Space Empire V2.1 for CNET BBS Systems by Harold R. Scadden First version created by Jon Radoff Version 2.1 Documentation I. Introduction II. Running Your Empire III. Covert Operations IV. Battle V. Other features I. Introduction The object of Space Empire is simple. You are the absolute ruler of a set of worlds. Your goal is to be the most powerful empire through diplomacy, economic ploys, and most of all, war. The first person to be "Space Lord" for seven days in a row ascends the iridium throne of the galaxy and becomes Lord of the Universe. To be Space Lord, you must have at least 100,000 points and be the highest scorer if there is more than one empire with 100,000 points. II. Running Your Empire At the beginning of each turn, you collect money in the form of taxes from your people and ore mined from planets. You also get a stock of food from agricultural worlds and a flow of weaponry from defense planets. Your governing planets, which are purely administrative worlds, don't do you any good and just sap your funds -- but you need one of them for every 25 other planets. After collecting this money, you are allowed to budget your money as you see fit. Certain amounts will be requested which you are advised to stay close to. Your people will also require food -- make sure you either buy enough food each round or have enough agricultural worlds to support your people! When you are done feeding your worlds you can use the Galactic Bank for a savings account at a 5% interest rate. This interest rate gains interest on every turn. There is also the option to borrow money from the Bank, this will cost you 5% interest and is posted every turn. If you make a loan YOU MUST pay back at least 10% of the loan value per turn. If you do not then the Galatic Repo Man will start taking your assests!! Soon, you'll be able to buy extra things, including more weaponry, planets, etc. Spend wisely. Don't use up all your money, or buy things which could sap all your money away in the future. You must keep your populace happy! Abusing them by not giving them enough food and not allocating enough money to your planets will stir up unrest. There are many factors which modify how happy your people are. Make sure you learn these and keep them that way. Internal unrest is worse than the most powerful of enemy armies! HINTS: People by nature are happier when they are well fed. The food levels suggested by the program are the MINIMUM levels required to keep them at their present status. Same with money needed for the planets the suggested amount is the minimum required to maintain the Status QUO. To build planets and defenses effectively during your first rounds in the game. Start off by buying NOTHING BUT ORE PLANETS for the first ten turns on turn one you should buy all ore planets except for about 2 or three agricultural planets always keep the agricultural planets producing more than the minimum required of food. Planet costs start to esculate rapidly but ore planets are the best investment. Each planet requires 10K credits to maintain and each governing planet requires 20K credits each. Since ORE planets produce 20K credits of income you profit 10K credits for every ORE planet you have. KEEP the levels of governing planets up to the minimum of 1 gov planet for every 25 plus fraction thereof of the other planets. Lack government representation is extremely bad for your people. After round ten or fifteen start buying Defense Planets but make sure that for every defense or agricultural planet you buy you alway buy at least one ore planet to support it. (Two ore planet to support the governing planets.) III. Covert Operations Spy work as covert agents to obtain information on your oponents military and government functions. Spys also help prevent someone from sneaking in for a look on you! When a player is no longer under protection you can now stir up civil unrest. If you are sucessful at this, depending on how happy his people are, you can cause their empire to crumble around there ears!! Also, when a player is no longer under protection, you can attempt to sabotage his equipment. Your spys will target the empires fighters, cruisers and carriers. This is not an effective way to bring someone to there knees but it helps in reducing forces. IV. Battle Battle is an integral part of the game -- this is how you weaken your enemies and sieze planets from them. The victor in battle depends on many factors. Each unit of battle force works a little differently. Soldiers are the base unit of your military -- they have the weakest firepower in battle, but you need them to back up all your other forces. If you don't back up your other weaponry with troops of soldiers, you are surely doomed. Fighter craft are offense only weapons, and are about twice as effective as soldiers when attacking. The cost a little more, and for every 100 fighters you have, you need a carrier to transport them. Defense stations cost about the same as fighters, and are defense only. Cruisers are both offensive and defensive, have more firepower than either fighters or cruisers, but cost about twice as much. The morale of your military is a very important factor. If you continuously lose battles, their morale will go down. It will go up if you win battles and allocate them extra money. It is also changed by various other factors. For instance, domestic unrest tends to demoralize your army. There is always an element of chance. A lesser enemy always has a slight chance of winning a battle if the two battle forces are close enough in size. If the attacking battle force emerges the victor, he will gain 10% of his enemy's planets (rounded up). His enemy will be wiped out of the game if you take all of his planets. This is one of the greatest moral boosters your army can get. New players are protected from being attacked for a period of 20 turns, unless they attack someone else first (note 20 turns ends at the beginning of turn 21.) If you fail to logon to the game for 7 days you will lose your protection and made open game for the rest of the players. This is done to benefit those who are actively playing the game and to clear room for other players to join the game. HINTS: The best way to attack is to spy on the player you are about to attack if they are not part of an alliance send slightly more of troops, fighters (against defense stations), and heavy cruisers than your opponent has. If he has an alliance send your best guess or what you think his allaince has to support in addition to the normal required forces. Note: In previous versions the full force of an alliance's help could not be felt due to a major coding error on the part of the original programmer. Starting in Version 1.5 the alliances now work to benefit those in the allaince. Previously the more people you had in the allaince the less alliance support you got. I have fixed this do that you always get the full defense support of your alliance force that YOU own and 50% support from all remaining forces. If in doubt as to what you current allied force leves are just select Info option in the allaince Menu. V. TIPs, Tricks & Other features Troops, defense stations, and heavy cruisers that are stock piled in the alliance cost you half of normal to maintain how ever they are not counted as part of your personal wealth when point tallying time comes so while you can bank forces in the alliance they don't count toward your score while they are there. Using the restock option allows you to use the alliance like an armament bank. It returns all the forces you contributed to you for you to redistribute back to the alliance or keep. Planets are taken from your enemy evenly from each of his types of planets so trying to take all of one type of his planets is useless unless you really want that type of planet yourself. i.e. player A has 4-ORE, 2-AGRI, 1-Governing, and 5-Defense. Player B defeates Player A and gets 4 planets. Player B takes 4 ORE planets leaving player A with 3-ORE, 1-AGRI, 0-Governing, 4-Defense. Take advantage of your alliance's defense capabilities and communicate with your alliance's members. The alliance section was repaired and works like a champ now. Alliance defenses operate like this: Player A has 1000 troops, 1000 defense stations, and 1000 heavy cruisers in his alliance of one. Player A is given the additional protection then of 100% of the total alliance forces combined with his non-alliance forces for DEFENSE only. Player B joins the alliance and is immediately covered by the defensive power of player A's contributed forces. Player B decides to add 500 troops, 500 Defense stations and 500 cruisers. Now Player B not only has the power of his contributed forces but still 50% of player A's contributed forces, giving him a total protection of 1000 troops, 1000 DS, and 1000 HC. Player A on the othere hand has the total defesive power now of his original contributed Forces (CF) but also 50% of the power of player B's cf's, for a total defensive power of 1250 troops, 1250 DS, and 1250 HC. As you can see the more you contribute the better protected all players can be. This was a major change from the way the alliance used to work which actually made it detrimental to ally with anyone but your self. Now at least there is some benefit to having an Alliance with someone else. Forces lost during a battle are taken off poportionately from the areas that supplied them. In this manner every one shares the benefit and the loss. The alliance also has a bank now. Every member can deposit or take out money from a common account. This can be helpful when a player gets on the needy side. In addition to the bank function, there is the TRANSFER function. This will allow members of an alliance to give each other the hardware and, in times of need, food to fellow members of the alliance.