Living Universe Online
This site contains the design and gameplay documentation for Living Universe Online (LUO) — a menu-driven, browser-style space MMO built around long-term strategy, economic growth, logistics, territorial competition, and player-driven politics.
What This Documentation Covers
This site is split into three different kinds of game documentation.
- Features document gameplay that is already implemented or otherwise treated as current game behavior.
- Ideas collect early design exploration, open questions, and rough directions that are not yet committed.
- Pitch presents selected ideas in a cleaner form so the community can react to them and express interest.
It is not implementation documentation. For backend architecture and code conventions, see the Docs/Architecture/ folder in the repository.
Who This Is For
- Designers defining or refining game features
- Developers implementing features and needing to understand the intended behavior
- Contributors writing or updating documentation
How to Navigate
Use the sidebar or top navigation to browse by area:
- Features — implemented or currently accepted gameplay features
- Ideas — design exploration and unresolved concept work
- Pitch — community-facing concept pages for discussion and voting
- Glossary — shared terminology used throughout all documents
- Contributing — how to write and maintain documentation in this site
Project Summary
Living Universe Online is designed around meaningful decision-making inside a persistent multiplayer world. Players are not judged by reaction speed or piloting skill, but by planning, coordination, risk management, and the ability to build influence over time.
The game universe is structured as:
- a single universe containing a galaxy
- a galaxy divided into named regions
- regions containing orbital systems
- orbital systems containing stellar objects
That structure is the foundation on which all gameplay systems — routing, ownership, economy, warfare, logistics, and exploration — are built.