starbit v0.03.0

A lightweight, space RTS game played in the terminal using QUIC and gRPC. Written fully in Go.

📚 Table of Contents

• Game Overview
• How to Play
• Controls
• Deployment
• Roadmap
• Contributing

Game Overview

starbit is a space real-time strategy game where 2-4 players compete to conquer the galaxy. Each player controls an Empire and aims to gain control over the entire galaxy by building and moving fleets to battle opponents.

How to Play

A game takes place across multiple sols, a unit of time. Think of it like a tick, where every ~500ms, everything updates (e.g battles, movement, etc.)

Players begin with a starting System and a Fleet.

GES: Players earn 1 GES (General Energy Substance) per system owned. GES is used to create new Fleets and Ships.

Fleets: Composed of several Ships. A starting Fleet begins with 1 Destroyer.

• Can only be created in Systems you control.
• Combat resolves automatically when Fleets from different players occupy the same system.
• During combat, each Fleet randomly selects an enemy to attack and deals damage each sol.
• A player wins by eliminating all opposing Fleets and controlling all systems.
• Stats are defined as an average of all the Ships.
• Construct new Ships in Fleets to modify stats.

Ship	Cost	Health	Attack	Ex Attack	Evasion	Armor
Destroyer	250 GES	50	2	1	35%	5%
Cruiser	350 GES	75	1	2	20%	15%
Battleship	800 GES	200	5	2	10%	30%
Dreadnought	1500 GES	600	3	5	5%	40%

The creation of a fleet costs 3000 base GES.

Controls

• Navigation: Press Shift+E and use arrow keys to move around the galaxy.
• Inspector: Press Shift+I to open the inspector panel, and use arrow keys to scroll up and down.
• Commands: Press Shift+C to access the command line, where you can enter:
  • fc <system> - Create a new Fleet in the specified system
  • fm <fleet id> <to system id> - Move a Fleet from one system to another
  • fu <fleet_id> <de|cr|ba|dr> - Builds a ship and adds it to a fleet
• Fleets: Press Shift+F to select the fleets list, and arrow keys to scroll up and down.

Deployment

You'll need:

• AWS Account (Free Tier is fine)
• Terraform (or you can do it manually)

1. Create a key-pair in AWS Ohio (us-east-2). Download the .pem file and place it in ~/.ssh/starbit.pem.

2. Set up the infrastructure:

   cd infrastructure
   terraform init
   terraform apply -var="key_name=starbit"

3. Connect to the server:

   ssh -i ~/.ssh/starbit.pem ubuntu@<IP>

Option 1: Using Pre-built Server Executable (Recommended)

4. Download and run the server directly (recommended):

   # Create a directory for the server
   mkdir -p ~/starbit
   
   echo "net.core.rmem_max=8388608
   net.core.wmem_max=8388608" | sudo tee -a /etc/sysctl.conf
   sudo sysctl -p
   
   # Download the executable directly to the server
   curl -L https://github.com/connortbot/starbit/releases/download/v0.03/starbit-server-linux -o ~/starbit/starbit-server
   
   # Or alternatively with wget:
   # wget https://github.com/connortbot/starbit/releases/download/v0.03/starbit-server-linux -O ~/starbit/starbit-server
   
   # To run with a specific amoutn of players (max 4)
   ~/starbit/starbit-server -maxPlayers=2
   
   # Make it executable
   chmod +x ~/starbit/starbit-server
   
   # Run the server
   ~/starbit/starbit-server

5. Destroy the infrastructure when done:

   terraform destroy -var="key_name=starbit"

Option 2: Building from Source

4. Clone the repository and set up the server:

   git clone https://github.com/connortbot/starbit.git
   cd starbit
   chmod +x setup_server.sh
   ./setup_server.sh
   source ~/.bashrc
   chmod +x run_server.sh
   ./run_server.sh <num_players>

5. Destroy the infrastructure when done:

   terraform destroy -var="key_name=starbit"

Roadmap

v0.03: Combat Update

Revamps the combat system so that each fleet is comprised of multiple Ships.

Adds stats Evasion and Armor to fleets.

• Armor reduces the damage received by a percentage.
• Evasion is a percentage chance that the damage received is dodged entirely.

Adds 4 types of ships: Destroyer, Cruiser, Battleship, Dreadnought.

Ship	Cost	Health	Attack	Ex Attack	Evasion	Armor
Destroyer	250 GES	50	2	1	35%	5%
Cruiser	350 GES	75	1	2	20%	15%
Battleship	800 GES	200	5	2	10%	30%
Dreadnought	1500 GES	600	3	5	5%	40%

The new fu command can be used to add ships to a fleet.

Future Updates

• Automatically grant a player the win when they are the only remaining one with owned systems.
• Build Supply System, requiring Convoys scaling with GES/tick consumption, and supply penalties.
• Combat Bonuses (outnumbering, ownership of system, etc.)
• Restrict movement in the grid? (e.g choke points)
• sel <system_id> which selects a group of fleets
• spl <t/b> which selects (t)top half or (b)bottom half of current selection
• sm <system_id> which moves selections to the system.
• Check client and server versions when joining a server. (Reject connections with an error message)
• Commands to modify fleet compositions (transfer ships, sell ships, in bulk)

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please open an issue or submit a pull request. Contact me at ([email protected]).