Playing Galactic Empire

Galactic Empire is a real-time multiplayer game about commanding a ship in a shared galaxy. Other players, automated ships, weapons in flight, and planetary production continue to act while a player reads or types. Typically, a game runs nearly 24 hours a day with a small "clean up" period in the middle of the night. There is no "ending" or winner declared by the game itself; a game will run indefinitely unless a sysop or administrator decides to end the game, declare a winner, and reset it.

Finding your footing

A new standard-game player starts in an Interceptor. The first useful habit is to check REPORT for the ship's position, systems, and inventory, then use SCAN to learn what is nearby. Impulse moves within and between nearby sectors; warp covers greater distances. Heading, speed, scanner range, and flux all matter, and the ship continues moving while commands are entered. Getting started walks through the first session; Commands is the command index.

Choosing a direction

There is no single required path after launch. Players can explore for planets and wormholes, improve their ship, fight automated opponents or other players, build colonies, trade, join a team, or pursue a high roster score. These activities overlap: a colony can supply a ship, while combat can provide resources and alter relationships with other ships.

For travel and finding contacts, start with Navigation and scanning, then Sectors and Wormholes. Scans can be incomplete or misleading because of distance, cloaking, jamming, and, in ge-next, nebulas.
For ship survival and fighting, see Ships, Hull damage, Maintenance, and Combat. Cybertrons are automated ships which are always hostile and must be destroyed or avoided; they will generally pursue and attack any sufficiently powerful user ship. Other NPCs generally leave user players alone unless provoked.
For building a foothold, see Planets, Colonizing planets, and Planetary production. A claimed planet needs population, food, sensible production settings, and protection before it becomes a dependable source of supplies.
For money and equipment, see Economy and cargo, Items, and Zygor. Cargo, planetary bank funds, tax revenue, and personal cash serve different purposes. Destroying NPCs and recovering and selling gold can help a player afford resources in the short term, but effective planetary production is necessary to build long-term wealth.
For cooperation and competition, see Teams, Send command, and Scoring and rosters.

Persistent-world consequences

The shared world remembers ownership, inventory, and many actions between sessions. Ship combat and planetary attacks can have lasting costs. A ship cannot always leave immediately after hostilities, and disconnecting in combat can destroy it. Make sure to exit the game cleanly with the EXIT command instead of just disconnecting to make sure that the active ship is not lost. Sysops can change ship classes, item values, and galaxy settings, so the running game's HELP and configuration remain authoritative.

Arena variant

ge-arena replaces persistent ships and colonies with a lobby, ship selection, timed modes, respawns, and match scoring. Movement and weapons will feel familiar to a GE player, but the goals and consequences of a match differ from the persistent game.

Finding your footing

Choosing a direction

Persistent-world consequences

Arena variant

Further reading