Pre-1.0 · Closed Playtest

STARS
REBORN// 4X · RTS · P2P

A real-time pausable 4X of fleet command, economic attrition, and fog-of-war. Procedural galaxies. Seven ship types. Matches end in 15–30 minutes — not thirty hours.

Join Playtest · Discord Read Briefing
Ship Types
6+ STARBASE
Match Length
15–30MIN
Galaxy Size
3TIERS
Netcode
P2PAUTH HOST
TACNET · Live Telemetry
Turn Model REAL-TIME · PAUSABLE
Combat Triangle FIGHTER ▸ CRUISER ▸ FRIGATE
Fog of War SCAN-GATED · LAYERED
Economy WORKFORCE + MINING
Engine GODOT 4.6.2
Platforms WIN · LINUX
§ 01 · Overview

What you're looking at.

DOC · SR-OVW-01
REV 03 / APR 21 2026

Stars Reborn is a real-time pausable 4X space strategy game built in Godot. Spiritual heir to the classic turn-based Stars! — stripped of the spreadsheet, dense with decisions.

Scout a procedural galaxy. Settle planets. Draft a fleet composition that counters what your opponent is building. Feint. Starve them of workforce. Collapse a front. Every match is a self-contained campaign that resolves in a single sitting.

No session lobbies, no monthly live-service grind. P2P netcode with an authoritative host — you host a match by IP and your opponent joins. That's it. Matches are designed to be replayed, not subscribed to.

Ship Types
7 TYPES
Six build-capable classes plus the starbase. One combat triangle.
Match Duration
15–30 MIN
Procedural pacing. Victory or defeat in a single sitting.
AI Opponents
3 DIFFICULTIES
Settler, Rusher, Expansionist. Distinct play styles, not stat inflation.
Multiplayer
2-PLAYER P2P
Host by IP (port 7777 UDP) or auto-discover on LAN. No servers required.
§ 02 · In-Engine

Live frames. No render passes.

SRC · GAMEPLAY FEED
BUILD · 0.16.3
FRAME.001 001 / 005
—
—
—
▸ FRAMES AUTO · 5.0s
§ 03 · Fleet Manifest

Seven types. One triangle.

DOC · SR-FLT-07
CLASSIFICATION · PUBLIC
▸ Combat Triangle
 Fighter ▸ beats ▸  Cruiser ▸ beats ▸  Frigate ▸ beats ▸  Fighter
SR-01 · CLASS SCT RECON
Scout
SCOUT
Long-range Reconnaissance
HP20 Speed180 Scan600 / 450 Evasion35% Cost50 m
SR-02 · CLASS FTR ▲ CRUISER
Fighter
FIGHTER
Interceptor · Dead-zone Closer
HP90 Speed140 Attack20 Range70 px Cost100 m
SR-03 · CLASS FRG ▲ FIGHTER
Frigate
FRIGATE
Armored Brawler · Heavy Sensors
HP200 Speed70 Attack35 Range100 px Cost250 m
SR-04 · CLASS CRS ▲ FRIGATE
Cruiser
MISSILE CRUISER
Long-Range Missile
HP140 Speed55 Attack40 Range60–360 px Cost350 m
SR-05 · CLASS BMB SIEGE
Bomber
BOMBER
Orbital Siege
HP60 Speed90 Attack— Rangeorbits Cost150 m
SR-06 · CLASS CLN EXPAND
Colonizer
COLONIZER
Colony Deployment
HP40 Speed80 Attack— Range— Cost200 m + 50 pop
SR-07 · CLASS STB STATIC
Starbase
STARBASE
Orbital Platform · Home Star
HP500 SpeedSTATIC Attack80 Range130 px Costbuilt on-site
DOC · SR-DOC · DOCTRINE
▸ FLEET ROLES
FIGHTER — closes cruiser dead zone
FRIGATE — brawler, heavy sensors
CRUISER — long-range missile
BOMBER — bombs enemy stars
────────────────
SCOUT — 600 scan, 35% evasion
COLONIZER — claims neutral stars
STARBASE — home defender
▸ Refer to §03 · Combat
§ 04 · Systems Briefing

How it actually works.

DOC · SR-SYS-01
4 SECTIONS · DENSE

Economy · Workforce & Mining

Planets run on a single resource: minerals. Output is the product of three levers — population, infrastructure (mines and factories), and a mining/production slider that splits workforce between the two.

  • Pop cap — size × 10 × (habitability / 100). Hab gates both growth speed and the ceiling.
  • Workforce — population / 2, split by the per-star slider.
  • Staffing — each mine/factory wants 10 workers. Below that, efficiency drops proportionally.
  • Extraction — mines × (concentration / 100) × efficiency. Concentration depletes as you mine.
  • Production — factories × efficiency minerals converted into queued builds per tick.

At hab=50, a fully grown planet can exactly staff every building. Above 50 you run a workforce surplus; below 50 your infrastructure is permanently understaffed.

Home StarStarting Value
Habitability85
Population100 / 850
Mines5
Factories5
Concentration100
Surface Minerals100
Starbaseat match start
▸ One resource. No research tree, no tech unlocks. The deck is what you build.

Fog of War · Scan-Gated Vision

Vision is layered. Each of your ships and stars projects a movement-scan radius (wider, tracks position) and a narrower visibility radius (identifies hull, shows HP bar). What you see depends on which rings the enemy stands in.

  • Outside movement scan — enemy is invisible to you.
  • Movement scan only — enemy shows as an anonymous owner-color blob. Position known, type hidden.
  • Inside visibility — full hull + HP bar. For stars, scouts and scanners reveal full planet stats.
  • First contact — a sonar-pulse blip on the frame an enemy is first detected.

Combat is detection-gated: a ship can only target enemies someone on its team has inside movement scan. A cruiser at 360 px range with 80 px self-scan cannot fire without a scout or frigate spotting for it.

SourceMovementVisibility
Scout600450
Scanner I700350
Scanner II1500750
Frigate350262
Starbase200150
Fighter8070
Cruiser8060
Bomber8060
Colonizer8060
▸ Visibility = max(attack_range, move_scan × 0.75). No boost when attack ≥ move_scan.

Combat · Rock · Paper · Scissors

Combat resolves in real time. Proximity clustering engages enemies within 400 px. Ships attack on a 0.5-second cooldown with a 20% miss chance (seeded RNG); scout evasion checks before damage resolves.

  • Fighter ▸ Cruiser — fast enough to close inside the cruiser's 60 px dead zone. Once inside, the cruiser cannot fire.
  • Frigate ▸ Fighter — higher HP + DPS wins the brawl once the gap closes.
  • Cruiser ▸ Frigate — kills at 360 px before the frigate's 100 px guns are in range.
  • Detection-gated — you can only shoot what your team has in movement scan.
  • Bombers — orbit enemy stars at 80 px and deal 5 pop per 1-second bomb cycle. No air-to-air.

Counters are stat-driven, not automatic wins. Bring the right composition for what you scouted — or pay for it.

ClassHPATKRange (px)Role
Fighter902070Dead-zone closer
Frigate20035100Brawler
Cruiser1404060–360Long range
Bomber60—orbitsOrbital siege
Starbase50080130Home defender
▸ Cruiser range · 60–360 px
DEAD · 0–60
OPTIMAL · 60–360
OUTSIDE
▸ Counters are emergent — no explicit multipliers. The triangle works through dead-zone geometry and stat matchups, not hardcoded damage modifiers. 0.5 s cooldown · 20% miss · scout evasion 35%.

Galaxy · Procedural & Seedable

Every match generates its galaxy from a seed. Share the seed to replay the same map; reroll for a fresh draw. Star placement is deterministic from seed × map size, so both players see an identical galaxy at match start.

  • Small · 16 stars — 6000×6600 playfield. 1v1 duel. ~15 min.
  • Medium · 24 stars — 9000×9900. 1v1 extended. ~20 min.
  • Large · 36 stars — 12000×13200. 1v1 marathon. ~25–30 min.
  • Win conditions — elimination (zero stars AND zero colonizers), domination (≥60% of stars), or timeout at 30 min (most stars wins).

The galaxy picker in the main menu sets size. The seed field reseeds on every menu entry; edit it to reproduce a specific match, or hit the 🎲 button to re-roll.

TierStarsPlayfieldPlayersDuration
Small166000×66002~15 min
Medium249000×99002~20 min
Large3612000×132002~30 min
▸ Seeded RNG. Same seed + size ⇒ same galaxy on both ends.
§ 04.5 · Interactive Model
Economy simulator.
PLANET PARAMETERS
LIVE · INTERACTIVE
Planet Size100
Habitability85%
Current Population100
Population growth chart.
Max Population
—
Max growth / year
—
1 year =
0.5SEC
Years to 50% cap
—
Years to 90% cap
—
▸ max_pop = size × 10 × (hab/100) · growth/tick = pop × 0.00428 × (hab/100) × (1 − pop/max_pop) · 10 ticks = 1 year = 0.5 real seconds
§ 05 · Change Log

Recent deployments.

LAST 5 VERSIONS
FULL LOG · /CHANGELOG.md
0.16.0 APR 21 · 2026 FIX
▸ Workforce Surplus Redistribution
  • Surplus workers now redistribute across sides. If mining focus is high but mines are fully staffed, excess workers flow to factories and vice versa. Idle workers only appear when total workforce exceeds total building demand.
  • Debug mode: planet status line shows actual mine/factory worker assignments against building demand.
0.15.3 APR 20 · 2026 BALANCE
▸ Rusher Fighters-First · Expansionist Economy
  • Hard and Brutal difficulties hidden from the menu picker — they don't read as distinct opponents yet.
  • Rusher: now queues 3 opening fighters before the first colonizer. Early economy is thinner, but fighters arrive at 60–90 s.
  • Expansionist: factory floor raised to 5 per star before the second colonizer; new global fighter floor gates the third.
  • Attack triggers lowered across the board (total/idle fighter thresholds) so pressure lands sooner.
0.15.2 APR 20 · 2026 BALANCE
▸ Build Deliberation · Settler Newbie Nerf
  • AI now simulates human hesitation: a per-difficulty skip chance plus a post-economy-queue lockout.
  • Settler further nerfed: economy capped at 4 mines / 4 factories per star, slower colonizer cooldown, lower fighter cap.
  • Military queues don't trigger the deliberation lockout — the pause is in planning, not in combat ramp.
0.15.1 APR 20 · 2026 BALANCE
▸ Settler Easier · Rusher Earlier · Expansionist Floor
  • Settler economy caps lowered to 6 mines / 5 factories per star — reads as a cautious beginner rival.
  • Rusher reordered to build fighters and bombers before additional colonizers.
  • Expansionist gains a minimum factory floor so captured stars actually end up able to build fighters.
0.15.0 APR 20 · 2026 FEATURE
▸ AI Difficulty System · Match Logger · 50× Debug
  • Three AI difficulty levels in the menu: Settler, Rusher, Expansionist. Each has distinct phase logic, not just number tuning.
  • Seed field in the main menu — fresh seed on every launch, editable for reproducible matches, 🎲 to re-roll.
  • Debug match logger writes per-player CSV snapshots to disk for comparing AI presets on a fixed seed.
  • Ctrl+Shift+F toggles 50× sim speed in debug mode, for observing AI across a full match in seconds.
  • AI no longer drains the mineral pool on fighters while saving for its first colonizer.