Constellation!
Game Manual

 

Introduction

Constellation is a turn-based multiplayer strategy game with a space theme. It is similar to games like Stars!, VGA Planets and Master of Orion. Constellation borrows a lot from those games where the author felt they were doing the right thing, and tries to innovate in parts that the author did not like as much. Constellation has less resource-management than those games (and less micromanagement! yea!) and is more focused on tactical combat.

Constellation is a strictly multiplayer game. No AI players have been written for it (although it is quite possible to do and some may appear in the future). Constellation is well suited to be played by email (PBEM).

Constellation is written by one man and does not have any flashy graphics or sounds. In fact, all of the game’s graphics has been downloaded from the Internet (mainly from Happy Icons collection (http://website.lineone.net/~andrew-watts/happy.html)– thank you there!). So please don’t be surprised when you see icons of ships form StarWars and StarTrek under different names -- they are simply the best icons I had at hand at the moment. Anyone who’d like to draw, assemble and propose a different set of icons is very much welcome to do so. An option to use your own set of pictures will be added to the game in the future.

The current version is Beta v1.9. It is fully playable, although new features may be added in the future. In this manual, I will be indicating possible new features in italic.

Constellation has been written for my and your enjoyment. It is distributed for free. The only thing I ask from you is your feedback, bug reports and suggestions.

Have fun!

Playing the game

There are two executables coming with the game, Client.exe and Host.exe. Host.exe is needed to host the game; to do your turns, you need only Client.exe.

There are three file types you will be operating with while playing the game, *.rce files, *.trn files and *.mve files.

Before the game starts, every player needs to submit her .rce file to the host. To do that, start Client.exe, type in your "commander’s name" (this name will also be your password – so be creative here), your race’s name, and click "New Race". A race file will be saved.

Currently all races in the game are alike. In the future, an option to customize your race may be added to the race creation dialog.Right now, however, the only things you can "customize" in your race are the race name and your commander’s name (password).

To start a game, the host has to have all .rce files on her machine. She starts Host.exe and clicks the "Add" button to add each race to the game. She then inputs the directory for game files in the upper line on the dialog and clicks "Start New Game". The turn (.trn) files for turn 1 have been generated, one for each race.

See the section "Asynchronous Start" below to learn how to start a game asynchronously.

Each turn in played in the following order: the clients receive their .trn files, make their moves (using Client.exe) and produce .mve files. The .mve files are then submitted to the host that produces the next turn’s files, and so forth.

The host also generates .mve files for "Natives", a passive computer-controlled player that represents the original owners of the game universe.

For example, if there are two races in the game, Terrans and Martians, then for the first turn two files will be produced: "Terrans 1.trn" and "Martians 1.trn". The host also produces "Natives 1.mve". The players load the .trn files into their clients and make their moves, producing "Terrans 1.mve" and "Martians 1.mve". The host then uses these files to produce "Terrans 2.trn", "Martians 2.trn" and "Naives 2.mve", and so forth.

To make a move, a player should start her Client.exe, type in her commander’s name and click "Load Game". When you’re done with the move clicking "End Turn" produces the .mve file (in the same directory the .trn file came from).

After producing the .mve file the client application enters the waiting mode. In that mode, it keeps checking for the next turn’s .trn file, and loads it when one is found. You can put the client directly into waiting mode by clicking on "Wait". You may want to do that if you’re restarting Client.exe after the current turn has already been submitted. The "Save" button saves your changes into the current .trn file but does not generate an .mve file.

In a similar way, the host application enters the waiting mode after the .trn files have been produced. It automatically checks for existence of all necessary .mve files in the directory specified in the top line (under "Path"). The moment all necessary files are available the next turn’s files are generated.

If you need to restart Host.exe: after restarting add all races in the game, set the directory and turn number fields to the right values and click "Continue Game". The host is now in the waiting mode and will generate the next turn when ready.

Customizing the game

There are a couple of parameters you can customize before starting a new game. The three main parameters are Universe size (2000 – 20000), total number of stars, and average resources per star system, number of starting resources for players and how well the native’s planets are defended. You can play with these parameters to produce the configuration you like the most.

Asynchronous Start

It is very unlikely that players actually interact during the first 20-30 turns of the game, even in a very crowded universe. Therefore, to speed up game play, an option to start "asynchronously" is added to the host options.

With this option on, each player gets her own sector of the universe where she can play the first few turns completely independent of everyone else. During this stage, no player sees or interacts with anything beyond their sectors; hence, players can submit turns independently at their own pace. Once the set number of turns has passed and everybody has played through these turns within their sectors, the sectors are "merged" with the rest of the universe and the game proceeds as a non-split game.

During the "split" stage of the game, an additional file is created for natives in every sector. E.g. along with the file "Terrans 1.trn", the file "NativeTerrans 1.mve" is generated and is needed for the next move of the Terrans. To "merge" the game, the host needs two *.mve files from each sector (for example, "Terrans 20.mve" and "NativeTerrans 20.mve") as well as the "main" "Natives 20.mve" file. The host generates the latter file in the very beginning of the game if the "split game" option has been selected.

During split-games, beware of cheating! Since players play their turns independently, the temptation is great to re-play turns that have not been very successful. This may be possible if the players decide to play the "split" stage on their own computers or if they have permissions to delete files form the host machine (during network games). Some host supervision will not hurt in these situations…

Winning, Losing and player elimination

A game is lost for a player when she has lost al of her stars and ships. The goal of the game is total conquest, i.e. to eliminate all other players. There are no customizable victory conditions.

Gameplay

In this section I will try to cover gameplay issues that are independent of the user interface. The interface description follows in the next sections.

In Constellation, you play with star systems and ships that can be organized in fleets or can be in orbit of a star.

Systems bring you resources; on planet surfaces you can build industries; some of these industries can produce new ships; other are needed to support shipbuilding industries or provide you with money.

Let us consider all these objects in more detail.

Game Universe

The Game Universe is a 2-D map; every object on the map (star system or fleet) has two coordinates in range from 1 to 20000.

Star Systems

Each star system has a certain position in the Universe, size and available resources. It also has an owner race. Whoever owns the system owns all of its resources, all industries built there, and all ships in orbit. By size we mean the total of available space on all planets in the system.

Initially, Natives – aborigines of the Universe, own most of the systems in game. They do not belong to technically oriented cultures and do not build industries. However, most of these systems managed to purchase some ships from space traders in exchange for raw resources (correspondingly richer systems were able to purchase more expensive ships). These ships are meant to defend native planets from invasion. Natives do not know how to fly these ships, so the ships are constantly in orbit of their stars, controlled by on-board computers and given orders to fire at every ship within range.

A star system is considered defended as long as there are friendly ships in it. When one of the stars has lost its entire defense, its governor will surrender to the first fleet to enter the system (to prevent casualties among civil population). If multiple fleets enter it on the same turn, it will surrender to the most powerful one.

Economy

There are five types of resources – Metal, Uranium, Dilithium and Biomass. Different resources are needed to build different types of industries. From every system you own its resources are added to your global resource pool.

The fifth resource type is gold – it gives you a fixed income every turn.

Each system has a maintenance cost proportional to its size (i.e. sum of sizes of all planets in it); currently, it’s 1/3rd of the system’s size. (In future versions the maintenance cost may become one of the parameters of your race). The costs are subtracted to your capital each turn and the income from gold resources is added and can be used to cover maintenance costs, purchase ships and cover industrial deficit.

If you grabbed one system too many and don’t like to pay maintenance costs for it, the system can be abandoned. To abandon it, literally do so – remove all industries and fleets from it. You will be asked to confirm you intention to abandon the system when you submit your turn.

Industriesare built on planets. Each industry occupies certain space on surface of one of the planets; when you’ve used up all available space in a system you cannot build any new industries in it (you can, however, purchase industrial satellites or build artificial moons to increase available space).

Each industry requires certain resources an/or industrial products to operate. If resources are required, they are taken from the global pool. If it’s another industrial product that’s required, you have to have an industry that produces it (in the same system or elsewhere). If, however, you don’t have enough resources from your systems or don’t produce the required product, it becomes a deficit and has to be supplied by space traders (and, those traders have rather steep prices!). We will come back to buying deficit products later when we discuss shipbuilding.

It is very important to note that resources do not accumulate from turn to turn even if you currently don’t use them (money being the only exception).

Also, please note the distinction between resources and products: for three industries that require "Dilithium" (a resource) you need three distinct sources of Dilithium. However, if you have three industries that require "Dilithium Computers", it is enough to have just one industry that produces Dilithium computers and it will satisfy all your needs in that product.

You can give orders for every system what kind of industries to build, and in what order (as long as there is space available). Each industry takes certain time to develop before it becomes operational.

As it was mentioned before, the only reason for having industries is that some of them can build space ships (and others provide parts for those ships so that you don’t have to buy those parts from space traders, and so forth). If you have a shipbuilding industry, you can order ships from it and the ships will be built for you (it takes 1 to 4 turns to build a space ship) – you only need to cover production costs. The costs, however, depend on whether all parts and resources are available for it. The more parts or resources are missing, the more you pay for each ship. If you don’t have enough money, you will not be able to complete construction. Generally it’s a good idea not to pay for deficit parts at all (unless you really really need that ship) as the prices are quite high.

Thus if you develop an unbalanced economy where lots of required products and resources are in short supply, your costs for building ships will be extremely high. If the economy is not good shape, the costs will be low. Costs of shipbuilding are the only way your economy affects your military (the population takes care of all other details of running the factories), but you will find that well-planned economic development makes all the difference.

Note that you cannot develop new industries and build new ships at the same system simultaneously. At any given time, each system is busy with exactly one task, be it either development or shipbuilding. Different star systems however can develop new industries and/or build new ships independently from each other.

In the same way you build industries you can build resorts. Resorts do not produce anything (nor do they require any products to operate) but they increase your income, which may be very useful if you are building a lot of ships or running some deficit.

Vertical Evolution

One special thing you can add to your development queues is “Vertical Evolution”. It is not an industry or resort, rather, you command the inhabitants of a particular start system to “evolve” to new levels of being. Evolving is not easy: it is an empire-wide process. As long as one of your systems has evolution in progress, no development is made and no ships are build across your entire empire (they are all busy providing resources and gene material for the evolving system). This is important: to evolve one system, you have to commit the resources of the whole empire to this process. This may be worth it if your empire is small, and not as much so if you already have many star systems in it.

Once evolution is “built”, the system that has it gains special abilities. It can build powerful ships without paying a single penny in deficit, and their efficiency grows with time. More precisely, on game turn n the deficit paid for ship building on this system is reduced by n*100 – 1000. Do you want to fly drednoughts when everybody else still  flies battleships? Evolve!

Ships and Fleets

Every ship has a number of characteristics defining the ship’s capabilities. The most important characteristics are:

Attack– the damage this ship is capable of dealing in one turn. The actual damage resulting from a ship’s attack varies between 0.5 and 1.5 nominal damage value. The number of shots determines the maximum number of enemy ships our ship can destroy in one turn.

Defense– the ship’s shields and armor. The defense value also has a regeneration (repair) rate that may be affected by the fleets repair value.

Speed – the ship’s maximum speed. A ship with speed n can cover approximately n units each turn. A fleet’s speed is the speed of the slowest ships in the fleet.

Range– fire range.

Precision– the chances to actually hit the target. If a ship’s precision is 50%, it misses on average every other shot. The chances to hit the target may be affected by the fleet’s targeting value and the target fleet’s jamming value.

Jamming, Targeting, Cloaking and Repairing are cumulative in a fleet. Jamming and targeting affect the chances for your ships’ shots to hit their targets and your ship’s chances to escape enemy fire. A non-zero repairing value increases the rate at which your ships’ shields and armor are restored. The fleet’s cloaking value affects how other players see your fleet. For example, if your fleet’s cloaking value is 50% then it will be seen by enemy bases at half the usual distance.

Ships can be organized in fleets when in an orbit of a star. There is no way to change fleet composition in deep space (other than scrapping some of your ships). Upon entering a friendly star’s orbit a fleet is automatically merged into the system’s orbital fleet.

A fleet is considered to have arrived to a star system when it crosses the outer planet’s orbit. When deploying a new fleet, it starts out from the point on this orbit closest to the target. When on orbit, however, a ship is considered to be at star center coordinates for firing purposes.

Communication Ranges

Fleets can only operate within communication range of your bases. Communication ranges are shown by blue color on your starmap. In early game, you can build stationary satellites that have communication range of 2000. You can also build advanced communication bases and ships with greater communication range; some of them are stationary (speed 0) and some are mobile.

You only see other player’s ships within your communication range, and you cannot send your ships anywhere outside it. If you at some point lose communications with one of your fleets (after losing a star system for example) you cannot give orders to that fleet until communication is restored. The android admiral of your fleet will show very little initiative by herself: the fleet will keep its position and fire at enemy fleets, but nothing more.

The communication range is at the same time your scanning range. You see enemy fleets and stars within your communication range. Only basic astronomical data is available on systems outside your range (i.e. position and size); you don’t know who inhibits it or what natural resources it can offer. Expanding your scanning capabilities allows you to get this information for more distant stars; you however still don’t see what kind of industries the enemy might be building on their planets (this is a top secret information).

Note however that you don’t necessarily see everything that’s going on within your communication range. If an enemy fleet is n% cloaked, you will see it only at (100-n)% normal distance form your bases. For example if you have no advanced communication bases then you will see a 50%-cloaked enemy fleet only if it’s within 1000 units form one of your stars. The same rule applies to ships in orbit of enemy stars.

Ordering Fleets Around

You can give any fleet an order to proceed to certain coordinates or to follow another fleet. When a target is given, the fleet proceeds to it at its maximum speed (a fleet’s maximum speed being equal the maximum speed of the slowest ship in it).

Another part of the fleet’s orders is its fire range. It is the distance our fleet should try to keep between itself and a hostile target (if the target is not hostile, fire range is ignored). By default, the fire range is set to the biggest range in the fleet. It is generally a very handy tool to use when you maneuvre around the enemy.

After all fleets have moved, they open fire in case there are enemy ships within range. You can set your fleet's battle plan to "None" if you prefer it to stay quiet this turn.

Combat

There is no separate combat screen and firing happens on the same starmap. It occurs each turn after all fleets have moved. The order in which the ships open fire does not matter: every ship is given a chance to fire even if it is destroyed on the same turn.

Any given fleet first targets an enemy fleet it’s been following, if that is the case. If the fleet it’s been following is destroyed, the rest of the ships can pick up a different target.

When picking targets, every fleet follows its battle plan. The battle plan can be: "damage long range ships", "damage big ships" etc. An enemy ship within firing range is picked that matches the battle plan the best, and the fleet’s ships start firing at it until it’s destroyed. Then, if there are still ships that have not fired, the next most suitable target is picked, and so forth.

Please note that cloaking does not affect target picking; it only hides you from big enemy radars. There on the battlefield the admirals use visual range and no technology has been invented that completely hides your ships from sight (if you heard about it, it’s probably science fiction!).

Out of the ships best matching your target criteria you will always get the least damaged ship in the targeted fleet. This is because of the ability of fleet commanders to regroup ships in the fleet between attacks. Thus having one fleet is different from the situation where you have several individual ships not organized in a fleet: there the enemy can always target the most damaged one. At the same time, all ships in a given fleet can coordinate fire during their attack meaning that the enemy fleet cannot regroup while one fleet is firing; regrouping only happens between attacks from different fleets.

The price to pay for these advantages is flexibility: you cannot re-deploy ships between fleets in deep space.

Friends and Enemies

You can declare any other race you see in the game a friend; your ships will not fire at friendly ships. Bear in mind though that friendship is not necessarily reciprocal!

You can also give ships to a friendly race: just order them to fly to one of their star systems. When they reach the system they will change hands and will be automatically merged into it’s orbital fleet.

In future versions a possibility to share resources and industrial production with friendly races may be added. This must be interesting: it’s not so easy to backstab your ally if your economies are dependent on each other!

The starmap

The left-hand side portion of the client screen is a starmap. Here you see star systems, fleets and your communication range (blue background). Every race gets it’s own color for fleets and stars: yours is always green, natives are gray and "unknown" stars (outside your communications range or cloaked) are painted in cyan.

You can get more information about objects on the starmap by clicking on them – the right-hand panel changes showing information about the selected object. For star systems, you can switch between surface view (that shows you resources and industries) and orbital view (that shown you ships in orbit) by clicking on "Surface" and "Ships" buttons below the starmap. Clicking on "Economy" or "Messages" will bring you to the corresponding summary screens.

Centering

To find out what object you’re currently looking at you may click on the little ‘+’ sign in the bottom-right corner on the map. This will center you on the selected object and show a little cross sign on it.

Zooming

You can zoom in and out by clicking on the small and big ‘Z’ buttons next to the centering ‘+’. The current zoom factor is also shown there. Note that if you zoom too closely you may not be able to see the whole map.

Stars

Stars are drawn as little stars; bigger star systems have greater radius. Note that the radius actually matters for navigation: a fleet is merged into a friendly system’s orbital fleet when it crosses the orbit of the outer planet.

If there are ships stationed in the system, the planetary orbits are highlighted with the owner's color to indicate that.

You can get information about a system and ships within by clicking on it.

Fleets

Clicking on a fleet shows you its composition and information about ships (damage value, in percents). Your fleets are connected with their targets by dotted lines; no lines are shown for enemy fleets but they are drawn facing the general direction they are flying (or were flying last turn).

You can give your fleet a target by clicking on it (selecting it) and then right clicking on the target.

Measuring Distances

You can measure distances by shift clicking on the map. A bright dotted line will be drawn between the selected object and your click, and you can read the distance between the two points below the map.

The “Tactical Planner"

The group of controls in the upper-right corner of the starmap is the “Tactical Planner”. It allows you to see more clearly what is about to happen with your and your opponents fleets during the next turn. It is not necessary to use the tactical planner to plan your moves but sometimes it comes in handy. If you are reading this manual for the first time though, do not hesitate to skip this section.

When you click on a fleet the tactical planner shows its speed and maximum firing range; so you don’t need to go to the Fleet screen for that.

If you then click on the little “x” in the upper-right corner, the predictedposition of the selected fleet on the next turn and the area it will cover by its guns will be displayed.

NB: this is only a prediction! For your fleets it will be accurate as long as you don’t target hostile fleets or planets with them. If you do, your fleet’s maneuvers may depend on your opponent’s. For other’s fleets, the drawn position and range are based on the fleet’s last move’s target, which you opponent has probably already changed.

If you would like to make a different guess on where your opponent’s fleet is going to head next turn, select it and right-click on the map. You will see the predicted position and fire range changing. I should repeat the same caveat again: this does not mean that the fleet will go there – you’re making guesses here and the only thing the tool is doing is helping you visualize your guesses!

The following features of the tactical planner are of more advanced nature and are likely to be useful only to expert players.

The default range drawn by the tactical planner is the maximum firing range of the fleet. You can change that by editing the “range” text field. No ship’s actual range changes, but it may be useful e.g. to draw the most powerful ship’s range on the planner instead of the maximum range of the fleet. In the same way you can change the predicted speed of the fleet if you expect the fleet to change it’s speed by scrapping ships. You can also play with the speed setting to see where the fleet can get in two or three turns.

Now the most complex topic. How does the tactical planner deal with displaying information for hostile orbital fleets? Here we have a possibility that the fleet will split into several, each heading its own way. The planner can emulate only one scenario (even this way it’s confusing enough). It is the most basic situation when a part of the ships leave and some (like satellites) are left to defend the system. For it, the planner draws two range circles instead of one, one for the predicted orbital fleet and one for the leaving fleet. The prediction on fleet composition is madebased on the speed value you set– the ships with speed high enough are automatically sorted into the leaving fleet, and the others are presumed to stay behind.

Thus if you are looking at an enemy system with lots of ships in orbit and you’re guessing that a fleet will leave it with speed of 500 and head towards one of your worlds, you a) click on that enemy system and enable the tactical planner for it; b) change the presumed speed to 500; c) right-click on the presumed target. On the starmap you will see the planner’s best guess about the future position of the attacking fleet, its fire range and the defending fleet’s fire range.

Now before going on with game description let me repeat once more: making changes (like changing range and speed figures) in the Tactical Planner does not affect the game! It is used only to help you better visualize your predictions and guesses about what is going to happen next turn. The actual events depend on the actual moves you and your opponents will make.

Surface screen

You can enter the surface screen by clicking on a star system on the starmap and then clicking the "Surface" button below.

On the top portion of the screen you can read various information about the star system: it’s name, coordinates, who owns it, its size and how much free space is left (this does include all industrial satellites and artificial moons built or queued for building).

Next to the "Resources and Industries" label you can see how long it will take for this system to build all ships it’s been ordered to build. Building ships is considered a first-priority task; all industrial developments are stopped while a new starship is being constructed (and then resumed normally).

Resources

The first line of icons shows all resources this system contributes to your (or someone else’s) economy. These resources can be consumed here or elsewhere.

Industries and The Development Queue

Just under the list of resources you can see all industries, resorts, satellites and artificial moons you have or are about to have in this system. The industries that are not yet operational as shown as "ghosted"; the number next to them shows how soon they’ll be coming on-line (this number may change if more ships are scheduled to be built at the system’s space docks).

For an operational shipbuilding industry the "T" column shows how long it takes to build one ship. Next to it, the "$" column shows how much it will cost you. The cost column may have two numbers in it – the first is the cost of labor and the second is the cost of parts for the ship. While the first number is never zero, the parts cost something only if you don’t produce them elsewhere, i.e. if the are in deficit and have to be bought from space traders. If the ship has no deficit parts, you will see only one number.

You can select a shipbuilding industry and click the "Order Ships" button above to schedule production of one ship. Selecting a shipbuilding industry and clicking on "Spec" brings up a summary of ship characteristics. For all other industries, pressing the "Spec" button will bring up a window listing all ships that use this industry.

If you scroll the industry window to the left you will see what kind of resources or products each of them consumes. You can also sort the industry list by any of these columns by clicking on column headers.

Clicking on an industry expands it in the lower portion of the screen where the same information (resources and products it consumes) can be seen.

Finally, you can select any number of industries and click on "Demolish" to get rid of them. This will free up resources, but it also may create deficit if their production was used elsewhere – so be cautious! "Demolishing" a not-yet-operational industry simply removes it from the development queue.

Building New Industries

The lower portion of the planetary screen allows you to pick new industries for development.

Every industry possible is the game is listed there along with the following three numbers (separated by slashes "/"):

• Deficit cost. This is how much you would pay each turn for this industry’s deficit if you built it now. If this is a shipbuilding industry, this is how much you would pay each turn while building these ships. This number is a good indicator of whether you should consider building this industry or not: if it’s too large, forget about it for a while.  To bring this number down, build industries that supply parts for this one.
• Number of turns needed to build this industry, and
• Planetary space it will occupy.

Also, every industry that you already have is marked with ">>", and the ones that you have scheduled for development are marked with ">".

Normally industries are sorted by deficit cost, with the industries you already have or are about to have appearing at the end of the list. This view is very useful if you are looking for something you can build easily with existing resources and technologies. You can however check the "Sort Alphabetically" checkbox, and the industries will be sorted by their names. This is useful if you know exactly what you’re looking for.

By clicking on any industry you can "expand" it and see all that it requires to operate. Again, in the expanded view the industries that you have or are about to have will be marked with ">>" or ">".

To develop an industry, select it and click "Develop New". If you select a shipbuilding industry, you may click "Spec" to examine the specifications of ships it produces; for all other industries, clicking on "Spec" will bring up a listing of all ships that use that industry.

Fleet Screen

Clicking on a fleet in deep space brings you to the fleet screen. In its top portion you can read the fleet’s owner race, coordinates, speed and a list of fleet properties (cloaking, jamming, targeting).

Below you see a list of ships and how much they are damaged (in percents).

At the bottom you can choose a battle plan and fire range for the fleet (see the Gameplay section to find out how they affect the fleet’s behavior).

To scrap ships in the fleet, select the sips you would like to scrap and click "Scrap Ships". You may want to do it to increase the fleet’s speed.

Selecting a ship and clicking "Spec" brings up a summary of ships’ specifications.

Once you have a fleet selected, you can select a target for it by right clicking on the map.

Orbital Screen

The orbital screen is very similar to the fleet screen. The only difference is that you may choose which ships to deploy instead of deploying the entire fleet. Also, the ships you are building appear on that screen as “ghosted”. The number next to them indicates how much you will need to pay to bring them on-line (as usual, the first number is the ship cost and the second number is that cost for deficit parts needed to complete construction).

Deploying Ships

To deploy a new fleet, select the ships you want to send on a mission and then right-click the destination point on the map. The selected ships will be taken from the orbital fleet and put into a separate fleet. This fleet is then positioned on the outer orbit at the point closest to its destination.

If you ever change your mind about deploying these ships, simple change their destination back to the system and they will be re-merged into its orbital fleet.

Economy screen

The economy screen gives you a global summary of your economy. You can access it from anywhere clicking on the "Economy" button below the starmap.

On the top part of the economy screen you can see your total capital, your current income, and how much space you have on your planets. Watch you capital very carefully! You won’t be able to construct any ships if you don’t have money to pay for construction -- those ship builders don’t take credit cards!

Free Resources

The resource summary shows all free resources you have. This is very different from what you see on the planetary screen: there, you see all resources a system contributes to the economy. Here, you see only those resources that are not being consumed by industries you already have. You’ll find this list very useful when you are planning which industries to develop next.

Industries and The Development Queue

The next list on the economy screen is a summary of all industries you have in all your systems and all industries scheduled for development. Scrolling this list to the right shows you where these industries are located and what they consume. Clicking on an industry brings you to the system where it is built.

You can sort this list by clicking on column headers.

Space Docks

The next list is a list of all ships that are built in your space docks this turn. You can quickly browse this list to see if you are paying too much for some of them. Clicking on a ship brings you to where it is being built.

Deficit

The deficit screen below shows you whether you have any deficits in your economy, and if you do, how much you pay for those products to space traders. Note that if one of the resources is in deficit, you will start paying for every industrial product that uses this resource. The price, however, is proportional to the supply/demand ratio for that resource.

You should think twice before trying to build ships that have too many costly parts – if you don’t have enough money you will never be able to complete construction.

Communications screen

The Communications screen allows you to read a log of what happened during the turn and manage player relations. You can access this screen from anywhere by clicking on the "Communications" button below the starmap.

The top portion lists all races you’re in contact with. You can check those races that you declare to be friends (or uncheck them if you no longer consider them as friendly).

If you think your situation is hopeless and you don't want to continue, clicking on "Resign" will transfer all your planets and ships to Natives and end your rule in the Universe.

The bottom potion lists all messages your fleet admirals and planet governors have sent to you during the turn. Clicking on a message brings you to the site of action.

Tips for Beginners

Here are a couple of tips for first-time players that should get you going in Constellation! :

• Build an SDI base first so you can look around.
• To start development, choose a ship type that's high enough in the new industries list. The farther below it is, the more time and resources you'll have to spend to build it.
• Expand that ship's node in the new industries list to see all the supporting industries your ship type requires; keep expanding until you have uncovered the whole subtree. Look at the resources you need to build all these industries; make sure you either have them (you will pay 100 a turn for any resource you don't have; can you afford that?) or you can acquire them soon (by conquering more planets). Also make sure you have enough free space on your planets to build all those industries. If you don't, try choosing another "target" ship type.
• If an industry has ">>" next to it, you already have it -- you don't need to expand into those. If an industry has a ">" next to it, you are building it already. You don't need to expand into those either, but remember that once they get on line, they will require resources to operate!
• Distribute development of all industries you need to build among your systems. Try to minimize the total time it will take to build all of them, but you may consider other factors as well (like: how close a system is to the front line, balance between development, ship production and defense, etc.)
• When you have all the supporting industries, build the shipbuilding ones and order a bunch of ships from them. With your new fleets, conquer several star systems, and repeat....
• Build some resorts when you have conquered enough star systems so you have income for more ships and for covering maintenance costs.

Advanced gameplay

Here is the order things happen in during each turn processing:

1. Industrial development
2. Abandoned planets are returned to Natives
3. Fleets move
4. Fleets merge into orbital fleets at friendly systems
5. Ships repair themselves
6. Ships fire
7. Ships receive damage
8. Undefended systems surrender
9. New ships purchased

The targeting, jamming, cloaking and repairing values for a fleet are calculated by the following formula:

Targeting = sum of targeting values / (number of scout ships + 1)

Analogous formulas are used for all other values.

For a ship with precision p in a fleet with targeting value t, firing at a fleet with jamming value j, the following formulas are used:

Miss-to-Hit-nominal = (1 – p) / p

Miss-to-Hit-actual = Miss-to-Hit-nominal * (1+ j) /(1 + t)

(1 - precision-actual) / precision-actual = Miss-to-Hit-actual

By "miss-to-hit" we mean here the average number of times the ship will miss divided by the average number of times it will hit its target.

Biomass is a slightly more frequent resource than all others. The approximate distributions of the resources are:

Uranium – 20%
Iron – 20%
Dilithium – 20%
Biomass – 30%
Gold  – 10%

The resources, however, tend to cluster, so local concentrations may be quite different from the averages.

Calculating deficit cost:

If you are missing industrial product X, then your deficit cost is calculated by the following formula:

Deficit-cost (X) = resources (X) * 100 + turns (X) * 20 + space (X) * 5 + deficit-of-components

Here resources, turns and space are, correspondingly, the number of resources, number of turns and space required to build X, and deficit-of-components is the sum of deficits costs for all parts required to build X that your industry does not produce.

If the system building a ship has Vertical Evolution, the total deficit for it is reduced by max(turn*100 – 1000, 0). Here turn is the current turn of the game.