Visual Comprehensive Guide

From Galactic Fleets Wiki

Authored by Ellias

Contents 1 Getting to know thyself 1.1 Starting Ships and Planets 1.2 Colonization 1.3 Getting Started 2 Your place in the galaxy 3 The ground beneath our feet 3.1 Items 3.2 Buildings 3.3 Supplies 3.4 People 3.5 System life 3.6 Events 4 Meet friends and influence people 4.1 Players 4.2 Information Buttons 4.3 Factions 5 Your ticket to faraway places 5.1 Ships 5.2 Construction 5.3 Platforms and Mining 5.4 Maintenance Costs 6 The path to enlightment 6.1 My Fleet 6.2 My Planets/My Systems 6.3 My Account 6.4 Points 6.5 Other buttons 6.6 Inactivity and Vacation Mode 6.7 Time 7 War, huh! What is it good for? 7.1 Invasions 7.2 Ship Classes 7.3 Abandoned Ships 7.4 Planet defense 7.5 Attacking ships 8 Appendix

[edit] Getting to know thyself

GF is a complex and large game, so don't feel bad if you do not grasp everything right away. Now when you signed up, you chose the name for your Fleet and your name, as well as your starting location. Now this was either Outer Rim, Inner Rim, or Core. Depending on which you chose, you could be in several places. Outer Rim will place you around the outside of the galaxy. By the looks of it, each area fills from the top left, and works to the right, before coming back to the left and down. Hence depending on how soon after GF began will determine where in the gaalxy you are. Inner Rim will be between the Outer Rim and the Core, sort of like a set of concentric rings, except they are square.

Your starting system will be randomly determined, but it will include at least one habitable planet (your homeworld) and up to 2 other habitable planets. There are several types of planets, and each has differing atributes assigned to them. The most obvious distinction will be what they look like on the System map, and the second most obvious distinction will be that each produce different types of items. These will be detailed below. You will also be given four ships to start you off: a Light Freighter (LF), a Light Transport (LT), a Light Cruiser (LCR) and a Colony Ship. All four will be fully fuelled and ready to move to your command. Now these ships do different things, and I shall quickly detail them here before more details are listed later.

[edit] Starting Ships and Planets

LF: These ships will allow you to move items between planets, so that you can trade for credits, so that you can purchase those items you really need. It also allows you to ship items between your own planets. BEWARE: All ships that have cargo capacity can only take 1 type of items, reagardless of any space there might be left on board - take this into account when shipping items.

LT: These ships only move civilians, workers and troops between planets. They are most useful for evacuating your planets of people, and to ship troops to warzones.

LCR: This is a warship, and its purpose is self evident. However, warships have an ammo requirement called Shells. Your first ship will have a full stock, but you will need to make/buy more later. It can also ship troops around as well.

Colony Ship: This will be one of the most important ships to you. It is the only way you can claim more planets and help you to grow. You will need to put 10,000 workers on board to make it work, and once you get to a planet you wish to take over, and have 500 turns remaining you can colonise it.

Your planet will also have various items that you can use to construct various buildings, or convert to different items. There will also be various civilians, workers and troops as well.

That lists your starting specs, so lets move onto getting your second planet and expanding.

[edit] Colonization

To colonise a planet, you first need a Colony Ship with 10,000 workers on board. Then you need to move your Colony Ship to the planet you wish to colonise. Once at the planet, click on your ships name, and then on the Colonize button - you will need 500 turns to do this. This will removeyour Colony Ship from the game, but will allow you to claim the planet for your fleet, and build a Civic Centre there as well. The 10,000 workers will be unloaded too. You will need to bring additional civilians to ensure that the workers do not return to civilians. $500,000 will also be transfered to the planet fund from the fleet fund to prevent workers being turned back so soon after colonisation.

See below for details on moving population to ships and moving.

[edit] Getting Started

Right, many people need more help with actually getting started, so here is the part of the guide that gets you going. If you do not understand how to do a certain part such as moving a ship, please refer to other sections of this Guide - this section is an attempt to get you started on the road to your empire, rather than as a background information section. This is under the asumption that you are in a new sector, with no 'veteran' players nearby to sell items. If there are, then you may be able to skip some of the steps below, and just buy the items you need. However to become even fairly self-sufficient you will need pretty much everything that follows.

When you start you have the items as described above. You will generally get enough materials to build a couple of buildings, but hold off for a minute. Find out what your particular home planet is, and the resource it makes. To start off with you will be needing Electronics as there is nowhere near enough at the beginning to get you self-sufficient. To get electronics you will need two different planets to get the resources you need: a Desert planet to get Silicon; and a Marginal planet for Gold. These two can be combined in a Tech Factory to make Electronics.

Its very unlikely you will be able to get both of these planets at the beginning - you only have one Colony Ship, and you will be wasting resources on another at this point. You will probably have to talk with other players near you and organise someone to make gold, and another to make the silicon. One or the other, or even a third player can then take these two and make the electronics. You will be needing plenty of these. When moving the items around, your best bet is to either set the sell/buy price to $1 for the trade, or just simply drop the items off in their Stores.

Now you have plenty of electronics, its time to move onto the next concern: Plexisteel. There is only one way to get this - build a mining platform and modify the items. However, MI platforms are huge beasties and will require much coordination with your fellow players. One person needs to build a Ship Yard, and gather resources from the others to build a MI. This can then be sent out into the systems to mine Iridium Ore. Now another person will likely be needed to build a Refinery and a Manufactory, or one to two different players etc. Then ship the Ore to the Refinery, make it into Iridium Alloy, and then ship this to the Manufactory for it to be converted into Plexisteel.

Ok, you now have the items needed for the construction of everything else (along with some other items), that aren't resources to be collected. Your best bet now is to build either a Colony Ship or two (mind the points though) and/or some more Light Freighters. Then just build up your fleets, and planets, help each other out with items, and try to each build different things, at least in the beginning - there is no point in you both having the same buildings, as thats the worst way to waste resources at the beginning. Also, do not build the Biodome or Resevoir at the beginning as they are not needed - save for other buildings instead.

Depending on which sector you started off in, there may be some inactive planets lying around from players that started off, and then gave up for whatever reason. The majority of these planets will have all the starting resources, so if you can invade them you will get a planet, plus all the resources. However you will be needing arounf 15k troops to guarantee a victory over the basic 10k troops you are given. If there is at least on such planet near you, then it might be worth you investing in a Barracks to make Troops. It will take you several goes as your Light Transport will not be able to carry all the Troops you will need to win outright.

[edit] Your place in the galaxy

Now we shall move on to, well, moving. Whenever you logon, your Flag Ship (initially your first LCR, but you can change that) and any other ships that are in the same grid square will be selected. This is your active fleet, and you can add and remove ships from this by selecting, or deselecting the tick boxes next to each ships name. If you have a ship in a different grid square and you select that, it will automatically deselect any other ships that you had previously selected, so you do not have to deselect your fleets if you are shuffling various ships in different areas.

Once your fleet is selected you need to take into account 3 things: Turns, Hydrogen, and Dark Matter. Turns are what your ship uses to move around, so the fewer there are, the less your ships can move. Hydrogen (H) and Dark Matter (DM) are two different types of fuel:

Hydrogen: This fuel is used when your ship moves within one system, and doesn't jump to a different System. This will come up with Light Speed and will show you the amount of turns that will be used and turns remaining, as well as H needed, and remaining.

Dark Matter: This is analoguos to H, except it is used to jump between systems. This will show a Hyper Space button instead, but the same turns and fuel numbers will show up.

When you select your fleet, you will enter the System view, and see all the planets (or not) in the system. This allows you to lightspeed between grids, by first clicking on one of the grid squares you wish to move to, then press the Lightspeed button. To change systems, click on the Sector View button to the right. This will show all the systems in the Sector your in. Click on the system you wish to travel to, and it will list the turn and Dark Matter cost for the jump - beware that the distance may be too great for the currently selected ship, even with full turns and fuel.

To move, simply press the Light Speed/Hyper Jump button and you will move you ship to that location. When you move between systems, you may notice that the DM cost between jumps may change. This is due to that fact that gravitational effects will change the DM cost. If you jump from a Null system surrounded by Null systems to a Null system surrounded by Null systems, the cost will be the lowest. As the number of Active systems surrounding the system you jump to and from increase, so does the DM cost. Jumping into an Active system rather than a Null system will also increase the cost. An Active system is a system that has some sort of solar system, whether it be a Stage 1 up to Stage 5, while a Null system has nothing in it.

To move between Sectors, you need to travel to a system on the edge of the sector, adjacent to the Sector you wish to move to. ie if you are in Sector 91 and wish to move to Sector 71 (one sector up), you move to a system that is at the top of system 91, and then go to Galactic view. Then click on the system you wish to move to (in this case 71) and once that page loads, click on view Sector. This will show you the overview of the sector as normal. Then click on a system that is next to your current system in the other sector, as normal for moving. Then just click Hyperspace as normal.

The Nav Computer will reduce hassle for long, repeated trips. If you plan on using a route a lot, find the best, shortest and cheapest (in DM cost) route between the two planets. Although you can just click there, that will take the most direct route, which may go through other systems, and that uses up more fuel. Also, making a route will mean that jumping into a sun is prevented, and you will avoid that annoyance. (Currently this feature is not implemented so don't worry about it at the moment)

To create a route, start on one grid and click the little + next to the Nav number. This will add that grid to the Nav Point list. Then move to the various systems between the two you go on and add a Nav point for each system. It will only allow you to add one that is next to the previous system in the route. Once you reach the destination add that point and click on the Create Route button. Name it and then when you leave from either planet, in Sector View you can select that route instead and the total turn and DM cost will be shown - much easier.

[edit] The ground beneath our feet

Now planets are one of the backbones of GF. You can theoretically survive without even one, but you would find it extremely hard, especially if you haven't been playing for long. Planets hold the majority of your items, your population and allow you to change the various items into others. Each planet will be one of several types. First there are three that you cannot colonise as they are too alien to live on: Demonic, Gas Giant and Barren. All the others can be colonised. Each has a different item they produce, and possibly penalties to food and water production:

[edit] Items

Planet Type	Item	Penalty	Population growth	civ:worker ratio
Adaptable:	Spice	N/A	Normal	3:1
Desert:	Silicon	less water	Slow	1:1
Glacial:	Helium II	less food	Slow	3:1
Marginal:	Gold	less water	Slow	5:1
Pelagic:	Polymer	N/A	Normal	8:1
Terrestrial:	Luxuries	N/A	Fast	9:1
Utopia:	Unknown	N/A	Fast	19:1

Whether the population growth is an inherent stat, or whether its linked to the food/water generation is unknown at the moment.

Some of these items will be used to make others, such as gold and silicon, while others are used diresctly, such as polymer or luxuries. You need a minimum number of Workers on the planet to access the resource, and this varies from 2,000 to 10,000 Workers.

You can construct various buildings on your planet to aid your fleet, and these are listed below. Full details about what each does exactly may be listed at the end in a appendix, but here I shall just go through what they do roughly.

[edit] Buildings

Civic Center: This is the backbone of your planet. Here you can convert your civs and workers back and forth so that you can keep an even amount of food and water avaliable. Also, the more workers you have, the less turns it will take to construct buildings and make ships. Increasing the level of the Civic Center means that more workers can be used to gather resources from the planet, meaning that you can generally get 2 or 3 times as many resources as the previous level allowed you to gather.

Bio Dome: This building increases the amount of food produced on the planet, and also allows you to see the usage of food on the planet.

Reservior: This building increases the amount of water produced on the planet, and allows you to see the usage of water on the planet.

Barracks: Allows you to convert civs and workers to troops.

Refinery: Allows you to process various ores into alloys.

Manufactory: This converts various items, such as alloys into other items.

Biofactory: Coverts food and water into medicines etc.

Techfactory: Allows the formation of advanced items.

Armoury: Allows the production of Armaments (used in warship construction), Shells (ammuniton for warships), Fighters, Bombers, and Mechs - all used for attacking (placed on warships) or defending (stationed at planets).

Ship Yard: This is where all your ships are built. There are several different classes, listed later. The more workers you have, the less turns will be required to build a ship.

With each of the buildings, there are several different ranks, with I being the lowest, and going up higher. Each new level comes with a more efficient usage of turns, so that more items can be transformed or ships built with the same number of turns. All buildings can be used with no Workers or Civilians on the planet, with the exception of the Ship Yard, as the turn requirement is inherent to it.

Turns are used in the construction of both ships and buildings on planets, and in the gathering of resources. Plan your usage wisely, as you only get 1 turn per minute, up to a maximum of 1,500 turns stored. After that is reached, further time is wasted in gathering turns. Its best not to have too many different buildings on a planet, as its unlikely that it will give you any advantage, and will split your attention from whats needed. Try and keep different buildings on different planets.

Buildings have maintenace cost associated with them as well:

Civic Center:

• I: 10,000
• II: 30,000
• III: 90,000
• IV: 270,000
• V: 810,000

Ship Yard:

• I: 20,000
• II: 60,000
• III: 180,000
• IV: 540,000
• V: 1,620,000

Others:

• I: 5,000
• II: 15,000
• III: 45,000
• IV: 135,000
• V: 405,000

[edit] Supplies

All the supplies on the planet will be listed in the Supplies button on the main page of the planet. This will show you all the items that the planet is currently holding, purchasing and selling. The list on the left shows items that you have there, or are purchasing. In Storage shows what you have, Max Store tells you how much the maximum number of the item you can have (0=infinite amount), and Will Pay indicates how much you are willing to pay for an item (0=will not pay). As you can see you can setup to buy items at a certain price and only buy so many. If you need to buy an item that is not listed already, use the drop down box at the bottom to choose the item, select it, and how many you wish to purchase. When you wish to sell some items, type in the amount you wish to sell in the In Storage box, and click the S button. This will bring those items to the right of the screen. Here it will tell you how many items you have left to sell, and how much you are selling them for. Initially, the price will be set at the galactic average, so you may need to tweak the prices slightly to compare with the prices of those planets near you, and any bargains you may have made. Again, if you wish to return any of those items back to your planet storage, select the amount and press the S button to the right.

You can view the galactic average price, by clicking on the items name. This will show you in a bar graph the average price for that item over the past few days.

At the top of this screen shows how much food and water you currently have in your reserve. If your workers do not make enough food and water for both them and the current number of civilians, food and water will be removed from here. Once the reserfve level drops to 0, your civs will start to die off unless you make more workers, or bring in more food and water. Beware though, if you have a large reserve, and it runs out, you will loose a lot of civilians as you will unlikely be able to make enough workers to make up that shortage. Eventually it will even out with the excess food and water produced by the workers being used by the civs.

You can also see what items you have over all your planets using the My Resources button in the top right menu bar. This will list all the items on your planets, whether you are buying them or selling them, how many you wish to get, and their locations. Very handy when you are shifting resources around.

[edit] People

Your civilians are one of your major sources of credits. You need to keep them supplied with enough food and water that they can grow. There are three amounts of taxes you can give them, and the money you get from each civilian is listed below:

Low Taxes: $0.5 per civ

Average Taxes: $1 per civ

High Taxes: $1.5 per civ

Obviously you will get more credits with a higher tax rate, but conversly you will also get a lower approval rating. Be careful to balance the two. Also, there is a limit on how much tax you can get per hour: $100mil. This is just on what each planet earns each hour. Also, each planet can only hold $5bil total, and any credits gained over this is lost.

Conversly with this, Workers and Troops will need to be payed each hour. Civilians produce credits as above and the others use them up as follows:

Workers: $1 per worker

Troops: $2 per troop

Planets also have a limit of the size of the population. There is a base amount dependant on the size of the planet, and then each level of Civic Center increases the amount the planet can hold by 3. If your population goes above this value, then the excess civilians will rebel, and you will need to use Troops to destroy them. Population is counted as Civilians, Workers and Troops.

Size 1 Planet

• lvl 1 upto 1,000,000
• lvl 2 upto 3,000,000
• lvl 3 upto 9,000,000
• lvl 4 upto 27,000,000
• lvl 5 upto 81,000,000

Size 2 Planet

• lvl 1 upto 2,000,000
• lvl 2 upto 6,000,000
• lvl 3 upto 18,000,000
• lvl 4 upto 54,000,000
• lvl 5 upto 162,000,000

Size 3 Planet

• lvl 1 upto 3,000,000
• lvl 2 upto 9,000,000
• lvl 3 upto 27,000,000
• lvl 4 upto 81,000,000
• lvl 5 upto 243,000,000

[edit] System life

One serious point that you must know is that planetary systems are not immutable - they will change fairly often. There are 5 stages of systems:

Stage 1 (Nebula): Newly forming system, lasts between 60-90 days.

Stage 2 (Proto): Has a sun. Thats it. Lasts 1 day.

Stage 3 (Early): Has proto-planets, gas giants and asteroids. Lasts 1 day.

Stage 4 (Living): The first habitable stage. This is what your first system will be and what you need to look out for. Lasts between 55-85 days.

Stage 5 (Dying): When your systems change to this, prepare for evacuation. You can 5 days before the system and everything in it goes BOOM! The system will then revert back to a Stage 1.

So, if you can check that the system you are going to colonise has only just turned Stage 4, or your resources might be wasted for nothing. Hopefully there will be a system clock that will tell you how long ago they system turned, which will help.

[edit] Events

There are also Events that can affect your planets. These will reamain until you fix them. There will be a News article when you login, and in you Logs section in My Fleet. To fix a problem simply go to the planet, and under the planetary funds the name of the event will be listed. Just click it, and it will tell you how many civs are affected, what you need to fix it, and how much you need.

Disease: Common. Spreads slowly. Needs Medicine to fix. Approximately 1 meds for each 1,000 population affected.

Plague: Uncommon. Spread quickly. Needs Medicine to fix. Approximately 1 Medicine for each 20 population affected.

Rebellion: Caused by low approval rating, the lower the rating the higher the chance of rebellion. Needs Troops to fix. Also, if you do not use Luxuries/Liquor to improve the Approval Rating, another rebellion will occur. Approximately 1 Troops for every 10 Rebels.

Zombies: Rare. Spreads fast. Needs Troops to fix. Approximately 1 Troop for every 5 Zombies.

You can evacuate your civilians to save them from the Event. Currently these only affect civs - not workers or troops directly, although you can loose both through either death (for troops fighting zombies/rebels) or being converted back to civs through loss of money.

[edit] Meet friends and influence people

[edit] Players

Now you know how to move your ships, and what your planets do, its time to meet you neighbours and start trading. You can message various players my simply selecting their fleet name/player name and using the Send Message button. This will allow you to send that player a message. You can also do several other things in the player page. You can add them as a Contact which will put their name in the Contact page (top left menu bar) so that you can get to their information easily, request a Treaty meaning that your ships will not attack each other, and may mean that in times of war your ships will help them and vice versa. You may also declare war on them, transfer credits and points.

If you declare war on someone, you have the option to ask for a Cease Fire. You will not be able to use the Trading Post on that players planets and your ships will fire upon each other. When you have accepted a treaty, the option to declare war will be greyed out. BEWARE: you do not get a message that a fleet has asked for a treaty with you so you must check your Fleet information page and go to the View Allies button. Here will show you who has a treaty with you, and any treaties that have been sent by you and not accepted, or treaties sent to you that need to be accepted. You can also see who you are at war with in the War Status button.

[edit] Information Buttons

Now you know where your neighbours are and have contacted them, you should see what they are selling/buying. Now you could go to the planet and physically see what they need, but there is a button at the top called Item Prices. Clicking this will list all items being sold in your current sector. You can change the sector it shows prices for, and to see who is buying as well as selling. It will give a list, in alphabetical order of items, along with the number being sold/bought and the price for those items. Further right, it will detail which sector and system they are being sold at, and who is selling it. Make sure you take only what you can sell as you will need the space to bring items back - remember that your ships can only take one type of cargo at a time.

Similar to this is the Ship Prices button. This is basically the same, but shows ships being sold in each sector. You cannot set ships to be bought on this page, so there is no page for that.

You can also transfer credits and points to other players. I touched on the buttons earlier, and clicking those buttons in a players infor page will go to the transfer page, with their transfer code already inserted. Then just type in the amount you wish to transfer and off it goes. The transfer should be instantaneous. Alternatively, if you have the transfer code already, just go to the Transfers button at the top and insert the code. By default that page will list your own transfer code, so you can give it to others.

You can also search for other players using the Search function at the bottom. Here you can search for Players, Fleets, Factions, Planets and Systems so you can find those near you.

There are also a Galactic Comms and a Chat Room that you can use to comunicate with other players that are online and using the program. Not all of the payers will be near you, but you can get some useful information from anyone online.

[edit] Factions

You can also join a faction and get all the benefits of their knowledge. You may have been invited to join one already - this one. Here you will gain information from other members who have been here longer than you, and setup trading partners from members near you. There are five ranks in a faction, but the top four can have any names from a list. In the JTA, the top two ranks get to choose their own titles. The (3) rank are generally Knights, but there are a few Senators and Consuls. The (4) rank are Paladins, and the (5) rank are always Members, regardless of the faction.

There may be several options for each rank, depending on what the faction leader(s) have decided. Everyone can access the Message Board and the Message All function, as well as the Faction Comms. These are all self-explanatory. Other options for the Faction include: Edit Sybmbol - same as for the Fleet vesion, changes the symbol used for te faction; Edit Description - again same as for the Fleet, changes what others will be able to read about the faction when they look at it; Edit Information - this changes what the members of the faction can see when they enter the My Faction page. Only the faction members can see this, so it is generally used for events and things that affect the faction.

You may also be able to View Logs, which shows what is happening to the fleet, such as invites, people leaving, alliances forced etc. View Invites is just that - you can see who has been invited to the faction - only 10 active Invites can be had however since the faction membership can be infinite. This is only for Non Viewed invites - Viewed invites do not count towards the limit. View Systems is also there. Currently this doesn't work, but presumbly you will eventually be able to see the systems the faction controls. At the bottom is also the Leave Faction button should you wish to leave. Remember any invites you have been offered which you haven't accepted will remain until they expire. Also, as said before, factions do not have a maximum size, and nor do each of the ranks. This means that you can have as large a faction as you wish. Do not worry about inactive players - they are removed after 5 days inactivity as fleets, and when they log back in they will have to restart.

In the factions you can store credits which can then be sent to members to help them out, or just send to others to pay for favours etc. However there is a $10bil credit limit to this fund, and any credits that are sent that take it over this will be lost.

[edit] Your ticket to faraway places

Ships are one of your most important assets in GF - without them you will die as soon as your system goes nova. This means that you are going to needto either build them or buy them. Buying is easy, so long as there are ships being sold. When buying ships, you need to have a ship of your own in the system where the ship is being sold, to allow the trade to happen. The other method of getting ships is building them, and is detailed below:

[edit] Ships

You will need to build a Ship Yard on one of your planets. Once that is done, you will see a drop down list in the Ship Yard page. This will show several different ships. The first type are the Non-Combat ships:

Transports: These ships allow you to move civilians, workers and troops around your planets.

Freighters: These ships allow you to move your items around.

Suppliers: These ships can bring H and DM to your stranded ships so that they do not have to refuel themselves and waste turns. Also these ships will bring shells to your ships for when your ships run out of these items.

All four types have four different classes: Light, Normal, Heavy and Bulk. As the size of the ship goes up, so does the amount it can carry, whether it be cargo, people etc. With each increase in size, will come an increase in the amount of items needed to build it as well as turns.

There are also Combat ships. For details on the attack script see later:

(Light Class Warships) Light Corvette - 2 X Rail Guns / 5,139 Isatons Light Frigate - 4 X Rail Guns / 10,278 Isatons Light Destroyer - 8 X Rail Guns / 20,556 Isatons Light Cruiser - 16 X Rail Guns / 41,113 Isatons Light Carrier - 400 X Drones / 102,706 Isatons

(Medium Class Warships) Corvette - 4 X Rail Guns / 10,278 Isatons Frigate - 8 X Rail Guns / 20,556 Isatons Destroyer - 16 X Rail Guns / 41,113 Isatons Cruiser - 32 X Rail Guns / 82,226 Isatons Carrier - 800 X Drones / 205,412 Isatons

(Heavy Class Warships) Heavy Corvette - 8 X Rail Guns / 20,556 Isatons Heavy Frigate - 16 X Rail Guns / 41,113 Isatons Heavy Destroyer - 32 X Rail Guns / 82,226 Isatons Heavy Cruiser - 64 X Rail Guns / 164,451 Isatons Heavy Carrier - 1,600 X Drones / 410,824 Isatons

(Super Class Warships) Battleship - 168 X Rail Guns / 431,684 Isatons Dreadnaught - 256 X Rail Guns / 657,805 Isatons

The various ships have different abilities, and these shall be covered later in the war section. Needless to say that the bigger the ship, the more powerful they are, and coversly the more expensive to build.

Ships have turns, the same way as planets do. They gain them at the same rate of 1 per minute, up to a maximum of 1,500. Turns are used by ships to move around, and probably to attack as well. Some ships also have a turn usage to activate special abilities such as colonising, invading or starting or stopping mining. These are listed elsewhere.

[edit] Construction

In the ship page, once you have selected a ship to build it will refresh and show you the stats of the ship on the left, and the items needed to build it on the right. There will be a second number in brackets after these - this is your current level of those supplies. This means that you don not have to flick between this page and the Supplies page to find out if you have enough resources. If you do, click the Build button and your will enter the prelimenary stages of construction - the needed items are removed, and the page changes to allowing you to enter how many turns you want to use to build it. If you do not have the entire amount of turns needed, it will show a percentage of how far it is finished.

Once the ship is finished, it will appear in orbit around your planet, but with no H or DM at all. So make sure you have fuel at your ship building planet.

When you place population on ships, they do not need anything to keep them alive - they will remain on there indefinately. With one exception: Troops require $4 per hour or they get converted to civilians. Do not worry if your ship doesn't have slots for civs (such as the Light Cruiser) as this indicates what you can put on, not what can be stored there. You can think of this cost as the $2 payment fee and the extra $2 as food/water supplies or hazardous pay.

[edit] Platforms and Mining

There is another type of ship called Platforms. These are the mining ships of GF, and is the only way ores will enter the game, and the most efficent route to obtain H and DM. There are three platforms:

M Platform: These platforms mine and allow you to get the afformentioned ores.

H Platform: These platforms allow you to mine H much more effeciently.

DM Platform: These platforms allow you to mine DM much more effeciently.

Again there are different levels of platform, ranging from I to III. The higher the level, the larger the capacity of the platform to hold cargo, and the turn usage on gathering resources is much better, allowing you to get more resources in the same time period.

To mine you need to enter the system view, and click the Scan System button on the right. This will bring coloured squares into the map. Green are for planets/inhabited planets, while the orange/red squares indicated either other players fleets or asteroids. You have to move there to determine which one, so its best to use a different ship to a platform to prevent wastage of turns/H. Once at an asteroid field, click the scan system button again, and it will tell you which type of asteroid is there. There are four different types:

• Iridium
• Zirconium
• Tetrium
• Quadrium

Each have different usages, but all will need a refinery to make them more useful. Once at an asteroid you wish to mine, click on your platforms name to enter the descriptive page, and scroll down to the bottom and it will have a section asking you if you wish to mine. Click the start mining button (this will use up 100 turns) and then enter the number of turns you wish to use to mine. Ores mined will be stored in the cargo hold, and this can be transfered to freighters so you can leave the platform there mining. Once you feel you have all the ore you need and want to move on, click the Stop Mining button (again this uses 100 turns) and you are free to move as normal.

For the H and DM platforms, its the same process, except you do not need to go to an asteroid field to mine - you can do it anywhere in the system. However each system has differing levels of H and DM and can be found out by having a ship there and selecting that ship, then going to Sector view. Alternatively the H/DM platform will tell you, but it would waster turns/DM moving to find out.

Each ship can refuel itself, in the ships description page at the bottom. Various ways to get the best have been worked out, but to get the most DM/H for your turns is to start with the least amount of turns and work upwards until the message bar no longer says Not Enough turns to refuel. However this is extremely inefficent and should only be used if there are no refuellers nearby, or the ship is not doing anything and is used for collecting fuel only.

[edit] Maintenance Costs

All ships require regular payments of credits from the Fleet Fund to keep them active. Costs are currently unknown, but they will presumably scale so that larger ships cost more. If you have no credits in your Fleet Fund, then your ships will begin to loose Hull Integrity. Currently it appears that this loss is a fixed amount, rather than a percentage, so ships will loose hull integrity faster than others as below - ships on the left loose Hull Integrity the fastest.

Light > 'normal' > Heavy > Bulk > Super Heavy Warships

If you get to zero credits in your Fleet Fund, take some from your planets, as otherwise you will loose all your ships.

There is also a $10bil credit limit for your fleet, so any credits that are moved into this fund that goes over the limit will be lost.

[edit] The path to enlightment

[edit] My Fleet

Now you know a fair amount about your fleet and planets, heres how to change a few things, and keep up to date. In the My Fleet section, you are able to change both your player name and fleet name. This will not incur any penalties at all to your fleet. However you cannot hide from people using this method - if you are in their contacts, their contact page will update for your new information. The player name here will change your name in the game and in the Faction/Galactic Comms windows.

This page will also show your Start Date, and the current funds of the Fleet (these funds are separate from your planet's funds, although you can move the credits between the two) and the description of your fleet that you have written.

Now the View Allies and War Status buttons have already be covered, sp onto the Symbol button. This will give you a page that allows you to upload two different pictures for yout fleet. One, a 16x16 pixel picture will be shown next to your ships names in the map view, and next to your name in the Comms windows, and in the Faction list. The other image, 80x80 pixels will be shown to the left of your name in the My Fleets window, and when others view your player/fleet info. They have to be .gif files though.

The View Logs button allows you to view important information about your fleet, such as Events, when credits were transfered, when items were deposited at your planets rather than sold there.

The last button is the Edit Description. This allows you to change what the test in your player/fleet description says. It uses bbCode, such as is used here, with the exception that colours use the #FFFF00 type coding, not hard names like green.

[edit] My Planets/My Systems

These two pages allow you to view the planets you control, and the systems that you have claimed. You can sort them by clicking any of the headings at the top, to say get a listing of the population of the planets. This will help you obtain specific information about the planet/system more easily. This is automatically set to alphabetical order, based on the planet's/system's name.

The My Systems listing tells you location of the system, its name, what stage it currently is at, the sector its in, and the dates when the system was formed and when it will go nova. If you click on the system number of the system you can change the name of the system.

The My Planets listing gives you information on the level of credits on the planet, what amounts of population you have on there, and the food and water reserves on the planet.

[edit] My Account

Now the Account button at the top right has a few more options. The player name here is for the Chat Room ONLY. It will not affect anything in the game at all. It will also list your Start and Joined date, as well as any Points you have accrued. There will be a reference for other players to use to join GF - if they use that link, you get 100 points for each player. You can also start Vacation Mode from here. Once started your fleet will not be destroyed after 5 days as would be the normal experience for not logging in. However planets and systems are still affected by the system changes and may go nova before you get back online. Therefore either transfer your planets to a friend, or evacuate as much as you can and hide in a Null system to survive.

Another page, is the Options page. Here you can choose whether the help boxes are shown, change your password, and your email address.

[edit] Points

Points are a second currency in GF. They are obtained in three ways:

Donating: If you donate towards GF, you will recieve points for this. Its 1,000 points per dollar you donate, and is instantaneous.

Voting: You can also vote. In the voting page at the bottom is a list of site to vote at - most of them need some sort of secondary input, so don't open them and then close. If you vote at all of them you can get up to 92 points a day, and they will be allocated to you up to 24 hours later.

Point Market: Here you can purchase points from other players. You have a maximum limit of 300 a day, depending on how ofter you voted. Also, there is a $1mil per point limit when selling, so if you wish to get more for your points, post in the forum and ask fro a trade.

Points are currently only used to construct ships - undoubtedly they will have another purpose later.

[edit] Other buttons

There are a few buttons left that I haven't touched upon yet. The first is the Forum, and the Wiki buttons. These take you to the forum pages, and the wiki site respectively. Both are good sources of information.

The Help button gives you details about the timing in GF, and the official guide for GF, currently this guide. The Guide button doesn't have anything in its page yet, but presumably it will list some guides on how to play GF.

[edit] Inactivity and Vacation Mode

If you happen to go inactive, this will be because you have not logged on in the past 10 days. When this happens you will loose any ships and planets you had. When you log back in, you will have to select a new location, fleet name etc as if you were registering the first time. When you do go inactive, your planets will loose their Protected status, and can be invaded as normal. This means that people looking for an easy planet to conquer should look for planets that have population and a Trading Post by don't have an owner - they have gone inactive and may have lots of resources as a bonus. This is because the planet remains as they left it, so any buildings, resource and population remain. However the costs to maintain Troops, Workers and civc remain, so depending on the setup they could all die off.

If you know you will be away for a while, you can enter Vacation Mode i the My Accounts page. This will render you account safe for a minimum of 5 days, after which if you log back in it will return to normal mode. During Vacation Mode, you will not loose ships etc, but planets still go through the Stages as normal, so your planets may be destroyed before you get back - either give them to someone else, or load as many resources and people onto ships as possible and hide in a Null system.

[edit] Time

Time in GF is counted slightly differently to normal. 1 minute real time is equivalent to 0.01 CE in-game. This equates to 24 hours = 14.40 CE. Hence 1 week is approximately 100 CE.

[edit] War, huh! What is it good for?

[edit] Invasions

To invade a planet, you need to target a planet that is no longer in a Protected System, otherwise you cannot invade. You need to place Troops into a Transport ship of some kind, and move it to the target planet. Once there, if you have 100 turns left on the ship, click the Invade button and the invasion will begin. Attempt to have as many Troops as possible as the defensive force will have a bonus that will mean that they will kill off an equal number of attacking Troops.

[edit] Ship Classes

Each ship class has a speciality that aids in the workings of the fleet. Some will help defense, others attack. So when building your fleet, ensure that you know what your plans are for it and plan accordingly.

All Corvette: Anti Drone Ship so will defend against Fighter & Bomber Drones. Useful for both defense and attack to shield your ships from enemy drones. Has a higher accuracy against Fighters.

All Frigate: Escort Ship has advantage if Defender and protects Carriers. Good for defensive fleets around a planet. Deals increased damage if defending non-combat ships.

All Destroyer: Hunter Killer has advantage as Attacker and working in Packs. Useful for invasion fleets and general patrolling. Deals increased damage against non-combat ships.

All Cruiser: Multi Purpose Ship has no advantage or disadvantage. Useful to bulk out fleets that have a decent compliment of specialist ships. Deal increased damage if they are the attacker, and deal less damage if they are the defender.

All Carrier: Carries Drones but requires other Ships to defend it. Very handy to attack enemy fleets that have little or no Corvette protection.

Battleship: Has lots of Guns. Says it all really - who doesn't want one or more of these bad boys. Deals a small increase in damage if its the attacker.

Dreadnaught: Has a huge amount of Guns. Says it all really - who doesn't want one or more of these bad boys. Deals a small increase in damage if its the defender.

Flag Ship: Not really a class of its own, but has several unique things about it. The first is that whenever you log in, the fleet that the Flag Ship is with is automatically selected. During combat, a Flag Ship reduces the other fleets accuracy by 10%.

Each ship will have to be supplied with the right ammunition to carry on the fight in enemy territory. For the majority of the ships that will be Shells, but for the carriers this will be the drones (fighters and bombers). Ensure that you have a supply fleet coming with you for long haul invasions.

[edit] Abandoned Ships

Currently nothing can be done with these ships. Presumably once the attack script is in, we will be able to board these owner-less ships for ourselves. Until then we will just have to be content with looking at their dead husks.

[edit] Planet defense

To defend your planet, your warships are your first line of defence. However once the enemy has broken through, they will ba able to invade. Troops and Mechs will be your defences against this. Mechs had the same combat capability as 100 Troops, but they can only be actived with a Barracks.

Also, Mechs have a maintenace cost associated with them once they are activated, but that is currently unknown. Fighters and Bombers also have a cost, but only when on board a Carrier, or possibly activated by a Barracks for defence of the planet.

[edit] Attacking ships

Whe attacking other fleets, you must bear in mind several things. First, any fleets that are residing in their Protected System cannot be attacked at all. When attacking, your ships will automatically target the enemy warships first, and only attack non-combat ships after all the warships have been destroyed. Needless to say, only your warships can attack.

Attacking uses up 20 turns per ship, and each attack uses all the avaliable weapons on board, so long as there are enough Shells. The defending warships will not use up any turns with return fire. All warships have enough turns to attack 72 times a day (1440 turns in total). Each warship carries enough shells for 100 attacks. Each shell does one point of damage each.

Ships do additional bonus damage as listed above. Each Shell has a chance of hitting based on the accuracy of the ship. This is determined by the size difference between ships. So small ships attacking bigger ships have a higher accuracy, while big ships attacking smaller ones have a lower accuracy. Any attack that does damage has a chance of destroying a weapon or fighter, rather than damaging the hull. Fighters do damage equal to 1 Shell.

So when actually attacking, you must first be in the same grid square as the other fleet. Then you will see an Attack option listed along with their ships. Clicking this will allow you to make one attack against that fleet. This will load the attack page, and give you details about how much damage you dealt, and how much they dealt back to you. YOu may then opt to attack again once, or 10x to speed up the process. All attacks are kept in the logs part of your fleet.

[edit] Appendix