SPACE TRADER

**You start alone in a second-hand Flea, with one pulse laser and 1000 credits.**

Trade between 140 star systems, exploit local shortages, dodge — or fight — the

pirates that want your hold, and work your way up to a ship worth fearing.

Space Trader is an independent, from-scratch remake of Pieter Spronck's Palm OS

classic. It keeps the economy model that made the original worth replaying and

builds a modern game around it.

## What's in it

**A galaxy that has an inside.** Every star holds 2–7 places to dock at, drawn on

their orbits: the settled capital with its spaceport, uninhabited worlds worth

mining or worth nothing, and now and then an orbital station. A warp drive is

dead weight this deep in a gravity well, so crossing a system costs days — and

out there you can still be intercepted.

**A market with reasons behind the numbers.** Prices move on tech level, economy

type, government, special resources, local events and your own Trader skill. Each

rich resource yields an exotic good you can only buy at its source. Every world

runs a news feed written from what is actually true of it — a drought on an

agrarian dictatorship reads nothing like one on a hi-tech democracy.

**Fights you can lose.** Pirate packs up to five ships, trader caravans you cut

through one hull at a time, police inspections, bounty hunters who come for your

record, and rare alien raiders. A small ship outruns a heavy one — until a pack

of big hulls pins it in a tractor beam. Surrender and pirates strip the hold and

let you fly on; bounty hunters want *you*.

**A crew that goes wrong.** Everything past the Flea needs hands aboard, up to ten

on a capital ship, across four stations: helm, guns, engineering and power. Leave

a post unmanned and somebody works double duty at half effect — that's when the

electrical fires, the wasted fuel and the gun bay firing into your own frame

start. Hire from 26 named mercenaries, or buy androids that never ask to be paid

but burn fuel every day.

**Work worth taking.** A job board on every planet across seven contract types —

courier runs, relief missions, bounty hunts, VIP transport, smuggling, supply

contracts and convoy escort. Contract cargo has to be *hauled in*; buying it at

the delivery point does not count.

**And the rest.** 24 hulls from the Flea to the Widow, each with its own drawn

silhouette. Wormholes, including unmapped ones that drop you anywhere on the map.

Black holes nobody charted. Mining asteroid fields and gas giants. Bank loans,

insurance, and a standing the galaxy files you under, somewhere between Outlaw

and Champion of Justice. Six save slots plus an autosave written after every

action you take.

## Language

English and Ukrainian, switchable in game at any time.

Англійська та українська, перемикаються просто у грі.

## Installing

Windows, 64-bit. Run the installer — it is **per-user and needs no administrator

rights**. The build is unsigned, so SmartScreen may warn on first run: *More info

→ Run anyway*.

**The game updates itself.** It checks for new versions on start-up, downloads in

the background, and installs the next time you quit. Your saves live with your

user profile, so updating and even uninstalling never touch them.

A portable build is available too if you would rather not install anything.

## Free, and free to inspect

There is nothing to buy, no accounts, and no telemetry. It runs entirely on your

machine and your saves never leave it. The full source is published under

Apache-2.0 — read it, build it, or fork it.

## Credits

Game design inspired by Pieter Spronck's original *Space Trader* and the *Space

Trader for Windows* port by Jay French. This is an independent reimplementation

and shares no code with either.