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Stars!

Stars! is a complex turn-based computer game based around the management of planets and fleets of spaceships following the 4X (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit & eXterminate) model. The game has been around since 1995, and still has a strong following, eight years later, which gives some idea of the level of replayability it allows.

Developer and Publisher

Stars! was developed by Jeff Johnson and Jeff McBride ("the Jeffs") for their own use, and initially released as shareware. A retail version was later produced for, and published by Empire Interactive, although the shareware version continued. More recently the game has been sold as part of the Xplosiv budget games range.

Modes of play

The game is well adapted to the Play-By-Email (PBEM) style of multiplayer gaming. One player takes on duties as host, and the other players send their instructions (turn files) by email to the host. The host then generates the results of those instructions and emails back the results.

An alternative to play-by-email is to use an online system such as the Stars! Autohost. This system automates most of the hosting duties, and can handle a large number of games simultaneously.

Many games are run at a rate of 1 turn per calendar day, giving plenty of time for strategic thinking. In large games this can be quite necessary, with turn generation dropping to only 3 times per week in cases, due to the complexity of the game and the level of micro-management required to effectively control a large empire competitively.

There is also a reasonably competent artificial intelligence (AI) that can take part in the game. The player can opt to play against AIs only (up to 15 of them), and this is the way that new players typically get to learn the game mechanics before launching into multi-player games. A well-regarded tutorial helps with getting started.

Another style of play is referred to as a Blitz game. In these games, turns are played every 15 minutes or so, and all players must be at their computers at the same time. Blitz games are generally more tactical and less political in nature, due to the time constraints involved.

Recently, the duel has become more popular. These are similar to regular turn-a-day games but are between two players only. Again, with only two players involved there is no political side to these games.

Graphics

The graphics in the game are rudimentary, which is not surprising given its age. It is entirely 2D, and the graphics consist of the main map view and static pictures of planets, ship hulls and components. Even battles consist of moving unanimated icons around a grid.

This does have the advantage of allowing the game to run on almost any computer, and it can even be run on Linux systems through the WINE system.

Race design

Stars! games begin with race design, in which the player creates an alien race using the custom race wizard. This is a points based system, with advantages costing points and disadvantages giving them back. The total points left at the end of the design must be zero or greater. Each race has a primary racial trait, possibly several lesser racial traits, economic settings, environmental settings and technology research capabilities, all of which can be adjusted.

Primary Racial Traits

Claim Adjuster (CA)

Experts at terraforming, and generally accepted to be the most powerful trait, economically.

Gameplay

Each player begins the game with one (or possibly two, depending on race design) planets and a small fleet of starting ships. From these beginnings they develop their empire until they come into contact with the races of other players.

Players initially send scouts out to scan the planets around their homeworld. These scouts determine the environment (gravity, temperature and radiation levels) and also the mineral concentrations. When a planet with a suitable environment (one that matches the environment settings defined in the race wizard) is found, coloniser ships are constructed and sent to the planet. Additional population and minerals can be shipped to the new colony in freighters.

Each planet will set up a production queue, telling its inhabitants what to build. Options include factories, mines, defences or a starbase. Once a starbase has been built, it becomes possible to build ships there.

In this way, colonies spread out throughout the galaxy from the homeworld, until the empire's boundries meet those of another race.

Economy

During the game, each player builds up their economy through development of their planets. The economy of a planet is based on the number of colonists living there, and each 10,000 colonists contributes a certain amount of resources. In addition, the colonists can build factories (which in turn produce more resources) and mines (which produce minerals). The amount of resources produced by each colonist and factory, as well as the cost of building factories and mines, is configurable during the race design phase.

In addition to building factories and mines, the resources and minerals can also be used to build planetary defences, ships and for technology research. No player ever has enough resources and minerals to accomplish all the tasks they need, and so trade-offs are constantly being made.

Ship design

Another element that adds to the complexity of the game is ship design. The game defines a number of standard hulls, each of which has different numbers of slots into which various components can be placed. Some slots can contain only engines, some only weapons, etc. There are also general purpose slots on some hulls.

Which hulls are available, as well as which components can be placed in those hulls, depends on the technology research level that the player has reached at a given point in the game.

Due to the complexity of the game there are no best designs. Advanced players continually counter-design ships as they battle against their opponents.

A significant complication to player's lives is caused by a limit of only 16 different ship designs per player. This means that older ships must be scrapped before new designs can be implemented, once the limit is reached. This limit acts to prevent unlimited counter-designing.

Battles

Battles occur whenever fleets from two different races arrive at the same point, unless the players have set each other to "friend" in the player-relations manager.

Due to almost infinite number of possible ship designs, combined with a number of possible battle orders for each fleet, battles can be very difficult to predict. Advanced players will frequently try out a battle in a test-bed game against themselves prior to a particularly significant battle.

Victory

When a new game is started, the host defines the victory conditions for the game. Victory conditions can be managed by the game (for example, winner must have 100 capital ships and a score over 10,000) or, in multi-player games, may be by a simple vote.

Research

Another important aspect of the game is research. There are six fields of technology that can be researched: energy, weapons, propulsion, construction, electronics and biotechnology. Each technology can be at any level between 0 (the default starting value) and 26 (maximum). Players can increase their level in technology by assigning resources to research, and can choose which technology to focus their research on. As players advance in techology, better components become available for use on their ships or planets.

The amount of resources required to increase a particular tecnology area depends on the current level, and also can be heavily influenced by choices made during race design. For example, one race design may take 3.5 times the resources to increase one level in a particular technology as another.

It is also possible to trade technology during the game. In modern games, therefore, most players pick one or two techs to research and then trade with their allies for the rest.

Diplomacy

Because many games take place over a period of months between players spread across the globe, diplomacy plays a very large part in the game. Alliances form, backs are stabbed and the outcomes of wars are decided by long email conversations.

Advanced play

As Stars! has been around for so long, the community has developed some very effective techniques for getting the best out of a race design. There is still a lot of discussion along these lines in the discussion forums.

Population management

The population of a planet grows as the planet dwellers reproduce, but at 25% of maximum planet capacity the growth rate starts to slow. For this reason it is best to keep a planets population at exactly 25%, shipping excess population to another world. However, transport between planets is not instantaneous, and while moving the population is not (except for one particular type of race design) growing at all and so it is a good idea to have population in transit for the minimum possible time. In addition, a point will be reached at which there is nowhere left to put excess population; in this situation it is advisable to start filling planets to 100%, starting from the ones with the least hospitable environment.

Good population management is one of the keys to creating a race that is a so-called resource monster. The generally accepted benchmark for a monster race is achieving a total output of 25,000 resources per year by the year 2450 (50 turns after the start of the game). Most non-beginners can achieve this level in a competitive game, and in controlled test-beds resource totals of several times this level have been achieved.

Chaff

Starships in Stars! may be armed with beam weapons (such as lasers) or missiles/torpedoes. Amongst the most powerful weapons are "capital ship missiles" which do enormous amounts of damage. However, each missile fired will destroy at most one ship, and so advanced players will field vast numbers of very cheap ships called "chaff". The purpose of chaff is to be hit by the missiles (and die) before the players valuable warships are targeted. As it is expensive to built missile ships, this has become an indespensable tactic.

The counter to chaff is to include "beamers" (warships with losts of beam weapons) in your battle fleet. Beam weapons are not limited to one ship killed per shot, and so a powerful beamer can be used as a "chaff shredder".

In some games the use of chaff is considered cheating, but most recent games see it is a perfectly valid tactic. In fact, many players consider that chaff makes the game better. Without chaff, missile ships are invariably superior to beam ships, although they are more expensive and generally can't use stargates. This often led to large slow fleets of missile ships trying to engage each other, with other fleets of beam ships playing an incidental role. Generally the player with the most missile ships won.

With chaff involved, beam ships with chaff can defeat missile ships, and so battles are more complex. Large warfleets in modern games must include beamers, missile ships and chaff in order to win, and the outcome of battles is much harder to predict.

Advanced Race Design

Over the past few years, race design has been raised almost to an art form. One of the benchmarks commonly used is to design a race that can be producing 25,000 resources by the game year 2450. Some race designs can hit several times this level.

The custom race wizard in Stars! allocates points (either positive or negative) amounts to all the various attributes, and there are certain values that are more or less efficient than others. For example, while the population growth rate of a race may be up to 20%, it is generally accepted that going from 19% to 20% is not worth the points it costs.

Experienced players will not use a race in a real game unless it has been properly test-bedded. This involves playing the race in a single player game (with no computer opponents) to see how the race performs and what its drawbacks are.

Battle simulation

In large games, two players may spend signifcant periods of time building huge warfleets. When these fleets meet, the factors that determine who will be victorious can be difficult to judge. For this reason, most advanced players will attempt to predict the outcome by running a separate copy of the game, attempting to duplicate the composition of the fleets as closely as possible, and watching the results. If the result is the loss of your fleet then it is better not to engage.

Stars! Supernova Genesis

The huge popularity of the original Stars! game convinced the developers that there would be a market for a sequel. They formed a company called Mare Crisium and began development of Stars! Supernova Genesis. This was intended to be a much more advanced game, with significantly better graphics, and also to remove some of the irritations of the original (such as the level of micro-management).

Unfortunately there was little interest from games publishers who by that time had become focussed exclusively on the games console and high-end 3D games markets, and so the project was eventually abandoned.

Tools and Utilities

Over the years a number of third party tools and utilities have been developed to help players manage their empires. These are invariably distributed as freeware, and several of them are of particularly high quality. These utilities can generally be found during a quick search through some of the websites listed below (external links) and downloaded for immediate use.

External links

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Photos, biographies and filmographies for various stars.
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Stars!

Packet Physics (PP)

Space Demolition (SD)