Description
StarPeace is a MMORTS in which players manage economic empires. Each player builds facilities (factories, shops, dwellings), à la
Sim City, which interact with each other. For instance: a player can own a farm that will sell wheat to a food processing plant owned by another player, which could in turn sell the food to a store, which would then sell to the general public - whether there will be demand or not depends on many factors, such as location, price, etc.
There are approximately 30 industries in the game ranging from raw material (e.g. agriculture, mines...) to complex manufactured product (computers, cars...) and services (television, movies...), and anything in between (plastics, electronics...). Raw materials and semi-processed goods are required by more than one industry, which allows complex interaction between players.
These interactions take place at the building level: one given plant or shop buys and/or sells goods from another plant or shop, which can belong to the same player or to another one. As it is difficult to manage all of these relationships (one player can potentially manage thousands of buildings), players can set up high-level rules: a plant can try to get raw material from "allied players", for a price not higher than a given amount. This allows the economy to keep functioning even when players are offline.
Workers also have to live somewhere: this is why players can also build dwellings and set rent levels, just like they can define the wages they pay in their factory. This has a direct influence on their behavior as consumers.
Players must take the market into account: if all of them are manufacturing clothes, for instance, the equilibrium price will fall drastically, and only the most efficient cloth makers will be able to turn a profit. Likewise, the first player to master the technology necessary to manufacture advanced products such as cars has basically a license to print money.
Planets, initially, look like huge playing fields but are limited in space. Each facility occupies one or more tiles. While planets are a few million tiles wide, the available space shrinks rapidly as the game progresses. That can be regulated by "mayors", players which are elected by their peers with special powers. While players can only destroy their own buildings, mayors can bypass that limitation (but must refund the offended players out of the city's budget) and can apply "zoning".
Alternate Titles
- "Legacy Online" -- Second Release
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Trivia
StarPeace went through many stages. Originally, it was developed by Oceanus Communications and published by Monte Cristo Multimedia in December 2000. There were not enough players to cover the enormous hosting costs, so Monte Cristo tried to disengage from its relationship with Oceanus, but came to an agreement in March 2001. Oceanus kept the rights and would host the game itself for another year.
On E3 2002, they caught the eye of
SEGA, who took over development and released it in 2003 as a free-download subscription based game with the name
Legacy Online. That same year, however, it already disappeared from the servers.
Puggy, a hardcore fan, approached Oceanus in 2004, asking for permission to re-release the game himself. He was given the rights and has since been developing and hosting the game on his own servers, back with the original title. Currently, there is an ad-supported free server and exclusive servers requiring a monthly fee.
This entry to the MobyGames database was contributed by
jerome cukier (44) on Apr 11, 2006.
