Planetary Hoppers Manual

Planetary Hoppers - The networked strategy game
Copyright (C) 1999-2002 Dodekaedron Software Creations, Inc.

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Table of contents

Introduction

Welcome to Planetary Hoppers, a turn-based strategy game of space economy, conquest - and intrigue.

Start with few planets, low-tech ships and moderate resources. Conquer neighboring planets and harness their production. Improve your technology levels to build better ships, weapons and shields. If materials are sufficient, build new bases of production. Watch out for rival players. Construct a fighting fleet of heavy warships. Control and collect the resources from the special planet Dodechaedron to enable ultra-high technology. And ultimately - defeat your opponents or be defeated by them.

The game can be played with 1-78 players. It is at its best with 4-6 players, however, there have also been exciting games of 2-3 players. The game usually consists of about 300-500 short turns (about 45 seconds each) until the winner is clear. Many low-level operations have been automatized to let the players concentrate on the essential: fleet maneuvering and diplomacy.

Story

This quadrant was for long an unimportant one. Its once young and brave spacefaring races were crushed in the Great Galactic Wars. The Thargon Empire's Gtan Cruisers laid waste of the entire quadrant, leaving only ruins behind.

The remains of the spacefaring races were forgotten into their own home worlds. They were visited by Thargon Tax Drones whenever the Empire was in need of more resources or money. Some local uprisings took place, but were always punished with extreme measures. After the last, and most serious one, all space industry was forbidden from the entire quadrant "to ensure the loyalty of the inhabitants forever."

With no hope of higher glory and doomed to be forgotten forever, some cultures slowly drifted away in their existential agony, some focused into finding the deepest answers in life from philosophy, and some spoiled themselves in endless pursuits for pleasure. After a few thousand years, nothing was left from the pride and glory of the former cultures...

Then, one day, a new hope was found from the sky. A strange object with the form of a dodechaedron was spotted in the telescopes of your planet. Despite all bans, a simple survey drone was constructed and launched towards the planet. It soon returned with a piece of strange material, called "Dodechadrium".

The first piece was dramatically lost. It dissolved into the cup of coffee of one careless scientist. However, new Dodechaedrium crystals were acquired and a new era of science began: the new material could be used in a number of ways previously unimaginable. Newly trained space engineers designed new ships and weapons, better than the Gtan Cruisers and their feared Death Rays. Politicians and generals created plans to defeat the Thargons with the new weapons. Laborers worked hard and with zeal to fulfill their newly found destiny.

Of course, a fleet able to defeat the greatest Empire in the galaxy can not be built with one planet's resources. Massive amounts of Metals, Minerals and Oil, as well as Dodechadrium, are required to build the necessary factories and components. Colonization fleets have been built and placed into your command. The quadrant is yours to re-conquer now.

Soon you will notice that your neighbor races have also survived the millennia of despair and slavery. And they are as eager to conquer Dodechaedron as you are. Negotiations are unnecessary - deal them with force. Nothing will stop you this time.

It is certain that the Thargons have also noticed the new planet and will also want Dodechaedrium to strengthen their iron-fist rule of the galaxy. However, their previously stable trans-galactic wormhole transport system has been totally wrecked by the arrival of Dodechaedron and they must rely on the much slower hyperspace travel. They will be coming... are you ready by then?

Playing the game

Basics

Objective

The objective of the game is to eliminate all opposing players' forces from the quadrant. Practically, this means capturing all critical planets, namely all home worlds and the center planet Dodechaedron.

Basic gameplay

The game consists of turns of certain length. During the turn, a player may order as many actions as he wishes to. When a player has finished his turn, he should select "End Turn" from the Turn menu. All ships and planets in the game have an "action", telling the player what the planet or ship is currently doing, and, what the planet or ship will be doing during the next turn. Some of these actions are completed immediately on the next turn, some take several turns to complete. The actions may be freely modified at any time, however, changing planetary actions in progress results in loss of effort and materials. Some orders are completed immediately and do not need an action. Such are sending messages to other players, cargo transfers between ships and planets and setting ship components into online or offline.
Timeouts
Every time a player finishes his turn by selecting "End Turn", he gains a small time bonus, depending on the remaining seconds in the clock. When enough bonus has been accumulated, the time bonus can be used to activate a timeout on any turn. The timeout extends the length of the turn by its original length. Several timeouts, even by different players, can be activated during the same turn. All players are free to order their forces normally during the timeout. Note that you accumulate time bonus much slower if you already have much bonus in storage.

Technology gallery

The Technology Gallery allows players to observe the properties of all ship components, available or unavailable.

Alliances

You can, at any time, ally yourself with any other player in the game. Your ships will not fire at any ship belonging to your ally (except the situation that your ally has chosen to attack you), and neither will they bombard your ally's planets. Alliances will become active the following turn and can be canceled at any time.

Alliances are activated (and de-activated) from the "Alliance" menu. Just select (or unselect) the check box between the player's name you want to ally (or break up) with.

Allying is 'one-way', in the sense that your allying with someone does not require anything from the player you allied with. It can be thought as giving orders to ship captains "not to attack XXX unless you are attacked first." If your fleet is attacked by another player's fleet, it will mercilessly destroy all ships in that fleet (even those without weapons), but will not bombard planets belonging to that player. In addition, your other fleets will not attack any ships belonging to the same enemy if not attacked first (for examply, by an unarmed fleet.)

Chat system

Of course, Planetary Hoppers allows you to communicate with your friends and enemies. Communication is always instant. There are three types of messages, which can be distinguished by the receiving player by the separator between the sender's name and the message itself.

The chatsystem (called "Interplanetary communications") is by default in Public message mode. To change the default, open the Receiver window (from the button "Receiver" in the window.) The window contains four choices of radio buttons: "All", "One", "GRP1" and "GRP2". All will set your default messages to go to all players, One will send them to the player of your choice (selectable by the radio buttons on the right from the players' names, GRP1 will target the players in Group Preset One (those whose check boxes are selected in the left row) and GRP2 is Group Preset Two (or the right row of the check boxes).

You can override the default choice by typing before your actual chat message for example 1> (private message to player one) or 1# (group message to group one.)

The host will automatically send you messages about almost all important events in the game (battles, planet captures, component/ship building etc.) These will be displayed in your chat window only, so watch carefully!

Visibility

Visibility is often very limited in Planetary Hoppers. All planets and ships in the game can scan some area of space, but everything else is unknown. However, the ownership of any critical planet will be known to all players at all times.

The scanned area is shown in the map with a lighter color. The area scanned by the currently active object is shown as lighter still. All enemy planets and ships will be visible inside scanning range. Outside the scanning range, only planets' names and types will be visible.

The vision range of a planet is 6 LY (light years, slightly less than what seems to be a planet's diameter in the map). Normal ships can see 3 LY away, which can be improved to 6 LY using the M1 Scanner Special item. Individual ships can avoid scanners by using cloaking devices.

Options

Planets

Basics

The game takes place in a star cluster with typically 10-100 planets. The "planet icons" in the game actually represent solar systems with multiple planets. The icon looks like the most important planet in the system, and all other planets are ignored in this game.

Planets are the most important pieces in the game. Planets produce materials and troops. These materials are transfered to ship parts by planets and finally assembled to complete ships. No two planets in the game are (usually) identical. Every planet has unique material production statistics and optimizing the use of these resources is one of the keys to victory.

Occupying a planet

You can capture any unoccupied planet by simply moving one of your ships to the planet. The planet will be under your control next round. Capturing a planet owned by another player is more complicated. If there are any troops on the planet, it can not be captured. Ships with their weapons on-line automatically bombard any enemy planet they are orbiting. The bombardment kills planetary troops, but they also get a chance to shoot back and damage the bombarding ship. When all planetary troops are killed, the planet is captured. Note that if there are any enemy ships orbiting the planet, you also bombard the planet all the time while fighting the enemy ships.

Production and Economy

Materials
The planets produce six different types of materials:
Planet types
There are 14 different kinds of planets in the game. The planets differ by the probability of finding different materials on them. The planet types and their statistics are:

- Nonexistent no production
* Very rare about 1-4 / turn
** Rare about 2-7 / turn
*** Average about 4-14 / turn
**** Dense about 10-25 / turn
***** Super Dense about 15-35 / turn

Planetary production and improving

The production of certain material on a planet depends on two things: The material's base production on the planet and the planet's production factor. Base production values are basic properties of the planet, and remain unchanged throughout the game. 

Production of material on planet = 
  base production of material on planet * planetary production factor

The production factor is same for all materials on the planet. By default, the production factor is 1 (or +0%.) The value of the production factor can be altered by using the "Improve production" option in the planet control panel.

When Production improving starts, some of the planetary production is used to building new mines, factories or garrisons. As a result of that, the planetary production factor goes temporarily down to 0.75 (or -25%). After that, the production factor is improved by 0.01 (or 1%) per turn, until it reaches its maximum (1.5 or +50%).

When a planet's production improvement is interrupted, because of any other action by the planet (improve tech, build component, build ship or recycle ship), the improve production operation is immediately canceled, the production factor is reset to 1 (or +0%) and all improvement made so far is lost. The same thing happens when a planet is captured by an enemy. The production improvement can also be canceled by the planet's owner by putting the planet to "Idle mode" from the planet control panel.

You can see a planet's current production by clicking on "Mining Survey" on the Planetary Control Panel. This window will also show you the average import per turn by currently active Autotransfer lines.

Note: there is no upper limit on production factor on the planet Dodechaedron.

Note: the player can not view base production values directly. What is shown in the "Mining survey" window is the net planetary production.

Autotransfering materials

To make it easier to transfer materials between friendly planets, scientists have developed a transporting method called the Autotransfer. Materials are packed to packets and flung into space with ultra high speed.

This method saves on fuel cost (no fuel required) and logistics planning costs. However, a portion of the packets is always lost during the journey. The formula to calculate the portion of passed packets is: 

Packets passed = Packets sent / (1 + Distance in LY / 6)

For example, with a distance of 6 light years, 50% of the transfered materials get through. The amount of passed packets between planets is diplayed in the sending planet's status screen.

Autotransfering will move only Metals, Minerals and Oil between planets. Fuel is too volatile, Dodechaedrium and Troops are too fragile. Autotransfer packets are invisible to players and can not be re-directed or intercepted when in transit.

To start autotransfering materials from a planet to another, select "Autotransfer" from the planet control panel and then select the target planet. Autotransfering is not a planetary action, and will not affect the current the planetary action (and vice versa). To re-direct new packets, simply select "Autotransfer" again with the new target. To stop Autotransfering new packets, select the planet itself as its Autotransfer target.

A planet can only have one Autotransfer target at a time. When Autotransfer is active, any Metals, Minerals and Oil will automatically be sent to the target planet each turn. A packet will be flung to space when at least 50 of any of the transferable materials are present on the sending planet's surface. The planet can only send one packet of each material during a turn.

Technology levels

Every planet in the quadrant is, at least in principle, able to build new ship components or even whole ships. In practice, most planets of the quadrant will never produce in anything but raw materials. The reason is simple. If the planetary technology is not advanced enough, the planet can build only very ineffective, low technology components, and they are hardly worth the effort. And advancing on technology is often very costly.

A planet's ability to build new components of specific type is called the planet's Technology level on that type (or tech level for short). There are five categories of starship technology, all of which are independent of each other. Also, tech levels on one planet are independent of tech levels on any other planet.

The categories are:

Technology levels are on the range 0-8. To build a component, the tech level of the planet on the component's category must be equal or higher than the tech level of the component. There is exactly one item per category that comes available with each new technology level.

Tech levels can be improved by selecting "Improve Tech" from a planet's control panel. The operation increases the technology level on one category to the next level. Improving technology to level N always takes at least N turns. The cost deducted each turn from the planet's material pool is 1/N of the total cost of the new technology. If the required amount of materials is not present on the planet's surface, the planet will stall the improve operation, spend no materials, and check the materials again on the next turn.

Technology improving can be halted by setting the planetary action to something else. All materials spent on the improving so far will be completely lost.

Tech improving usually costs Metals, Minerals and Oil. Improving tech levels to high technology (levels 7 and 8) or improving any levels on Misc technology also costs Dodechaedrium. In addition to this, some Misc technologies cost fuel.

Your engineers will become more skillful after each improve tech operation: the cost of improving radically changes along with the number of planets which already have improved to that tech. If you have one base with Tech 3 Engines, improving Engines to Level 3 in another base will cost 1/2 of the normal. If you have two bases with a Level, the cost of improving in the third one is 1/3 of the normal, and so on. This affects material cost only, not required time.

Note: a planet will produce raw materials normally during an Improve tech or other planetary action.

Ship components

Ship building

Ships

Ship structure

A ship in PH is constructed from pluggable components. These components include hull, engines, weapons and shields. A ship can only have one hull, but may have any number of other components so that their total mass does not exceed the capacity of the hull. The rest of the ship hull capacity can be used as cargo space and fuel tank.

Normally it is wise to leave some free cargo space at least for fuel, because otherwise the ship cannot move. However, ships built solely for planet defense purposes may not need to be able to move. In that case one can load the ship with weapons and shields and leave the engines out. Without engines, there is no need for any cargo space.

Hulls

There are eight different hull types in this game, one for each tech level. All hulls are general-purpose with some limitations, however, most hulls have so-called "primary purposes" where they are at their best:
* H1 Lightning Scout
* H2 Vineyan Main Battle Ship
* H3 Small Freighter Scout, Freighter
* H4 Gtan Main Battle Ship
* H5 Space Station Defensive fortress
* H6 Large Freighter Freighter
* H7 Edelweiss Main Battle Ship
* H8 D-Class Battlestar Main Battle Ship
Any components can be placed on any hull if the hull has enough volume. The statistics of the hulls can be viewed from the Technology Gallery. The only hull with an unique property is the Space Station, which will increase the repair speed of any friendly or allied ship in the same location, including itself. The hull-specific statistics are hull hit points (durability during battle), hull mass (when determining speed of moving ship), hull volume (the space available for components, cargo and fuel) and the fuel cost of hull's life support systems in deep space per turn. Check these carefully before building a hull. If a hull takes so many hits that its hit points get to 0 or below, the internal structure of the ship will immediately collapse, destroying the hull, all internal components, cargo and fuel.

Engines and fuel

Your typical starship construction includes some engines. Engines produce engine power, which is used to give propulsion power so that ships can enter hyperspace and move about. Engines also boost the recharge rate of ship shields.

The ship must have at least as much engine power as it has mass to enter hyperspace. Extra engine power will speed up the ship's movement. The ship's speed is calculated by the formula: 

    
warp speed = ( engine power / mass ) ^ .65

With Warp Speed 1, the ship moves exactly 1 light year per turn. With Warp Speed 1.5, the ship moves 1.5 light years per turn and so on.

Engines consume fuel equal to their "power consumption" rate per turn. Any ship starting their turn in deep space will also need some fuel for powering up their life support systems. If a ship starts its turn orbiting a planet, its built-in solar panels will give it enough life-support power for that turn. Some special items (scanners, cloaks etc) also need fuel when used in deep space.

If a ship runs out of fuel in deep space, it immediately goes to "emergency mode". Everything but primary life-support is immediately put off-line. A ship in emergency mode can be boarded and taken over by any nearby ship. In addition to this, any such ship will be vulnerable to the constant bombardment of small, deep-space meteors, causing damage, and eventually destroying the ship's hull.

Fuel can be stored in the ship's cargo space. "Reactor" special items can be used to decrease the ship's fuel consumption. They will not produce new fuel, however.

When a ship is selected, a green circle will be drawn to show where the ship can move using its current fuel. When building a new ship, the green circle will represent the maximum range of the ship without refueling.

Weapons and shields

All ship hulls have some armor to protect them from enemy fire. Hull armors are generally weak and can not survive very long under enemy fire. To further improve a ship's endurance, a ship can be equipped with any number of shield components.

There are three different classes of weapons:

Ship shields

Shields produce shield power, which is automatically used to absorb some damage in combat. A newly built ship has its shield power at maximum (the sum of the shield powers of all shield components in the ship). When absorbing damage, the ship's shields go down. They regenerate slowly every turn when the ship is not moving.

Ship shields also fall into three categories:

Misc items

Some ship components do not fit in any category mentioned before. All normal ships have some extra equipment (like scanners) which are automatically included and not mentioned anywhere in the game. The equipment called "Misc items" in this game are always very special and powerful improvements, impossible to research or construct without some Dodechaedrium crystals.

Tips

Moving

The basic rule for moving a ship is simple: The total engine power of ship engines must be greater or equal to the current mass of the ship. If the power is smaller, the ship does not move at all and if the power is greater than mass, the ship will move faster. Engines consume fuel when ship moves. This consumption depends on the technology level of the engine. Ship also consumes some extra fuel when it is in space whether it moves or not. This amount is determined by the technology level of ship's hull and is called "Idle consumption".

To move the ship you must set a waypoint for it. The ship will move towards the waypoint if it can. Waypoint can be set either by selecting "Set Waypoint" from ship control panel or clicking middle mouse button over the map. Waypoint marker will be shown on the map (if enabled from options) If the marker is green, ship has enough fuel and engine power to reach the waypoint. If the marker is yellow, ship will reach the waypoint, but warns that the waypoint is in space. (Note that ships consume fuel when they are in space, whether they move or not). Red waypoint marker warns that ship will never reach the waypoint with current amount of fuel and engine power.

Note that the waypoint is automatically set to the planet or ship if you click on the area occupied by a planet or a ship. To bypass this feature, hold shift-key while clicking the place for the waypoint.

Tracking ships
Ships can also try to follow other ships. Tracking will be successful only if the ship tracking is faster than the ship being followed. The tracking will automatically set the ship's waypoint to point at the target ship before moving. Since ships move in speed order (slowest first), faster ships can set their waypoints to slower ships after the slower ones have moved.

Tracking can be initiated by selecting "Tracking" in the ship control panel. You must then choose a track target. The ship will show "Tracking xxx" in the waypoint part of the status display when tracking is enabled. You can disable tracking by selecting waypoint manually.

Fleets

You can combine several ships to a fleet. The ships of a fleet will move together at the speed of the slowest ship. The ships will also automatically share their fuel with each other.

To create a fleet, select "Form fleet" from the "Ship" menu when one of the ships is active. When a fleet icon appears, other ships can join it by tracking the fleet. The ships of a fleet will not appear separately in the space display (except to other players, who view them normally as single ships). Individual ships can be selected from the "Fleet" menu.

You can split a ship from a single fleet by setting its waypoint to somewhere else. The whole fleet can be broken back to its individual ships by selecting "Split fleet" from the Fleet menu.

Loading fuel with the "Load fuel" button, the range-displaying green circles, and fleets, all work the same way with fleets than with single ships.

Note: even the heaviest battleships must have enough cargo space for one turn's movement (EDT greater or equal than ES) or else the fleet will slow down. Ships always move about with their own power and cannot be towed.

Wormhole Travel

The Thargons' wormhole transport system is now totally wrecked. Loose, unstable, dangerous ends are spinning around the quadrant. However, you may find even this dangerous method of transportation useful in your strategy.

To use a wormhole, simply use "track" to one loose end. Most likely (at about 95% chance) the ship (or fleet) will appear at another loose end of a wormhole in the same quadrant. Anyway, some of the following things may also result:

Ship experience
Each ship crew has a certain level of experience, reflecting in a better combat efficiency. The direct experience value is invisible to the player. Each ship gains some experience every turn. Traveling through space gives the ship a little more experience, but mostly experience is gained through combat. All crew experience is lost if a ship is recycled and re-built, forced into life-support mode, or surrendered to an enemy.
Tips

Material transfers

Engineering

In the ships "Engineering" control panel you can inspect ship's components. You can see each component's type, tech level, condition and power output. The power output depends on the component type. This means that for engines 300 means engine power and for weapons it means maximum possible damage. Condition is presented in percentages, 100% means that the component is in perfect condition and 0% that it has been completely destroyed.

You can enable and disable components in the engineering. This is useful for engines and some misc items (when wanting to conserve fuel), and weapons (when wanting to make the ship a less desirable target.) Note that if a ship is saved from emergency mode, all components start off-line.

All misc items start off-line. Putting M8 Superbomb on-line deploys it on the next turn after movement. If a Space Mine or Defense Pod is deployed, the ship will lose the component before movement (the cargo space can be immediately re-used), and in case of the Superbomb... guess!

Ship hulls and components repair themselves slowly. The repair speed can be boosted by staying in one place over any planet, and even more by being at same location with a friendly or allied Space Station. Note that components that have been destroyed (0% condition) cannot be repaired. If you recycle the ship they will simply disappear.

Ship combat

Ship combat overview

Your ships will start shooting at any other player's ships if they are in exactly the same location, your ships have weapons on-line, and you have not set the owner of the other ships as your ally. Ships without weapons, or with weapons off-line will not start a fight.

Ship combat consists of 15 combat rounds per turn. During a combat round, every ship in the location is given a combat turn (in some random order). During that turn, the ship fires all its weapons to the enemy ship it considers to be most desirable target.

Target acquisition

Each ship will select its target each combat round, changing it if necessary.

Your captains will usually act according to their own judgement when choosing a target. They prefer shooting first at ships which have a high damage ratio (its firepower divided by damage its absorption capability). This is a natural approach, because you usually want to damage the enemy's firepower as much as you can with a single shot.

If you want to order your captains to use a more advanced method of target acquisition, you can use the Battle Orders preferences from the Ship and Fleet menus to set up a new method. A ship will use its own Battle Orders first if the orders are set to Custom. If the orders are set to Default, it will next look up at the Battle orders of the Fleet, and if even they are Default, it will use the earlier mentioned natural approach.

Note! There are some occasions where tweaking with the Battle Orders really are useful (for example, a ship with lots of Shield Weapon Power should not shoot at ships with Persistent Shields and so on). The gain will never be very high, and you can easily win a newbie (or even an advanced) game without ever using this option. However, a bad set of Battle Orders will most likely lead to catastrophic results and the decimation of your fleet when either every one of your ships fires at a different target, or your strongest warship spreads its fire against a large fleet.

You can order a ship or a fleet to prefer, or to avert, the hull hit points, total shield power, persistent shield power, hull weapon power (observed), shield weapon power (observed), ship mass, or hull volume, of every target candidate ship. You can set a preference value for each, being positive or negative. A positive value means that a big value of the factor will increase the target preference, a negative value with a big factor will decrease the target preference. Actually, this is done by adding together all factors times their preference values where the preference value is positive, adding together all factors times their preference values where the preference value is negative, and dividing the former with the latter.

This table demonstrates the different factors, their automatic coefficients, and the values used in the natural approach.
Factor Coefficient Natural value Note
Hull HPs 1 -5
Shield power 1/7 -5
Pers. shields 4/5 -5
Hull fp 1 5 cumulative
Shield fp 1/4 3 cumulative
Mass 2 0 total
Hull vol 2 0

The observed Hull and Shield weapon firepowers are cumulative, meaning that they will be updated after every combat round. Before the first combat round, no hull weapon power has been observed yet. Because of that, any ship, including freighters, can be shot at during the first combat round. Consider using at least one shield unit in freighters which are transporting fuel for warships.

You can not order your ships to prefer unarmed ships or ships with their weapons off-line before ships with their weapons on. These ships stand in the back line and cannot be attacked as long as there is at least one armed ship left to defend them. When all of the armed defenders are gone, the same Battle Orders will be used to pick a target from the unarmed ones.

Note: Freighters with weapons on-line are almost always considered primary targets because of their weak hull strength. If you have armed freighters and warships in the same fleet, consider turning off-line the weapons of the freighters.

Firing weapons

Every weapon has two independent weapon powers: its hull weapon power and shield weapon power. During each combat round, the weapon fires twice: one shot against the hull and one shot against the shields.

For each shot fired, the program generates a random number in the range [1..Weapon Power+50]. The damage generated will be the that number minus 50, except that it will always be at least one.

Shield damage is directly decreased from the target's shields. Hull damage is affected by the target's remaining shields: actually only Volume / (Shields - Volume) of the damage is inflicted to the hull. Part of the hull damage can also be absorbed to a random component aboard the ship.

Sometimes during combat a ship can maneuver itself into an advantageous position, allowing a critical hit against the enemy. A critical hit will completely bypass enemy shields, and will inflict more component damage. Ship crews with more experience will inflict more critical hits, and receive fewer. The average critical hit probability is about 1/20 per combat round.

Battle reports

Each ship combat will produce a battle report into a specific window, "Battle Reports." Shown are all the ships that were present in that location. For each ship, the following information is displayed:

It is impossible to see the types or numbers of weapons onboard an enemy ship, but it can be guessed from their inflicted damage.

Planet combat

Bombarding

Any ship alive after the ship combat phase will automatically bombard the planet it is orbiting (if not friendly or ally.) When bombarding a planet, the ship will fire all its weapons on the planet, killing planetary Troops. The number of Troops killed by a weapon is determined by the weapon's anti-hull strength only.

Planets with troops get a chance to shoot back at any bombarding ship. When the ship starts closing in on the planet, the troops equip planetary Ion Cannons. The cannons are very efficient but inaccurate, and therefore have more power against ships with large hulls such as freighters. Defense Pods will allow the use of even more efficient Ion Disruptors and extend the ability of the troops to shoot back at bombarding ships. See M2 Defense Pod for the exact formula for bombardment.

Ships, whose owner is allied to the planet's owner, do not bombard, get fired upon by the planet, or try to capture the planet, not even after surviving ship combat with the planet's owner.

You can order your ships to avoid contact with planets. This way, the ships will blockade the solar system and attack any enemy ship present, but will not engage in planetary bombardment and are also safe from defensive fire. The setting is found from the Battle Orders window (see Target Acquisition.) Ships with no on-line weapons will always steer clear of the planets with troops.

Ground Combat
Troops dropped on enemy planets will automatically start fighting with the local troops. They will kill approximately as many defending troops as their own number. Attacking troops cannot capture a planet in this phase, and they will also vanish in the end of the turn because of the lack of supplies. Any Troops dropped to a planet belonging to your ally will be considered as a gift and added into the defending planet's garrisons.
Capturing

After the bombarding and ground combat phases, if a planet under siege has no Troops left and its owner has no ships present, the planet will be captured by one of the orbiting enemy ships. The ship to make the capture will be selected randomly. The next turn, the planet will be owned by the capturer.

Capturing a planet will cancel the current planetary action, but it preserves the material pool, the component pool and all tech levels of the planet.

Capturing a planet is also possible for an unarmed ship. A gas giant or asteroid with zero troop production will be captured by any passing scout or freighter, unless there are at least 1 Troops present.

Recycling

Sometimes one may want to disassemble a particular ship. Ship recycling does just that. If you select "Recycle ship" at ships control panel, and the ship is orbiting a planet owned by you, the ship will be in parts again on the planet in next round. Note however that recycling a ship is planetary action, which means that the planet will change it's action to "recycle this ship" cancelling whatever it might be doing at the moment.

Nothing is lost in recycling besides time. All components and the hull of the ship will end up on the planet. If there is something in ship's cargo space, that will also be transfered on the planet before putting ship into parts. Note, however, that completely destroyed (unusable and unrepairable) components disappear in recycling.

Giving to other players

There are several reasons why ships could be given to another player. Players may wish to trade ships with one another, a ship may want to refuel on an allied planet (remember that it is not possible to move cargo between ships of different races, or from a planet to a ship of a different race), or a ship chased into neutral territory may rather want to surrender to the neutral party than to be destroyed by the enemy.

The order "Surrender to" can be found in the Ship menu. For this to work out, the ship to be surrendered must be stationary, and the receiving party must have at least one ship in the location to supply its own crew for the ship. It is not necessary to have an alliance between the parties. The surrendering will be effective in the beginning of the next turn, including all cargo aboard the ship. All morale and experience levels of the crew (not yet implemented) are lost.

Optional features

The features described here are considered "new". They are either unimplemented, under construction or under testing. All optional features are disabled by default in the start menu.

Galactic economy

(Status: under construction)

The Galactic Economy model introduces an additional resource: credits. Credits are an abstract representation of surplus labor. They are a global resource, available to be used anywhere in the empire.

In the galactic economy model, credits are required for the following functions:

Credits are produced in planets. The Home Worlds produce 1000 credits per turn. Other planets produce 50 credits per turn. Dodechaedron produces no credits. Placing troops on planets slightly improves the planetary money production. Having 1000 troops on a planet (except Dodechaedron) gives 10 extra credits, and the extra money production is proportional to the square root of the number of troops.

In the Galactic Economy model, autotransfers are not conducted with giant slingshots but with an independent race of traders. The traders have a diplomatic immunity everywhere in the galaxy, allowing transfers even in and out of blockaded planets. Instead of taking a percentage of the transferred materials, the traders take credits for their services.

Improve Production now costs credits. Even after the planetary action is changed, the already-made improvements will keep producing extra materials. Production is increased by 1% per turn from the base-line level. The maximum production level is 50% for normal planets and homeworlds. Improving Dodechaedron production has a double cost, but no production limit. On any planet, the first production percentage unit costs 110 credits, the second 130, the third 150... until the 50th, which costs 1110 credits.

All starships require a constant sum of credits to build, and a sum of credits per turn. If no credits are available, the crew's morale will drop. The ship will not recharge its shields, conduct repairs, or gain experience. The other functions of the ship are as usual: the ship will move and fight normally. Any planet can support some of its orbiting fleet without cost. The support is proportional to the planet's normal credits production.

If the empire has not enough credits to cover all its costs, it will first support as many ships as possible. If all ships are not supported, space dock workers will go on support strike and no new ships can be built. If credits are left after shipbuilding, Autotransfers are conducted. The leftover credits are used to construct planetary improvements.

Credits

For more information, see http://planets.sourceforge.net/.

License

GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE

Version 2, June 1991 

Copyright (C) 1989, 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc.  
59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA  02111-1307, USA

Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies
of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.

Preamble

The licenses for most software are designed to take away your freedom to share and change it. By contrast, the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free software--to make sure the software is free for all its users. This General Public License applies to most of the Free Software Foundation's software and to any other program whose authors commit to using it. (Some other Free Software Foundation software is covered by the GNU Library General Public License instead.) You can apply it to your programs, too.

When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not price. Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for this service if you wish), that you receive source code or can get it if you want it, that you can change the software or use pieces of it in new free programs; and that you know you can do these things.

To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions that forbid anyone to deny you these rights or to ask you to surrender the rights. These restrictions translate to certain responsibilities for you if you distribute copies of the software, or if you modify it.

For example, if you distribute copies of such a program, whether gratis or for a fee, you must give the recipients all the rights that you have. You must make sure that they, too, receive or can get the source code. And you must show them these terms so they know their rights.

We protect your rights with two steps: (1) copyright the software, and (2) offer you this license which gives you legal permission to copy, distribute and/or modify the software.

Also, for each author's protection and ours, we want to make certain that everyone understands that there is no warranty for this free software. If the software is modified by someone else and passed on, we want its recipients to know that what they have is not the original, so that any problems introduced by others will not reflect on the original authors' reputations.

Finally, any free program is threatened constantly by software patents. We wish to avoid the danger that redistributors of a free program will individually obtain patent licenses, in effect making the program proprietary. To prevent this, we have made it clear that any patent must be licensed for everyone's free use or not licensed at all.

The precise terms and conditions for copying, distribution and modification follow.

TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION

0. This License applies to any program or other work which contains a notice placed by the copyright holder saying it may be distributed under the terms of this General Public License. The "Program", below, refers to any such program or work, and a "work based on the Program" means either the Program or any derivative work under copyright law: that is to say, a work containing the Program or a portion of it, either verbatim or with modifications and/or translated into another language. (Hereinafter, translation is included without limitation in the term "modification".) Each licensee is addressed as "you".

Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been made by running the Program). Whether that is true depends on what the Program does.

1. You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all the notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty; and give any other recipients of the Program a copy of this License along with the Program.

You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee.

2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of it, thus forming a work based on the Program, and copy and distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1 above, provided that you also meet all of these conditions:

These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole. If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program, and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate works. But when you distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it.

Thus, it is not the intent of this section to claim rights or contest your rights to work written entirely by you; rather, the intent is to exercise the right to control the distribution of derivative or collective works based on the Program.

In addition, mere aggregation of another work not based on the Program with the Program (or with a work based on the Program) on a volume of a storage or distribution medium does not bring the other work under the scope of this License.

3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:

The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it. For an executable work, complete source code means all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any associated interface definition files, plus the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the executable. However, as a special exception, the source code distributed need not include anything that is normally distributed (in either source or binary form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the operating system on which the executable runs, unless that component itself accompanies the executable.

If distribution of executable or object code is made by offering access to copy from a designated place, then offering equivalent access to copy the source code from the same place counts as distribution of the source code, even though third parties are not compelled to copy the source along with the object code.

4. You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Program except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Program is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License. However, parties who have received copies, or rights, from you under this License will not have their licenses terminated so long as such parties remain in full compliance.

5. You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are prohibited by law if you do not accept this License. Therefore, by modifying or distributing the Program (or any work based on the Program), you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so, and all its terms and conditions for copying, distributing or modifying the Program or works based on it.

6. Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to these terms and conditions. You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein. You are not responsible for enforcing compliance by third parties to this License.

7. If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues), conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not excuse you from the conditions of this License. If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute the Program at all. For example, if a patent license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Program by all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to refrain entirely from distribution of the Program.

If any portion of this section is held invalid or unenforceable under any particular circumstance, the balance of the section is intended to apply and the section as a whole is intended to apply in other circumstances.

It is not the purpose of this section to induce you to infringe any patents or other property right claims or to contest validity of any such claims; this section has the sole purpose of protecting the integrity of the free software distribution system, which is implemented by public license practices. Many people have made generous contributions to the wide range of software distributed through that system in reliance on consistent application of that system; it is up to the author/donor to decide if he or she is willing to distribute software through any other system and a licensee cannot impose that choice.

This section is intended to make thoroughly clear what is believed to be a consequence of the rest of this License.

8. If the distribution and/or use of the Program is restricted in certain countries either by patents or by copyrighted interfaces, the original copyright holder who places the Program under this License may add an explicit geographical distribution limitation excluding those countries, so that distribution is permitted only in or among countries not thus excluded. In such case, this License incorporates the limitation as if written in the body of this License.

9. The Free Software Foundation may publish revised and/or new versions of the General Public License from time to time. Such new versions will be similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to address new problems or concerns.

Each version is given a distinguishing version number. If the Program specifies a version number of this License which applies to it and "any later version", you have the option of following the terms and conditions either of that version or of any later version published by the Free Software Foundation. If the Program does not specify a version number of this License, you may choose any version ever published by the Free Software Foundation.

10. If you wish to incorporate parts of the Program into other free programs whose distribution conditions are different, write to the author to ask for permission. For software which is copyrighted by the Free Software Foundation, write to the Free Software Foundation; we sometimes make exceptions for this. Our decision will be guided by the two goals of preserving the free status of all derivatives of our free software and of promoting the sharing and reuse of software generally.

NO WARRANTY

11. BECAUSE THE PROGRAM IS LICENSED FREE OF CHARGE, THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. EXCEPT WHEN OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE THE PROGRAM "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE PROGRAM IS WITH YOU. SHOULD THE PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION.

12. IN NO EVENT UNLESS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW OR AGREED TO IN WRITING WILL ANY COPYRIGHT HOLDER, OR ANY OTHER PARTY WHO MAY MODIFY AND/OR REDISTRIBUTE THE PROGRAM AS PERMITTED ABOVE, BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR DAMAGES, INCLUDING ANY GENERAL, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE PROGRAM (INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO LOSS OF DATA OR DATA BEING RENDERED INACCURATE OR LOSSES SUSTAINED BY YOU OR THIRD PARTIES OR A FAILURE OF THE PROGRAM TO OPERATE WITH ANY OTHER PROGRAMS), EVEN IF SUCH HOLDER OR OTHER PARTY HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

END OF TERMS AND CONDITIONS

How to Apply These Terms to Your New Programs

If you develop a new program, and you want it to be of the greatest possible use to the public, the best way to achieve this is to make it free software which everyone can redistribute and change under these terms.

To do so, attach the following notices to the program. It is safest to attach them to the start of each source file to most effectively convey the exclusion of warranty; and each file should have at least the "copyright" line and a pointer to where the full notice is found. 

one line to give the program's name and an idea of what it does.
Copyright (C) yyyy  name of author

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2
of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA  02111-1307, USA.

Also add information on how to contact you by electronic and paper mail.

If the program is interactive, make it output a short notice like this when it starts in an interactive mode: 

Gnomovision version 69, Copyright (C) yyyy name of author
Gnomovision comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details
type `show w'.  This is free software, and you are welcome
to redistribute it under certain conditions; type `show c' 
for details.

The hypothetical commands `show w' and `show c' should show the appropriate parts of the General Public License. Of course, the commands you use may be called something other than `show w' and `show c'; they could even be mouse-clicks or menu items--whatever suits your program.

You should also get your employer (if you work as a programmer) or your school, if any, to sign a "copyright disclaimer" for the program, if necessary. Here is a sample; alter the names: 

Yoyodyne, Inc., hereby disclaims all copyright
interest in the program `Gnomovision'
(which makes passes at compilers) written 
by James Hacker.

signature of Ty Coon, 1 April 1989
Ty Coon, President of Vice

This General Public License does not permit incorporating your program into proprietary programs. If your program is a subroutine library, you may consider it more useful to permit linking proprietary applications with the library. If this is what you want to do, use the GNU Library General Public License instead of this License.