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).

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

Misdirected mail may be ignored, or delayed.

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The names Hermes, Uranus, Nike, and Apollo are used as examples of
various game names. Substitute whichever one(s) you are in as needed.

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Note to players that have played in my games before: I have rewritten 
parts of this, clarified some things, added some new policies, and
generally brought it into agreement with reality, please do reread it.

This message is a compilation of questions, answers, polices, and
other information that players need, or have asked for over the 4
years I've been GMing. ~80% of the questions I get are answered here,
or in the rules. yes, I probably should do a major rewrite of it, and
put it on the web. 

Welcome to Galaxy game Hermes, Uranus or Nike!

Below are some general notes & instructions:

+++++++++++++
Changing you Empire's name (via the C command), Setting Passwords

If you change your empire's name from what it was originally set to,
please let me know before I run the turn. I have a file which I
maintain by hand that cross references empire names to email
addresses. I've enhanced the Blind code (as of version 2.46) to
automatically do handle this, but I may miss something.

If you change your name, and I miss it, you won't get a turn report
since the program that mails reports won't have any idea where to mail
this "new" empire's turn reports.

Setting or changing a password can have similarily unpleasant side
effects. You might want to let me know ahead of time that you are
using one, so I can manually set it for you. Again, this appears to
work correctly in V2.46, but please play it safe.

+++++++++++++
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 (the Human,
not the server) 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 and that they do not have some archaic mail system that chokes on
"large" mail messages (like some Micro$oft "products"). 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 or 3 turns in a row, I'll typically not try to get in touch 
with you to see if you are still alive. Kindly don't go this route, I have 
too little time for such games, and writing orders for players until I
can find a substitute is time consuming.

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

  There are about 20 players in Hermes and Uranus, about 10 in Nike (this 
is a blind game, so I can not be more exact). Each player's homeworld will 
be one of the ones on your turn sheet, 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. Again, the constant I'm using is secret, to make homeworld
location guess more difficult during the midgame.

  I will tweak the code to generate galaxies somewhat, so those of you
with source code won't have an unfair advantage.

++++++++++++++
Game Rules & Quirks
  I'll be using all the rules, including:
1) "version 3 compatible" -  cargo and multiple weapons rules
   Note that as of V2.46, version 2 compatible code and rules are gone.
2) The K command will be allowed
3) Tech level info about other races encountered will be carried over from 
   turn to turn.
   Note that as of V2.46, the code and rules don't support this not
   being the case.
4) Partial techs will be allowed.

Note: The following commands are not presently supported in the blind
code:
Q (quit) - send me mail instead
@        - send a message

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

Reading the rules for other differences is _strongly_ encouraged. A
player who only uses Standard Galaxy commands, will be at a
substantial disadvantage.

++++++++++++++
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 released 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. generally
     speaking, if no one did anything for the turn in question, this 
     report is accurate.
  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 Tuesday & Friday @ 8:00 AM EST (1:00PM 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
  This time is 8AM US Eastern time.

  Note: I run turns by hand. This means that they will seldom be out
  before 8:30 (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:"Uranus orders for <racename>"
  (substituting your game's name, as needed)
  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)
  "Uranus 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 "Uranus" and "orders" in your subject,
  otherwise, your orders will not be recognized, and I'll have to
  refile them manually. See "Order checking" below for why. The
  preprocessor is case sensitive on the subject line- "Apollo" is not 
  "apollo", "orders" is not "Orders".

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

for example:
Subject: Apollo orders for Iron_Empire (turn 5)
#Galaxy Apollo Iron_Empire
M
T Strike_Eagle Eagle
P Germania CAP
P Macedonia 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", as the message body is read by a C program
(which I've ensured is case insensitive.).

+++++++++++++
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 2 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. See below for finding out about its status.

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.
Unlike the standard Galaxy gchecker program, this code is compiled
from the same source code. If it says there is a problem, so will the
main program.

If the are no complaints, you will get back an acknowledgment telling 
you that all your orders are fine (plus a forecast, if requested). 
If there are any problems with them, you will get:

a) A Mistakes section, with the command (as seen by the
program), its command number (i.e. the nth line in your orders, after
the #galaxy line), 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.

This server is MIME unaware. It expects text to be in ascii. Some
types of MIME encoding will produce strange responses to your orders.

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 & sh 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).  I've
got a partial rewrite of that mess in perl which I hope to upgrade to
at some point. All the code runs on a Sun 4/1xx server (I don't know
the exact model), running SunOS 4.1.3. At some point interlego will die,
and I'll be forced to migrate to Solaris 2.5.1 and a SparcCetner 1000.
Hopefully the perl version of the server will be done by then, because
these scripts are 3-4 years old, and not something I'm proud of having
written.

++++++++++++++
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...

  As an alternative, if you can contact two races, you may enable them
to talk to each other.

  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: Apollo:FWD:<your_race_name>:<race to forward to>

To forward to multiple people at once:

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

Examples:
Subject: Apollo:fwd:Myempire:GM
Subject: Apollo: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: Apollo forwarded message from <racename>

You will receive an acknowledgment when your message is sent
successfully.

+++++++++++++++
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:Apollo:forwardlist:Iron_Empire

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


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

  Help! I've forgotten when my turn is due, how to send mail to the
server, etc.

  If you've got a Internet connection, you can finger zeus@cs.utk.edu
zeus's .plan has instructions on how to use the server. It's .project
is updated every few minutes to tell you if it is running.

zeus's .project typically says one of three things:
"Down, GM will fix ASAP"
"GM Disabled it temp" (I'm usually running a turn while this is the case).
"Running"

Web enabled types can browse http://www.cs.utk.edu/~bampton/ There are
no graphics, so lynx or an ascii browser is just as good as a
graphical one. There are links to the server status, as well as the
most up to date copy of the turn running schedule that appears at the
top of your report.

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

  Downtimes:

Once every 28 days, our mail server goes down for backups. It is
typically down for several hours. Mail will be queued while it is
down. My best guess as to when it will be down is posted at the top of
every turn report (the downtimes are sometimes rescheduled, otherwise
I'd be more exact).

Interlego (where all my files are) also gets backed up once every 28
days, on a different day than cs.utk.edu, of course (:-). I've got a
cronjob that attempts to restart my mail server program after interlego 
comes back up. Most of the time it works. If interlego's mail server 
program is down, I will get mail peridically telling me so (and attempting 
to automatically restart), in theory, this means at worst, it is down 
for 12 hours or so. Once in a very great while, something goes
horribly wrong (server program wedges itself, power failure), and zeus
stops responding completely.

+++++++++++++
When a empire goes inactive, and can not (or will not) be replaced
with a real player, I take over control of that empire. This has the
following effects:

Political status: I don't change them unless you shoot first (except
in rare circumstances). I also typically ignore forwarded messages.

Tech advancement: I will do some, but generally don't do it until
planet defenses are sufficient.

Economics: I will max out planets, and possibly colonize planets that
have col in orbit or en-route. Nearby uninhabited worlds may be
colonized as well.

Ship production: generally speaking, warships are pulled back to
inhabited systems. All ships are upgraded to current tech (within
reason). All systems are given some sort of defenses, time permitting.
Typically a system only has what started there, and what it can build.
I will build general defenses, not ones that are optimized against any
player(s) (unless I can do it from looking at the inactive player's
turn report).

The general attempt of the above is to create a player that is not
trivial to knock off (ala the inactive since turn 1 type), nor will it
take unfair advantage of knowledge that it doesn't have but the GM
does. I usually only spend 5 minutes or less on a player's orders.

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