This is a sample of the introductory message that I send out to new
players in my games. Feel free to base your message upon it (adapting
the sever instructions to your server and changing e-mail @'s is needed
however).

****************
Welcome to Galaxy game UNNAMED!

Below are some general notes & instructions:

Note to players that have played in my games before: I have rewritten 
parts of this and clarified some things, please do reread it.

+++++++++++++

Changing empire names-
  You _MUST_ mail me and let me know if you change your empire's name
with a C command. I manually maintain the file that cross references
your empire name with your e-mail address. If you change your name and
I don't notice, you don't get a report....
 

+++++++++++++
Vacations, quitting, new players:
  If you are going to be going on vacation & will be unable to submit
turns, please try to tell me in advance. You can give me turns ahead
of time, but please mark them as such. You can also opt to have
someone substitute for you, again, give me a few days notice so I can
make sure their e-mail address is reachable from here. Note that mail
of this sort needs to go to bampton@cs.utk.edu, not zeus.

If for some reason you wish to or have to quit, please drop me a note.
If your empire is in decent shape, I'll try to find a replacement (or
you can nominate one yourself).

If you miss 2 turns in a row, I'll try to get in touch with you to see
if you are still alive. Should I get no response in a reasonable
amount of time, your empire will be considered abandoned, and I'll
seek a replacement as above. Kindly don't go this route, I have too
little time for such games.

++++++++++++++
Number of players and locations:

  There are 15-20 players in UNNAMED (this is a blind game,
otherwise I'd tell you (:-)). Each player's homeworld will be one of
the ones on your turnsheet, but it probably won't be one of the first
or last 99 ones. (i.e. they will be randomly distributed).

  The galaxy will be large enough that your nearest neighbor will be
at least 20.01 LY away (i.e. you shouldn't see anyone on turn 2 unless
you happen to both send probes to the same system). This should give
everyone time to expand for a few turns before they run into each
other.

  I will tweak the code to generate galaxies somewhat, so those of you
with source code won't have an unfair advantage. Unless you have version
2.43, your galaxy simulations will be off anyway; I've rewritten critical
parts of that code.

++++++++++++++
Game Rules & Quirks
  I'll be using all the rules, including:
1) "version 3 compatible" -  cargo and multiple weapons rules
2) The K command will be allowed
3) Tech level info about other races encountered will be carried over from 
   turn to turn.
4) Partial techs will be allowed.

Note: The following commands are not presently supported:
Z (change e-mail @) - send me mail instead
Y (password stuff) 
Q (quit) - send me mail instead

Options: twocol, underscores, namecase

The following commands have different meanings or are slightly
different in blind galaxy:

I (intercept) - you have to be able to see where they are going
G (upgrade) - partial upgrades of a group are impossible
F (full reports) - this is not the player @ lookup command

++++++++++++++
Anyone who is interested in getting their hands on any tools that I am
using to run the game, or the source code is welcome to ask. The most
recent stable (?) version is always ftpable from cs.utk.edu 
/pub/bampton/Blind

++++++++++++++
Sending email

I have a limited duty server that takes care of several game related tasks:
  1) It accepts orders, checks them, and mails you a response informing
     you how they may turn out, as well as checking errors.
  2) It supports double blind message forwarding, so that you may remain
     anonymous (or not).
  3) It supports queries about to whom you can forward messages.

Mail that should be handled by the server, should be sent to "zeus@cs.utk.edu"
Mail that I should read should be sent to "bampton@cs.utk.edu"

Note: I do skim all mail that goes through zeus, and will on occasion correct
mistakes about game mechanics that are mentioned. It is possible to "spoof"
the programs and read other people's turn reports, or fake messages from them.
Anyone caught doing this may be ejected from the game. I have not gone to 
great lengths to prevent spoofing because I'd rather spend the effort on 
making the game better.

++++++++++++++
Turns:
  Turns are due Monday & Thursday @ 4:30 PM EDT (8:30PM GMT), they
  should be sent to zeus@cs.utk.edu. Any questions or comments to
  me should be sent in a separate message, to bampton@cs.utk.edu

  Note: I run turns by hand. This means that they will seldom be out
  before 4:45 (especially since I will be running 4 games on some
  days). If there are no problems with player's orders, I can run a
  turn in 10 minutes. If there are lots of players with bad orders,
  it may take 30...

Format:
  Please use a subject of:"UNNAMED orders for <racename>"
  you may include a turn and/or revision number in the subject as well
  (note that my server ignores anything after the racename, this is
  for human tracking purposes)
  "UNNAMED orders for <racename> turn 5, revision 1"
  If you submit multiple sets of orders, especially within several
  minutes of each other, I strongly recommend that you use the latter
  format. Your first message may get here last (or I might file them
  in the wrong order), and be used instead if this isn't done.

  You _must_ have the words "UNNAMED" and "orders" in your subject,
  otherwise, your orders will not be recognized, and I'll have to
  refile them manually. See "Preprocessor" below for why. The
  preprocessor is case sensitive on the subject line- "UNNAMED" is not 
  "UNNAMED", "orders" is not "Orders".

  The body of the mail message should look like (Note: do not put in
  leading spaces!)
      #Galaxy UNNAMED Iron_Empire
      <whatever you are going to do>
      #end

for example:
Subject: UNNAMED orders for Iron_Empire (turn 5)
#Galaxy UNNAMED Iron_Empire
M
T Strike_Eagle Eagle
P Germania CAP
P Macedonia SHIP Chariot
S 63 Balmung
S 65 Balmung 32
S 73 Rommye
#end

Note: you can use "GALAXY", "galaxy", "Galaxy", or "GaLaXy", as well 
as "end", "END", or "End". 

+++++++++++++
Order checking

  Since I tend to be a terrible typist, I've written a few tools to
help players avoid stupid errors (typos, not attacking someone bigger
than you (:-)).

Here is how I handle your orders:
About every 10 minutes, the preprocessor checks for and handles any
mail- messages get forwarded, and orders checked. Machines getting
rebooted or large messages may take it out until I come in the 
next day though.

For each set of orders, a modified version of the code that I run the
game with is used. It checks for all errors in your orders. If it can
not find any orders, it will complain about a mistake on line 0.
If the #galaxy line is found, it will use your orders and flag
get any problems, such as misspelled planets, non-existent groups, etc.

If the are no complaints from either pass, you will get back an
acknowledgment telling you that all your orders are fine. If there
are any problems with them, you will get:

a) A V3.x Galaxy style Mistakes section, with the command (as seen by the
program), its command number (i.e. the nth one in your orders), and
why it thinks that it won't work.

In general the preprocessor doesn't get confused and mess up the rest
of your orders unless something is really wrong with them. It also is
usually right (especially if I haven't changed the code recently).

b) Your original message, including your orders.

If requested, a forecast of what the next turn report will look
like (sans most information about other empires) will be in that message 
as well.

If any of your orders are flagged as being wrong, please take the time
to correct them and resubmit your entire set of orders. While I will
make reasonable attempts to fix things, I may guess wrong or be so
pressed for time that I delete commands that don't work.

  For the curious, I process turns using a csh script (which does all
the ack. creation, feeds your orders through the the galaxy program itself, 
and allows me to test things manually before I run the turns).  For speed 
reasons, I am using a sun Sparc station.

++++++++++++++
Contacting other players-
  Initially you won't know the names of the other players in the game.
While I can't & won't stop you from writing your friends to find out
if they are playing, I find that it ruins part of the game if you try
to find this information out outside of the game.

  To establish contact with a race, you have to have a ship belonging to
one player at the system of another, or 2 ships at the same system
(one of which must have mass>1.0). This must be the case at the end of
the turn. If you bombed/blew them up, well, its hard to figure out
where they came from when you only have debris to look at...

  If someone you are in contact with can contact someone you wish to
talk to, they can request that I enable it between the two of you.
I.e. if A can speak to B, and B can speak with C, B can request that I
enable communications between A and C.

  You then need to contact me and request that I enable forwarding to
that player. You will need to list what planets meet the above
criterion, since I do check them. Failure to list the planet(s) may
result in delays. Once you have that, you are free to talk to each other as 
you choose, either through the forwarder, or exchanging e-mail @'s.

Note that it may take me a day or two to enable forwarding requests.
Also you MUST wait for me to acknowledge your request before sending
message. I will not resend messages that you sent too soon.

++++++++++++++
Forwarding messages

Send a message with a subject like this to zeus@cs.utk.edu:
Subject: UNNAMED:FWD:<your_race_name>:<race to forward to>

To forward to multiple people at once:

Subject: UNNAMED:FWD:<your_race_name>:<race to forward to> <race to forward to>..

Examples:
Subject: UNNAMED:fwd:Myempire:GM
Subject: UNNAMED:fwd:Myempire:GM Myempire otherempire

The forwarder will strip out any mail headers, but leave the message
body intact. Any signature your mailer adds will be kept, so keep that
in mind if you don't wish to be exposed... The sending race will be
identified in the forwarded message -
Subject: UNNAMED forwarded message from <racename>

+++++++++++++++
Forwarding lists:
  It is possible to get a list of players to which you can forward.
Send a message to zeus@cs.utk.edu with a subject:
Subject:<gamename>:forwardlist:<racename>
for example
Subject:UNNAMED:forwardlist:Iron_Empire

You will be sent a list of the empires that you can forward mail to.

+++++++++++++++
Note: An easy way to check the server status, is to finger zeus@cs.utk.edu
If it is up and running, the "Project" field will say so (or tell you
that it is down).

It is not uncommon for sites with slow (or not so slow) links to have
mail take hours to arrive. If finger says it is up, mailing me isn't
going to help things.
+++++++++++++++

This is a brief overview of what gets logged and what doesn't get logged
as far as zeus is concerned, so you can understand why I've made the
changes that I'll detail later.
 
Incoming mail-
  The time I get it, and the headers and body of the message are
stored until the game ends.
 
Outgoing mail-
  Note: This is the _outgoing_ copies...
  Turn reports - no logging of any sort
  Forwarded messages - all messages are kept for a short time (for
   my reading enjoyment), and deleted. 
  Forwarding ACK's - all logged (for the time being) and deleted once
   I see them. When I get the chance, I'll remove this misfeature.
  Forecasts/order ACK's - Ones with errors logged, and deleted once I see what
   errors it flags. This is so I can fix, or at least plan to fix
   spurious error messages.

 
  The outgoing mail log is limited to ~1 megabyte. If it exceeds that,
  it stops processing mail. This is to prevent the problem I had once
  where I replied to a message with a bad return address, the mailer
  daemon at that site returned it, I saw it as a new message, processed
  it, and sent it to the bad address. Suffice it to say, the local
  mail guru at UT was extremely pissed at me. This problem has not
  re-occured, but paranoia never hurts.
 

