Planet administration

Planet administration is how the commander of a colony directs its labor, finances, market, and public message in classic Galactic Empire and standard ge-next. The owner enters the menu by orbiting the planet and issuing ADMIN. Administration changes settings on that specific planet; it does not instantly produce supplies or transfer its bank balance to the player's account. The separate production cycle applies most economic settings at the planet's next update.

Access and ownership

An unowned ordinary planet can be claimed through ADMIN, subject to the configured ownership limit. Claiming asks for a name, then opens the menu. A planet owned by another player cannot normally be administered by a visitor; ge-next also permits a user authorized for the SYS command to open any owned planet's menu, an override added during testing. The ship must remain in orbit for administration. Colonizing planets covers the claim process and the difference between a new colony and one previously abandoned; Attacking planets covers conquest.

The menu has seven numbered options and X to return to normal command mode. While it is open, input is interpreted as a menu choice or response to a prompt, not as a flight command. In classic 3.2e the final prompt incorrectly says (1-6) even though option 7 works. ge-next corrected the prompt to (1-7) in 0.3.3.

Choice	Purpose	What it changes
1	Accounting report	Nothing; shows current item and bank figures.
2	Collect taxes	Moves an entered amount from the tax bank to the commander's personal cash.
3	Work assignments and trade policy	Edits one item's production effort, sale price, sale permission, and reserve.
4	Rename planet	Replaces the planet's displayed name.
5	Adjust tax rate	Sets a rate from 0 to 100 for later production updates.
6	Set trade password	Controls access to planetary buying and maintenance.
7	Set beacon message	Sets or clears the message seen by approaching ships.
X	Exit	Returns to normal command mode.

1. Read the accounting report

The report lists all fourteen producible item categories: men, missiles, torpedoes, ion cannons, flux pods, food, fighters, decoys, troops, zippers, jammers, mines, gold, and spies. Each row has these columns:

Column	Meaning
`Rate`	Percentage of colonist effort assigned to making this item; all item rates share one 100% budget.
`Qty`	Units currently in the planet's stock, including units reserved or not for sale.
`Price`	Per-unit sale price set for visiting ships, not necessarily what the owner pays.
`Resv`	Units held back from visitors when the item is offered for sale.
`Sell`	`Y` or `N`: whether visitors may buy the item.
`Sold`	Running count of units bought from the planet. It is a purchase count, not the number produced or currently available.

The report also shows cash in the planetary bank, tax revenue, the current tax rate, and the trade password. These are separate balances. The planetary bank is operating cash: purchases add to it, existing gold can be converted into it during a production update, and having cash available improves production and stock limits. The tax bank holds revenue from taxation until the owner collects it. Neither is the player's personal cash until a rule explicitly moves money there. The menu offers tax collection, not a general withdrawal from the operating bank. See Buy command, Gold, and Taxes.

2. Collect taxes

The game asks how much of the tax bank to transfer. The amount must not exceed the tax balance; ge-next also rejects negative amounts and a transfer that would overflow the player's cash. Successful collection increases personal cash and decreases tax revenue by the same amount. It does not draw on the planet's operating cash or change item production directly. A rate set under option 5 only adds new revenue when the colony receives a production update, so collecting immediately after changing the rate will not create money on the spot. Taxes explains the revenue formula and its costs.

3. Set work assignments and trade policy

Select an item using the abbreviation shown by the menu, such as men, foo, tor, tro, or gol. For that item the editor asks, in order, for production effort, sale price, Sell Y/N, and reserve. All four answers are committed together after the reserve prompt. ge-next shows each existing value in the prompt and allows Enter at each step to retain it; classic requires an explicit response at each step. Valid numeric inputs are 0–100 for effort and 0–32,000 for both sale price and reserve.

Effort is shared, not per-item. A newly established colony normally starts with 50% assigned to men and 50% to food. To add 15% troop production, first reduce one or both existing allocations to free 15%; simply asking for 15% troops while the other items still total 100% will make the game reduce the troop assignment to 0%. When an edit would take total effort over 100%, the selected item's rate is cut to the remaining percentage. If the total is below 100%, the unused percentage is reported; it is not automatically reassigned. A plan such as 35% men, 40% food, 15% troops, and 10% gold uses the entire budget. The amount produced from each assignment still depends on population, environment, resources, taxes, and money in the planetary bank; those calculations are detailed in Planetary production. Changing a rate does not add the item to stock immediately.

Price and stock are independent of effort. A planet may sell existing stock with 0% production, or produce an item while keeping it unavailable to visitors. Sell N bars visitor purchases regardless of quantity; Sell Y makes only the units above the reserve available. For example, 80 torpedoes in stock with a reserve of 50 means at most 30 are offered to visitors. The reserve is a sales floor, not a cap on production or a prohibition on the owner's own withdrawals. The owner can buy any available stock at the game's configured base price, regardless of the public sale price, sale flag, or reserve, but still spends personal cash and adds the purchase proceeds to the planetary bank. Buy command, Buy command, and Transfer command explain buying and moving physical goods.

4. Rename the planet

Enter a new name when prompted. The name is visible in scans, messages, and the owner's planet list; changing it does not change ownership, sector coordinates, stock, or production. The stored field holds 19 visible characters plus a terminator. Unlike option 3, this uses the same name-entry handler as the initial claim. ge-next corrected the classic off-by-one display problem discussed at Classic bug: Planet name limit off by one.

5. Adjust the tax rate

Enter a whole-number rate from 0 through 100. Tax revenue is credited to the tax bank during later planetary updates, based on the population remaining after that update's production. A higher rate yields more collectible cash but reduces both production and calculated stock ceilings; if a new ceiling falls below the goods already stored, the excess may be discarded at the next update. High taxation also demands more defending troops to avoid a recurring revolt risk. A rate of 0 avoids tax-driven revenue and revolt, but does not solve food, population, or other colony problems. The precise formulas and examples are on Taxes and Planetary production.

6. Set the trade password

The password can be up to ten characters. Enter none to remove the requirement. Entering an ordinary word creates a shared secret that visitors must supply when buying goods or requesting maintenance. Do not use a real-world password: the administrative report displays it to anyone who can open the menu, and it can be shared with other players.

team has a special meaning for buying. If the owner belongs to a valid team, the planet stores that team's code; members of the same team can buy, while outsiders are refused. If no valid team membership is found, the request is rejected rather than granting public access. ge-next also validates a stored team restriction when the referenced team is removed. Classic GE and ge-next through 0.3.2 apply this team check only to buying: maintenance checks the literal password, so MAINT team can be used by an outsider. ge-next 0.3.3 also checks team membership for maintenance, without requiring teammates to type team. An ordinary password can still be required even of the owner; owning the planet does not automatically bypass every trade-password prompt. See Classic bug: Team maintenance password bypass, Buy command, and Maintenance command for details.

7. Set the beacon message

Enter a message of up to 74 visible characters, or submit a blank response to erase it. A beacon can advertise stock, warn intruders, or identify an alliance; it does not change the planet's defenses or notify the owner when someone approaches.

In classic GE, a player must scan the planet to discover its beacon. The scan loads the message for that player, but does not print it immediately. While the player remains in the sector, later ship movement updates have a chance to display the cached beacon. Merely flying close to an unscanned planet does not reveal its message.

In ge-next, a ship in normal space can receive a planet's beacon automatically when it comes within 1,000 distance units, without scanning the planet first. Repeats are limited by a cooldown. Beacon messages are subject to the recipient's beacon display setting; see Set command.

Keeping a colony useful

Administration controls policy; it cannot by itself feed a starving population, place defensive equipment, or move newly produced stock onto a ship. Use TRANSFER while in orbit to deliver food, troops, fighters, ion cannons, or other goods, and to collect goods from a planet you own. Check the accounting report after production updates, adjust men and food before diverting too much effort elsewhere, and keep defenses appropriate for the population and tax rate. Attacking planets and Ion cannons cover invasion and protection; Colonizing planets covers ownership changes.

Abandoning a planet clears its owner, password, and team code but leaves its name, inventory, population, prices, production settings, and bank balances in place. A successful conquest or revolt can also remove the previous owner's command. In ge-next, the player's planet total is updated when ownership changes instead of waiting for nightly recalculation. See Admin command and Classic bug: Planet conquest bypasses ownership limit.

Version scope

The menu and its seven functions exist in both classic GE 3.2e and standard ge-next. ge-next's changes include retaining settings when a previously named planet is reclaimed, showing current values and accepting Enter to keep them during item editing, correcting the option-range prompt, validating old team associations, and protecting large bank and sales values from classic numeric/display failures. Those fixes do not make the underlying production and trade systems identical in every detail; see Classic bug database for individual corrections. ge-arena has no persistent colony administration: its ADMIN command only renames an eligible unowned planet during a match.