galaxius


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guide
basics
ships and buildings
battle
battle formula
resources
tech
maps

This page gives a quick introduction to the main issues of the game.

Game interface

Galaxius is a web-based strategy game with java interface. It is simple to get into games:
1) log in (if you have not yet created a user, then you can do it here)
2) choose an open game you like and join it
* if you want you can create your own game and join it
3) the game begins when the start time arrives, given that it has required number of players. All players in the game receive an e-mail 12 hours before the start. One player can play several games at the same time.

Game basics

The ultimate goal of the game is to defeat your opponents by conquering all their stars. Though, often the game ends before the total victory has been reached, then the victor is decided on the grounds of the number of stars and colonies. The general idea of the game resembles that of Master of Orion series. Empires can colonize stars, construct buildings, create fleets and research technologies. In addition, empires can form alliances, except if you are playing Free For All(FFA) games. The alliances are unbreakable unions, and at the end of the game only the alliance as whole matters, meaning that all empires in the alliance will have the same result.

Fleets

The fleets can be used in attack, defense and scouting. In the beginning each empire starts with a fleet of 100 fighters and a spy. As a first move, it is smart to capture all nearby neutral stars by routing your fleet through the stars, since neutral stars are usually only protected by a small band of fighters. You can send your fleets by pressing "send fleets" and holding down the SHIFT key while selecting destinations. The fleets can only be dispatched if the destination star(s) is(are) in range, that is the star is close enough to the stars owned by you or your allies. The following picture of the java interface shows how to send fleets:

Legend:

1 - galaxy map

2 - minimap

3 - action menu

4 - info/form menu

5 - info bar

6 - status bar

There are several ship types, each having a different effectiveness depending on the opposing units:

fighter - small unit, good against other small ships

bomber - small unit, effective against large ships and stations

carrier - large and powerful unit, with mothership capabilities

cruiser - large and even more powerful than carrier

spy - scouting unit, only detectable by other spies
See guide on ships for more information.

Economy

The economy is one of the most important aspect of the game. Empires control 3 resources: money, capacity and tech-points. All three are gathered on stars. The first source of money is generated from colonized stars, thus it is important to capture and colonize all stars with good income figures. Second possibility is to generate money by constructing mining stations. Minings can be built on any star that has asteroids. But to start constructing minings you need to have researched mining tech.

The next two resources, capacity and tech-points, are generated by factories and labs, respectively. As several unit types (especially bombers and fighters) require a lot of capacity then it is smart to have large number of factories. But it is not wise to build factories everywhere. The efficiency of an additional factory decreases when you have built more factories than star's productivity on a star. With labs it is even more drastic. After reaching star.tech labs, it is impossible to build more labs on a star. (See the guide on resources for more info)

As economy has high importance, game interface provides an easy way to observe the properties of stars. Moving your mouse over a star displays an information bar:

Technology

There are various technologies available to the empires, some give additional fleet power, others new units and building types. See the full list under tech guide. The cost of researching increases with the size of the empire. The size penalty starts after 10 stars. Thus, smaller empires have cheaper tech prices.

Waypoint system

The general idea behind the waypoints is that they are future orders of dispatching fleets. When the time of departure of a waypoint has reached, the system will check whether conditions for the fleet departure are satisfied:

there are units

the destination star is in range.
If successful all units owned by you in that star are dispatched towards the destination star. However, if your fleet gets destroyed in the way or it's just too late, the order will fail. The orders are kept alive only for 7200 seconds after the time of departure, every hour all orders older than 7200 seconds are deleted.

Buying ships

The player can buy ships by pressing the "buy ships" button on the action menu. This option is available if the star is owned by the empire and has a buidling called "buying center". The amount of ships purchased can be determined by adjusting the text-field or the slider of the particular ship type. The form displays the price and capacity needed for and left after the purchase.

After pressing the pressing the "buy" button the request is processed and if succeeded it is possible to find the requested ships under the "In progress" title, in the star view menu. The time of arrival of the fleets varies along the ship types. Nevertheless, one can purchase different ship types at the same time, since they are dealt as separate requests.

Constructing buildings

The "construct" button on the star owned by the player outlays the possible construction options. Similarly to buying of ships the amount of buildings constructed can be determined by using the text-field/slider. Also the duration of the construction varies along the building types, similarly as the time of arrival for buying of the fleets.