Boldly go where no bug-eyed floppy-tentacled being has gone before in our game of the exploration and conquest of space. Critical decisions of population growth, industrial development, military power and technological investment in the early game will decide your fate in the struggle for galactic domination.

At the start of the game you control a single star system and your home planet, with a handful of population, a little industry, a few ships and just enough technology to make them fly. Plus a reasonable reserve of cash ("build points", in fact) in your treasury to spend on more.

First you'll plant your flag and your first colonies on whatever other planets are in your home system (usually a Jovian planet, an asteroid belt and maybe a Martian or Venusian planet) while your cruisers fan out to nearby stars in search of new worlds to conquer. Which is where the trouble starts, because other people are out there, doing the same thing.

The first big decisions are over which technology best deserves your investment. Economic factors, so that you'll have more to spend later? Weapons technologies and ship designs so that other players can't steal what you build? There's a wide range of technologies to choose from: - agriculture, birth labs, cosmology, culture, defence tech, Eco tech, fighters, hyper-space construction, hydroponics, income, industry tech, jump tech, life support, mines tech, space marines, orders, petrochemicals, probes, robots, supply, terraforming, transport, treasury & weapons.

Four major resources control build and supply costs throughout the game. The availability of each of Food, Hydrocarbons, Isotopes & Minerals is decided by the resource prices in each system: this rises with demand and falls with supply.

Food is needed to feed your workforce and your fleet, and is provided by population toiling in your agricultural colonies on whatever earth-like worlds you can find or by industry & hydroponics in space colonies. Hydrocarbons are needed to power your industry (except for space industries which can use "solar" power) and can be mined on the moons of Jovian planets (or by petrochemicals technology and industry in star systems).

Isotopes are the core of the space drives of your ships and the power systems of your space stations, and can be mined on the rare "Satan" worlds or produced by industry among the asteroids. Minerals are needed for construction as your population and industry expand, and are mined on asteroids and any world you're prepared to dig up and destroy.

An important part of your economy will be your independent "merchants". These run from system to system, in and out of your empire, shifting resources to wherever they are needed (buying where they're cheap, and selling where they're expensive) and paying useful docking fees and taxes wherever they touch down.

The ships you begin the game with are simple cruisers, but you can also add more powerful and flexible assault carriers which carry additional fighters (as "riders") and space marines. When empires collide it will be these ships that decide your fate.

Essential to your empire will be the construction of a network of space stations that link your industries and allow your fleets to dash from one end of your empire to the other in the twinkling of a single action, and then beyond. Without your "net" you're consigned to plodding from system to system, a single hyper-space jump to each action, and with lengthy real-space transfers to delay you further.

Warfare revolves around strategic shipyards and breaking the opposing net. If you have an active net and your opponent does not, then you hold interior lines and can concentrate your strength, no matter what the shape and relative size of the empires.