Starship traders, The last resort
| title: | Starship traders, The last resort |
| url: | link |
| download page: | No link! |
| license: | freeware |
| genre: | Mmorpg |
| developer: | Starship traders team |
| platform: | Online Web browser, telnet |
| release: | 1999 |
| features: | text |
| last edit by: | Dark |
Description
Tsarwars was a classic multiplayer starship trading and text battle game originally developed in 1999 by Ray Yeargin. Similar to the famous Trade wars, the object of the game is simple. Trading goods between the various ports across the truly massive universe (over four million locations), in order to upgrade your starship, build star bases, fighters and bunkers, and hopefully avoid being robbed by other prospective starship captains.
Starship traders, the last resort is actually two games rolled into one, though you can play either alone if you prefer.
Assuming you take the route of playing both games you will begin in "The last resort" Lost in a massive series of run down hotels, having to trade commodities such as iron, alcohol and hardware between broken down vending machines in order to get enough microbots to survive. Microbots, miniturized robots are the currency of this world, far more useful than anything as pointless as money sinse they can directly build lots of things. In particular, a box of iron and some microbots is all you need to make milibots, and milibots are what you use to defend yourself. You can put them in whichever hotel your in at various rooms in order to trip up your opponents, or just keep them around with you so nobody steals your valuable backpack full of loot.
You begin in one of literally several hundred thousand rooms in a hotel, with machines scattered throughout. Make enough cash and you'll be able to not only create milibots, but also make useful items for yourself such as a pantry finder to help you locate those all important vending machines, a larger backpack to hold more cargo, or a jetpack to fly elsewhere. Eventually, once you've earned 100000 microbots and have a bigger backpack you can go to the spaceport and try and make it out of this nightmare. That however is where the real fun begins sinse once out into space you've nothing but a spaceship, a few fighters and if your lucky some cargo, and now the hole process begins again however this time your far more likely to run into unfriendly starship captains, so making friends is a good idea.
Once in space, the Starship traders portion of the game begins. Now you will still be trading commodities, but between hole planets not just between vending machines, and your milibots are replaced with space fighters. Similarly, other important gear is available to you such as trading computers, star bases and of course bigger weapons, though you might want to form a gang with others for protection or just spend your time amassing as much capital as you can
If you want to begin on starship traders right away, use the profile settings you get when you first create or log into your account to change your game (though bare in mind you can only do this three times per account.
You do have a limited amount of energy or fuel, however note that more is given to you each hour, so though there is theoretically a limit on available game time, practically your probably unlikely to reach it.
One thing which is helpful both from an access point of view and in general to speed up gameplay is that trading in the game is made easy by two options, computrade and autotrade. Computrade (c in the text box), will automatically move you to the next available vending machine or planet where you can sell what you have and buy something else cheap (you can set the number of times it does this). While Autotrade (t in the text box), can be used when you have reached a vending machine or planet to do the buying and selling in one click. Note though that computrade uses more fuel or energy so if your worrying about running out it might be wiser to use the options sparingly.
The game can still be connected to via telnet but most people will probably want to use the web interface. Though you are free to type commands as in the original Tsarwars, (there is an enter button and a box at the bottom of the page), the menu of options you get at the top of each page is more than adequate and are simple links any screen reader should handle, just remember to type a question mark in the box i.e ? to show it if it ever gets lost. Fortunately sinse everything is very standard links, all screen readers should be absolutely fine reading the in game pages, though it's recommended to take note of the letters and occasional symbols given next to the room numbers the current room your in connects to, sinse the lower in the alphabet the letters, the better deals available (those with a Z are utterly useless), while star symbols i.e * mean a trading keosque, so simply relying on getting all the information from just hitting the tab key is likely not a good idea.
One other thing to bare in mind is that the manual you see on the main screen with the link "eXamine manual" is the manual to Starship traders not to The last resort, your best off reading the tlr survival guide on the front page instead, and only worrying about the more advanced gameplay of Starship traders later on, though you might want to check some sections of the starship traders manual for some of the telnet shortcut commands and some other basics like movement, though most of these are more than adequately covered in the Tlr survival guide.
The game is browser based, however it is still possible to play via telnet, or even using a mud client by connecting to Eoresort.com port 2323.
The game is also utterly free to play.
Despite being such a no frills game (or perhaps because of it), the learning curve is rather steap, one reason why you begin in the only slightly easier world of last resort as opposed to being flung instantly into space aboard your ship, however for those willing to take the time, the game is surprisingly addictive, particularly given the easy trading options and simple nature of the in game objects and mechanics, so is definitely one stratogy fans should check out, especially for people who want to dive into a game and get playing without having to spend a huge amount of time absorbing massive lists of information.
Community
The following users have added this game to their favorites: mektastic
Add this game to your favorites.
Extra
Report broken link or news to the moderators
Updates: entry 2 Feb 22 and description 2 Feb 22