Game mechanics

Players controlled "positions" in the game which were identified by four-digit numbers for turn processing and interaction, and were tied to a specific player who owned them. The numbering meant that a maximum of 9999 positions could exist in the game at any given time, including GM-run positions such as neutral starbases.

A position could be one of four types:

• A starship was the most important type of position. Each starship belonged to a specific class which was defined primarily through the number of Command, Main, and Engine Hulls it had. Hulls determined the number (mass) of items that could be installed in the respective section or carried as cargo. For example, only Command Hulls could have items like life support, sensors or targeting computers installed, and housed the crew; only Engine Hulls could have thrust engines and jump engines installed; and Main Hulls would be used to install most other equipment and store passengers and cargo. Some items, like shield generators, could be installed in any section, as the sections could be targeted individually in combat. In this fashion, it was easily possible to customize a given ship. Ships could also be upgraded (or downgraded) to another class at colonies with suitable shipyards, gaining or losing hulls. Beyond a number of generic classes, affiliations could create their own advanced ship designs on which they would then have a monopoly. Players would begin with a Surveyor-class vessel that had 6 Command, 12 Main and 6 Engine hulls. If a player wanted to run additional ships, these would usually be spawned as Yachts configured 3-4-5. For comparison, the Supra Freighter, the largest generic ship class available to all players through neutral GM-run colonies, was configured 4-45-10 and was prohibited from firing weapons (though it could launch fighters). More advanced ships grew progressively bigger, up to several hundred total hulls and sometimes with special abilities or quirks.
• A ground party could be formed from any combination of items and personnel in one spot on the ground or in space, ranging from mere equipment stashes to exploration teams, to huge ground assault armies. They could be moved as a single cargo item aboard starships if enough cargo space was available for the entire ground party, and most ground parties were surface mobile (if they had enough cargo vehicles to carry any immobile equipment) or even capable of dropping onto a planetary surface from orbit.
• A colony was a fixed ground installation consisting of various buildings called "complexes" organized into civilian, naval, and military quarters roughly similar to starships. While inherently immobile, they could mine resources, research, and produce items. A subtype were Outposts which typically consisted only of automated mines. Outposts were not considered positions themselves, although they were identified with a number; instead, they were either tied to a starship, ground party, or colony position that owned them and received status updates on their printouts, or were unowned and did not report to anyone. Since they were no proper playing positions, they cost no money to run but also had very limited options. Colonies could be turned into outposts (and vice versa) which would shut down most activity at a colony, save for mining.
• A political position had no in-game representation and only very limited means of interacting with other positions, mostly in the form of transferring in-game currency. Political positions were reserved for the most senior players such as affiliation leaders, to be used for administrative purposes.

Each position type had their own set of possible orders or actions, with a specific syntax. Players would send in filled-out turn cards with orders covering one or two weeks (70 or 140 "Time Units", TUs); each action for ships and ground parties required a specific amount of TUs, limiting the number of possible actions. Colonies and political positions were not limited by TUs but rather by number of orders issued. Orders as written on the turn cards were entered manually, and processed one turn card at a time. Players paid money to have their turn cards processed. Inactive positions thus cost no money to run, but ships could be lost to overdue maintenance or crew mutiny; colonies meanwhile would auto-generate a turn every four weeks at the latest even when no orders were submitted.

All positions could use "Special Actions" (at extra cost), a free-text action directed at the GM who would provide a hand-moderated result. This allowed for roleplaying and interaction with Non-player characters or phenomena found during exploration, beyond the scope of the actions pre-defined through the ruleset.

Affiliations

Although every positions was played individually, players were expected to band together in so-called Affiliations. These were identified by a three-letter prefix to the name of all their positions. Initially, most affiliations available to players were a range of competing mega-corporations including FET (Frontier Exploration & Trade), GTT (Galactic Trade & Transport), and SMS (Stellar Mining & Smelting), under the overall aegis of the human empire, IMP (Imperial Forces). Affiliations had appropriate special abilities, such as superior exploration (and smuggling) abilities for the FET, increased production at colonies for the GTT, increased output from mines for the SMS, or improved combat capabilities for the IMP. Other human and non-human affiliations, some player-driven, some as friendly or even antagonistic NPCs, were added in over time as the game and its storylines evolved. New players were classed TRN (Trainee) for a while, and players who did not wish to join an affiliation had the option of staying IND (Independent), though this usually resulted in being mistrusted by everybody. Affiliation was tied to a given player, not an individual position, and thus applied to all positions run by a given player. (An exception were derelicted starships which were classed DER on an individual basis, and could not process orders until they were crewed again.)

Diplomacy played a part in gameplay. A player in 1987 stated that he received an average of 47 letters weekly while playing.^[10]

Setting

The game took place on a vast space stage. Stephen Marte stated the following about the field of play in 1987:

The playing field consists of 80 systems. Each system is 30X30 hexes and each hex is 46,000 square miles. Five hundred planets, moons, and gas giants have been found in the 52 systems of the Capellan Periphery and it is estimated there are another 500 worlds in the 38 systems of the less explored Transhole Region. Planets and moons may be mapped, scanned, and geologically proved down to a 10 square mile sector. For all intents and purposes the scope of the playing field is as large as your imagination.^[1]

The central element of the game was its thirteen mega-corporations.^[1] Most of these were directed by a Game Master employed by Adventures by Mail, but run by a board of coordinators made up of players which managed a large hierarchy of players.^[1] These corporations provided frameworks that enabled players to choose, pursue, and accomplish tasks, but also generated interesting competition dynamics between corporations as well as internal competition struggles that sometimes caused cleavages serious enough to cause banishments or voluntary departures.^[1] Players did not have to join a mega-corporation: other possible groups included "seven alien races, a religious sect, and a small piratical band know[n] as the Raiders of the Imperial Periphery (RIP)".^[1]

Players were limited to two starcaptains at the outset, but had significant variety among the 16 ship types and great room for game progression.^[1] For example, by 1987, there were 250 players acting as space colony governors of varying sizes.^[1] Powerful players in mature roles could shift to a research focus to keep gameplay from getting stale.^[1]