Last Update: Quicklinks:   rec.games.computer.stars   The Stars! FAQ article base   Stars! AutoHost   Stars! Wiki   Order of Events  

Altruist's Collection of Strat & Tact

Stars! is still one of the best and most thrilling strategy & tactics game, especially when played with/against other human players. For this purpose games can be hosted at Stars! Auto Host. There you can also find more articles, a forum, tools and downloads of the game (demo version). Stars! was programmed by Jeff Johnson & Jeff McBride in 1995, regularly patched until 2000, and, to our utter regret, those two fine game programmers have vanished from the scene because of the nowadays difficulties to find publishers for games which aren't following the main stream.

Since the game is around for quite some time now, there is a great wealth of superb articles which, often enough, aren't only interesting for Stars! games purposes but for everybody who is interested in strategy and tactics in general. For mainly my own convenience (out of fear that some really good articles get lost due to abondened websites), I have collected some articles by various authors here. Wherever possible I posted on top of the article the original source or where I stumbled about it. From on the old Stars-R-Us website articles came traditionally on a black star-background with the text in this kind of light blue (ah traditions... the contrast could be better, couldn't it?).

Regards, Altruist

• Download: game, help, how to get a serial number, other files

• Some finished Games - tactical graphical overviews

  • Infight (220 kb): small/packed with 8 players, hosted by wizard early 2006
  • Antiball (100 kb): small/packed with 9 players, hosted by Micha Oct-Dec 2006
  • Babylon 5 v2 (763 kb): scenario, large/normal with 16 players, hosted by Steve in 2007
    
    
  • Fledgling Admirals VI (FA6), 9 players, hosted by Altruist 2009

  • Duels:

  • 2007 Duelling Club Championship - Finale (7c1-duel) : between Bystander and Perrindom, hosted by Altruist 2007/08 (with tactical maps)
  • Pistols (73 kb): small/normal, duel between Per and Altruist, hosted by Per mid 2006

  • Zipped files:

  • 2009 Duelling Club Championship - Finale (download: dc_final_2009.zip, 1823 kb): between Perrindom and Orange (includes .m and .x files). The tactical discussion afterwards can be read in the autohost forums: Duelling Club: Championships 2009 finals

• General

  • Stars! Order of Events
  • Stars! - Abbreviations List
  • Stars! - Abbreviations List: English-to-German, translated by Andreas Nieke
  • Charts of habitability spread and mineral concentrations by Alan L. Kolaga
  • Designs and numbers for Overcloaking by Ptolemy

• Strategy & Tactics

  • Basic Race Design by Art Lathrop
  • Hints & tips by Altruist (the texts are in the Stars autohost forum, you need to be logged in to read them)
  • Stars! Official Strategy Guide (online)
  • Stars! Official Strategy Guide (download: ssg.zip, 1305 kb, for cozy offline reading, start with ssg.htm)
  • Living with Chaff by Art Lathrop
  • Concepts Of Warfare by Mikkel
  • A Primer on Counterdesign by Leonard Dickens

• Warmongers (WM)

  • War Mongering 101 by Darrend Brown
  • Mongols - sample easy start WM HG by Jason Cawley

• Alternate Reality (AR)

  • AR Guide by Leonard Dickens
  • The "Monster" Pantheon by Barry Kearns (rec.games.computer.stars)

• Tools

  • Stars Calculator v3.06 by Mathias Dellaert, modified by Raven (download: starscalc306.zip 273 kb) - Excellent, Many utilities in one.
  • Stars! Notebook by Andrei Romanov (download: snb_v2xf.zip 258 kb) - creates maps and stats from your p-files - great tool, easy to use
  • StarsFileMerger (StarsFileMerger.zip, 74kb zipped) Java based great and easy to use tool to merge m- and/or h-files (extremely helpful for allies)
  • Xtreme Borders: A nice tool for mapping, statistics and terraforming from the no longer existing Pirates Retreat website. Download and install dlXB.zip (2.6 MB). After installing you should add the latest update: dlXBupdate.zip (106 kb).
  • StarsPlayerColoursChanger.exe (download: StarsPlayerColoursChanger.exe, 36 kb) by PaulCr (explaining article)
  • Per's Terra-Hab-Tool, V 1.03 by Per Rindom (download: contact me, email at bottom) - (needs Excel) click a button and automatically your and your allies p-files get loaded, sorted and a hab-value-comparison of the planets will be calculated for you and/or your allies (extremely helpful in alliances and much easier to use than the other tools I know). Additionally see how much improvement 1-10 units of terraforming gives you and several other features.
  • Overall Planet Habitability and Race Econ Calculator - while designing your race, this tool allows a good overview what hab-ranges to expect
  • PLC - Packet Location Calculator v1.0.1 by James McGuigans (download: PLC.zip 194 kb) - Program for predicting the future location of mass packets and fleets. Accurate over multiple years.
  • Dog's Multiple-Packet Calculator (download: dpacket3.zip 15kb)
  • Micha's Starsbackup Tools (MST) (download: michas-stars-archiv-tool.zip, 3241kb zipped, originally by Micha, here version 2.1 by Altruist updated with the freeware CourierBeta1198-b email-client and a longer description) - Utilities and email-client for hosts to get a completly automated backup for all players' m-files sorted and saved into the proper directory (Windows OS based).

• Links

  • Stars! AutoHost: Offers to host Stars! games automatically, a still lively forum and community, tools for download. Most probably the best place to find games to play in.
  • Stars! Wiki, here with a direkt link to the utilities-overview. Started by gible this Wiki has become the most important source for Stars! articles and out of fear that more websites might go offline with their content lost now includes the content of the Stars-R-Us Article Database, The Stars! FAQ and many more articles.
    
    
  • Stars-R-Us Article Database: old and no longer updated but still one of the best collection of Stars! strat&tact articles which is the reason why the articles were also embedded into the Stars! Wiki: Stars-R-Us Collection
  • The Stars! FAQ: Home of FAQs and a huge collection of articles. A must to read. (partly embedded into the Stars! Wiki: Stars! FAQ Collection) Complete Stars!FAQ-website zipped (1382 kb) for cozy offline reading.
  • rec.games.computer.stars:The old and still alive (a little bit) Usenet group (from on 1996), now hosted at Google.

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News:
5th Dec 13: adding Xtreme Borders to Tools because its home website "Pirates Retreat" is no more.
29th July 13: some links and descriptions reworked
23rd April 13: added Micha's Starsbackup Tools, slightly modified.
20th Jan 12: introduced max-width of pages to be 1300px for better reading with wide displays
28th Dec 10: updated, new link to the Stars! Wiki
23rd Dec 08: added Hints & tips by Altruist
22nd Dec 08: Old Stars! version 2.0b made available by courtesy of mlaub, see Old Stuff
19th July 08: Per's Terra-Hab-Tool, V 1.00 added to the selection of tools.
8th Feb 07: Stars! Official Strategy Guide: another typo corrected: jihad.gif to Jihad.gif
18th Jan 07: images for the finished game Antiball redone, now much smaller (from 167kb down to 69kb)
17th Jan 07: Stars! Official Strategy Guide: since Mare Crisium there was a typo for an image link in ssg08.htm, corrected bbcapac.gif to bbcapacit.gif
17th Jan 07: added this small news section
6th May 2006: Start of this Website, upload of articles etc.

altruist@9spamarglos.net (remove the 9spam)