Starship Traders MMO

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SSTMMO, a sandbox game-world built by a single developer, (*re)Launches the first permanent realm cluster on September 27, 2025

Starship Traders MMO "Maelstrom" realm cluster, based in New York, launches as a live permanent SST universe on Saturday, the 27th of September, 2025.

(*)The prior launch had a critical bug which took days to track down and fix, interrupting the launch. Mistakes were made and a lesson was learned... But we're better prepared this time!

Steam: Starship Traders MMO Steam Page

Discord: Starship Traders MMO Discord

Discord notes:

Click the link above to join our discord server and receive a notification when we launch new, permanent realms. Since this game requires a certain minimum of players for a viable realm cluster, we will only launch the permanent realms when we have enough players to populate them. We intend to launch three universe. One will serve the Americas, a second will serve Europe, and the third will serve Asia. The American realms to be located in New York, the European realms in Frankfurt, and the Asian realms in Singapore.

A tiny intro to the Starship Traders MMO Universe

Starship Traders MMO plays like a cross between a modern MMO and a graphical version of a traditional Multi User Dungeon. Each location in the game is a 'sector'. You can only directly see the objects, players, and aliens within your current sector. This structure makes it possible to guard small areas--and sometimes large areas--by fortifying a single sector.

The Scenario

An exploratory intergalactic starship mission beamed back a tale of an unpopulated twin of Earth, prompting many would-be colonists to launch one-way trips to the new world. Unfortunately, all was not as it was presented... Now, as a stranded starship pilot, your first goal is to learn to survive in your new environment, first by scavenging the abandoned tradingposts, phishing for lost gear among the wormholes, hauling commodities between ports, and later by hunting aliens for cash and ship upgrades.

Players can create corporations or apply to join an existing one. Corpmates can share defensive resources and pool their power to monopolize a valuable star cluster. Wormholes to star clusters can sometimes be guarded to gain exclusive control of a slice of space.

The MMO requires a keyboard to play -- and is optimized for efficient play by typing. It has mouse support, but like many MMO's, typing is still faster than pointing and clicking.

Starhip Traders MMO (SSTMMO) is an original and unique game

  • truly one-of-a-kind, SSTMMO slowly evolved from the original Starship Traders online game
  • A true Sandbox; You can change, create, destroy, move, or guard almost anything.
  • a minimalist GUI, optimized for keyboard play; if you can type, you'll quickly adapt
  • a resource-based combat system; since combat is not free you must choose your battles with a goal of benefiting from each fight
  • an elaborate set of features to discourage griefing...
  • ...but playable as an outlaw, if you enjoy playing with higher degrees of risk
  • player housing is secure, shareable, moveable, and an integral part of the game
  • There is a creative character name generator (this is useful for other MMO's!)
  • a strategy game, a thinking game; not an action combat game
  • non-intrusive, excellent music from Purple Planet Music
  • completely free; Existing game accounts will remain free even if we switch to a buy-to-play model in the future. However, we will not add in-game cash transactions or charge for subscriptions. Currently, there isn't even a tip jar -- so there is literaly no way to spend money on or in this game.

The downside of being a unique game is that it will be completely new to you and you definitely will not know how to play! Learning the basics will take a little time and practice. It has no pre-planned experience or 'boot camp'. There are hints and short tutorials on the core topics, but, at first, you'll feel like you've been thrown into an alien environment.


__Download Links__

Linux version (~115MB)
Windows version (~126MB)

__Software Instructions__

The clients are self-contained programs that require no installation.
To run the Linux version perform the following steps from a terminal window:


1) Uncompress the Linux PC program:
bunzip2 sstmmo.bz2

2) Make your program executable:
chmod +x sstmmo

3) Run your version: You can now use your GUI view to click on the program -- or you can run it directly from the terminal as in the examples below:
./sstmmo

(Note that you may see a few debugging messages upon exit when running from a terminal window. These messages refer to items used internal to the client and you can safely ignore them. The messages are only useful for developers.)


__sha256 file hashes__


Linux: Wed May 13 06:33:06 PM EDT 2026
c4a3a9e679f54d9163d2dd36e0efb841619f2c146b342381625910e5553e43ff sstmmo
61b4c23cc3f33da8bbfea41ce7a56d79043b96a1ca5882e0292ecb0e9ae93f55 sstmmo.bz2

Windows: Wed May 13 06:33:06 PM EDT 2026
e74a70c009c6d55607d4fd0b76eec3e790ff9f3e6f46d6a278d78a146ac245db sstmmo.exe
245ac1f9936421536c92cef377a091a9be9cc7bb4d17c39f0cd808bf8638806f sstmmo.exe.zip