Space Merchants: Arena

Space Merchants: Arena is an online multiplayer game in which futuristic spaceships fight in dogfights and tactical battles. You join the Army of Seven Stars in the year 2510, as it battles the Black Flags pirates amid the exploration and colonisation of new planets. The war has scattered the surviving Black Flags across the outer galaxy, and further losses of lives, colonies and planets lie ahead.

Game modes

The game has three modes:

• Battle: 2–10 players fight in a free-for-all, trying to kill opponents while avoiding being killed.
• Team Battle: Blue and Red teams fight in matches of 1 vs 1 to 5 vs 5. On Faarlands, teams score by killing opponents; on Tristar, they earn a point for every 15 seconds they survive at the central mining site. Jupiter uses Capture the Artefact: steal the opposing team's artefact and deliver it to your base.
• Training: fight an AI opponent in a training arena. Experience and money rewards are lower than in matches against human opponents.

There are four maps: Faarlands, Tristar, Jupiter and the Naussike system. Players can compete across platforms, and the game has platform and global leaderboards.

Develop your ship

After each battle, you earn experience to increase your skills and stats, as well as money to buy and upgrade ships and equipment. Ship AI skills increase automatically through use: for example, aiming at an enemy improves Accuracy, while collecting bonuses improves the bonus-gain effect. Four bonuses provide temporary benefits during a battle: red increases damage until the battle ends, green repairs your armour, blue adds experience and yellow adds money.

Upgrade Tools let you improve weapons, shields and armour. You earn Reward Points for winning a Team Battle, with additional points for being the team's Best player, based on kills, or Best assistant, based on assists. Reward Points can be exchanged for special rewards such as Upgrade Tools, or used in the Outpost minigame. Starting the game also grants a daily reward of experience and money.

Hacking and outposts

Use a Turrets communicator tool, available from the shop, to hack turrets on the maps. Hacked turrets fight for you and attack your opponents. Hacker Tools let you try to hack an enemy; a successful hack, which depends on that enemy's AI Firewall skill, prevents them from controlling movement and firing.

In the Outpost minigame, you build and upgrade your outpost, which other players can attack. You can also choose a randomly selected enemy outpost to attack. The winner receives Reward Points.

Achievements

The game lists 23 achievements. Actions in the game earn points for the achievements table. It also includes 22 Steam Achievements.