First, install and start the game as described in Quickstart. Select the singleplayer-mode including the tutorial. The tutorial will tell you almost everything you need to know to play the game. You need this manual only for details!

Ship handling

Ships in general
There are in general three different kinds of ships: Mining ships, construction ships, and battleships. Some ships are capable of doing several things, but that applies to the more advanced ships, and you are a small poor emperor at the moment, and can only buy the cheapest of the cheap. Mining ships are used to mine raw materials. They do this per turn, and they do it automatically on the planet where they are located. You can move these ships (if they have engines) to other planets, and then they will continue mining there. Different mining ships can be used to produce different materials, and some are even capable of creating advanced materials from simple materials.

By using these materals, you can use your shipyards to produce new ships. It's up to you to choose the right strategy - do you want more mining ships to be able to produce quicker later on? Do you want battleships to conquer new worlds quickly to earn more taxes? Or do you need more shipyards? Only one thing is for certain: All your ships start decaying after a while, and so does your shipyard. If your last shipyard is gone, then you cannot create new ships, and you will lose the game.

Moving ships
The interface can be set to different modes, the modes optimize the appearance of the interface for the intended tasks. Initially, the interface is in the strategy-mode, which facilitates movement of ships. In this mode, the planets and their connections are displayed, and so are the ships that are located at the planets. Next to the ships icon, you can see a bar that represents the ships state. Big and green means the ship is okay, small and red represents a damaged ship.

If you select a planet, then the lower part of the screen displays a list of all the ships that are located on this planet. Selecting a ship then displays a list of the weapons aboard this ship. Or you can select a ship on the galaxy-map directly, which also displays it in the list below.

You can move ships from one planet to another by dragging it in the galaxy-view with your mouse. While dragging, a line is displayed. All planets within the reach of the ships are displayed normally, while planets that are out of reach are greyed out. If you move your mouse to a planet within your reach, the planet will get a green target-cursor, while for non-reachable planets, the target-cursor will turn red (like in the screenshot). You will quickly notice that you can attack only frontline planets: you are not able to attack a planet to which you don't have a direct connection. So even if your ship is capable of traversing 10 hyperlinks in one leap, you will never be able to attack an opponent at a distant homeworld. During the first turn, this means you can only attack your direct neighbours. You may move your ships as often as you like during a game session - it is only the last position that counts for the next turn. Please keep in mind that when attacking another planet, the stronger you are in comparison, the less your ships suffer. And that the enemy may bring in reinforcements. And that defending a planet is easier than attacking it. Always attack in large numbers - or don't attack (there). The attack is not performed immediately of course, but as soon as the turn is done and the evaluation of all players turns takes place

Constructing new ships
To construct new fleets, the Strategy Mode is not very useful. You should select theProduction Mode to make the correct panels appear below. Also, the galaxy now displays the amount of materials on the planets, because the checkbox in the settings-panel is enabled in the production mode. If you want to customize the display for this mode, you may also choose to deactivate the planet names (to save that space on the screen)

Select a shipyard. On the panel below, you can view all ships that you have the blueprints for. Select a blueprint, and use the right part to view their capabilities, and their requirements.

• To produce a ship, you need to have enough materials of each type on your planet. In production mode, the galaxy view shows you the amount of materials on the planets, and the tab "Costs" displays the amount of materials the ship needs.
• The selected construction ship must have enough remaining production capacity. A construction ship with capacity of 50 units can produce two 25-unit-sized ships per turn, but cannot aid you in constructing a ship sized 60 units.
• You need enough money (displayed in the top left corner of the window)

If you meet all the requirements, the button for constructing the ship (found in the "Buy"-Tab) is enabled, otherwise it is grayed out. If it is grayed out, then there will be a text displaying more information below that button. After creating a new ship, you can use it for attacks immediately. New construction ships cannot be used in this turn yet, you'll have to wait for the next turn.

Repairing ships
You can buy repair-ships to repair ships that were damaged in battle. All you need to do is place the damaged ships and the repair-ships onto the same planet. By the next turn, your ships will have repaired a certain amount of damage. The more damaged ships you place, the slower they get repaired, because repair-capacity is limited. And the more repair ships you place, the quicker repairing is done. Just try it.

Giving away ships
You may feel that some of your ships could help an ally better by giving them to him. In this case, you have to hold down the SHIFT-key while dragging the ship. The line turns to purple, and the ship turns to grey when dropped on another planet. You may still move the ship back to your empire. But as soon as the turn ends, the ship belongs to the owner of that planet.

Ship details
Every ship has specific advantages and disadvantages. Some are cheap, others are expensive. Some need only few raw materials for their production, others require a huge amount of advanced raw materials. Some have massive weapon systems, but can only cross one hyperlink per turn. Some can jump five links or more, but start degrading after 3 turns, and are wrecked after another 5 turns even if you don't use them in attacks. Some mining ships can convert simple raw materials into expensive rawmaterials, but use a lot of money for that each turn. Other mining ships only convert few materials per round, but are so big that they can help you defending a planet by drawing the enemy fire to themselves, while your fighters can fight longer. So, it is impossible to say which ship is best. You have to find out about their capabilities in single player mode, and then use the best ships for the situation you find yourself in when in multiplayer mode.

Special units
The first special unit you will discover is the radar station. If your campaign supports fog of war, then you will only see your own planets and the adjacent ones. You have to create radar ships to enlarge the radius of planets you can see. Other special units will follow soon.



Population and taxes
Each planet has a population, and that population will pay the emperor some part of their taxes. You may charge different tax levels on your planets. The lower the taxes, the happier the people get, and the higher the taxes, the more angry they get. The happiness is shown as a smiling or angry face. An angry population might start a revolution after a while, so don't charge too much. Happy inhabitants may attract other planets to you empire, and they tend to fight better when attacked by other empires. You set the tax level by choosing the finance mode, selecting the planet, and then you can set the level on the lower part of your screen.

Developing new spaceships
In advanced campaigns, you will have access to starfleet-academies. These are huge university ships, which perform academic research for you. It is impossible to tell what new ideas they will come up with, and you cannot even tell them when to produce results. Just one thing is for sure: The more academies you have, the higher are the chances that they will develop new spaceship-designs for you. Research may cost some money and slow down your empires expansion, but it may also give you that extra-special shipdesign to crush your enemy...

Communication
Communication with other players is done via the "Communication Mode". Select the recipient of your message from the list, or select his planet in the galaxy view. Now enter the message into the big message textfield, and then press the send-button. Your message will be delivered to that emperors players email-address immediately. The mail will contain your emperor name, but not your player-name or even your email-address. Thus, in an anonymous campaign, you can send foul letters to your best friend, and still go drink a beer together without him suspecting you. Maybe he'll even complain to you that he is receiving these mean letters all the time! :-)

You can test this feature by sending a message to yourself. As you will see, it is not possible to reply to the mail directly, you have to log in to the game to answer.

Although this message-mechanism is trivial, you should not underestimate the power of communication. It is much easier winning a game if you have allies. And you will save a lot of spaceships too if you talk with your neighbours before attacking planets between your empires.

Ending the turn
After you have performed all the actions you wanted, you choose the "evaluation"-mode. Currently, there is only one big button to calculate the next turn. Click it, and see wether your moves were successful or not, and what your opponents have achieved.

Part 2 - Multiplayer Guide

In multiplayer mode, you can be a player or an administrator for a campaign (or both). We assume here that you want to join a running campaign. You should not try to administrate your own campaign without any playing experience.

Players guide

Entering Multiplayer
When IMP300 starts, press the "Multiplayer"-button. You will then be prompted for a username and a password. If you don't have an account yet, click the button to create a new account. This new account will not be an emperor-account yet. You can use one user-account to control many different emperors in different campaigns. You can also use this account to administrate you own campaigns later on. So this is the most important accounts of all - make sure to choose the name carefully, and to remember the password. You will get an email with your name and password, but emails have disappeared before. So remember your password, because once it is lost, it will remain lost forever!

One word on email-adresses, and on how to avoid spam: You don't have to enter an address here. But it is highly recommended, because this will be the address by which other players will contact you. Also, we will tell you by mail when your campaign enters its next turn.
So if you are afraid of getting spam-emails, then we can recommend "self-destroying" fake-emailadresses. They forward email to your real (secret) email-account, but only for a certain amount of time. For example, at SpamGourmet you can set up an account (for example, named "billclinton"), and from then on you can make up new email-adresses like "imp.12.billclinton@spamgourmet.com", which means you will only accept 12 emails to your account "billclinton" from us, and after that no email from us will reach you anymore. When evaluating other games, you can tell them that you are "destiny-sphere.8.billclinton@spamgourmet.com",and so on. We use our spamgourmet-accounts all the time, and are very satisfied with them.

After logging in you'll see a window that looks like the one displayed here. On the upper level, you can see all the currently active campaigns, and when you select a campaign, you see a list of the players that take part in that campaign. Below are buttons that can be used to create a new campaign, to administrate running campaign, to join a starting campaign, and to enter a running campaign.

Joining a campaign
To join a campaign, you have to find one that has is accepting players. This can be a campaign that has not started yet - indicated by the number of the turn being 0. Or it can be running campaign in which a player has stopped playing. In both cases, the campaign will display a "Yes" in the "Accepts player" column. Select that campaign, and make sure that the description of the campaign fits. If you are a beginner, don't sign up for an advanced players campaign. If you are an advanced player, don't sign up for a beginners campaign. If you speak french, don't enter a japanese campaign. If you want to play once a week, make sure you don't join a campaign that will have daily turns!

Joining a starting campaign: If you want to join a new campaign (turn number is 0) please press the "join campaign"- button. A window opens in which you can enter some details about the emperor you wish to impersonate. Most important are the name and the password - make sure to choose a nice name (you cannot change it later on), and to write down the password, as there is no way to get it back once you lose it. Note that for joining a campaign, you must know a password. This password is given to you after you have conquered 10 planets in the singleplayer mode. This mechanism helps us sorting out players that "are just looking around", but never come back when the campaign is running. Now it is time to lean back, and to wait for the campaign to start. If you provided a valid email-address, you will be notified of the start of that campaign.

Joining a running campaign To join a running campaign, select that campaign, and find an emperor that has a "Yes"-Value in its "Available"-column. Select that player, and press the "Grab"-button below. You may now enter a new password for that player, and you can immediately log in and play than emperor. (see below for playing instructions)

Playing
When a campaign was started, you select it, and then you select your emperor in the list. Enter the password, and press the "play"-button to start the game. From now on, everything works just as in singleplayer mode. Except that the button to end the turn will not initiate the next turn, but will store all your actions on the IMP300-server (so you need to reactivate your internetconnection if it was disabled meanwhile). When you close the window, you return back to the main menu. As you can see, if you select your campaign, your name now has a small icon to indicate that you have made your move. If you want to, you can enter the game again, and enter a completely different turn. After you are satisfied, it is time to wait for the admin to start the next turn again. Again, you will be notified by email.

Now, what happens if you don't manage to play the game before the turn ends? Very easy: The computer will do some actions for you. As you could see in the singleplayer mode, the computer opponents can be rather strong. But they tend to do stupid things too. And even worse: The computerplayers do not know who's your enemy, and who is your friend. They might attack your friends, and withdraw all ships from the frontline to your worst enemy. So why do we have these computerguys anyway? To prevent boring campaigns of course. If one player quits, then the neighboring players would have a great advantage - they can easily get lots of good planets, and quickly win the game. Also, this mechanism encourages people to play regularly, and not miss a turn.

By the way: It does not mattern when you play, or which of your opponents already have made their turns. Everyone acts on the same data, and if two players decide to attack the same planet, then fate decides who attacks first and who is second. So wether you make you turn 5 minutes after the administrator performed the evaluation, or 5 minutes before the next one takes place does not matter at all. It is considered good style though not to wait until the last minute, this makes the life of the administrator much easier.

Winning
Who is the winner? The only rule at the moment: if you surrender, you are not the winner... If you decide to quit the game, please tell your administrator, so he can find a replacement, or decide that the game is over.

Administration guide
You may create and administrate your own campaigns for yourself and your friends. You may not create campaigns for the public though, we have had very bad experiences with this. So, if you create a campaign, make sure that you tell your friends, and that they join that campaign quickly. A campaign created but not started within three days will get erased. It is no problem if some strangers join your campaign. But creating a campaign just for strangers is currently not allowed. We have had too much trouble with that. Sorry.

To start a campaign, simply click on the "create campaign"-button in the multiplayer-mainwindow. A new window will open to prompt you for some information about the new campaign. Currently, you can only choose from a few general settings, provide a short description, and determine the amount of players that may participate. Assuming you are creating a test-campaign, please choose a small galaxy, and choose a password so that only you can join this campaign later on. Also, set both the minimum and the maximum number of players to a low level, so that you don't need too many friends for this test-campaign. After that, your campaign is created, and ready for sign up.

Please sign in one player (you will now be prompted for the campaigns password). Now, press the "administrate" button. The button for starting the campaign is active. But if you press it, you will notice that you are NOT allowed to start the campaign yet. This means: Choose the minimum number wisely, currently you cannot change it. Okay, have your friends create the remaining players, and go back to the administration panel. You can now start the campaign. You will be prompted for a message which will get emailed to the players that have provided an email-address. Enter the game as one emperor, and make some turns. Return to the main window. Enter the administration panel again. Now the other button is active - you can end the turn, and create the next one. As one player has not yet made his turn, you'll get a warning message, but you can ignore it. The computerplayer will perform some actions for that player.

That was easy. As we said, the technical part is easy. To be a good administrator is not easy though. To be a good admin, you must be able to find a good compromise between the quick and the slow players. Some players are done one hour after a new turn started. Others have to be convinced, talked to, screamed at, kicked and cursed before they make their turns. Being late does not mean they are bad players, or that they lost interest. They are just like that, and if you lose two or three of them by ending the turns too early, the campaign might be dead. On the other hand, you also don't want to lose the quick players by ending the turns too late. Only if you can find a good compromise you will be a good administrator.