Getting started
Galactic Empire is a real-time multiplayer game played with short text commands. Your ship keeps moving and other ships keep acting while you read or type, so learning a small set of information and movement commands matters more than memorizing the whole command list.
Before entering
Choose a board from Where to play online. If you're not sure where to play, WABAC is a good choice, as it has classic GE, the latest version of ge-next, and an active user community. Use a telnet client with ANSI color. A small keymap is helpful, but begin with commands you understand rather than automating combat immediately.
Your first reports
After entering your ship, use:
| Command | What it answers |
|---|---|
HELP |
General information |
HELP CLASS |
What ships are available for purchase? |
ROSTER |
Who else plays on this board? |
REPORT NAV |
Where am I, which way am I facing, and how fast am I moving? |
REPORT SYS |
Which systems are working and how damaged is the ship? |
REPORT INV |
What cargo and ammunition are aboard? |
SCAN SECTOR |
What ships, planets, mines, or wormholes are near me? |
SCAN RANGE 9 |
What detectable ships are in the wider area? |
Commands are normally recognized by their first three letters, so REP NAV and SCA SE are common forms.
Moving safely
Use IMPULSE speed for slower movement that allows you to keep shields up, and WARP speed for faster travel. Before engaging impulse, be aware of your surroundings by running SCAN SE, as your ship is vulnerable to crashing into planets at impulse speed. If you see a message about being within the gravity pull of a planet, be prepared to stop with IMP 0 or orbit the planet with ORBIT number.
A relative turn is positive to starboard/right and negative to port/left. Prefix an absolute heading with @:
IMPULSE 25 @90 WARP 5 -10 ROTATE @180
Sector 0 0 is the neutral zone. It contains Zygor, Tahanian Station, the Enforcer Planet, and wormholes. Hostile actions are restricted here, so as long as you are in the neutral zone you are safe from other ships. You can still destroy your ship by crashing into a planet, traveling through a wormhole too slowly, or provoking the Enforcer Planet, so be careful. Once you leave the neutral zone, you are no longer protected from others, and you can engage other ships as you like.
A practical first objective
In GE, the usual opening is to obtain colonists and supplies, locate a planet with useful environment/resources, claim it with ADMIN, and transfer down enough population, food, and defenses to survive. A colony can later produce supplies and revenue. Combat-oriented players may instead start by hunting automated ships, but one must be careful to not spend all the starting cash on weapons, only to lose the first ship and all the weapons with it.
When combat begins
Raise shields before engagement, but remember that phasers and projectiles will lower the shields before firing and not automatically raise them again. Torpedoes are impulse weapons; missiles can pursue through hyperspace; standard and hyper-phasers are selected by your speed. Keep flux pods aboard and remember that disconnecting while the battle-exit restriction is active can destroy your ship; see Exit command. ge-next adds REPORT ORD for reviewing incoming ordnance; classic GE reports incoming weapons through its normal warning messages but has no ordnance report.
Learn next
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