- "Potato Bug" - midget miner (2x, Advanced Remote Mining exclusive). And hardcoded, but apparently not used from v. 1.x "Lilliputian Freighter" - basic small freighter.
  • Designs (except Starbase) are upgraded, while preserving class of each components (per technology browser or design drop list) rather than filling slots with the "best" that fits: if you start with Tech Level 4 in all fields (JoAT all+75% start higher), "Stalwart Defender" destroyer upgrades to your new best beam weapon, scanner and armor, but retains its mostly-useless starting torpedo; "Teamster" armored freighter with new scanner and better armor in Armor/Shield slot, never shield; Armed Probe with better beam weapon and scanner, etc and all ships have your best engine. Also, if you start with Radiating Hydro-Ram Scoop ^[11], it will put on everything except colonizers, unless it's safe per race parameters.
• Tactical Rock-Paper-Scissors: The result: Missile Capships > Beamer Capships > Beamer Capships + Chaff > Missile Capships + Chaff > Missile Capships.
• Tech Level: 6 fields.
• Terraform: Common, for each of 3 variables separately. Claim Adjuster is a Primary Trait specializing in it - they have free auto-upgraded terraforming, permanent terraforming chance and their mineral packets hitting a planet terraform it toward their references. Total Terraforming lesser trait improves it.
  • Genesis Effect: Genesis Device (MT technology) - it removes all buildings and randomizes environment and minerals on the planet.
  • Hostile Terraforming: Claim Adjuster has exclusive toys for this - "Retro Bomb" (undoes terraforming and ignores planetary defenses) and Orbital Adjuster (goes into mining robot slot and terraform friendly planets to the benefit of their owners and hostile/neutral to the owner's detriment).
• Turn Based Battle: Also simultaneous turn split by phases.
• 2-D Space
• Vaporware: Stars! Supernova Genesis.
• Wiki Rule: http://wiki.starsautohost.org/
• Worker Unit: Mining ships and freighters. And colonizers, of course, but they are single-use.
• You Require More Vespene Gas: In early game the bottleneck is Germanium (for factories and ships), later Ironium (mostly for ship hulls, armor and missiles). The green stuff is necessary for most weapons, but still almost always ends up piling up until lobbed at some unlucky planet as mineral packets or sold to Mysterious Traders.

1. ↑ there are a few minor quirks, such as placing ini file in system directory, but they don't interfere with the game once you started it
2. ↑ which won't stack with them
3. ↑ to avoid using the station's stargate transports need to move away from the colony for 1 year, but it's still an improvement
4. ↑ and since it's cheaper, you can build about twice as many ships
5. ↑ i.e. detectable at 1/4 range
6. ↑ thus normal planetary buildings are unavailable, production, mining and colonization work differently; their colonies are more vulnerable, except to packets
7. ↑ Travel Time shows Danger
8. ↑ of course, fuel matters only if the destination is a Space Fort with gate
9. ↑ which means it can be beaten with impunity using wimpy starter torpedo, thanks to its greater range
10. ↑ help says Orbital Construction Module does this, but in fact standard Colonization Module does the same for AR, while OCM works like a normal CM for everyone else, and even shares its bug.
11. ↑ IT with IFE and Energy start at 3, or JaoT with IFE, CE and Propulsion start at 4