Rules for Galaxy v3.5
18 June 1993
Copyright 1991-1992 by Russell Wallace
Copyright 1993 the Galaxy PBeM Development Group
Introduction
Galaxy is a game of interstellar war for several players. You are the leader of
your race. You start off by sharing an area of the galaxy with a number of
other races and your objective is to become its sole occupant. You must provide
a name by which your race will be known e.g. "Mutant Camels", "Zzyaxians" etc -
if you have not already done this you should do it on your first turn, until
then you will simply be known as "Player 5" or whatever. See "Orders" for how
to change your race name.
The Galaxy
The area of the galaxy in which the game is played is a square area (for the
sake of simplicity the third dimension is ignored) which contains a number of
habitable planets (all other astronomical objects are irrelevant to the game
and so are ignored). Each race starts off occupying one planet and the other
planets are uninhabited. It is possible to colonize uninhabited planets and
conquer planets inhabited by other races.
Units
Game units relate to real units as follows: Distances are measured in light-
years. Each game unit of population represents 10 million people and each game
unit of goods, raw materials etc. represents about 10 million tons. Each game
turn represents about four years of time.
Industry
Each inhabited planet has an industry level. This may not be greater than its
population but may be less. The productive capacity of a planet is determined
mostly by its industry and partly by its population. Each industry unit on a
planet gives one production point, and every 4 population units over and above
industry also give one production point. So at the start of the game you have
one planet with industry and population of 1,000. This means you have 1,000
production points to be spend on producing whatever you choose. If your home
planet had industry 500 and population 1,000 it would generate only 625
production points per turn.
Production points can be spent on producing raw materials, building spaceships,
building industry units, or researching an area of technology. Planets also
produce extra population, but this does not cost production points.
Technology
You start off with a technology level of 1 in each of the following areas:
Drive, Weapons, Shields and Cargo. These levels can be increased by allocating
production to research. It costs 5,000 production points to increase a
technology level by one point. However fractional increases are possible and
they are immediately useful e.g. if you spend 500 production points on research
into Weapons, your Weapons tech level will go up by one tenth of a point and
this will take effect immediately, you don't have to wait until the level goes
up by a whole point.
Raw Materials
Producing anything other than research requires raw materials as well as
production points. Raw materials represent things like sheet steel, copper wire
and wood and oil for conversion into plastics. Each planet may have a stockpile
of raw materials and if present this will be used. If no stockpile exists, some
production points will be allocated to producing raw materials.
For example, suppose you allocate production at the start of the game to
building spaceships. Since you start off with no raw material stockpiles, raw
materials will have to be produced in order to build the spaceships. (To build
spaceships requires an amount of raw materials equal to the total size of the
ships built). This is completely invisible from your point of view, the only
effect it will have is that spaceship production will be somewhat lower than
you would otherwise expect.
The only reason you need to know about materials at all is that some planets
are better than others at producing them. Each planet has a Natural Resources
attribute which indicates how rich it is in metal deposits, coal and oil etc.
Planets high in Natural Resources can produce materials more cheaply. The
attribute ranges from 0.1 to 10, the average being 1. Your starting planet has
Natural Resources of 10, which means that each production point can produce 10
points of materials. A planet with Natural Resources of 0.1 could only produce
0.1 point of materials for every production point spent on this. So if you
colonize some planets with low Natural Resources you should dedicate your
planets with high Natural Resources to producing materials and ship them to the
other planets.
Population
Each planet has a Size attribute which can be anything from 0 to 1,000. This is
related not only to the planet's physical size but also to how much of it is
mountains, desert or oceans, how suitable the climate is for agriculture etc.
The planet's population can never be higher than its Size but may be lower.
Your starting planet's size and population are both 1,000. A planet's
population increases by 8% every turn. Population increases beyond the planet's
size are converted into colonists.
Colonists
Population increases beyond a planet's size are converted into colonists. These
are people stored in containers in deep freeze. Every 8 extra population units
are converted into 1 unit of colonists. When colonists from a planet's
stockpile are shipped to other planets which still have room for population
growth, they are automatically thawed out and added to the planet's population.
This is how uninhabited planets are colonized. (Note that colonist production
is completely automatic, and consumes no production points.)
Capital
A planet's industry level is increased by the production of capital goods.
These represent things like machine tools, computers and transport vehicles. To
produce one unit of capital requires 5 production points and 1 unit of raw
materials. If the planet's industry level is below its population it will then
be increased by one unit. Otherwise the capital units will be stockpiled. If
shipped to a planet whose industry level is below its population, that planet's
industry level will be increased. This is useful for quickly building up the
economy of a colony planet.
Designing Ships
Galaxy allows you to design your own types of spaceships! To design a ship, you
decide on a name and give numbers for the following:
Drive - how powerful is its hyperdrive engine
Attacks - how many guns does it carry
Weapons - how powerful is each of its guns
Shield - how powerful is its shield generator
Cargo - how much cargo can it carry
Some example types are:
Drone 1 0 0 0 0
Fighter 1 1 1 1 0
Gunship 4 2 2 4 0
Destroyer 6 1 8 4 0
Cruiser 15 1 15 15 0
Battle Cruiser 30 3 10 30 0
Battleship 25 1 30 35 0
Battle Station 60 3 30 100 0
Orbital Fort 0 3 30 100 0
Space Gun 0 1 10 0 0
Freighter 8 0 0 2 10
Megafreighter 80 2 2 30 100
The Attacks number has to be a whole number, but the others can be fractional.
However they must be either zero or at least 1. For example, you can have a
Drive of 1.5 but not 0.5. See below for the effects of the numbers.
Names
As well as the various races, other things in the game which have names are
ship types and planets. Names for all three things may be no more than 20
characters (a character is a letter, digit, space, punctuation mark etc). Ship
types are given names by their designer. All planets only have numbers for
names at the start of the game. When you colonize a planet you can change its
name. You may want to change your home planet's name immediately to something
more exciting e.g. from "112" to "Zzyax Prime".
Building Ships
You can allocate a planet to producing a type of spaceship. The cost of a ship
is equal to its mass times 10 production points. A ship without weapons has a
mass of Drive + Shields + Cargo (e.g. a Freighter from the above list has a
mass of 20). A ship with one attack has a mass of Drive + Weapons + Shields +
Cargo. For a ship with multiple attacks, each attack beyond the first adds half
the Weapons number to the ship's mass (e.g. a Gunship has a mass of 11).
Example: If your homeworld was producing Drones, and there was a stockpile of
raw materials, it would produce 100 per turn. (If there was no stockpile of raw
materials, it would produce slightly over 99 per turn.) However, if it was
producing Battleships, it would only produce one and one-ninth per turn. After
the first turn, there would be one battleship in orbit, and one one-ninth
built. After the second turn there would be two battleships in orbit, and one
two-ninths built. If you then switched production on that planet to another
type of ship or something else entirely, the two-ninths completed ship would be
scrapped so it's a bad idea to switch production too frequently when building
large ships.
Groups
In later stages of the game you can have hundreds or even thousands of
spaceships, which would be inconvenient to handle individually. Hence
spaceships are handled in groups. A group is a collection of spaceships which
are all of the same type, in the same place, carrying the same quantity and
type of cargo and built with the same tech levels. This last bit is important
because a ship's effectiveness depends on the tech level at which it was built.
Any ships without a certain type of component are recorded as having a tech
level of 0 in that component e.g. unarmed ships are always recorded as having a
Weapons tech level of 0 so that two otherwise equal groups of them can be
merged into one. You can load an entire group of ships with cargo, send it to
another planet etc. with one command. Groups can be split up, and the program
will automatically merge together any identical groups after processing your
orders.
Fleets
Fleets are a formed group of different types of ships. They are basically
a group of groups. Fleets can be ordered to move around as a single group
using the fleet orders. Fleets also do not go off on routes. Also, the
speed of the fleet is the speed of the slowest group.
When a individual group is given a 'send' or 'intercept' order it is
automatically removed from its current fleet if any. Also, breaking off a
number of ships from a group which is part of a fleet automatically removes
the broken-off group from the fleet. Loading and unloading cargo does not
affect the fleet status of a group.
Movement
Spaceships are equipped with hyperspace drives whose power is equal to their
Drive number multiplied by the Drive tech level at which they were built.
(Ships with a Drive of zero remain forever at the planet where they were
built). A ship moves a number of light years per turn equal to 20 times its
drive power divided by its total mass. "Total mass" means the mass of the ship
itself plus the mass of any cargo it's carrying, so transport ships move faster
when empty than when full. Note that unless your Drive tech level is very high,
large ships should have correspondingly large drives or they will be very slow.
On the other hand the fastest ships you can possibly build (all numbers except
Drive being zero in the design) can only travel at a speed of 20 times your
Drive tech level.
Hyperspace travel is only possible from one concentration of mass to another,
i.e. from one star system to another. A ship can only travel at maximum speed
in hyperspace. When a ship enters hyperspace, no time passes for the ship or
those on board; a ship in hyperspace cannot turn around, change course, or be
attacked.
Detection of ships in hyperspace is a difficult business. Of course, your
administrative staff will keep a record of your ships, so you will always know
where they are. However, the equipment to accurately detect the position of
alien ships in hyperspace requires a large staff to operate and maintain, only
works from a centre of mass, and can only track ships heading to or from that
centre of mass. In practical terms, this means you will only receive a report
of groups of alien ships heading towards one of your planets (all of which are
assumed to have hyperspace detectors), though a rough indication of the
location of other ships on the map will also be given.
Cargo
The amount of cargo a ship can carry is determined by the following formula:
cargo-technology * (cargo-number + cargo-number^2/10)
where "cargo-technology" means the cargo technology at which the ship was
built, and "cargo-number" is determined in the ship design.
So, at cargo technology level 1, some examples would be:
Cargo Number Amount Carried
1 1.1
5 7.5
10 20
50 300
100 1100
At cargo technology level 2, these quantities would be doubled, and so on. Note
that large freighters can carry very large quantities of cargo, but if fully
loaded are likely to be slow (e.g. a fully loaded Megafreighter at drive and
cargo technology 1 would have a speed of only 1.22 light years per turn).
The slow speed of heavily loaded ships can be alleviated by higher levels of
cargo technology, however. At tech level 2, the mass of any cargo loaded onto a
ship is only considered to be half as much as normal, for purposes of
calculating ship speed and shield dilution (see "Combat" below). At tech level
3, the mass is divided by 3 and so on. So, a Freighter from the example ship
types can carry 20 units of cargo at tech level 1. At tech level 2, it could
carry 40 units, but these would only slow it down as much as 20 units at tech
level 1; thus, a tech level 2 freighter loaded with 40 units of raw materials
can travel as fast (assuming the same drive technology) as a tech level 1
freighter loaded with 20 units.
A ship may only carry one type of cargo at one time. The possible types are raw
materials, capital and colonists. Cargo may be loaded onto a ship at a planet
where it is available. Capital and materials may be unloaded onto any planet;
colonists may only be unloaded onto a planet you own, or an uninhabited planet.
Routes
To move cargo between planets you can use a route instead of doing it manually.
A route from planet A to B for a particular cargo type means that the computer
will try to get that type of cargo from planet A to planet B using all
available transport ships. So once the route is set up, any empty ships at
planet A each turn will be loaded with cargo (if any of that type is present on
planet A) and sent to planet B. Any ships at planet A which already are loaded
with the appropriate type of cargo will also be sent to planet B. Any ships
which arrive at planet B carrying that type of cargo (even if they didn't come
from planet A) will be automatically unloaded.
You can set up a total of four routes from each planet that you own, one for
each of the three kinds of cargo and one for empty transports which is useful
for returning transports from resource consuming planets to resource producing
planets. You can only set up routes from planets that you own but you can set
up routes to any planet at all, so you can use them for shipping colonists to
uninhabited planets. Routes are assigned transport ships in the following order
of priority: colonists, capital, materials and empty transports.
Combat
Ships in hyperspace cannot be attacked but whenever hostile warships are
present at the same planet a battle will take place. This proceeds as follows:
A ship is picked at random. It selects a hostile target at random and fires.
The target may or may not be destroyed, depending on weapon and shield
strengths and on luck. If the attacking ship has more attacks, it will fire
again at randomly selected targets until it has used them all. Then another
ship is picked at random to fire its shots. This continues until all ships have
fired. If neither side has been wiped out another round of combat takes place,
and so on until only one side is left (or until any remaining ships are unable
to destroy each other).
The success of an attack is calculated as follows: The power of the attack is
equal to the Weapons number multiplied by the Weapons tech level. The power of
the defense is equal to the Shields number multiplied by the Shields tech level
and divided by the diameter of the target ship. (A ship's diameter depends on
the cube root of its total mass). This is because a large ship's shield will
have a larger area to protect and so be diluted and, other things equal,
weaker. A ship with numbers 8 1 8 8 0 will have only 4 times the effective
shield strength of one with numbers 1 1 1 1 0, even though it has 8 times the
Shields number. (It might arguably be more realistic to dilute shields as the
2/3 power of the ship mass, but this would make large ships too vulnerable.)
Note that any cargo carried adds to the total mass for purposes of shield
strength calculation, as the shield generator must protect the cargo as well as
the ship. Thus, the "total mass" of the ship for purposes of calculating shield
strength is the same as the "total mass" for purposes of calculating speed.
(This means that a freighter loaded with a given amount of cargo will have its
shield strength diluted less if it has higher cargo technology.)
The numbers are calculated so that if a ship with numbers 10 1 10 10 0 fires at
an identical ship, it will have a 50% chance of destroying the target. If the
effective attack is four times as strong, the attack will always succeed. If
the effective defense is four times as strong, the attack will always fail. The
exact formula is:
p[kill] = log[4] ((Weapons * Weapons Tech) /
(Shields * Shields Tech / mass^(1/3) * 30^(1/3))) + 1
_____________________________________________________________
2
Conquering Planets
If an armed ship is left at one of an enemy race's planets after all fighting
has been done, it will bomb the planet and wipe out the population. The planet
is then uninhabited and colonists may be landed on it. This is how you conquer
planets occupied by another race.
War and Peace
At the start of the game you are assumed to be at war with all the other races.
You may declare peace on another race at any time. This means that your ships
will not fire on ships belonging to that race, nor bomb their planets. However
that race will still consider itself at war with you and until they have also
declared peace, their ships will still attack you. Of course, your warships
will always shoot back if fired on. (Actually, the battle will be fought just
as if both sides were at war with each other; being at peace puts your warships
at no disadvantage in combat.) Having declared peace, you may declare war again
at any stage and vice versa.
In your turn report, other races will be listed followed by their diplomatic
status e.g. "Zzyaxians Peace" means that you are at peace with the Zzyaxians.
However you don't know whether they are at war with you unless you encounter
some of their warships! (Of course you could always ask the Zzyaxians player
and take his word for it...)
Victory and Defeat
Winning a Galaxy game is simple in concept: you must have completely
exterminated all other races. When a race has no planets or ships left, it is
declared extinct and deleted from the database.
Note that alliance victories are NOT allowed; there can be only ONE winner.
However, a player who fought sufficiently well against the eventual winner in
the last stages of the game before being defeated may, at the GM's discretion,
be declared a runner-up. When a game is over, the name of the winner, together
with any runners-up, will be posted to rec.games.pbm.
Order Format
To enter orders for Galaxy, you should send a mail message containing the
following:
#GALAXY game-number race-name
...orders...
#END
or if the race's password is set:
#GALAXY gamename race-name passwd
...orders...
#END
The #GALAXY line should be in the body of the message, not in the subject line.
It is very important to type this line correctly, as otherwise all of your
orders will be discarded. Everything before the #GALAXY line or after the #END
line in the message is ignored by the program.
Each type of order is designated by giving a letter or keyword as the first
non-blank character on the line. The program only checks the first letter, so
you can either give a whole word or just the letter. Parameters are given after
this, separated by spaces or tabs. Blank lines are permitted, as are comments;
anything after a semicolon on a line is treated as a comment and ignored.
(Messages (see below) are an exception; semicolons in message text are treated
as part of the text rather than comments.)
The parser is not case sensitive, so all commands, names etc. may be given in
upper case, lower case or a mixture of the two. However, when supplying names
containing spaces, the name must be surrounded by double quotes, or else
underscore characters must be used in place of spaces in the name. (These
things apply to the #GALAXY and #END lines as well as to order lines.)
Replacement sets of orders may be sent anytime before the deadline. The last
set of orders received at the time of running the turn is used.
Any player not sending in orders for three turns in a row is removed from the
game, e.g. if your last set of orders was for turn 20, you will receive reports
for turns 20, 21, 22 and 23; your turn 23 report will contain a request to send
orders; and you will not receive a turn 24 report. Note that an empty order set
still counts as sending in orders.
Examples of correct order lines:
Send 100 "Zzyax Prime"
send 100 zzyax_prime
s 100 "zzyax prime" ; Attack the Zzyaxian homeworld
Examples of incorrect order lines:
Send 100 Zzyax Prime
s 100 "zzyax prime" Attack the Zzyaxian homeworld
Orders
The following orders are available:
@ to-whom
This command sends a message to one or more other players. All lines between
this line and the next one with an @ as its first non-blank character are
treated as message text. The to-whom parameter should be a list of race names
separated by spaces. The message will be sent to all of these, e.g.
@ Zzyaxians "Mutant Camels"
...
...
@
If no list of players is provided (or if a player name is provided with no
space between it and the @ sign - take care to avoid this), the message will be
sent to all players. The program does not automatically sign your name, so you
should sign it yourself unless you wish the message to be anonymous.
A race-name
Declare peace on another race.
B group-no number-of-ships
Break off a number of ships from a group.
C new-name
Change the name of your race.
D type-name drive attacks weapons shields cargo
Design a new ship type with the given numbers.
E type-name
Erase a ship type (only works if you have no ships of that type in
existence or being built).
F race-name
This gives the address of the indicated player. If there is no address, this
means that that position is either not being played, or being played by the GM,
or being played by someone who cannot be contacted by email.
G group-no [number-of-ships]
Upgrade a group of ships. The group must be at one of your planets, and must
remain there during the turn long enough for the upgrade to be performed; this
means that it cannot be given a Send or Intercept command that turn, though it
may be automatically sent on a route, as this happens later in the turn. Ships
in the group will be upgraded to the latest technology levels as of the start
of the current turn (if they are already at the latest tech levels, nothing
will happen). The cost of upgrading a ship is equal to a fraction of the cost
of building a new one; for example, if the ship is currently at 2/3 of the
latest tech levels, the cost of upgrading will be 1/3 of the cost of building a
new ship. (Effectively it will be even cheaper than this, because upgrading
uses no raw materials.) The exact formula for the cost is:
10 * ((1 - ship-drive-tech/current-drive-tech) * ship-drive-mass +
(1 - ship-weapons-tech/current-weapons-tech) * ship-weapons-mass +
(1 - ship-shields-tech/current-shields-tech) * ship-shields-mass +
(1 - ship-cargo-tech/current-cargo-tech) * ship-cargo-mass)
If the number-of-ships parameter is given (even as 0 to explicitly specify the
entire group), exactly that many ships will be upgraded, even if only enough
production points are available to do a partial upgrade. If the parameter is
omitted, only as many ships will be upgraded as can be fully upgraded. So if
you have an expensive ship which will cost more than a full turn's production
to upgrade, you must partially upgrade it the first turn, and issue another
order next turn to upgrade it again. (This is different from building expensive
ships, where a single production order will cause a planet to keep working
until told to stop.) Production points spent on upgrading ships during a turn
are deducted from that planet's production that turn.
I group-no planet-name [number-of-ships]
Order your group to intercept alien ships at another planet. With this command,
you specify one of your groups, and a target planet. Typically there will be an
alien ship or fleet at the planet, which you want your group to attack and
destroy. However if you use an ordinary "Send" order, the alien fleet may leave
the target planet on the same turn, so your group would arrive to find it gone.
With the Intercept order, if alien ships leave the target planet that turn,
your group will be sent towards whatever planet has the largest total mass of
alien ships sent to it from the target planet, except that only planets which
your group can reach in no more than two turns will be considered. Otherwise
your group will be sent to the target planet itself.
L group-no cargo-type [number-of-ships]
Load cargo onto a group of ships. The following cargo types are available:
CAP Capital
MAT Materials
COL Colonists
M x y size
Change the area covered by the map on your turn report. X and Y are the
coordinates of the top left corner of the map and size is the size you want
covered in light years, e.g. M 10 20 50 will give you a map starting at (10,20)
and 50 light years on a side. Useful for zooming in on a particular area for
greater detail or zooming out again to get a wide picture. The position and
size of the area covered by the map is included in your turn report.
N planet-name new-name
Change the name of a planet that you own.
O option
Sets game options. The following options are currently available:
O UNDERSCORES
On your turn report, names with spaces in them will be output using underscores
instead of spaces. This may make the turn report look less attractive, but also
makes it easier to use a spreadsheet or other tool to analyze the report. Note
that this has no effect on the requirement to use underscores or quotes when
entering orders.
O TWOCOL
Report data will be printed in multiple columns where possible. This is not as
good for viewing the report on a computer, but makes it look better and saves
paper if the report is to be printed out.
O NAMECASE
Names that you input in your orders have the first letter of each word
converted to upper case. This means that you can type names in all lower case
and save the bother of having to capitalize the first letter. If you set this
option on one turn, it will affect all names you input that turn, but not ones
you have input on previous turns.
O AUTOUNLOAD
Automatically unloads all cargo arriving at one of your planets. This does not
work at a planet occupied by another race or an unoccupied planet.
O SORTGROUPS
Sorts the groups with respect to planet order. All your groups at your planets
will be displayed first in planet order, then all your groups at planets
belonging to other races will be displayed in orders and finally groups at
unoccupied planets will be displayed. The group number will be changed so
that all groups are still numbered logically.
O PRODTABLE
Makes the 'Ships In Production' table be displayed.
You can turn off options using
O NO UNDERSCORES
O NO NAMECASE
etc.
You cannot set more than one option using one O command, separate commands must
be used.
The default options which you will start with are:
NO UNDERSCORES
NO TWOCOL
NAMECASE
NO AUTOUNLOAD
NO SORTGROUPS
NO PRODTABLE
P planet-name produce-what
Set production for a planet. The following things can be produced:
CAP Capital
MAT Materials
DRIVE Drive research
WEAPONS Weapons research
SHIELDS Shield research
CARGO Cargo bay research
type-name Ships of the named type
Q your-race-name
Quit the game. You must provide your race name as the parameter as a safeguard
to prevent Quit orders being issued accidentally.
R from-planet cargo-type [to-planet]
Set a route. The following cargo types are available:
CAP Capital
MAT Materials
COL Colonists
EMP Empty transports
Specifying no to-planet indicates that an existing route should be
cancelled.
S group-no planet [number-of-ships]
Send ships to a planet.
T type-name new-name
Change the name of a ship type.
U group-no [number-of-ships]
Unload a group's cargo onto the planet it's currently at. Colonists cannot be
unloaded onto an alien planet (this applies to unloading at the end of routes,
as well). Capital and materials unloaded onto an uninhabited planet will sit
there until someone colonizes the planet.
W race-name
Declare war on another race.
X group-no [number-of-ships]
Scraps old spacecraft. The ships are converted into raw materials which are
deposited on the planet where the group is located (must be at a planet, not in
hyperspace). Any cargo the ships were carrying is unloaded first. The command
will not work if the ships are carrying colonists and over an alien planet.
Y passwd
Sets the race's password to passwd. If passwd is not specified the password
for the race is cancelled.
Z new-address
Change the address to which your reports are sent.
Things to note:
All orders involving groups can take an optional last parameter giving the
number of ships to be used. If this parameter is given, the indicated number of
ships will be broken off into a separate group first, and the order applied
only to that separate group.
Whenever a group number is required as a parameter, the keyword MAX may be used
instead. This will apply the order to the group with the highest group number.
This will be the most recently created group.
Keywords used as parameters to orders must be given precisely; unlike order
keywords they cannot be abbreviated (nor expanded). The following keywords are
used: CAP, MAT, COL, EMP, DRIVE, WEAPONS, SHIELDS, CARGO, UNDERSCORES,
NAMECASE, TWOCOL, MAX.
Fleet Orders
The following fleet orders are available:
B groupno FLEET
Remove Group groupno from it's current fleet
D FLEET fleetname
Create a fleet called fleetname
E fleetname
Disband Fleet fleetname.
I fleetname planetname
Intercept ships at planetname with Fleet fleetname
J groupno fleetname [number-of-ships]
Add Group groupno to Fleet fleetname. If it is currently with another fleet
it will be moved to the new fleet.
J fleetname1 fleetname2
Merge fleetname1 into fleetname2 leaving fleetname1 empty.
O [NO] FLEETTABLES
Select which format you want the fleets to be displayed in:
The default is
FLEETTABLES
S fleetname planetname
Send Fleet fleetname to planetname
T fleetname new-fleetname
Change the name of the fleet to new-fleetname
The following keywords are used: FLEET, FLEETTABLES
Sequence of Events
The following sequence of events takes place when a turn is being run:
All orders except for renaming and upgrading orders (C, G, N and T) are
executed.
C, G, N and T orders are executed.
Hostile ships fight each other.
Ships bomb enemy planets.
Cargo is loaded onto ships at the beginning of routes, and the ships are sent
into hyperspace.
Ships are sent on intercept orders.
Ships move through hyperspace.
Hostile ships fight each other again (new battles might be possible after ships
emerge from hyperspace).
Ships bomb enemy planets again.
Production takes place.
Cargo is unloaded at the end of routes.
Identical groups are merged.
A few things to note:
When orders conflict, such as two players trying to unload colonists onto an
uninhabited planet simultaneously at the start of the turn, whoever is first
in the list of players will have his order executed first and colonize the
planet. In practice this does not happen often enough to be relevant.
A ship which takes several turns to build will be built with the tech levels
available at the start of the final turn.
Because names are changed after other orders, entities which are renamed in a
turn must still be referred to by their old names for the rest of that turn.
Your Turn Report
Your turn report will contain some or all of the following sections:
Player Addresses
Your first turn report will show the addresses of all players in the game.
Messages
Messages from other players.
Mistakes
Any mistakes in your orders.
Status of Players
This is the current status of all players in the game; the following
information is provided:
Name
Drive Technology
Weapons Technology
Shields Technology
Cargo Technology
Total Population
Total Industry
Number of Planets Owned
Diplomatic Relations
Your Ship Types
This is a list of your ship types; the following information is provided:
Name
Drive
Attacks
Weapons
Shields
Cargo
Alien Ship Types
This is a description of each type of alien ship that you have come into
contact with this turn; the information provided is the same as for your ship
types.
Battles
This is a description of all the battles that you have fought or witnessed this
turn. For each battle, a list of groups belonging to each player is given. The
following information is provided:
Number of Ships
Ship Type
Drive Technology
Weapons Technology
Shields Technology
Cargo Technology
Cargo Type (a "-" means that the group is carrying no cargo)
Cargo Quantity Per Ship
Ships Left (survivors after the battle)
Bombings
This is a list of all the planets that you have observed being bombed this
turn. The following information is given:
Who bombed the planet
Owner
Planet Name
Population
Industry
Producing (capital, raw materials, research or ships)
Capital Stockpiled
Material Stockpiled
Colonists Stockpiled
(Obviously, most of this data is from just *before* the planet was bombed.)
Map
This is a map of all or part of the galaxy. Symbols on the map have the
following meanings:
* Your Planet
o Uninhabited Planet
+ Alien Planet
. Your Ships
- Alien Ships
Incoming Groups
This is a list of all the groups of alien ships currently heading for planets
owned by you. The following information is provided:
Origin (which planet the group came from)
Destination (which planet the group is heading towards)
Distance Remaining
Speed
Total Mass
Your Planets
This is a list of all the planets that you own. The following information is
provided:
Name
X Coordinate
Y Coordinate
Size
Population
Industry
Natural Resources
Producing (capital, raw materials, research or ships)
Capital Stockpiled
Material Stockpiled
Colonists Stockpiled
Ships In Production
This provides you will a list of ships in production with the total cost
to produce such a ship (including cost to produce any materials required)
and the production that has gone into producing the next one of those
ships. It will be displayed as follows:
Planet
Ship Type
Cost to Produce
Production Already Used
This table is displayed when the PRODTABLE option is set.
Your Routes
This is a list of the routes from those of your planets which have routes
defined. For each planet, the destination world is listed for the following
commodities:
Capital
Raw Materials
Colonists
Empty Transports
A "-" for a particular commodity means that no route is defined from that
planet for that commodity.
If you have to AUTOUNLOAD option is set there will be an additional route
saying:
AUTO UNLOAD IS CURRENTLY SET
Alien Planets
This is a list of all those planets owned by another player, at which you have
at least one ship and which you can therefore observe. The same information is
provided as for your planets.
Unidentified Planets
This is a list of those planets owned by another player, which appear on your
map but which you cannot observe. Only the name of the planet and the X and Y
coordinates are available. (Occasionally, due to roundoff errors, a planet will
appear at the edge of the map but not be listed, or vice versa.)
Uninhabited Planets
This is a list of uninhabited planets which appear on your map, or which you
can observe. For all planets on the list, the name and X and Y coordinates are
provided. For those planets which you can observe, the Size and Natural
Resources attributes are also listed.
Your Groups
This is a list of your groups of spaceships. If the FLEETTABLE option is
set this will be a list of your groups which are not part of a fleet.
The following information is provided:
Group Number
Number of Ships
Ship Type
Drive Technology
Weapons Technology
Shields Technology
Cargo Technology
Cargo Type (a "-" means that the group is carrying no cargo)
Cargo Quantity Per Ship
Destination
Fleet (Only if NO FLEETTABLE is set. A "-" means that the group is
not part of a fleet)
Distance (if this is left blank, the group is at the Destination).
Your Fleets
If you have set the FLEETTABLES option you will get a table for each
fleet. The header for each fleet will be:
'Fleet fleetname (Speed fleetspeed)'
where fleetname and fleetspeed is the fleet name and fleet speed respectively.
The following information is provided:
Group Number
Number of Ships
Ship Type
Drive Technology
Weapons Technology
Shields Technology
Cargo Technology
Cargo Type (a "-" means that the group is carrying no cargo)
Cargo Quantity Per Ship
Destination
Distance (if this is left blank, the group is at the Destination).
Fleet Speeds
This table will be displayed if you have NO FLEETTABLES set.
Provided is the following information:
Fleet
Speed
Alien Groups
This is a list of groups of ships belonging to other players, which you can
observe. The information provided is the same as for your groups except without
the group numbers.
Hints and Tips
In the early stages of the game, there will be plenty of planets to spare so
there will be little need to fight for territory; however, you should ensure
that your homeworld is defended against sneak attacks by xenophobic aliens. You
will need to devote your efforts to exploration, building up colonies,
researching technology, and contacting other races with a view to forming
alliances.
The map in your turn report only indicates which planets are occupied by alien
races, and the total mass of any groups of alien ships in hyperspace heading
for one of your planets. To learn of enemy fleets which may pose a threat to
your safety, you will need to send ships to enemy planets to spy on them.
If you have an "Incoming Groups" section on your turn report, this probably
means that one or more of your planets is under attack, and your first priority
should be to ensure that you have an adequate defense. For each incoming group,
divide the Distance by Speed to find out how many turns the group will take to
reach its target world. Look at the Total Mass figure - the bigger this is, the
greater the potential threat. Of course you don't know whether a very large
group is a huge battleship or a fleet of small fighters or anything in between.
You could also try some last-minute diplomacy: the player owning the group
cannot turn it back, but he could declare peace on you, so that the group would
not attack you when it did arrive.
In the later stages of the game, it is quite likely that one player will
develop a dominant position and appear to be heading for victory. At this
point, it is vitally important for all the other players to immediately leave
aside whatever differences they may have among themselves and launch an attack
on this player, because if he is given a chance to pick the others off one by
one at his leisure, he is very likely to win.