Stars! (the computer game)

Cafe Society
1

So I’ve dusted off my copy of Stars! for the first time in years and re-discovered how fun and frustrating this game can be. Fun: it’s amazingly addictive for such a clunky-looking title. Frustrating: ye flippin’ gods, the micro-management!

(obligatory Wikipedia link)

Any Dopers ever play this? Any Dopers still play this?

Strategy discussion? Fond memories of particularly engaging games?

Any Dopers interested in a PBEM game? (Erm… mods, I’m not asking to play on the SDMB, just so’s you know…)

Anybody? Bueller?

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I loved that game, too. It was fun trying to chase down the mystery traders and hoping they’d give you a spaceship part.

Last I heard there was a new game in development by the makers of Stars! cslled “Stars! Supernova” or something like that. I think they actually completed the game but couldn’t find a company willing to produce it.

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Yep, that would be “Stars! Supernova Genesis”. And it looked REALLY frikken’ cool. The authors claimed in several Usenet posts and on their website that it was juuuust about done, they only needed a publisher before moving into the beta test phase. For several years.

And then the website went poof! and nobody seems to have heard from them since. Sad. :frowning:

I was one of many who signed an online petition (fat lot of good THOSE do, heh) asking them to at least release it as shareware, just like the first game, but they weren’t interested. I gather there was something going on ‘at home’, as it were, and somebody needed a sizable payout before they’d give the go ahead… which pretty much precludes a shareware release, if all you’re after is the Big Buck$.

There have been some attempts at recreating it freeware, but none of them live up to the original so far.

Re: the mystery traders: in my latest game I apparently managed to find every one of them, because by the end-game stage, every time I met them with a freighter fleet full of goodies they’d turn me down. Never did get the part I was after, either. Dangit.

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I still play Stars! Just against the computer. Never could be sure of being able to do my turns fast enough to get in a group game. There are/were websites that listed all the mystery trader offerings. I think after a while you have to provide more minerals to get anything from them. (They always reminded me of Niven’s ‘Outsiders’.) Always hoped that Stars Supernova! would come out. Does anyone know of any similar games available now? I never liked the ‘hand-eye coordination’ type games.