Worlds

Worlds are the source of wealth throughout the galaxy. Owned worlds generate Resource Units (RUs), which you'll use to design, build, and repair your fleet of starships. At the start of the game you control only one world, known as your homeworld. As you explore the galaxy your empire will discover and conquer other worlds.

Ships

Ships are the vessels that each empire builds as it explores the galaxy and expands its empire. Ships come in a variety of configurations, but serve two main purposes;
 

• exploration -- your ships gather information about the galaxy via two types of scanning: short-range scan (SRS), which reveals detailed information about any sectors that your ships occupy, and long-range scan (LRS), which reveals fewer details about adjacent sectors within scan range of your ships. Each ship has a scan rating that determines how many sectors distant it can gather LRS data.
• combat -- your ships will attack other ships to conquer and defend worlds in your empire. The number of guns and defense points (DP) that your ships possess will determine their relative strength in combat.

 
See the section on Ships for more details about them.

Wormnets

Scattered throughout the galaxy are a series of space-time anomalies called wormnets. A wormnet is a set of two or more interconnected portals through which your ships can travel to distant portions of the galaxy in a single turn. Travel through a portal is possible through the use of a wormnet drive installed on every spacecraft. If a ship enters a sector containing a portal it can activate its wormnet drive and traverse the portal to one of its possible exits.
 
Until one of your ships travels through a particular portal, your empire knows nothing about its behavior, and your exit from the portal will be determined randomly. Once your ship has traveled through the portal your empire will acquire the navigation data for that portal, which gives you detailed information that allows non-random travel thereafter. Navigation data may be shared between empires. The prudent wormnet traveler should be aware of some interesting portal characteristics:
 

• Some portals function only as entrances or exits, but not both, thus leaving the unwary traveler stranded on the far side and forcing him to take the slow route home through normal space.
• Wormnet portals can become unstable and collapse altogether for some number of turns. During this time, the portal is unusable, and does not even appear on ships' scanners.
• Some portals drift from sector to sector each turn. It is not uncommon to use wormnets to launch attacks on far away enemies, and a drifting portal can distrupt -- or enhance -- those plans. Portals that drift may do so in deterministic patterns, while other simply drift randomly from sector to sector. A portal that drifts into a sector containing a world or another portal collapses until it drifts out of such a sector.

 
Only through diligent exploration and sharing of information will you learn the details of the galaxy's wormnets.

Nebulae

Nebulae are great clouds of interstellar dust that interfere with ship scanners. Ships cannot gather LRS data for items within a nearby nebula scanner, although the nebulae themselves do show up on LRS; only by entering the nebula sector will its contents be revealed on SRS. Nebulae thus make an effective place to hide from enemies. A ship occupying a nebula sector has an effective LRS radius of zero, regardless of that ship's actual scan rating, so the nebula confers some degree of blindness along with the cover it provides.  Note that nebulae do not block your long-range scanners' ability to see sectors beyond them; they obscure only the nebulae sectors themselves. That is, a nebula one sector away from your ship will not prevent it from scanning a regular sector on the other side of the nebula (i.e., two sectors away from the ship).
 
It is entirely possible that nebulae can hide worlds and wormnet portals. Once a nebula sector has been explored, any worlds or portals discovered therein will be known to you, but since there is no way to scan into nebulae sectors from afar, your scan data of those worlds or portals will immediately become obsolete as soon as your ships leave the nebula sector.
 
Like wormnet portals, nebulae can drift from sector to sector, either randomly or according to a pattern.  Two nebulae may drift into the same sector for a turn and then part ways the following turn; no additional effect occurs when two nebulae overlap in such a manner.

Ion Storms

Ion storms wreak havoc on all ship systems, causing damage to ships just as if they had been hit by enemy fire. The stronger the storm, the more damage a ship will suffer while it remains within that sector. Each ion storm is rated with a number that indicates the amount of damage per turn that all ships in that sector will suffer. Note that there is no upper limit on this rating, and even the heartiest ship may find itself amid a storm that can destroy it in one turn. In addition to inflicting damage ion storms act as nebulae for purposes of interfering with ship scanners.
 
Like nebulae and wormnet portals, ion storms drift throughout the galaxy, either at random or according to deterministic patterns. Two storms that drift into the same sector add their storm ratings together for purposes of applying damage to ships within the overlapping storms.
 
Finally, ion storms can fluctuate in strength from turn to turn, yielding a corresponding change in the amount of damage they inflict.  Like drift patterns, storms fluctuate either either randomly or according to a set pattern.  Thus what may look like a small storm from afar can grow into an inferno by the time your ship arrives.