Starship Traders is a free text based massively multiplayer online roleplaying game

MMORPG

Massively multiplayer online role-playing game is a genre of role-playing video games in which a very large number of players interact with one another within a virtual game world....

 in the vein of the classic Star Trader

Star Trader

Star Trader was one of the original computer games of interstellar trading. Seemingly based on Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series of novels, Star Trader presents a star map of the galaxy in which the players move about and make money from trading and establishing trading routes...

 style of games. SST was created in 1999 by Ray Yeargin.

Starship Traders development history

The inception of Starship Traders can be traced back as far as 1986.

Czarwars/Tsarwars/The Last Resort [version I]/Starship Traders [version I]

The best summary of the development history from 1986 to 2002 is this article written by creator Ray Yeargin.

Starshiptraders description

"Starship Traders (SST) is an online, multiplayer webgame where players play independently or form teams. When you enter the game you'll be issued a starship with cargo holds, a lot of fuel, and a little cash. By hauling commodities between planets and ports you can earn microbots (money) which you can use to buy fighters, upgrade your ship, build a bunker, make starbases, or buy other handy items. You can use your fighters to attack other players' ships, you can mine a galaxy with attack-mode starbases, or you can guard key sectors with defensive starbases. Or, you might join a team and, together with your teammates, attempt to dominate a large and lucrative galaxy for your exclusive use. Or, perhaps you might prefer to join the war of resistance and help topple the ruthless overlords of the universe..."

Economics

Players produce revenue by purchasing and selling three types of commodities at ports. Each port buys two types of product, the third type it produces itself. Planets give away large quantities of free product, however, the planets purchase no product themselves. SST provides built-in tools to help new (and lazy veteran) players automatically make trades: Computrade and Autoscoop. Both Autoscoop and Computrade use more fuel than if their actions had been performed manually.

Computrade

Computrade will automatically purchase product at a port, move to another sector and sell said product, looking out for the best prices. Computrade will perform up to 16 trades at a time depending on the player's title. Lesser titles will be able to perform trades fewer times per Computrade. Computrade's command shortcut is 'C'.

Autoscoop

Autoscoop will pick up free product from a planet and sell it at a port in the same sector. Autoscoop requires the player's ship to be equipped with a Planet Scooper. Autoscoop's shortcut command is '$'.

List of Game Servers

• starshiptraders.com the original gameserver, shut down since January 2005
• The Last Resort: A Holiday In Hell ("official" successor game to original Starship Traders) - running since 15 January 2005
• Starship Traders: The Extended Last Frontier (fan-run gameserver using previous Starship Traders codebase) - running since at least 30 December 2005