Solar Realms Elite also frequently referred to as SRE was a popular multi-player, space strategy game back in the early 90′s. SRE was developed by Amit Patel as a BBS doors game. It originally started as a clone of another BBS game, Solar Empire Elite, but took off in a different direction. Since the last version of SRE was released in 1994, there have been dozens of clones or games based on SRE developed. This includes Starpires which was heavily inspired by Solar Realms Elite.

In SRE, players battle to become the most powerful empire in the galaxy, usually playing against 25-50 others. It is a turn based game with each turn made up of several section including buying planets, buying military, sending attacks, trade and diplomacy. Players start with a number of planets and some money. They must provide food and spend money to maintain the population, army, and planets, or suffer civil unrest.

One of the engaging aspects of SRE is the complex economics model underlying the game. There are 10 different planet types including food, mining, government, etc. Each of these planet types provide something that your empire needs. Part of the strategy of the game is balancing how many of each planet type you have to make your empire run as efficiently as possible. If you don’t have enough food for your people they starve, petroleum planets create pollution problems, etc.

There are a variety of attack types that can be strategically used against opponents including invasions, guerilla attacks and numerous covert operations. You could also make alliances with other players as well as trade resources back and forth with them.

SRE was known for being extremely addicting, with a rather large following of fans even to this day.