Star Dart was a game made in the late 1990’s to 2000’s made by Fred’s Friends fiends.com. The game was widely popular alongside their other popular games such as Dragon Court and Puggle. Fiends.com’s slogan was “We Write Games That Waste Your Time”.
Unfortunately Fred has decided to no longer develop his site due to working full time and having a family.
We can learn the history of Space Domination and how it originally evolved off of Star Dart from the original excerpt from their website:
Space Domination first came into being on July 29, 2003 when spacedomination.com was first registered as a remake of Star Dart, with few new features but with a lot of potential for growth. Space Domination was a relatively simple game in late July; there were no alien races, facilities, and declarations, and few graphics. However, Space Domination was greatly improved throughout the month of August, 2003 to include a number of new enhancements to gameplay and the interface.
The first considerable update to Space Domination was implemented on August 4, 2003. Merchants, beacons, and stardocks were implemented in an innovative way which allowed there to be multiple facilities per world contrasting with the way in which Star Dart’s facilities operated. The facilities added a new strategic dimension to the game because players were able to have worlds stronger than what population and industry would allow and have an advantage over other players. Also, because of the addition of facilities, the cost of each ship along with the number of guns each ship has was doubled to take advantage of the effects of the facilities.
The most significant accomplishment yet was the implementation of alien races, which had long been desired and were finally added on August 12, 2003. At first, there were only six alien races and they only provided a unique ability, but they brought a unique strategic element to the game since some races are particularly good in certain situations and against other particular races. Finally there was a way in which certain players would be fundamentally different from others, which was a goal that had only now been achieved. Of course, alien races would be expanded to contain two new races and their abilities have been modified and expanded over time to make them more balanced.
After the previous additions were implemented to the game, declarations were the next goal to add and they were implemented on August 20, 2003. Declarations worked well with the original implementation of them, though they too were to be decently expanded with the next version.
The last significant update for some time occurred on August 24, 2003 with the implementation of homeworlds for each race and declarations pertaining to them. The seventh and eighth races were also added during this update and the races were finally balanced to the point where there were always a few races which could be selected for any particular situation. After that update, the game had reached a point where the strategies were becoming complex and the pace of updates was slowed since the updates players had been clamoring for were mostly all implemented. Additionally, it was time to allow players to have enough time to develop consistent strategies without having to modify their strategy often.
On September 20, 2003, the game received another substantial update. This time, the most important aspect of the update is that facilities now account for part of the maximum score of each game since it was nice to have a third factor in the scoring equation and it encourages players to build up their worlds instead of rampaging. The artificial intelligence was also improved in this game in order to make players more active while capturing neutral worlds.
Space Domination has certainly come a long way in the last three months, progressing from a simple game without much lasting value to an extensive, strategic game which is relatively easy to learn but difficult to master and will entice you to come back for more.