1: Overview

The aim of taking part in this game is to build an empire others will cower before, a monument to your (virtual) greatness..

To do that you need bases that will give you the income, research and fleet production you need to attain that aim. None of your aims can be reached without a balance of these elements:

- if you do not have the income you cannot afford improvements and ships
- If you do not have the building capacity making anything takes forever
- If you don't build fleet and defenses you are vulnerable to other players' attacks.
- If you don't have sufficient technological development the options of what you can build are limited and anything you do build will be almost useless (imagine the difference between a chariot and a heavy battle tank).

So the finesse of the game is choosing correctly which options to spend your time and assets on. No solution to this conundrum is perfect, many approaches may work and many may not.

The primary mode of advancement is the owning of 'Bases' (think of a colonised planet), and later on 'Starbases' (hovering in space over a planet) can be built as well. These are your basic units of activity in terms of building, production and research. Without bases you cannot have those activities, so players should strive to construct as many as possible.

They (Bases and Starbases) are founded by using up a 'Colony Ship' that has been moved to a planet, moon or asteroid belt for this purpose. Collectively these placets, etc. are referred to as 'Astros' in the game. An astro can have 1 Base sited on it; as well as the option of placing as many Starbases over the astro. Starbases do not require that there be a Base on the astro (but they do tend to be safer placed over Bases)

Once you have your base set up you begin constructing structures on them to increase your output capacity. Generally you would start with some factory-type buildings to increase the output speed. Later economic buildings might follow, increasing your ability to fund further expansion and later still research buildings would allow for technological advances that unlock new, more advanced buildings and combat units.

To add to the game-play there are many other players taking part in the game. They all have plans to do better than you and the others involved in the game; in many ways it is a race to do best. At a certain level of play they may begin to attempt to attack their neighbours so as to acquire more income to pursue their advancement and to delay that of their opponents.

Hence having defenses and fleets to deter attack is highly important. A player with poor defenses is an invitation to attack. A predatory player will always attack the weakest victim possible. Why attack Player-A who has good defenses when you can make as much profit from Player-B for 10% of the casualties?

There are many kinds of defense structures you can choose from, depending on cost and on technology requirements. Building ships to help defend your bases, and later-on to attack other players' bases, is at the core of the game. Acquiring a fleet depends on having the income to pay for it, the industrial capacity to build it quickly, the technology to make it effective and the defenses to protect it once it is built. This is the core of this game; building and protecting, then moving to 'seize' the assets of other players in the race to become great.

Terms worth knowing regarding your bases before you start are:

- Economy (e): Credit output per hour. You need money to buy things.
- Construction (c): Capacity to build buildings per hour (in credits/hour).
- Production (p): Capacity to produce ships, stated in Credits per hour.
- Research (r): Capacity for technological research, in credits per hour.

Everything has a price. The length of time it takes a base to 'make' that item is the price of it divided by the base's capacity (cap) per hour to process that item. So if it costs $5000 and the relevant base cap is 500 per hour then it will take 10 hours to finish. Of note the (c), (p) and (r) commanders reduce the cost of their speciality by 1% per level, thus making it faster too.

A special warning: AE players (you know who you are; I do too) will find that there are a lot of familiar features here. True; but this is not AE and things do not necessarily work out the way you expect, including a lot of aspects of combat resolution. Be careful; and read the explanations to avoid embarrassment

Please note; in the game huge amounts of links exist to allow you to pass from one game 'page' to another. For the most part they are coloured in a turquoise-like colour called 'teal ' to make the links easy to see. The relevant names for important links are coloured the same way in this guide but are (for the moment) not linked.

Last thing: This is a work-in-progress that is very new. Please forgive any whoopies I've made whist constructing it. Also if there are inaccuracies or if you find any grammatical or spelling mistakes please pm 'Descartes' on any of the servers and i will fix it.

Any sorry for the Brit spelling; they made us do it for 800 years.