Buy low. Sell high. Watch an entire star sector react.
**Star Trader** is a deterministic, fully offline trading sim set in a living deep-space
economy of **6 sectors and 33 worlds**. Prices breathe with supply and demand, AI
merchant guilds work their own strategies, pirates hunt unescorted freight — and every
run is reproducible down to the last credit from a single scenario code.
READ THE TIDE, RIDE THE TIDE
Every world produces what it can and hungers for what it can't. Watch prices swing with
each turn, chase the "best destination" column across 37 goods, or run the sector scan
to surface hundreds of arbitrage routes — then pick your own. When shortages bite,
launch an economic blockade and sell into the spike you created.
FROM STREET PEDDLER TO SECTOR TYCOON
- **Trade by hand** — buy raw materials where they're cheap, haul them to worlds short on supply
- **Discover hidden recipes** — experiment in the Recipe Lab; relic-tier formulas are hiding in the outer sectors
- **Automate with fleets** — five ship classes, from nimble Cutters to heavy Ore Barges, running auto-arbitrage, mining, patrols and hunts
- **Build space stations** — turn discovered recipes into production lines for passive income
- **Fight for the lanes** — three tiers of pirates, faction protection rackets, escorts and bounty hunts
- **Outsmart the guilds** — Red Sail, Swiftcurrent and Deepwell each play monopoly, arbitrage or price war; their intel panel shows their latest move
A SECTOR WITH STORIES
Narrative event chains unfold as you play: guild wars, mysterious signals, harvest
seasons — and in the outer sectors, five handcrafted worlds (Veinmelt, Jadereap,
Ashforge, Hushport, Firstring) with their own specials, from relic whispers to black-market
premiums. Deal in smuggled goods if you dare: prices are higher, and so are the seizures.
INSPIRED BY THE WORLDS WE KEPT PLAYING
Star Trader was shaped by the games we kept coming back to: X4: Foundations,
EVE Online, No Man's Sky, Astrobuilder, Distant Worlds and Starsector.
What drew us to all of them was the same thing — a universe that feels alive:
economies churning, prices breathing, a world that doesn't wait for you. We're
not trying to out-build any of them. We pulled out the one thread we loved
most — the living economy — and wove it into something small, honest and
complete: deterministic, turn-based, fully offline. Same seed, same world,
every time — the only thing between you and the summit is your decisions.
WHY WE BUILT OUR OWN
The games above taught us to love space trading. They also left us a wish list:
- **Trading should not require a pilot's license first.** No hand-flying, no docking exams — click a route, place an order, and spend your attention on decisions, not throttle juggling.
- **A sold game should be complete to play.** No subscription, no token meter, no external accounts or services. Buy it, install it, play it — everything runs on your machine.
- **Pirates should be algorithms, not strangers.** Strictly single-player: your opponent is the sector's rulebook — no guild dues, no cargo ambushes by other players at 2 AM.
DETERMINISTIC. OFFLINE. YOURS.
- **One code, one sector** — share your scenario code and friends replay the exact same world; a paste-and-play preview of Steam Workshop support
- **100% offline** — no account, no internet, no telemetry (see our Privacy policy)
- **Deterministic by design** — the same seed plays the same game, so competition is about decisions, not dice
- **Legacy** — finish a run and carry +2,000 credits into New Game+; 15 achievements and 8 milestones chart the climb
- **Bilingual** — full English & Simplified Chinese UI, self-hosted music and sound effects
OUR TAKE ON AI — THE HONEST VERSION
AI was part of making this game, and we'd rather explain that than hide it.
- **Not in the game.** The simulation IS the game: every price, every pirate raid, every guild move comes from hand-tuned deterministic rules. AI merchants are classic state machines playing real strategies — no language model improvises your economy. The shipped game contains no generative AI at all.
- **Only in the making.** The four BGM tracks were made with Suno; in-game text and this page were drafted with AI assistance, then human-edited; the code was written with AI coding tools under human direction.
- **Where we stand:** AI is a decent apprentice and a poor substitute for game design. The rules are the game — and the rules are ours.
HOW LONG?
Three difficulties (Relaxed / Standard / Hard). A standard summit run takes about
2–6 hours — tight enough for one sitting, deep enough to replay. The outer sectors
unlock as your net worth grows: The Veins, The Breadbasket, The Foundries, The Fringe,
and finally The Vault.
Ready the cargo hold, captain. The tide is turning.
