The RTSC Guide to Startopia
Part 1: The Station

The first thing strategy gamers will notice is that Startopia doesn't have different maps. Startopia is played entirely within the same environment: your classic, ring shaped Space Station. Its a majestic spinning torus with three circular decks subdivided into sixteen equal sections. This donut motif is central to Startopia's concept and humour. The cute thing about the playing area is that it is truly circular - scrolling around the curve will get you back at where you started. Your strategies aren't going to be revolving (har har) around different terrain types or wondering where the opposition is.

The Station from outside. That's the the Bio-Deck visible through the panoramic windows.

Each player starts with their own segment in an otherwise empty and derelict station. As Station Administrators, you are all charged with its renovation and reconstruction, opening new sections and annexing unclaimed territory. Those who survive bankruptcy or the skulduggery of their peers gets to claim the whole station and with it victory.

The next thing control freaks and micromanagers will find is that while there's a considerable amount of detail lurking in Startopia, there's hardly a health bar or stats table anywhere in sight. You get a couple of vague looking overviews, and that's pretty much it. Like all good management sims, control of your characters is indirect. Actually, they're not even yours to control: all you do is hire or fire them and make sure you've employed enough to ensure all your facilities are fully manned. Whether they decide to hang around, leave, work or piss about is entirely up to them.

There's considerable overlap in Startopia, and usually about three ways to do or get anything. To attract more of one species, you generally deck out your Station with the stuff that it likes, often installing more than one version of a facility or a Bio-Deck environment if you need to attract lots for some reason. They each have their favourites, but this by no means they won't use anything else. Rich species will use low rent facilities sometimes and vice versa. If you miss anything, its not likely to kill you off in the game as it would in a typical RTS, or completely stall everything. About the only thing you have to watch out for is power failures - which will screw you monumentally. Oh, and Skrashers - big, black scary space monsters that can wreck a fledgling Station Administrator's career very quickly.

Keeping everyone happy and healthy boils down to making sure that everything they need is readily available and just leaving them to it. Your role is mostly hands off: the Peeps and droids do all the rest, automatically working and using the Station. Direct micromanagement only comes in trading, arranging rooms and decks, defusing the odd bomb or two and and directing the action in a fire fight. With competitive netgames, Startopia can be a violent affair of forcible take-overs or a friendly (but serious) economic war where the winner achieves an economic goal or merely avoids going bankrupt before everyone else. It all depends on what victory conditions are set. Since its possible to have up to four victory conditions from a pool of choices, you can determine what kind of game you want to play beforehand.

The Station is subdivided into three major decks: