                               Concept : Units

 The basic data objects in Empire are called units.  Units vary  from  movable
combat  units  such  as ships, planes, spacecraft, and nukes, to more esoteric
units such as loans and treaties.

Units which Empire currently provides includes ship, plane, nuke, trade,  nie,
nation, missile, news, loan, treaty, and spacecraft.

The following units in Empire are able to move, attack, and  in  general  have
position  and  location  on  the Empire map.  They include ships, planes, mis-
siles, and spacecraft.  Each of these unit types supply the following  set  of
fields for selection:
loc  the location of the unit,
owner  the nation that owns the unit (which,  practically  speaking,  is  only
useful to the deity),
type  the unit sub-type (battleship, jet fighter, etc)
efficiency  the percent efficiency of the unit, from 0-100%,
flags  the permissions of the unit (under construction, allies can use, allies
can use as base, etc).

                               Concept : Units

Ship units represent individual ships in Empire that  can  be  used  to  ferry
cargo, or to attack enemy shipping on the high seas.  The following fields are
available for selection:
mobility  the number of mobility units,
tech  the technology level of the ship,
fleet  the ship grouping character, if any,
nplane  the number of planes on the ship

Plane units represent groups of planes in Empire that can  be  used  to  ferry
cargo,  or to attack ships, sectors, or planes.  The following ship fields are
available for selection:
  News units are actually news stories, which are generated by player  actions
and  by events that happen during the production update.  The following fields
are provided for selection:
actor  the nation causing the event
action  the news story (types are listed in news.h),
victim  the victim, if any,
times  the number of times this event occurred,
time  the time at which this event occurred.

                               Concept : Units

Loan units are loan and repayment agreements between two nations.   Loans  can
either  be  in the "offered" state or in the "accepted" state.  If accepted, a
payment is generated from the loanee every update to the owner  of  the  loan.
The following loan fields are provided for selection:
loanee  the country making the payments,
owner  the country receiving the payments,
irate  the interest rate (over 1000 etus),
etus  the loan duration in etus,
principal  the amount of cash originally lent,
remain  the principal remaining to be paid.

See also : ships(i), planes(i),  missile(i),  spacecraft(i),  loan(i),  flags,
unit.

