This game's author, all of whose games deal in some fashion with space exploration, felt a certain systemic turn-based pause for reflection to be to the detriment of the wide array of starship captain simulators out there in the early '80s. To help convey the stress and prompt the snap decisions needed in an emergency situation, Starship: Invasion was devised as a realtime simulator, of the Excalibur-class starship the H.I.M.S. Stinger.

The typical, limited, options remain the same as in its mainframe-derived BASIC predecessors: firing photon torpedos or phasers, going to warp speed, raising and lowering shields. The display options similarly hold true to their classic roots, largely based on divining your sector neighbors and ship status by decoding numerical displays and interpreting coloured alerts. The player's ship can still recharge ("Trillom" energy reserves) at six friendly StarDocks, which remain targets for an invading force that comes piloting six different varieties of marauding enemy starships. .. just now you get a little less time to plot your next course of action.