List of guides on this page:

    * Common IC terms

    * Banking

    * NAP's

    * Building

    * Science

    * Voting / Leader options

1. Glossary of common IC terms

IC - Imperial Conflict
MF - Mining Facility
RC - Research Center
HF - Hydroponic Farm
RS - Refinement Station
OC - Occult Center
TO - Tax Office
LQ - Living Quarter
CF - Cash Factory
Pop = Population
RPs - Research points
Econ = Economy
Sci = Science
Figs = Fighters
Ground = Ground units (soldiers/droids)
Air = Air units (bombers/fighters/transports)
Pax, Paxy, Prax = Partaxian
Wizzie = Wizard
Ops = Special operations, normally just used for agent operations.
U-News = The Universal News Forum
Gal = Galaxy
Uni = Universe
n00b, newb = New player, may be used as an insult
w00t = Yay
Foohon = Anything you want it to mean, generally an affectionate greeting
Foo = Short for foohon
VL = Vice Leader
Rogue = Player who doesn't co-operate with his family
Trannys/ies = Transport
Aggy = Agent
Eship/Explo = Explorer/Explore phase
SA = Space Amazement
NF = No fear
Hypno = hypnotise
ES = Electric Storm
PI = Planetary Infrastructure
PL = Planet List
NAP = Non Agression Pact
MW = Milky Way
SagD/SD = Saggitarius Dwarf
Andro = Andromeda
Tri = Triangulum OR 3 Families who have all allied eachother (tri-alliance)
PW = Pinwheel
FR = Fleet readiness (some players still use this term but Fleet readiness has now been replaced with morale, so if someone asks you what your FR is they mean your morale)
HP = Home Planet
Coords = Coordinates
NW = Networth

Banking

If you decide to be a banker, as opposed to a resource producer, then you're going to want some income

There are two ways to get income, either through population or cash factories. The exact income formula is:

Income = ((pop/30) + (CashFactories * 8) * (1+RaceBonus/100%) * (1+(2 * TaxOffices/TotalBuildings)) * (1+ EconomyScience%/100%)

Or basically, your base income is:
Your population divided by 30, plus the amount of cash factories times 8.
Income bonuses from your race, science and tax offices then come into effect, so a 50% race bonus, 50% science bonus and 100% tax office bonus would give you a total income bonus of 200% - so add 200% of your base income to your base income to get your income.

Most people do not mix population banking and cash factory banking, although if you want to, you can do that. It is recommended that bankers choose or make a race containing Tax Offices, in order to get a better income. A high race income bonus is always good, a high race research bonus is also good as it allows you to more easily get a high economy research bonus. If you are using population banking you may also want a Population Growth Bonus.

Population Banking:
This involves only building Living Quarters and Tax Offices, the exact ratio of these two is up to you but the best strategists all agree on a figure of around 60% Living quarters 40% Tax Offices.
Population grows at a rate of 4% per tick per planet if you have no population growth bonus, so a planet with 1000 people on it will grow by 40 people on the next tick. If you have a bonus, multiply the 4% by that, so a 50% bonus means your population grows at 6% per tick and a -30% bonus means your population grows at 2.8% per tick.
Never build anything other than Living Quarters and Tax Offices if using this method, as that will kill your Tax Office bonus. It is best to fund science instead of building research centres and either get another member of your family to send you resources, or buy them on the market rather than building the buildings for them.
Note that population banking will lead to high food costs, and that your population is susceptible to the wizard spells "Hypnotize" and "Electric Storms" - so you will need to build some wizards to protect yourself.

Cash Factory Banking:
Cash factories are a cheap, quick source of cash but it is hard to get as good an income with them as with population banking. You can either build cash factories alone, with a range of other buildings or just cash factories and tax offices for a high tax office bonus.
Their advantages are the quick speed with which they are completed and the low food costs they entail. Also, you are never at risk from wizards with cash factories.

Note that if your population is starving (you do not have enough food to feed your population, every 10 people eat 1 food every tick) then your income will be halved.

Income 100
Units -20
Buildings -20
Net Income 60

It is the top figure (100) that will be halved, not the bottom figure, so if you are starving:

Income 50
Units -20
Buildings -20
Net income 10

You will be informed on your main page if your population is starving.
Every unit costs 1gc per tick to maintain, every building also costs 1gc per tick to maintain, this is subtracted from your income to give your net income.
Also note that every soldier eats 1 food per tick.

NAP's

A NAP is a common IC term and stands for "Non-Agression Pact'

In the real galaxies when you enter a family you will normally notice on the forums or the leader message a list of NAPs. These are families that you must under no circumstances attack.

The actual terms of each NAP differs with every one, though there are a few sets of standard terms that players have written which can be copied and pasted for a NAP agreement (ie: 'TNT NAP' or 'Brom NAP' - TNT and Brom being two well known players in Milky Way). A basic NAP will state that each family agrees not to attack eachother, the families will agree to pay compensation if a member of the family attacks the NAPped family and that each family must give a certain amount of notice (normally 24 or 48hours) to get rid of the NAP. This 24/48hour period is put in place in order to give the family who is having the NAP cancelled on them time to prepare for the attacks that will normally come once a NAP ends.

Your leader will tell you how many NAPs the family has, and if there are any special clauses (such as 'you are not able to explore into these 3 systems'). NAPs can be made by just sending a message to another leader and having him reply, or by being set officially in the relations page. Either way is just as good because any family that breaks a NAP without giving the right amount of notice will be known as 'dishonorable' and attacked by most other families in the galaxy - so make sure to always check the family's NAPs before attacking.

If you decide to attack a NAPped family without your familiy's permission and then refuse to pay compensation it is highly likely your family will just kill you themselves.

Building, buildings

Well, one of the first things you'll want to do when you come to Imperial Conflict is get yourself some buildings, but before you start massing row upon row of lasers, check this out first

How do i build a building?

Go to your planets screen, if you're new you'll only see one planet there. That is your homeplanet and can only be attacked in a hardcore galaxy (Draco or Saggitarius Dwarf)
Next to your planet you'll see two buttons, 'construct portal' and 'build'. I've explained portals elsewhere, so for now just click build.
Your infrastructure advisor will tell you quite a few things on this page; how many buildings you have already built on the planet, how many the planet can hold before overbuild costs start, how many you can currently build, if the planet has a resource bonus, what your construction bonus from science is (if any), how much extra overbuilding will add to the cost of each building (if anything) and your 'large empire construction costs' (if any). I'll take you through what these mean one by one below.
In order to actually build the building, fill out the amount of buildings you want on the planet and click "build" at the bottom of the page. If you do not have enough cash or resources to complete the buildings, you infrastructure advisor will tell you.

How many buildings you have already built on the planet:
Pretty self explanatory, scroll down to the bottom of the page and click 'planet view' to see which buildings they are.

How many the planet can hold before overbuild kicks in:
This can be seen on the planets screen as 'max size' - the bigger a planet the better. I'll explain overbuild below.

How many you can currently build:
In order to stop a strategy known as 'Flint Jumping' (named after the person to popularise/invent it - which involved destroying lots of units and buildings in order to get a very high construction bonus, and then building thousands of buildings on each planet at once) IC now has a build limit on planets. You can get an unlimited amount of buildings on each planet, but it takes time now. The amount of buildings you can currently build is equal to the amount of completed buildings on the planet. If the amount of completed buildings on the planet is under the planets maximum size, you can build as many buildings as the planets maximum size.

If the planet has a resource bonus:
Resource bonuses are very useful to resource producers and a research planet is easy to spot. An iron bonus planet is very small and brown, an octarine bonus planet is small and yellow, an endurium bonus planet looks like the earth and a food bonus planet is plain blue. Clicking on any planet will show you its resource bonus, and you can also see your own planets' resource bonuses from the planet screen.
A resource bonus means that any buildings producing that resource get a bonus to their production. So 10 mining facilities (which normally would produce 10 iron every tick) on a planet with a 10% iron bonus, will now produce 10x110% = 11 iron per tick. Note that imperial conflict rounds down, so 10 mining facilities on a 9% iron bonus planet would not gain you any extra iron.

What your construction bonus from science is:
This reduces your costs, see Science - A Short Guide for a detailed explanation.

How much extra overbuilding will add to the cost of each building:
The maximum size of each planet dictates how many buildings you can build on it at normal cost. As the amount of planets you can get is limited, it will eventually be necessary to build more buildings than the planets maximum size on your planets. This is known as overbuilding and costs extra.
The amount overbuilding costs is calculated per building, so there is no gain to be had by building 100 buildings at once as opposed to 100 buildings 1 at a time (except for saving a lot of time). You can see how much extra overbuilding costs by looking at the figures next to each building (unless you are mass-building, which is explained below)
Once you build double the amount of buildings that your planet can easily support (its max size) costs will be 100% higher, or twice the normal. Once you build three times the amount of buildings your planet can easily support, the costs will be 300% higher, or four times the normal.
The exact formula is:
OB=(amount of buildings/planetsize-1)*100%

Large empire construction costs:
These start at 10000 networth and add to the cost of your buildings. At 10000 you pay 1% extra, at 100000 you pay 10% extra, at 1million you pay 100% extra, at 2million you pay 200% extra and so on

Here is what each building does:

Mining Facility - Produces 1 iron per tick
Hydropnic Farm - Produces 100 food per tick
Refinement Station - Produces 1 endurium per tick
Occult Centre - Produces 1 octarine per tick
Research Centre - Produces 20 research points per tick (possibly more or less, see Science - A short guide)
Cash Factory - Gives a base income of 8gc per tick, (possibly more or less - see Income - A short guide)
Living Quarter - Increases the maximum population of a planet by 500. See Income - A short guide to see what population does and also see Science - A short guide to see what effect welfare has on population.
Laser - Each laser fires 10 shots at attacking enemy bombers and transports, and each bomber has a 10% chance of destroying a laser (so generally 10 bombers destroy 1 laser). Bombers attack lasers before they shoot, so if your opponent sends enough bombers your lasers will never get off a shot.
Tax Office - For every 1% of your buildings that is a Tax Office, your base income recieves a 2% bonus. See Income - A short guide for the best ways to use Tax Offices

Science

Research, also known as science, is very important to your success.

On the research page, you will see how much you are currently funding towards research, how many research points you have in each section, what your research bonus is in each section and what percentage of your research points go to each section.

You gain research points either through funding research or building research centres. Unless you are using Tax Offices i would recommend building research centres - in the long run they prove more cost-effective. Every gc you put in research gives you 1 research point and every research centre you have gives you 20 research points. If your race has a research bonus, you can multiply the total research points you get per tick from that. So a 50% research bonus means you get 50% extra research points per tick, a -30% research bonus gives you -30% research points per tick.

At the bottom of the page you can choose what percentage of your research points every tick goes to which section, the numbers must equal 100%.

The bonus each section gets from the amount of research points it contains can be calculated using this formula:

Science% = 100 * (1 - exp(-RP / (100 * networth) ) )

note that Exp = the e button on your calculator.

Here is what each section does:

Military - Increases the attack and defense strength of your units, note that this does not affect lasers or bombers. Recommended for all attackers.
Welfare - Increases your maximum population. Some population bankers may wish to use this.
Economy - Increases your income, recommended for all bankers.
Construction - Decreases building costs for units and buildings, note that a 50% research bonus will not mean half building costs, merely reduced costs (otherwise a 99.9% bonus will get you nearly free buildings). Recommended for all.

Note that there are some planets with a science bonus (a picture of an atom with a number by it) - a science bonus of 50 acts as 50 extra research centres.

Voting / Leader options

In order to change your vote, go to your family screen (by clicking 'my family') and look for the button marked 'change your vote'. Click this and you will be presented with a list of your family members, and will also be told who your leader is, who everyone else is voting for and who you are currently voting for (by default you are voting for yourself). Click on the circle next to the person who you wish to vote or and click 'change vote'. In virgo please vote for your tutor as leader as they need leadership to be able to do their job.

Once someone has 3 votes they become leader of the family and then have access to the 'leader options'. However, if more than 1 person has more than 3 votes, the one with the most votes is the leader. In the event of a tie (ie: 4 votes each) the current leader will keep leadership. It is not a good idea for players in a family to fight over leadership as familys should always work together. You can see who your leader is from the family page too, their name is highlighted in pink.

Leader options:

The leader of a family is the public contact point for all other families with the family, messages about alliances, NAPs, wars and anything else will go through him. The leader should always be an experienced player who knows other people in the galaxy and is good at diplomacy. When you arrive in the real galaxies you will almost certainly be in a family that has already agreed on a leadership, its always best if you just go along with this decision.
The leader can post in the Galactic Congress (which vice leaders can read, but not post in) - a forum just for family leaders.

The leader can also:

    * Change the family picture

    * Change the family name

    * Change the leader message (the message you see in your HQ)

    * Make or break alliances

    * Make or break NAPs

    * Declare or cancel wars

    * Set the external family home page

    * Set the family chat channel

    * Declare players inactive

    * Make vice leaders

Exploring

In the early stages of each round exploring is *THE* main thing that every player will be doing and it is recommended you do the same. After a couple of weeks every planet in the galaxy will be explored and the only explorable planets will come from players deleting or people attacking other players that are less than 35% of their networth and winning (this results in the planet that was attacked become an unowned explorable planet). In virgo the best way to pass is to explore 9 planets to get yourself 10 (the number needed to pass into a real galaxy) - though you can also do this by attacking other players.

How to explore:
Go to the units page and find 'exploration ships' - if you can afford e-ships then type the amount you want next to the picture of one and click build. Note that you can only build 6 in any 24hour period. This is to stop large families getting all the planets early on.

Next, once your ships are completed, click the planets page and look at the co-ordinates next to your planet. Remember these. For my example my planet will be at 12,121:20. This means planet 20 in the 12,121 system.

Click on the map and click the section that contains your planet, and look around until you find a system with a blue circle around it, this means you have a planet in that system, your exploration ships will automatically launch from the nearest planet to their destination. If the planet is in a system where you already own a planet it will still take 1 tick to arrive.

Find a system near to the one with a blue circle in there and click on it to see the planets inside, if there is a planet with no name under it then you may explore it. If you are a resource producer you may want to look for a planet with a high resource bonus (the highest bonuses are around 20-25%).

Once you have clicked the planet that you want to explore, click the "explore" button on the planet view screen, you will then be told how much the exploration will cost, and if you can afford it, click explore again to launch your ship.

If someone arrives at a planet before you, then your ship will be returned to you. If two players send ships to the same planet that arrive on the same tick, the one who sent the ship earlier in the tick will get the planet.

Note that you cannot explore planets 1-20 in a normal homesystem, and in a virgo homesystem the last 20 planets are also off-limits. These planets are reserved for players in the family and will never become explorable.

Allies

Outside of your own family your best friends in IC are your allies. If you're under attack, your allies should be there for you, if they're under attack, you should be there for them. If they're far away from you and you want some planets on that side of the galaxy, it should be easy to arrange planetswaps with them. If you need help planning a war or an economic jump, they'll be around to help you.

The leader of the famliy generally decides who to ally, and he or she may ask the family for their opinion if he/she is a democratic leader. Occasionally a family has a vice-leader in charge of relations. Only a leader can officially make or break an alliance on the relations page.

You cannot break an alliance for 48hours after you have created it, you cannot re-ally someone for 72hours after you have broken an alliance with them, and you cannot attack a family for 48hours after you have broken your alliance with them. Attacking your ex allies is considered very dishonorable and may cause other families to declare war on you to punish you.

Good allies are generally near to your family in the networth rankings, communicative and preferably near to you in the galaxy so they're on hand to support you. You are allowed up to 2 allies (the game won't let you declare any more, and if you try to form alliances with other families or players from other families you run the risk of being blocked and deleted for an illegal alliance) and the best alliances are 'tri-alliances'. This is where all 3 families in the alliance are allied to eachother.

Your allies will show up on the map with a grey dot next to their planets and a green ring around their homesystem. You can see who your allies are and access their forums by clicking on the relations page.

I will NEVER become a memory...

X(   X(
~SA

The leader can post in the Galactic Congress (which vice leaders can read, but not post in) - a forum just for family leaders.

You might want to update some o the stuff =P

wow that's long o.O

FR = Fleet readiness (some players still use this term but Fleet readiness has now been replaced with morale, so if someone asks you what your FR is they mean your morale)

4 years that i played i have not seen a sole use this.

usefull still for new people!