How it works

Strategy (Active) - When players think of strategy computer games, titles like Command and Conquer, and Age of Empires usually come to mind. However, these games are more accurately classified as tactical strategy games. This is because they all require quick decisions that take place immediately on the battlefield.

Turn-based (Active) — When players think of turn based strategy, they usually think of either Civilization or Master of Orion. These games tend to work great as single player games, but tend to be a bit awkward when playing multiplayer mode. The reason for this is because players are forced to rush their turns to keep the flow of play moving along at a reasonable speed.

Play-By-Email (Passive) — This style of play had a short lifespan with roots that started before the emergence of the modern Internet. With Play-By-Email games, a host system was set up to process game turns. Players would do their turn on their own time, and then email it to the host system for processing. Once all the turns from all players were received (or a preset time period of say 24 hours or so was reached), the host system would process them all together, and send the results back to the players. They could now make a new move. A game of chess could easily be played this way. It is this basic concept that most closely resembles the style of play used for Stellar Ops.

Stellar Ops is a hybrid of all these playing styles and is classified as Active/Passive. It is considered a passive multiplayer game, in that it does not require its players to be playing at the same time. In fact, this is one of its strongest points. You will quickly find that this time is very much needed to deal with the Active phase of Stellar Ops — diplomacy.

Creating your empire — You will build ships from resources, supplies and funds. Those ships will be built from facilities in solar systems that you own, claim or conquer. The higher the population of that system, the more facilities you can build there. You will need to protect your supply lines, expand your land, seek out the enemy, and drive him from the game. All this will be done one turn at a time. Ships may take several turns to travel from one system to another.

The game will start with you on a star map. Picture the Generals of today leering over the global theatre map from their command center. From here you will be able to click on a particular system, ship, starbase etc. From this map you will open up windows that let you change orders for that ship, production and building screens for star systems, diplomacy screens for communication with other players in the game, etc.