Starport: Galactic Empires is a free space-oriente, massively multiplayer online role-playing game, and uses a third-person 2D overhead view similar to that used in Asteroids. The game uses semi-realistic physics for both space and atmospheric travel, affecting both the movement of ships and player-fired weaponry. Starport has a simple backstory which automatically leads to a number of systems being combat protected but other than this every server has a different starmap, with sometimes over one thousand stars being placed in accordance with a number of templates. Characters can conquer and colonize planets with a variety of different terrains depending on the type of planet. The player can build and harvest resources with their colony. Starport shares most of the core concepts and many names (such as ship names) with Tradewars 2002.