Ok, I gotta confess, I don't know how to play
yet. This game is a monster! Have you ever played Trade Wars?
This game makes it look like a little kids game. My brother says
that any game that has docs over 50 pages is too much like work;
but this is fascinating, and a lot more than 50 pages over all.
So I fired up the game and ignored the tutorial, I found the
setup game. Let me hit just the high points. You can adjust the
galaxy size, set the chance for warp points and are they
connected. You can decide the severity and frequency of external
events. You can decide what tech areas are allowed and the costs
of same.
You can set the number of racial advantages per empire; and set
starting tech levels, starting points per empire, in addition to
those from facilities. You can adjust the score display You can
set the placements of empires, the values and numbers of starting
planets. You can set up for random generated computer players,
and set their difficulty level. You decide the victory
conditions, such as score, or number of years played, or numbers
of years at peace, tech levels, etc.
The mechanics window has options for all players on one machine,
or multi-playing [which allows a master password, and secret
cheat codes-but I'll bet those are for registered versions.
Then you are finally allowed to go to the game and stare at the
four different windows, first time this happens, you might feel a
little intimidated, but you'll get over it-in several weeks.
You'll recognize File in the upper left corner; after that you
are offered design types, ship designs, enemy designs, combat
strategy and combat simulator. There are nine different kinds of
reports generated for you every turn, production output,
purchases, research, intelligence, politics, and repair
facilities.
This didn't even mention troops, fighters and I saw something
about ground vehicles, but I lost it. The list of what you get
with registration is awesome. So I guess you got to forgive me
for not finishing learning the rules before sharing this with
you. Come-download-BUT I hope you don't have anything important
to do tomorrow!