# Galaxy Game

Player's guide.

## The turn cycle {#turn-cycle}

The whole game is divided into turns, which in turn alternate between two processes: "turn production" and "waiting for the next turn to be produced". Turn production is considered instantaneous — it takes no in-game time. It is the moment when everything actually happens: planets produce, the fleets of warring races fight [battles](#combat), and ships [move](#movement) from planet to planet. The full order of these steps is described in [Turn sequence](#turn-sequence).

There is also the notion of "game state", which reflects the current situation (who owns what, who is doing what, which ships are flying where, and so on). The game state corresponds to the report a player receives right after each turn is produced.

Turn production happens regularly at a pre-arranged time known to all participants. It ends with reports being sent to everyone, describing the state of their races for that turn. After that the waiting period for the next turn begins — its purpose is to give players time to think over their orders for the upcoming turn and thereby change the game state.

A command only declares an action (for example, the production type on a planet); it does not perform that action immediately. You can order a ship to be built, but it is built only during the next turn production. You can order ships to depart somewhere, but they fly only during turn production.

When an order (a sequence of commands) reaches the server, the player is notified that the commands have been accepted. Each command in the order is checked for validity and acknowledged separately. A player may send as many orders as they like, but each new order replaces the previous one. This lets you correct a faulty order, but you must repeat the commands that were already correct. Fortunately, the client program helps the player keep track of this and ensures the orders stay consistent.

During the waiting period you can also exchange diplomatic mail between races. All turns are numbered, which makes planning your actions easier.

The game begins with the production of turn number zero, during which the galaxy itself is created (planets are placed, participants receive their developed planets, and so on). Reports describing each race's initial state are then sent out. Having received such a report, each participant should study it carefully and, based on it, design (or adjust) a development plan for their race. Note that from the moment the reports for turn N are sent until the reports for turn N+1 are sent, turn N is in progress (the wait for turn N+1 to be produced).

For a fuller understanding, here is an example of how the server works:

- reports for turn N are sent to everyone (turn N has begun);

- orders are accepted, order acknowledgements are sent according to the commands received, diplomatic mail and news are distributed, and so on (turn N continues — the "wait for the next turn" is under way);

- according to the schedule set when the game was assembled, the server produces the new turn N+1 (turn production happens);

- reports for turn N+1 are sent to everyone (turn N+1 has begun).

## The galaxy {#galaxy}

The space of the galaxy where the action unfolds is the surface of a torus — visually just a square whose opposite sides are joined. The galaxy contains a number of star systems. Although any star system could contain several planets and other bodies, that level of detail is irrelevant to the game: resource extraction uses the combined resources of the whole star system, and travel is organised as movement between centres of mass in the galaxy.

For simplicity, then, the game uses the term "planet" where it might really mean "star system".

## Units of measurement {#units}

The game's units correspond to real ones. Distances between planets are measured in light-years. Planet sizes are measured in tens of kilometres of diameter. Each unit of population stands for 10 million people, and each unit of goods, material, and so on stands for 10 million tons. Each turn of the game corresponds to one year in the life of the galaxy. In most cases, instead of quoting real units it is more convenient to use the phrase "unit of measurement" — for example, "5 units of mass" or "10 units of population".

## Numeric precision {#precision}

Numbers used in commands and reports are shown to three decimal places. The server stores numbers and performs calculations at higher precision, rounding the results only for presentation to players in reports. For example, if a report shows 2.000, the real value may range anywhere from 1.9995 to 2.0004.

Ship technology levels are the exception — reports show them without such rounding (see [Technologies](#tech)).

## Names {#names}

Ship classes, planets, fleets, and sciences can have arbitrary names chosen by the player. Names may be at most 30 characters long. Characters may be letters of the alphabet, digits, and the special characters `!@#$%^*-_=+~()[]{}`. Special characters may not appear at the start or end of a name, nor be repeated more than twice in a row.

When choosing a name, the player is advised to use common sense first and foremost and not to abuse the ability to create unreadable names. While this is not outright forbidden, such a way of communicating with the outside world will not look its best in the eyes of other participants, since many of the names a player picks are seen by the whole galaxy. Do not use wording in names that grossly insults any player or incites ethnic or religious hatred (in the real world, of course, not the game one). The game administration reserves the right to take measures, up to removing a player from the server, for abuse of names.

## Planets {#planets}

Each race begins the game owning one or three planets (depending on the game type); all the other planets are uninhabited. During the game you may both settle uninhabited planets and conquer planets settled by other races.

At the start of the game all planets have unique names. After colonising a planet you may rename it. You may also wish to rename your first planets right at the start to give them a more intriguing look.

Every planet has two unchangeable characteristics: size and natural resources. In a standard game each participant starts owning one planet of size 1000 (called a "Home World", HW) and two planets of size 500 each (called "Daughter Worlds", DW). Players' HWs are at least 30 light-years apart from one another; DWs lie 5 to 15 light-years from their HW.

All the other planets have no fixed characteristics and occur in the galaxy in the following proportions:

| planet type | size | resources | approximate share of all planets |
|---|---|---|---|
| Super-large planets | 1500-2500 | 0-3 | 6% |
| Merely large planets | 1000-2000 | 1-10 | 18% |
| Ordinary planets | 0-1000 | 0.1-10 | 50% |
| Small but fabulously rich | 0-500 | 5-25 | 18% |
| Asteroids | 0 | 0 | 8% |

Super-large planets may only occur at least 20 light-years from an HW and from one another; merely large ones, at least 10 light-years. As you can see, the characteristic ranges of super-large and merely large planets overlap. This is not a mistake but reality. On average there are 10 planets per participant in the galaxy (including the three starting ones).

A planet's other characteristics may change over the course of the game, both as a result of players' actions and through the planet's natural development. These characteristics include:

- Population
- Colonists — surplus population.
- Material
- Industry

## Population {#population}

Every planet has a "Size" attribute. It reflects not only the planet's physical size but also the presence of mountains, deserts, and oceans, the climate, and so on. A planet's population cannot exceed its size, but may be lower. Your first planet has size and population both equal to 1000. A planet's population grows by 8% each turn. The part of the population that exceeds the planet's size turns into [colonists](#colonists). Remember that a planet's population limits the growth of its [industry](#industry): the number of industry units cannot exceed the number of population units.

## Colonists {#colonists}

Every 8 units of population exceeding the planet's size automatically turn into one unit of colonists. These inhabitants are kept in containers at low temperature. If colonists are carried to other planets that have room to settle, they are automatically thawed and added to the planet's population. This is how uninhabited planets can be settled. Each unit of colonists yields 8 units of population again. Modern technology lets colonists be frozen and thawed without any production or material cost.

## Industry {#industry}

A planet's industry level (or "amount of industry") corresponds to things like tools, computers, transport, and so on. At the start of the game all your planets have the maximum industry level, equal to their population (1000 for the HW and 500 for the DWs).

## Production on a planet {#production}

Available production units may be spent on extracting material, building ships, producing industry, or researching technologies. A single planet may produce only one kind of product per turn (for example, only one type of ship).

## Production units {#production-capacity}

Each inhabited planet has a certain production capacity, expressed in production units. It cannot exceed the planet's population, but may be lower. Production capacity determines the planet's output and is made up of the productive power of its population and its industry level.

$$\text{Production capacity} = \text{industry} \times 0.75 + \text{population} \times 0.25$$

At the start of the game you have one planet with a production capacity of 1000 and two with a capacity of 500 each. This means that every turn you have 1000, 500, and another 500 production units that you can put to work however you like. If your planet has 500 units of industry and a population of 1000, it can produce only about 625 units of the chosen product per turn. In other words, your planet has a production capacity of 625 production units.

## Technologies {#tech}

You start at technology level 1 in the following fields: Drive, Weapons, Shields, and Cargo. These levels can be raised by switching a planet's production to research. To raise a technology level by one, you must spend 5000 production units. Fractional research spending is certainly useful: if you spend 500 units on Weapons research, your level in that field rises by one tenth, and this takes immediate effect when building ships — there is no need to wait for the level to rise by a whole unit. When a ship is built, it receives the technology levels you had at the moment turn production began (see [Turn sequence](#turn-sequence)). The technology levels of ships already built can later be raised with the upgrade command.

To avoid inaccuracies in calculations, ship technology levels are rounded to three decimal places at the moment of building or upgrading. Reports therefore always show ships' actual, not rounded, technology levels.

By default, all players' starting planets are set to research the "Drive" technology.

## Sciences {#sciences}

You can combine technologies into sciences. Each science consists of known technologies taken in proportions you define. When you switch a planet's production to research in a science you have defined, production units are spent on the technologies that make up that science, in the proportion you set. The shares of technologies in a science are given as fractions of one, and they sum to one (100%).

For example, a science named "First Step" is defined by the shares 0.222 for Drive, 0.111 for Weapons, 0.667 for Shields, and 0 for Cargo (summing to one; this corresponds to the ratio 10 : 5 : 30 : 0). When researching such a science, 22.2% of the planet's available production units go to Drive research, 11.1% to Weapons, and 66.7% to Shields. In this way, in a single turn on a single planet you can raise several technology levels at once.

## Material {#material}

Producing anything other than technologies requires material as well as production. Material corresponds to things like sheet steel, copper wire, timber, and oil needed for production. Every planet may hold a stock of produced or delivered material that can be used when building ships. If no such stock exists, some of the production units can be directed to producing material.

As noted, every planet has an unchangeable characteristic — Natural Resources — that shows how rich the planet is in metals, coal, oil, and so on. Planets with a high Resources rating need less production spent on making material. The rating depends on the [planet type](#planets): for inhabited planets it is strictly above zero, reaching 25 on rare richly endowed planets, and is zero only on asteroids. Your first planets have a resources rating of 10, which means each production unit can produce 10 units of material. A planet with a resources rating of 0.1 can produce only 0.1 units of material per production unit. Produced material is stockpiled and can be transported to other planets by cargo ships.

When you colonise planets with a low natural-resources rating, you should produce material on high-rating planets and then carry it to the others, so that you do not spend a lot of production units extracting material. The amount of material on a planet can also be increased by scrapping ships located there. In that case each unit of mass of the scrapped ships turns into one unit of material.

For example, suppose you have set production to build spaceships. Building requires an amount of material equal to the ship's mass. If you start with no material stock, it is produced automatically. This process is entirely invisible to you; the only noticeable effect is that in places the production output is lower than you expected.

In other words, what remains for building a ship is as much production as the planet can give, minus the amount spent on extracting the material needed for building. For this reason, keep in mind that when building ships not all of a planet's production units go directly into building — some have to extract the material that is missing for it. In practice this condition is one of the most important when designing ships, because it directly determines how long a given class of ship takes to build on a chosen planet.

## Producing industry {#industry-production}

As planets develop, the amount of industry can be raised by switching the planet's production to industry. One unit of industry requires 5 production units and one unit of [material](#material); if there is no material stock, the missing amount is extracted automatically from the same production units (as when [building ships](#ship-building)) at the planet's resources "rate" — so on resource-poor planets industry grows more slowly.

A planet's industry level cannot exceed its population. While industry is below the population, the industry produced immediately raises the [production capacity](#production-capacity). Once industry reaches the population, the surplus is not lost but set aside as an industry reserve (shown in the report as "industry reserve", `$`). This reserve can be carried between planets; and as soon as a planet's industry drops below its population again — whether because the population has grown or because the reserve was brought to a young colony — it is automatically turned into industry and raises the level. This is how colonised planets develop quickly.

## Designing ships {#ship-design}

Before issuing commands to build ships on planets, you must design the ship classes you need. There are no ready-made ship classes; each race in the galaxy designs its own according to its strategic goals. To create a ship class, give it a name and define the following characteristics:

| Parameter | Description |
|---|---|
| Drive | hyperdrive power |
| Armament | number of weapon mounts |
| Weapons | weapon power |
| Shields | shield-generator power |
| Cargo | cargo-hold size |

Each characteristic you choose may be either 0 or at least 1. Of course, not all of a ship's characteristics may be zero at once. Armament and Weapons must both be zero or both non-zero. Armament is an integer; the rest may be fractional. For example, a ship may have Shields of 1.5 but not 0.5.

Designing ship classes takes no time or resources; a new class becomes available immediately after the corresponding command. For how a ship's characteristics affect the game, see [Movement](#movement), [Cargo capacity](#cargo), and [Battles](#combat).

Here are a few example ship classes. Although such classes may be found in the galaxy among various races, you are not required to design ships with exactly these characteristics — what matters far more is the tasks your ships will perform.

| Name | D | A | W | S | C |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 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 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Freighter | 8 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 10 |
| Megafreighter | 80 | 2 | 2 | 30 | 100 |

## Building ships {#ship-building}

Ships are built with the technology levels the race had at the start of the turn. In other words, in the next report the just-built ships carry the previous turn's technology levels.

An unarmed ship has a mass equal to Drive + Shields + Cargo, as set when designing it. A ship with one gun has a mass equal to Drive + Weapons + Shields + Cargo. For ships carrying several guns, each gun after the first adds mass equal to half of Weapons.

The masses of some of the ships above:

- Freighter: 20 units of mass.
- Cruiser: 45 units of mass.
- Gunship: 11 units of mass.

You can set a planet to build ships of a class you designed earlier. Building a ship requires an amount of material equal to the ship's mass, plus 10 production units for each unit of the ship's mass.

For example, suppose your HW builds "Drone"-class ships from the list above and there is enough material stock; then you can produce 100 of them (with no material stock, a little over 99 ships are produced). However, if you build a Battleship, you can produce only 10/9 of a ship per turn. After the first turn one ship is fully built and 1/9 is in progress. After the second turn 2 ships are in orbit and 2/9 are unfinished. If you then switch production to another ship type or something else entirely, those 2/9 are scrapped and added to the material stock. The material stock grows by exactly as much material as was used in building those 2/9 of a ship. The production units that were spent on building the ship itself are lost for good, as wasted labour.

As you can see, it is inefficient to switch production often when building large ships. It is also clear that the economical approach is to build ships whose mass is a multiple (or an approximate multiple) of the mass a given planet can produce in one turn.

A planet with industry 1000, resources 10, and no material stock can produce 99.0099 units of mass per turn. It is sensible to build ships of mass 99.00, 11.00, 198.01, or 297.02 on such a planet. And it is very inefficient, though possible, to try to build something of mass 140, say.

Note that material is spent only at the very end of building a ship. So for ships meant to take a long time to build (more than one turn), the required material can be delivered to the planet throughout the build.

Correctly computing the ship you build is one of the most important tasks in the game. You must understand the whole calculation thoroughly. For instance, if ships that by your reckoning should have reached the target planet on a certain turn end up a negligible 0.001 light-years (or less) short and fail to arrive, it means you miscalculated the speed/mass/etc.

## Ship groups {#ship-groups}

In the late game you may have hundreds or even thousands of ships, which would be extremely awkward to manage individually. For this reason ships are combined into groups. All commands for manipulating previously built ships operate on ship groups, even if a group contains only one ship. You can load a group with cargo, send it to another planet, transfer it to another race, and so on.

A group is some number of ships of the same class, in the same place, carrying the same amount of the same cargo type, belonging to the same fleet, and having the same technology levels. Ships lacking a component are marked as having technology level 0 for that component; for example, unarmed ships always have technology level 0 for Weapons.

When you need to issue a command for fewer ships than the group contains (for example, send 8 of 10 ships to another planet), you must first split those ships off into a separate, new group. The client program simplifies this for the player, but remember that in the order such an action consists of two commands: first the ships are split into a new group, then the action is applied to the new group. Equivalent groups are merged automatically before each turn, or on the player's command.

## Transferring ships between races {#ship-transfer}

During the game you can transfer ship groups between races. If the receiving race already has a ship class with the same name but different characteristics, it also receives a new ship class whose name has a random suffix appended.

## Upgrading ships {#ship-upgrade}

As a race's technology levels advance, previously built ships may become obsolete and no longer match the race's current capabilities. Such ships can be upgraded to the required technology levels.

Keep in mind that the ship-upgrade process completes only by the end of the turn, so ships ordered to upgrade will first take part in [battles](#combat) if enemy ships happen to be in the same orbit.

To perform an upgrade, the ship group must be on one of your planets. The ships in that group are upgraded to your current technologies (if they already have your latest levels, nothing happens). You can also cap the technology level the upgrade goes up to, by specifying a target upgrade level.

Of course, upgrading ships has its price. The cost of upgrading a ship equals a partial cost of building a new one. For example, if a ship has technologies equal to 2/3 of the required ones, the upgrade cost is 1/3 of the cost of building a new ship. Upgrading is more economical than building anew, since it requires no material. Each of a ship's blocks can be upgraded separately. The final formula for the cost of upgrading one block of one ship is:

$$\left(1 - \frac{\text{current tech}}{\text{target tech}}\right) \times 10 \times \text{block mass}$$

> For example, upgrading a "Cruiser" with all unit technologies up to technology level 2.0 requires 225 production units for a full upgrade.

It is easy to see that the upgrade cost is higher the larger the gap between the ship's current technology and the target technology.

You can upgrade either the whole group or only the number of ships needed. If a planet does not have enough production units for a full upgrade of even one ship, the specified technologies of one ship are raised as far as possible (and for a combined upgrade, all the ship's technologies are raised in proportion to the masses of the corresponding components). This way you can upgrade ships over several turns, issuing the upgrade command each turn.

Of course, the production units spent on upgrading ships do not take part in the planet's production process during that turn. So if there are not enough production units for a full upgrade of the specified group, the planet's entire stock of production units is used and it will be unable to produce anything that turn.

A planet can upgrade any number of ship groups while free production units remain. Production units left over after upgrades are not spent on a partial upgrade but stay free for further production.

When upgrading several groups on a planet, the groups with the highest cost are upgraded first, provided the planet has enough production units to upgrade each one. If there are not enough production units for a particular group (for example, an enemy bombardment occurred), it keeps its original technology levels.

## Scrapping ships {#ship-scrap}

Ships in orbit of a planet can be broken down into their constituent materials. The material stock of the planet where the ships were located is increased by the mass of those ships. If the ships carried any cargo, it is first unloaded onto the planet. Colonists are a special case: over your own planet they are unloaded and add to the population; over an uninhabited planet they are unloaded and settle it (the planet becomes yours); but over a foreign planet colonists cannot be unloaded and remain frozen forever in the reaches of the galaxy.

## Fleets {#fleets}

Fleets may be made up of ship groups of different types. The move command applies to a fleet just as it does to a single group. Unlike standalone groups, the groups within a fleet do not travel along the cargo routes set for planets. A fleet's speed equals the speed of its slowest group. Loading and unloading ships in a fleet can only affect the fleet's speed. If you split some number of ships off a group that belongs to a fleet, those split-off ships do not belong to the fleet. A fleet exists as long as it contains at least one group. Groups can be transferred between fleets, and fleets can merge into one, but only if the fleets are on the same planet.

## Movement {#movement}

The physical laws obeyed by ships travelling through hyperspace state that movement is possible only from one large centre of mass to another. This means you can send ships only from one planet to another. You cannot send a ship to some arbitrary point in space. Once ships are in hyperspace, they can no longer change course, turn back, change speed, or be attacked.

Spaceships are fitted with a hyperdrive whose effectiveness equals the Drive power multiplied by the current technology level of the Drive block. Ships with drive power 0 stay forever in the orbit of the planet where they were built. This does not mean such ships should not be built — on the contrary, they can be an excellent means of defending planets from enemy ships.

In one turn, ships travel a number of light-years equal to the drive effectiveness multiplied by 20 and divided by the ship's full mass.

"Full mass" means the mass of the ship itself plus the mass of the cargo it carries. The "mass of carried cargo" differs from plain "cargo mass" in that "cargo mass" is the total number of cargo units, whereas the "mass of carried cargo" is the total number of cargo units divided by the Cargo technology level — that is, a smaller value.

Consequently, transports move faster when they carry no cargo. When the Drive technology level is low, large ships must have Drives to match their mass, or they will be very slow. The fastest ships can move at a speed of:

$$20 \times \text{Drive tech level}$$

The exception to the general speed rules is ships that belong to a fleet you have formed. In that case, regardless of the ships' own capabilities, their speed equals that of the fleet's slowest group.

To travel from one planet to another, it takes as many turns as the sent group of ships needs to cover the distance between those planets.

A race's drive technology also determines its ships' free-flight zone (the maximum flight range of ships from the race's own planets). Any ship may fly to any planet located no farther from the race's planets than:

$$40 \times \text{Drive tech level}$$

If a race has no planets left, its remaining ships cannot leave their location, because there is no way to compute the maximum flight distance.

If a ship transferred to another race is outside that race's reach, it either continues its flight or can be sent to a planet within the owner race's reach.

In reports you can get the direction and speed of foreign ships, but only when they are heading to one of your planets. Otherwise you can only get the coordinates of the centre of mass of foreign groups moving through hyperspace no farther than

$$30 \times \text{your Drive tech level}$$

from the nearest planet you own. Ships beyond the visibility zone do not appear in your reports at all, even if they are flying to one of your planets.

Remember, too, that a race can observe events on a planet it does not own only when its ships are present on that planet. If all ships are sent away from such a planet, the planet's state immediately leaves your view.

## Cargo capacity {#cargo}

A ship's cargo capacity is the size of its cargo hold. The amount of cargo a ship can carry is computed by the formula:

$$\text{Cargo tech} \times \left(\text{Cargo size} + \frac{\text{Cargo size}^2}{20}\right)$$

where "Cargo technology level" means the ship's current Cargo technology level, and Cargo size is set when designing the ship.

A few examples of ship cargo capacities at Cargo technology 1.0:

| Cargo size | Cargo amount |
|---|---|
| 1 | 1.05 |
| 5 | 6.25 |
| 10 | 15.00 |
| 50 | 175.00 |
| 100 | 600.00 |

At Cargo technology 2.0 these figures double, and so on. Note that large transports can carry a great deal of cargo, but when fully loaded they move very slowly (for example, a fully loaded Megafreighter at Drive technology 1 has a speed of only 1.97 light-years per turn).

The low speed of heavily loaded ships can, generally, be compensated by a higher Cargo technology. At technology level 2.0, the mass of any cargo on board is counted as half the normal mass used to compute the ship's speed and shield power (see [Battles](#combat)). At level 3.0, the cargo mass is divided by 3 in the calculations, and so on. For example, a Freighter at Cargo technology 1 can carry 15 units of cargo. At level 2.0 the cargo amount rises to 30 units, yet they slow the ship exactly like 15 units of cargo at Cargo technology 1.0. So at level 2.0 with 30 units loaded, a Freighter moves just as fast (for a given Drive level) as a Freighter loaded with 15 units at Cargo technology 1.0.

In other words, Cargo technology determines how compactly cargo is stowed on board. The "mass of carried cargo" equals the cargo amount divided by the Cargo technology level — so the higher this technology, the less the same cargo weighs in the calculations, the less it slows the ship, and the less it weakens its defence in [battle](#combat).

A ship can carry only one type of cargo at a time. The possible cargo types are colonists, material, and industry. Cargo can be loaded aboard from your own or an unoccupied planet that has it. Industry and material can be unloaded on any planet. Colonists can be landed only on planets you own or on uninhabited planets.

## Cargo routes {#routes}

To move cargo between planets, you can set up cargo routes instead of doing it by hand. A cargo route from planet A to planet B with a given cargo type means the server will try to deliver that cargo from A to B using all available transport ships. So once such a route is set, any unloaded ship on planet A is loaded each turn (provided cargo of the right type is present there) and sent to planet B. Any ship arriving at planet B with cargo of the right type is automatically unloaded (even if it did not come from A).

You can set up to 4 cargo routes for each planet you own: one per cargo type, plus one for empty ships, which is useful for returning transports from resource-consuming planets to the ones that produce. You can set cargo routes only from planets you own, but those routes may lead to any planet, so you can transport colonists to uninhabited planets this way.

If several route types are set from a planet, ships are loaded and dispatched in this order: colonists first, then industry, then material, and finally empty ships. When there is a surplus of a particular cargo type on a planet, ship groups are loaded in descending order of their hold size.

Ships that belong to a fleet are a special case. Such ships are assumed to be assigned to some special mission and are not subject to following the cargo routes set up.

A cargo route can only be set to a planet that lies within the ships' [free-flight zone](#movement).

## Battles {#combat}

When armed ships of warring races meet on a planet, a battle occurs. If one side is the aggressor, the other side joins the battle too, even if it is at peace with the aggressor. This does not mean the attackers have the right of the first shot: all the fighting sides are on completely equal terms, and the one who is luckier shoots first. Ships ordered to depart, as well as ships dispatched along cargo routes, are still at the planet of departure at the start of the turn and take part in the battle there — only the ships that survive it enter hyperspace. A ship already in hyperspace does not take part in battles until it arrives at its destination planet (for the full order, see [Turn sequence](#turn-sequence)).

In each round of a battle, every ship gets a chance to fire at the enemy — provided, of course, that its opponents were not luckier in the same round and did not manage to destroy the ship awaiting its turn to attack.

At the start of a round one ship is chosen at random from the battle's participants. It picks an enemy ship at random as its target and fires at it. The target may or may not be destroyed, depending on weapons, shields, and Fortune. The attacking ship keeps firing at random targets until all its guns have fired and while targets it can hit remain.

Then another ship is chosen at random — one that has not yet fired this round and has a chance to hit an enemy ship. This continues until every ship has fired in the round. If, after that, ships able to hit one another remain, a new round of the battle begins.

A battle ends when none of the warring ships has a target it is able to hit. This may happen, for example, when a small fighter meets a huge but unarmed transport whose shields it cannot pierce.

The formula for the probability of destroying a ship:

$$\frac{\log_4\!\left(\dfrac{\text{Weapons} \cdot \text{Weapons tech}}{\text{Shields} \cdot \text{Shields tech} / \sqrt[3]{\text{mass}} \cdot \sqrt[3]{30}}\right) + 1}{2}$$

> Note: $\log_4(a)$ is the base-4 logarithm of a; $X^Y$ is X to the power Y; the term Weapons refers to the firing ship, while Shields and mass refer to the target ship.

The attack effectiveness equals Weapons multiplied by its technology level. The defence effectiveness equals Shields multiplied by the Shields technology level and divided by the target ship's diameter, which equals the cube root of its mass. This is only natural, since larger ships must protect a larger surface and, all else being equal, are weaker. A ship with D=8 A=1 W=8 S=8 C=0 will have only 4 times the effective defence of a ship with D=1 A=1 W=1 S=1 C=0, even though its Shields are 8 times larger.

The parameters are chosen so that a ship with D=10 A=1 W=10 S=10 C=0, firing at an identical ship, destroys the target with a probability of 50%. Working it out, that ship's defence is clearly about 3.21. To equalise the attack and defence probabilities, the defence is normalised — multiplied by about 3.11 — so that one unit of shields provides one unit of protection. If the attack effectiveness is 4 times higher than the normalised defence, the target is always destroyed. If the normalised defence is 4 times higher, the attack always fails.

Note that any cargo aboard a ship increases its [full mass](#movement) when computing the ship's shield power, since the shield generator must protect the cargo as well as the ship itself. In other words, for a transport loaded with a known amount of cargo, the lower the [Cargo](#cargo) technology level, the weaker the defence. And if such a ship is destroyed in battle, the cargo it carried perishes with it: with each ship lost, the group's cargo decreases in proportion to the number of survivors.

If an armed ship remains at an enemy planet after the battle ends, it begins to bombard the planet, destroying its population and industry in proportion to its weapon power.

## Planet bombardment {#bombing}

Enemy ships in orbit of an inhabited planet bombard it in order to capture it through subsequent colonisation. The mechanism is as follows. The planet's population and colonists are destroyed in an amount equal to the combined bombardment power of all the attacking groups. The same amount of industry is converted into material. The bombardment power of one group is computed as:

$$\left(\frac{\sqrt{\text{Weapons} \cdot \text{Weapons tech}}}{10} + 1\right) \cdot \text{Weapons} \cdot \text{Weapons tech} \cdot \text{Armament} \cdot \text{ships in group}$$

Thus one Battle_Station at Weapons technology 1.0 has a bombardment power of 139.30. This means that in one turn, bombarding a planet, such a ship can destroy 139.30 units of population, 139.30 units of colonists, and convert 139.30 units of industry into material. Two such ships have a power of 278.60.

Bombardment, unlike battles, does not happen in rounds — each attacking ship group gets to attack the planet only once, with the forces it has.

The order of bombardment also does not matter, because the planet is attacked simultaneously by all groups, starting with the highest bombardment power, while the planet still has population.

If population remains after the bombardment, the planet keeps producing and may, by the next turn, build a ship, for example. If colonists also remain, they turn into population, and the accumulated industry makes up for the lost production.

If no population remains after the bombardment, the planet becomes uninhabited and can be colonised anew. This is how you can capture planets belonging to other races. All material and all industry reserves left on the planet after the bombardment are preserved and pass to the new owner who colonises it. The colonists who were on the planet also die, since there is neither active population to thaw them nor industry to sustain them.

## Colonising planets {#colonization}

Any uninhabited planet can be colonised — that is, settled and thereby added to a race's holdings. This happens when colonists land on an uninhabited planet.

If ships of several races loaded with colonists arrive at an uninhabited planet at the same time, and those races have cargo routes set to deliver colonists to that planet (or several players issued a colonist-unload command), the right to settle the planet is decided in this order:

- the largest amount of colonists being unloaded;
- the largest race population;
- a random choice among the contenders.

The colonists of races that did not win the planet are not lost: only the winner unloads, while the other contenders' colonists stay in their ships' holds and can be sent to another planet. Of course, if a race colonising a planet failed to take it into possession, all subsequent commands that relied on your colonists having been unloaded there may be cancelled during turn production. If you are not sure the planet will be colonised by you, it is worth entering into diplomatic correspondence, making treaties, selling the right to colonise for material gain, and so on.

Remember that fleets do not obey cargo routes; therefore colonists aboard fleet ships do not count toward the total number of colonists for priority landing at the ends of routes.

By default, colonised planets are set to produce industry.

## War and peace {#war-peace}

At the start of the game you are assumed to be at war with all the other races. You may make peace with another race at any time. This means your ships will neither fire at that race's ships nor bombard its planets. However, that race may still be at war with you, and until it makes peace with you in turn, its ships may still attack you. While at peace, you may declare war again at any time, and vice versa.

Your report shows your diplomatic status toward each race, but this in no way shows how the other races regard you. You do not know how they feel about you until you meet one of their warships. Only after a foreign race's warship has not fired at your ships during the turn can you consider that race to be at peace with you.

Of course, you can make sure a given race's intentions toward you are purely peaceful through diplomatic correspondence — concluding, say, a non-aggression pact until a certain turn, joining an alliance until the end of the game, and so on. But do not forget that the galaxy has room in equal measure for valour and for treachery.

## Leaving the game {#exit}

A race is considered completely dead if it owns no planets and no ships. If a race reaches such a state, it is removed from the list of participating races before the next turn is computed. So if a race has lost all its planets and ships, friends may well come to its aid by transferring ships into its possession before turn production.

Any race may use the early-exit command. After issuing it, the race is removed from the game in 3 turns. The exit command must be the last one in the order.

There is also a way to force-end the game for a race. If a race has not sent orders to the server for 10 consecutive turns (diplomatic mail does not count), that race is removed from the game.

Any race may also be removed from the game at any time by a decision of the administration, for gross violations.

On removal from the game, all ship groups belonging to the race are deleted, and all its planets become uninhabited and lose all their industry, while materials remain. Races that have left the game cannot be restored to the participant lists.

5 turns before a forced removal, the race begins to receive a warning with every new report.

3 turns before removal, every following report tells all participants about the coming departure of that race from the game. Any command reaching the server from a still-living race switches off the race's exit mechanism (this does not apply to diplomatic mail).

## Victory and defeat {#victory}

Each of your reports, after the turn is computed, shows in the race-status list the number of votes received by each race during the turn. The total number of votes is also given in the report. Every thousand units of population on a race's planets grants one vote. If at the start of the game each race has one fully developed planet of size 1000 and two of 500, then each race has two votes. Through colonising other planets and developing them, each race can increase its number of votes.

Voting happens during turn production. Between turns, each race may change whom it votes for. If several races give their votes to one another in a chain, those races are considered to be in an alliance. An alliance's vote count is the simple sum of the votes of all alliance members, not counting the votes of the other races that voted for alliance members but are not part of the alliance.

The winner is the race (or alliance) that gathers 2/3 of the total votes of all races. In principle it is possible to end the game in the very first turns if 2/3 of all races pick the one worthy race and vote for it or form an alliance — but is it worth playing for that? The game may also be ended by an unappealable decision of the administration.

## Turn sequence {#turn-sequence}

Once orders have been received from all races, the turn itself happens — that is, the following sequence of actions:

- Ships are handed to their new owners.

- Races that have left the game are freed of their property.

- All commands issued by races are carried out. In particular, ships are unloaded according to the orders, and ships may be ordered to depart: such ships become ready to depart but physically stay at the planet of departure.

- Ships are merged into groups where possible.

- Warring ships join battle at the planets of departure. Ships ordered to depart are still at the planet and take part in this battle; only the survivors enter hyperspace.

- Goods are loaded onto ships at the start of cargo routes (after the battle — route transports fight unloaded).

- Ships (those ready to depart and those equipped along routes) enter hyperspace and fly through it.

- Ships are merged into groups where possible.

- Warring ships join battle (after leaving hyperspace, at the destination planets).

- Ships bombard enemy planets.

- Ships are upgraded on planets.

- Ships are built on planets (using the production capacity left over from ship upgrades).

- Ships are merged into groups where possible.

- Planets produce industry, extract material, and research new technologies.

- Planet populations grow.

- Ships are unloaded at the ends of cargo routes.

- Unloaded colonists increase the planet's population (if the planet's population is below its size).

- Accumulated and unloaded industry raises the planet's production level (if the planet's production level is below its population).

- Routes that go beyond the ships' flight zone are cancelled.

- Voting takes place.

## The turn report {#report}

The report you receive after each turn contains the necessary and sufficient information about the state of the galaxy, subject to the visibility of actions available to you.

The list of report sections is given below.

- Galaxy size, number of planets in the galaxy, and number of remaining races.

- A warning that your race is about to be removed from the game for inactivity, when no more than 5 turns remain until removal: the number of remaining turns is shown (the mechanism is described in [Leaving the game](#exit)).

- Races leaving the game soon: races with no more than 3 turns left until forced removal for inactivity; this list is visible to all participants.

- Your total number of votes.
- The name of the race you give your votes to.

- Player status.

  | Code | Meaning |
  |---|---|
  | N | Name |
  | D | Drive technology level |
  | W | Weapons technology level |
  | S | Shields technology level |
  | C | Cargo technology level |
  | P | Total population |
  | I | Total production |
  | # | Number of planets owned |
  | R | War or peace (your stance toward the listed race, but not the reverse) |
  | V | Number of votes given to the race |

- Your sciences.

  | Code | Meaning |
  |---|---|
  | N | Science name |
  | D | Drive technology share |
  | W | Weapons technology share |
  | S | Shields technology share |
  | C | Cargo technology share |

- Foreign sciences.

  A foreign race's list of sciences is available when your ships are on one of that race's planets where technologies are being researched using those sciences.

- Your ship classes.

  | Code | Meaning |
  |---|---|
  | N | Name |
  | D | Drive |
  | A | Armament |
  | W | Weapons |
  | S | Shields |
  | C | Cargo size |
  | M | Mass of one ship of this type |

- Foreign ship classes.

  A description of each foreign ship class you encountered this turn.

- Battles.

  A description of all the [battles](#combat) you took part in or witnessed this turn. For each battle, a list of the groups present at the battle site at its start is given, followed by a description of the exchange of fire. Additionally noted:

  - The number of ships in the group not destroyed during the battle;

  - The participant's battle status: "In_Battle" or "Out_Battle", where the latter means the group did not take part in the battle but was only a witness to events. This is possible if the group had no enemies.

- Bombardments.

  A list of planets that were bombarded this turn within your visibility, with attack information:

  | Code | Meaning |
  |---|---|
  | W | Name of the bombarding race |
  | O | Name of the owner race |
  | N | Planet name |
  | P | Population |
  | I | Production capacity |
  | P | Production type |
  | $ | Industry reserve |
  | M | Material reserve |
  | C | Number of colonists |
  | A | Attack power |
  | (blank) | State after the bombardment: "Damaged"/"Wiped" |

- Approaching groups.

  A list of all foreign ship groups in hyperspace heading to your planets.

  | Code | Meaning |
  |---|---|
  | O | From (which planet the group was sent from) |
  | D | To (which planet the group is heading to) |
  | R | Remaining distance |
  | S | Speed |
  | M | Full mass |

- Your planets.

  A list of all your planets. The following information is given:

  | Code | Meaning |
  |---|---|
  | # | Galactic planet number |
  | X | X coordinate |
  | Y | Y coordinate |
  | N | Planet name |
  | S | Size |
  | P | Population |
  | I | Production capacity |
  | R | Natural resources |
  | P | Production type (industry, material, research, or ships) |
  | $ | Industry reserve |
  | M | Material reserve |
  | C | Number of colonists |
  | L | Free production capacity |

  The (L) parameter is used to determine the real industrial capacity for the current turn.

- Ships in production.

  | Code | Meaning |
  |---|---|
  | # | Galactic planet number |
  | N | Planet name |
  | S | Name of the ship type being built |
  | C | Cost of building one such ship (in production units), excluding material-extraction costs |
  | P | How many production units have already been spent building this ship (already including material production) |
  | L | Free production capacity |

  Note that the build cost of one ship excludes material-extraction costs, whereas the number of production units spent already includes material-extraction costs. So it is perfectly normal for (P) to slightly exceed (C). This only means that the material needed to build the ship has not yet been produced.

- Cargo routes.

- Someone's planets.

  A list of foreign races' planets where your observers are present.

- Uninhabited planets.

  A list of unsettled planets you can observe — that is, ones where your ships are present.

- Unknown planets.

  A list of planets within your reach that you cannot observe. Only the planet number and its coordinates are given.

- Your fleets.

- Your ship groups.

- Foreign ship groups.

  A list of ship groups belonging to other players that you can observe.

- Unidentified ship groups.

  A list of coordinates of foreign ship groups in hyperspace that are not heading to your planets.

## Diplomatic mail {#mail}

Players in Galaxy are anonymous. This means no one but the server administration knows the addresses and names of other players. This is done so as not to carry game relationships and conflicts into real life, and thereby to let players behave more freely.

During the game each race can communicate with other races. Communication happens by sending diplomatic letters through the server. The purpose of writing letters can be very varied — for example, forming alliances, joint military action, breaking alliances, and so on.

## Questions you should know the answers to {#questions}

1. What is the difference between industry and production capacity? And between industry and the industry reserve?

2. What mass does a ship with D=0 A=20 W=5 S=0 C=0 have?

3. At what speed will a ship with D=5 A=0 W=0 S=0 C=0 fly if its Drive technology level is 1.0?

4. On which turn will a ship with a speed of 18 light-years per turn arrive at its destination if the distance between the departure and destination planets is 40 light-years and it was dispatched on turn 15?

5. What Drive technology level will a ship with D=1 A=0 W=0 S=0 C=0 have if, before it was built, the Drive technology level was 1.8, and on another planet the Drive technology rose by 0.2 at the same time it was built?

6. What mass will a ship with D=10 A=0 W=0 S=0 C=2 and Cargo technology level 1.2 have if it is fully loaded?

7. Will a battle occur if a ship with D=1 A=0 W=0 S=0 C=0 belonging to race A and a ship with D=1 A=1 W=1 S=0 C=0 belonging to race B meet on a planet, where race B has "peace" with race A and race A has "war" with race B?

## Some tips {#tips}

In the early game there is no need to fight for planets. You should start by building cargo ships, accumulating industry, and delivering colonists and industry to the nearest uninhabited planets. It is also wise to establish contacts with other races to form alliances, which will come in very handy when the time for battles comes. For that you simply must keep up diplomatic correspondence. Only doomed races do not correspond.

The map in your report shows only planets colonised by foreign races and the full mass of foreign ship groups heading to one of your planets. To get detailed information about enemy fleets that may threaten your security, you need to send ships to foreign planets purely for spying.

When an attack on your planets is approaching, the most important thing is to make sure you have enough force to defend. For each such group, divide the distance by the speed to get the number of turns left before the group reaches the planet. Assess the full mass: the larger it is, the greater the potential threat. You cannot, of course, know whether it is a huge battleship, a fleet of small fighters, or something in between. You can also try diplomacy: although the group's owner cannot turn it back, they can declare peace with you, so the group will not attack you on arrival.

In the later game it is quite likely that one race will develop more than the others and take a dominant position in the galaxy. From that moment it is vital for the remaining players to immediately set aside all their differences and attack that race together. For if this race is allowed to capture races one after another, it will get an excellent chance to win the game.

Because of how the [battle algorithm](#combat) works, a fleet is usually split into three complementary parts:

- many small screening ships, to draw the enemy's guns;

- one or more ships with several small guns, to quickly destroy the small screening ships;

- one or more ships with one or several large guns, to destroy the main enemy ships.

This must be taken into account when designing planet defences.

## Turn recomputation {#turn-recalc}

However well the server and the internet work, sometimes a turn must be reproduced. This is an exception to the server's general rules. Here are the cases in which a turn may be recomputed:

1. A bug was found in the server logic that caused irreversible changes to the state of several players' races.

2. The system for delivering orders to the server or reports from it was disrupted for longer than the waiting time between two turns — that is, all players were unable to manage their races.

3. A force-majeure event occurred and most of the game's participants unambiguously concluded that the turn must be recomputed.

4. An unappealable decision by the administration to that effect.

Any participant may ask the administration to recompute a turn, citing any of these points and providing appropriate evidence. If the administration decides that one of the listed conditions is met, the turn will be recomputed.

A turn will not be recomputed if the conditions are insufficient or the situation can be fixed dynamically.

## Game ethics {#ethics}

Bear in mind above all that "Galaxy" is a game; do not identify the leader of one of the races with the real player. Do not take offence if someone has treated you incorrectly. Deceit and treachery are permitted here — take that into account in your policy. The administration does not consider complaints of this kind and takes no sanctions against players who have committed such "misdeeds".

The diplomatic mail circulating between players is private mail. You may use any forms and expressions in it. However, rudeness is unacceptable in broadcast messages, even if that rudeness is part of your image. In addition, the server administration reserves the right to censor messages that are not private diplomatic mail.

The "Galaxy" game server is a program that, unfortunately, may contain bugs. We would be grateful if you reported any such findings. However, if you try to use a bug you found for your own benefit, the server administration may decide to remove you from the game.
