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A game master usually gets a lot of questions about Galaxy, simple ones, but
also rather difficult ones. Beginners are usually confused on how to interpret
the rules, and come up with questions such as "can I produce more than one
product on a planet?". As soon as players become more experienced they come up
with far more detailed questions about the exact working of the Galaxy code.
This FAQ tries to give answers to both kind of questions.
This is the first version of the FAQ, and there are no doubt many more
questions to be answered. If you can think of any, think you have a better
answer to the ones listed here, discovered an error, created another FAQ, please
send a email to, fslothouber@acm.org,
and I'll include it in the next version.
Frans Slothouber.
Galaxy is a play-by-email interstellar wargame for several players created by
Russel Wallace somewhere in 1992.
A game usually has somewhere between 10 and 80 players and one Game Master
that runs the game. Each player gets to play one nation. The game is set in a
Galaxy filled with many planets. Each nation starts with one populated planet.
The other planets are empty. The goal of the game is to conquer the whole Galaxy
by colonising the empty planets and killing the other nations.
A game runs several turns a week. Players send in orders before each turn.
These orders tell what the player wants his nation to do, and after each turn
runs each player receives a report that states what happened that turn.
When you play a nations you can do many things. You can design your own
ships. Each ship has many parameters, drive, number of weapons, shields, and
cargo capabilities. These can all be tweaked to create many different ship
designs. Populated planets can be used to build the ships you designed. The
ships can be used to transport cargo and colonize planets, or to fight battles
with your neighbours to take over their planets. Ships can be improved by
technology research.
Experienced players do not operate alone, they use diplomacy to create a
pacts with other players, and attack their enemies together. Back stabbing,
double deals, and other treason are of course also possible, no-one is to be
completely trusted, and you will find that Galaxy is a good simulation of
real-world politics. It is also very addictive :)
If you want to play a game of Galaxy the best thing is
to check the galaxyng sites mentioned in the games page or to
watch the newsgroup: rec.games.pbm for announcements.
You can also watch for anouncements on the general discussion mailing list.
To subscribe to the General discussion mailing list, see:
http://www.badcheese.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/galaxy.
If you want, you can view there the Subscriber list, or you can view the collection
of prior postings to the list, visiting the Galaxy Archives:
http://www.badcheese.com/pipermail/galaxy/
You can post a message to all the list members, sending an e-mail to:
galaxy@badcheese.com
Depending on how many turns are played a week, a Galaxy game can last from 4
months till 1 year. Preparing orders can take an hour or more per
turn.
There are several WWW and FTP sites that contain information about Galaxy,
links to these sites can be found on games page: http://www.galaxyng.com/ng/games.html
See also: 4.2 and
5.1.
The exact sequence of events is a good way to get answers to many questions
about Galaxy. This is how the Galaxy program computes what happens during a
turn:
No you can not. A planet can only produce one product at a time. If you want
to produce several products each turns, you have to use more planets.
Yes you can. Technology levels are global.
Yes it will, even if your planet produces tiny amounts, they do have effect,
since Galaxy internally stores techlevels with more than two digits after the
decimal point.
No you have not. Once you used a P order to state a planet has to produce
something, for instance capital, the planet continues producing this until told
otherwise.
Low resources mean that when ever a planet is used to build a ship or
capital, a lot of industry points are wasted on building materials. This means
that the total mass a planet can produce is smaller than that of planets with
higher resources (see also 2.6).
There are two options two solve this problem:
The size of a ship you can produce at a planet depends on a number of
factors: the effective industry, the resources, and the material stockpiled.
The ship mass you can produce is calculated as follows:
effective_industry = (population - industry)/4.0 + industry
effective_industry + materials/resources
mass = ------------------------------------------
10.0 + 1.0/resources
if the mass turns out to be larger than effective_industry/10
then the mass = effective_industry/10
For instance:
A home planet, Pop=1000, Industry=1000, resources=10, and no materials stockpiled
effective_industry = 0/4 + 1000 = 1000
mass = (1000 + 0/10) / (10 + 1/10) = 99.0099
A half developed planet, Pop=750, Industry=300, resources=5, and 25 Materials stockpiled.
effective_industry = (750-300)/4 + 300 = 412.5
mass = (412.5 + 25/5)/(10+1/5) = 40.93
A half developed planet , Pop=750, Industry=300, resources=5, and 2500 Materials stockpiled.
effective_industry = (750-300)/4 + 300 = 412.5
mass = (412.5 + 2500/5)/(10+1/5) = 89.46
Since this is larger than 412.5/10 the mass is 41.25.
Yes you can. There are two different cases. One, You already own the planet. In this case you use the option AUTOUNLOAD. Use the order:
O AUTOUNLOAD
to turn this option on. If you now send ships with cargo to a planet, the cargo is automatically unloaded that same turn.
Case 2, the planet is empty. In this case you use both the AUTOUNLOAD option and Routes. Example. Your home planet is called Coosy_Home, and some light years away from it is am empty planet called 111. If you use the orders:
R Coosy_Home COL 111
O AUTOUNLOAD
then all your cargo ships at Coosy_home will be automatically loaded with Colonists, the ships will be send to 111, and their the colonist will be automatically unloaded. This all in one turn.
Yes you can. Just use the U and S orders.
Suppose the 100 cargo ships have the group number 20, then you use the following orders:
B 20 50
L MAX COL
S MAX X
L 20 CAP
S 20 Y
A common question is, "I am at war with everybody. I send a probe to a planet but it was not shot down, how can this be?" It is sometimes confusing to determine whether or not a ship will be shot down, or a planet will be bombed or not. It depends on the peace/war status of all the nations. We will try to clarify this with a number of scenarios:
Scenario 1:
Consider the following situations:
Scenario 2:
Consider the following situations:
As you can see it is possible to bomb to planets in one turn.
Get a copy of the Galaxy Strategy Guide written by Jacco van Weert Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4. You have to read this to be able to survive more than a few turns.
The outcome of a bombing depends on many factors and can therefore be hard to predict. In the most simple case if there is a battle between two nations. If the owner loses the battle the planet is bombed. The population and industry is reduced to 25% of the original value. The winner of the battle becomes the owner of the planet.
The battle can also end in a draw. This happends when at the end of the battle ships are left that are not strong enough to destroy each other. For instance two ships with a huge shield and a tiny gun. In this case the planet is still bombed and the population and industry are reduced to 25% of the original value, however the planet will become neutral. Neutral means that nobody owns the planet. The planet will show be listed as uninhabited. The population is still there though, and the first nation to recolonize the planet gets the population and industry.
A more complicated scenario is when there is a battle between more than 2 players. In this case if the owner of the planet loses the battle, the owner ship will go to the one of the winning nations. Who this is, is determined by the order the nation has in the nation list (the one in the turn report). The one that comes first in this list gets the planet. Since this is unfair, a nation can claim ownership over a planet with the 'V' order. This allows allies to divide the planets the bomb amongst them. The 'V' order has to be issued before the battle takes place.
An interesting situation occurs when two or more allies all issue a 'V' command (they are then probably cheating on eachother :). In this case again the planet is bombed and becomes neutral, and the first one to colonize the planet becomes the owner.
With the intercept command you can order your fleet or groups to follow an enemy fleet that is on another planet.
This is an except from the Galaxy Manual: "..with the Intercept order, if alien ships leave the target planet that turn, your group will be sent towards whatever planet has the largest total mass of alien ships sent to it from the target planet, except that only planets which your group can reach in no more than two turns will be considered. Otherwise your group will be sent to the target planet itself."
A handy command. Be careful though. The sting is in the details. Imagine the following situation.
What will happen is that all your groups will follow that single probe to planet C! They will be in space for one turn and the groups of your enemy are free to do some damage.
You might expect that the intercept order would cause your groups to go to planet B. Planet B has the larger mass after all. However, the intercept command only takes in account the mass of groups that leave the planet you intercept on.
In this case, the mass of one probe.
The situation would be even worse if planet C was in two turn range of part of your groups. In this case, some of your groups will follow the probe, while the others will go to planet B, and stand a smaller chance of winning the battle. This problem does not occur of cource if you organized your groups in fleets.
On the upside of this all. The rules apply both ways; if the roles are reversed you can use the same trick on your enemy.
First you must read Ship Design in Galaxy and Blind Galaxy, written by Howard Bampton.
Galaxy TV is a turn viewer. It creates a graphical representation of the Galaxy that you can use to analyse your current situation and create your orders. Many players use this program, though you need a MS-Windows machine to use it gtv4_3.zip. This was one of the first turn viewers, there are many more nowadays link to them can be found on http://www.galaxyng.com/ng/Tools/tools.html.
Yes you can download one from here batsim32.zip (MSWindows) and another one you can find on http://www.galaxyng.com/ng/Tools/wopr.html (C Source).
Take a look at http://galaxyview.sourceforge.net/tools.html
or http://www.galaxyng.com/ng/Tools/tools.html.