Description

The Earth is a dead husk. Having mined all of its resources, facing a population many times that which could be possibly sustained and slowly mutating it into a massive, cloying, choking city, we had no choice but to set our greedy eyes on the planets around us and conquer new lands.

After the Information War of the 21st century, the Corporations dissolved national borders and began a new war of their own: the Resource War. Like their European ancestors, who conquered and fought over new land, the corporations started to clash for control of the stars around Earth, as if they had claims to them from the moment of their conception.

Thus began the new arms race, but this time the lessons learned from past wars would be embraced and used to leverage as much advantage as possible. Research into more advanced abilities to control not only the battles, but the hearts and minds of the people who fight them would become key to victory.

Steel Stars is a game of intergalactic warfare amongst rival corporations in Earth's dark future with a near endless number of system configurations and multiple paths to victory – through the council, through research of technologies and advanced abilities, via the creation of popular utopian worlds, or by the might of your powerful fleets.

Each player steps into the powerful and all encompassing shoes of the head of one of the five corporations fighting for the control of the universe. You will need to use cunning, guile, diplomacy, deception, and tactical thinking to make the decisions that will hopefully bring victory, control, renown, and respect to your corporation.

In each round of the game, players select four actions to perform. Players in turn perform one of these. Whenever an action is performed, all other players may also perform that action. The available actions are: Fleet (move ships), Research (develop tech), Council (Create votes on new rules), Planetary (develop your civilization), Energy (generate resources) and Logistics (build new ships). Players score points for colonising worlds, developing tech, building colonies, passing votes and developing their civilisation. The game ends when one player has accumulated 15 points, but that player does not necesarily win, as there are bonus points scored for being the best player in each of several categories.