SEASON STATUS: ACTIVE v2.0.0 — a new universe →
B
Big Bang Smugglers
Mobile-first Turn-based Async multiplayer Free

Run a galaxy from your phone.

Built for the phone in your pocket, five minutes at a time. Trade three commodities, pick a faction, take a planet, hunt a bounty — the season keeps running while you're away.

Install on Android Play in browser
One account · same galaxy on phone and web
45
Hulls
9
Ship lines
6
Structures
4h
Prod. cycle
A turn on the phone ~5 min
00:00 Collect four hours of planet production
00:40 Check the market — equipment is up 18% at your home port
01:30 Fill the hold and run one route out to the frontier
03:10 Buy the tier-3 hull you've been saving for
04:25 Queue a structure, dock somewhere safe, close the app

No session to sit through. Nothing lost by putting it down.

01 / Core systems
TRADE

Living markets

Fuel, organics, equipment. Ports price on real supply and demand — find the route, run it before someone else does.

COMBAT

PvP anywhere outside Fed space

Fighters, shields, torpedoes, hull. Win and take the cargo; lose and hope the escape pod holds.

PLANETS

Claim and build

Six structures, population growth, production every four hours, and a starbase when you're ready to hold ground.

BOUNTY

Names on a list

Post a price on a rival, or collect one. Faction bounties pay out in person at the issuing registry.

02 / The galaxy

Three zones. Risk priced accordingly.

Patrolled Federation core with no PvP. Open frontier in between. Lawless pirate rim, where the richest planets and the black markets are.

Fed core
Safe, patrolled, thin margins
Frontier
Contested, unclaimed worlds, real money
Pirate rim
No law, black markets, best planets

Federation or pirate — you choose by playing

Start neutral. Clean routes push you one way; contraband and first strikes push the other. Alignment sets your prices, port access, and which hulls you're allowed to fly.

Seasons of every length

Sprints and marathons, small maps and sprawling ones, each balanced for its length. Standings lock when the galaxy closes and carry forward as permanent prestige.

Corporations

Fly as a fleet, capture and hold ports, share planets under corp policy, climb the standings under one banner.

03 / Fleet registry

45 hulls, five tiers deep.

The neutral spine is open to anyone. Federation hulls carry reinforced shields. Pirate hulls run better escape odds and hidden compartments customs can't scan. Six epic hulls can't be bought — only earned.

Three neutral lines anyone can buy, at any standing.
Three Federation lines unlocked by legal standing.
Three pirate lines earned on the wrong side of the law.
Line
Access
Built for
Trading
Open
Cargo volume
War
Open
Fighters and torpedoes
Balanced
Open
A little of both
Patrol
Fed standing
Fast, well shielded
Enforcer
Fed standing
Shields and firepower
Dreadnought
Fed standing
Heaviest legal hull
Smuggling
Pirate standing
Hidden compartments
Raider
Pirate standing
Speed and escape odds
Corsair
Pirate standing
Rim-built brawler

Plus six epic hulls outside the registry — never sold, only earned.

04 / Progression

The game is always watching the work.

Every real act — a trade, a kill, a scan, a bounty collected, a sector seen for the first time — goes into one action stream. Missions, goals and streaks all read from it. Nothing is self-reported, and objectives bind to actual things in the galaxy, not to descriptions of them.

Everything pays in five currencies
Credits XP Turns Alignment Standing

Turns are the important one: finishing your dailies hands back more turns, so the reward for playing well is a longer session.

STREAK

Streaks

Any day you spend a turn counts. Miss one day and it's forgiven. Your streak is the only thing that crosses season boundaries — payouts are seasonal, showing up isn't.

3 days 7 days 14 days 30 days
DAILY

Daily missions

A rotating slate — trade runs, cargo hauls, pirate hunts, convoy raids, surveys, contraband moves. Honest work nudges your alignment up; underworld work drags it down. Exploring and duelling stay neutral on purpose.

Credits · XP · bonus turns
SEASON

Season arcs

Seven long hauls that run the length of a season, from an easy opening muster up to elite gauntlets. This is where legendary gear is earned rather than rolled — the Overdrive module, the Vanguard hull, champion titles.

Up to 80k credits · 4,000 XP · 50 turns
LADDERS

Goals

Bronze → Silver → Gold ladders per category: combat, trade, exploration, economy, piracy. Progress accrues on its own as you play. Top tiers grant titles that stay in your lifetime trophy case.

Credits · XP · titles
EPIC

Epic goals

Commissioned for the impossible. Compound conditions above Gold — stat floors, standing floors, a clean record, a measured fraction of the galaxy explored. Tuned so maybe one captain a season gets there.

One epic hull · grant-only, never sold

“It feels like a sort of Trade Wars meets Privateer vibe… My favorite part are the cutscenes — I feel rewarded every time I see a new one.”

John Pritchett — Trade Wars 2002 developer, Trade Wars™ rights holder*
05 / v2.0.0 — a new universe

Not an update. A re-founding.

Rebuilt from the engine up. Seventeen systems redesigned. The universe restarted with no carried history — and the game now runs in your browser too.

Full release notes →
UNIVERSE

Fresh start for everyone

New accounts, new galaxies, no carried history. The v1 record books are archived with honor.

ENGINE

New engine

Instant turn resolution, galaxies generated in seconds, live balance tuning per season.

SYSTEMS

Seventeen systems redesigned

Living markets, smuggling careers, port capture, starbases, factions, corporations, bounty claims.

MOBILE FIRST

Designed for the phone

Every screen built for one thumb on Android first, with the browser as the same galaxy on a bigger screen.

The season is open.

Install it, run a route on the walk home, and you're in it.

Install on Android Play in browser