Frequently Asked Questions

Click Play — free browser MMORPG, no downloads required. You'll land in the shared galaxy and find your feet on a living world. A live connection is required (shared server clock).

On foot: A/D or arrows to walk (release to stop), walk up to a ▶ prompt, confirm with E/Enter/Space or tap it. Jump with W/Up, duck with S/Down. Ship combat is fully auto cube duels — fit wins; watch the fight or resolve away. Board at berth, launch from the helm. There is no right-click freefly sandbox.

You learn by doing — walk ports, talk to people, board your ship when a fight is queued. The first hour is onboarding in-world; the public pitch is pirate freedom, not a lecture. Take your time on the surface before you launch.

Interaction is walk-up + explicit confirm — nothing fires just because you arrived. In combat, abilities and fit do the heavy lifting; salvage pods scoop home after kills. No auto-mine toggle, no tractor-beam freefly loop.

MultiPirates is a free browser MMORPG space pirate RPG. One shared living galaxy — smuggle, cube ship combat, faction territory, living ports, belt mining, brawls, and season boards. Not pay to win. Early build, always open.

Modern browsers on Windows, Mac, and Linux. Keyboard is ideal; touch has prompts. A live connection is required for the shared server clock.

Yes — free to play. No purchases, no subscriptions, no pay-to-win. Click Play and be a pirate.

MultiPirates is a solo dev project created by Philip Radvan and published by Blue Coast Water, LLC. No team, no publisher - just one person building the space game they always wanted to play.

Phaser 3, TypeScript, React, Zustand, Vite, Firebase (hosting, auth, Firestore, functions). Procedural generators for ships, portraits, planets, and POIs. Pixel art via Piskel/Photoshop; CRT theme in CSS.

It started with Super Star Trek on a Commodore - ASCII art, sector grids, photon torpedoes. Then came the Atari years, followed by Elite, Dope Wars, Wing Commander, Another World, Civilization, Star Control 2, X-Wing, Privateer, Masters of Orion, TIE Fighter, Escape Velocity, Freespace, Homeworld, Space Pirates, Space Rangers, Freelancer, and Eve Online. Games that let you be anyone in a universe that didn't care. MultiPirates is a love letter to all of them.

This game has been over 20 years in the making. Dozens of prototypes, different engines, different languages. Life kept getting in the way - jobs, moves, all of it. But the idea never left: a living galaxy with real consequences, your ship, your rules. MultiPirates is the game that refused to stay unfinished.

On foot: A/D or arrows walk, W/Up jump, S/Down duck, F punch / C kick in fights, E/Enter/Space confirm prompts. Ship combat is cube duels (watch or away-resolve) — scanners, modules, and loadouts decide. I inventory, J journal, map via the star-map chrome. No right-click freefly.

Fully auto duels on a 3D cube grid. Both sides scan for contact, then fire into module boxes — engines, weapons, cooling, power core. Dual weapon mounts and full gear modules (rarity, Mk, uniques) decide the fight. The same f(seed, loadouts) truth runs for watched fights and away resolution; the server re-runs it.

Open the star map, plot a course, and jump or hop on real timers using fuel. Same-system hops and inter-system jumps are cozier voyages — you arrive in orbit, then land (or approach a belt or derelict). There is no freeform right-click warp-anywhere sandbox and no skill-tree warp mods.

Eight factions own territory: settlers, corporations, pirates, cults, nomads, plus independent fringe. Capitals seed empire borders (not random speckles). Standing shifts prices, fuel, jobs, and hostility. Help a faction and their rival remembers — hostile worlds can refuse services.

Cube hits land on module boxes. Destroyed weapons stop firing, dead engines cripple impulse, a killed power core ends the fight. Fires and structural damage persist on the parked ship until you repair at a bay or station.

Three-tier repair at repair bays and parked ship stations: pay a mechanic for instant full repair, repair with parts on a real-world timer while you keep playing, or free jury-rig with caps. Broke + wrecked still has a free jury-rig path. No skill-tree repair perks.

Land from orbit into the spaceport hangar or surface pads. Walk the port, board your ship at berth, trade and repair at POIs. People keep schedules; shops open and close on planet-local time. Take off and launch from the helm when you're ready.

Trade at markets, pawnshops, outfitters, and shipyards on living ports — grid shops with daily stock. Smuggle hot cargo for better margins. Dialogue vendors and native barter also move goods. Contraband like Nova Spice and Clone Blanks still pays if you know the fence.

Mining is live: from orbit, target a belt and hit MINE for a ship dig session (ore types, richness, shared daily cap). On-foot MINE nodes on wild worlds, DEBRIS salvage, and ore hand-in contracts still pay. Season miner boards track lifetime digs. The mining laser is a real ship weapon archetype — not an auto-mine toggle or continuous ore stream.

From orbit, open a belt dig session and work the field. Ore types, richness, and remaining rock are real; shared daily caps keep belts honest. Scoop into the hold, hand in contracts, or sell at market. This is not a continuous auto-mine laser on freefly rocks.

Your hold is a real inventory grid — when it's full, new pickups don't land (or stay on the ground as a toast opportunity). Sell or jettison, then dig again. Nothing important is silently deleted on death; gear and freight stay yours.

Salvage comes from DEBRIS nodes on foot, battle salvage pods that scoop home after kills, and parts you can spend in kind. The mining laser is a combat weapon archetype, not a continuous freefly salvage beam.

Belt claims and world content are seeded on the shared galaxy and live clock (daily caps, epoch stock). Come back later and the board still makes sense — you're not the only pilot on this map.

Yes. Surface digs, belt claims, salvage, and ore contracts pay without a body count. Trade and smuggling remain options. There is no economy skill tree — progression is pilot level, ship points, fame, and gear.

Dig on wild worlds, fly belt digs from orbit where the ore is rich, run ore hand-ins on job boards. Expand cargo via class and fit. Deeper rings pay better and hurt more. Fit a mining laser when rock (or hull) needs cutting.

One shared living galaxy for every pilot — same map seed, same server clock, same champions and season boards. Plot routes on the star map, hop or jump on real timers, arrive in orbit, then land. Not an infinite personal freefly sandbox.

One shared map with faction regions and distance rings. Safer core ports, thinner law on the frontier, deeper rings with champions, outlaws, and meaner contracts. Danger and pay scale as you push out — not an infinite personal zone grid.

Systems have stars, planets, asteroid belts, and derelicts you reach via the star map and orrery. Arrive in orbit, then land on a planet or approach a belt/derelict. Belts are claims; wild worlds have digs and camps. Travel is planned jumps/hops, not free zone-edge scrolling.

Planets with living ports, wild digs, belt claims, DEBRIS salvage, contracts and bounties, rivals and champions, and the occasional orbital scrap. Exploration is map + land + people — not freefly POI farming with a tractor beam.

Every planet is procedurally generated from a seed. 13 unique planet types exist: Earth, Desert, Jungle, Ice, Volcanic, Toxic, Rocky, Water, Gas Giant, Swamp, Tundra, Savanna, and Ash. In space, planets appear as rotating 3D spheres with realistic lighting, swirling cloud layers, and city lights visible on the dark side of inhabited worlds. When you land, each planet generates a unique parallax terrain with 5 depth layers, day/night cycles, weather effects, and world assets like vegetation, ruins, and structures specific to that planet type.

Open the star map from the chrome. Zoom from galaxy regions into a live system orrery, pick a body, plot course or land. Jumps and hops run on real timers with fuel. No freefly zone-edge scrolling.

Yes! Inhabited planets have life and activity. Planets with life have birds flying across the sky - solo birds and occasional V-formation flocks. Advanced civilizations (tech level 3) have satellites visible both orbiting in space view and crossing the sky as bright dots when landed. Jungle planets get swarming flies with erratic buzzing movement near the terrain. Each planet's tech level (1-3) is deterministically generated, with about 25% reaching the advanced level with satellites.

When you land on an inhabited planet, you'll see a procedurally generated cityscape with buildings, rooftop details (AC units, satellite dishes, water tanks), and glowing windows at night. Flying cars stream through the background - foreground vehicles with headlights and taillights pass closer. The skyline style changes based on planet type: urban cities have dense skyscrapers, spaceports have control towers, industrial zones have smokestacks, and frontier outposts have scattered buildings.

Walk up to POIs on the street and confirm to enter: market, repair, cantina/divebar, spaceport hangar, clone lab, casino, fight club, pharmacy, pawnshop, arcade, flophouse, and more. Multi-floor interiors, real stock on shelves, people on schedules. Neon signs and seeded shop names still slap.

Open the nav computer and drill down: galaxy, then system, then the planet, then its pads. The pad level is the lander — pick a landing site and commit. Bodies carry several sites (capitals, outposts, back-country strips), and you only see the ones you have charted. Unknown pads stay dark until you find them.

You explore around your landing site, not the entire globe. Set down at a pad and the surface around that berth is a real walkable space — POIs to discover, wrecks, dig spots, wilderness hotspots, and locals on schedules. To reach a different part of the world you lift off and land at another pad. There is no free-flight mode and no seamless planet-wide surface.

Authored ship classes from shuttle and fighter through freighter and cruiser — fourteen classes across five tiers. Each class ships with real bays (weapons, cooling, scanners, cargo). Buy, steal, or refit at shipyards; modules are full gear with rarity, Mk, and uniques. The ship is how the galaxy reads you.

Every hull is an authored class (layout family, deck count, bay roster, cargo) painted by the assembly system from a seed. Design families (military, industrial, sleek, pirate, civilian) tint palettes and flavor. Modules — cockpit, engines, power core, scanners, cooling, CPU, dual weapons — light up by power and damage state. Walkable multi-deck interiors match the exterior massing. Refit bays so any combination stays possible on top of a class baseline.

Ports are full of residents with jobs, schedules, dialogue, and grudges — keepers, traders, rivals, fighters, champions, outlaws, and sleepers who will throw hands. Fights and deals start with people in places, not ambient freefly AI fleets.

Residents resolve to places by planet-local hour and flags (including sore rivals who relocate). Dialogue, favors, challenges, and shop hours all ride the live clock. Ship opponents in sorties fly real loadouts with heat and modules.

Kills eject salvage pods that drift home and auto-scoop. Bosses and big tickets can drop signature uniques. Modules are full gear — fit what you find, sell the rest at the pawnshop or shipyard.

SpaceBook is the in-world social network — drama, fame, and rumor texture from the cast. It is not other players DMing you. Real work still lives on contracts boards, job kiosks, and people you talk to.

Every NPC in the galaxy has a unique procedurally generated 64x64 pixel portrait. The portrait system uses 11 layered features - background, hair (front and back), face, eye sockets, irises, facial features, facial hair, headwear, and accessories. Each layer is rendered with parallax depth for a pseudo-3D effect. Portraits are deterministically generated from a seed, so the same NPC always has the same face, even across game sessions.

Portraits are fully animated to bring NPCs to life. Eyes track your mouse cursor with smooth interpolation. Heads turn slightly using parallax layer offsets. NPCs blink every 2-6 seconds with proper eyelid animation. Expressions change periodically - eyebrows raise, furrow, or go asymmetric; mouths smile, frown, or breathe subtly. Combat NPCs like pirates get harsh red lighting, while traders at ports get warm ambient lighting.

Appearance is one shared identity across portrait and walker. Shape yourself through play — salons, outfitters, gear that dresses you — and a living portrait that blinks, turns, and can show pilot damage. No separate public character-creation form.

Portraits animate (blink, gaze, expression). Live views can show pilot-HP face damage; photo/ID contexts stay clean. Same person as your walker on the street.

ID Forge and salons/outfitters let you change the look while progress stays. Wanted heat and fame are separate problems — a new face helps the story, not a cheat code.

No landing-page identity picker. Click Play and become someone in the world — origin and look unfold through play, not a form before the game.

Yes — modules are items, the same as anything else you carry. The ship has eight slots: cockpit, engine, power core, cooling, scanner, CPU, and two full weapon mounts. Every module carries its own flavor and stats, so two hulls of the same class fight differently depending on what you bolted on.

Rarity is the affix count: common has none, uncommon one, rare two, epic three. Mk I through Mk III is power tier, and it comes from how dangerous the source was — deeper, meaner places drop higher Mk. Uniques sit outside that ladder: a hand-authored set with their own special line.

One grid, drag and drop. Items have real footprints, so packing matters. Your pilot bag rides with you and the ship hold carries the bulk; pilot gear (suit, tool, trinket, head, accessory) sits in its own layer and adds on top of your build rather than replacing it. Cargo, contraband, and modules all live in the same system.

Shipyards handle hulls and refits, pawnshops take what you scraped off a wreck, and market vendors carry stock that shifts with the venue, your standing, and the day. Sell the duplicates, fit the upgrades, and go back out.

Commodities, contraband, gear, modules, consumables, and valuables share one inventory grid. Black-market staples (Nova Spice, Clone Blanks, Xeno Relics, and friends) still move. Gear has rarity, affixes, and Mk power. Prices follow venue, standing, and the day's stock.

Markets and pawnshops roll seeded daily stock. Outfitters sell wardrobe. Shipyards sell modules. Mystery crates, brawl drops, wild caches, and battle salvage feed the grid. Fences pay for hot goods; pawnshops buy almost anything.

Work comes from people and boards: delivery and haul jobs, ore hand-ins, bounties and contracts, rival/champion challenges, fightclub ladders. SpaceBook is flavor; the contracts kiosk and dialogue are where tickets get real.

XP comes from the loop — fights, jobs, exploration, and living in the galaxy. Level feeds build points for your ship and pilot track. Fame (champions beaten) and ring fame are separate ladders. No 34-skill tree spending points every level.

There is no multi-branch skill tree. Progress through pilot level and build points, ship module fit (Mk gates and boosts), fame and champions, gear and credits. Fit and judgment beat passive trees.