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 (~105MB)
Windows version (~105MB)

__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: Mon Nov 24 08:13:25 AM EST 2025
e9c8c1141f584c3c508f52a3480e7f3a8f6f644f8aff36b911f4279fe45033d0 sstmmo
f66ac93952c6ca195a8bc88dce0d231d3a17f221fcb55ed9c5ca16bd5487ecb1 sstmmo.bz2

Windows: Mon Nov 24 08:13:25 AM EST 2025
48c8400dc076bfd0e08449ceab7df6e15fd96b1bbde0c9c25fd896cba39cf74a sstmmo.exe
2079810e0bef410bab2ad6f36096724aa30192954e81a181a7746f575e8f2c12 sstmmo.exe.zip