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 gamename race-name ...orders... #END or if the race's password is set: #GALAXY gamename race-name passwd ...orders... #END [Previous documentation referred to a "game number" which is the same as game name"...] 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. For Robert Novak's servers, you should use a subject of "galaxy orders for gamename turn-number". For example, if you are working from your turn 15 Alzarius turnsheet, you should use a subject of "galaxy orders for alzarius 16" or "galaxy orders for alzarius" (the turn number is optional). 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 (i.e. no orders between #galaxy and #end) 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.