These questions are often asked by players completely new to the game.

Who am I?
Where am I?
When is the game set?
Where do I start?
Tell me about my ship
Where can I go?
When do I start paying?
What can I fight and where?
How do I get more ships?
How do I create my own empire?

You are in control of a ship. You are a training position labeled TRN and are not yet part of an affiliation. An affiliation is a faction within the Peripheries. This faction may be human or may be an alien species. You will get the option to join an affiliation after you have looked at the choices available to you. You can do some training missions to get used to the game or if you are a returning player you can skip this stage and join an affiliation straight away.

You start the game docked in the starport of Balmoral starbase. This is situated in the Yank system. This is a star that is pretty much in the centre of a number of star clusters that together make up a region of space known as the Peripheries. The Yank system along with the adjacent Skord system together make up a neutral region of space controlled by the Kastorian species of aliens. You have started here as it is central to the game and also neutral, i.e. relatively safe. Faster than light travel is possible, i.e. ships can move between stars using engines known as jump drives. They move the ship directly from the region of space close to one star to the region of space close to the destination star. There is a network of roots that forms the map of the stars.

The setting is a few hundred years from now. Humanity has fractured into various groups and has encountered alien races. Each species of alien has its unique history and while some have interacted with others for hundreds of years, humans generally have not had dealings with aliens for more than a few decades.

It is best to start simply by getting used to doing simple orders. Use the ‘move to planet orbit’ in order to move your ship from its current location to that of another planet. ‘Scan planet’ order can be used to get maps. You can issue ‘detailed scan’ in order to look more closely at other positions (ships, starbases etc) that you have detected during your journeys. Do not leave the system unless you know where you are going. It is a hostile universe so jumping into the wrong system could prove disastrous.Another top tip is to contact other players. Email addresses are shown next to positions scanned. Simply writing to anyone and everyone can often pay dividends. The game is a very social one so knowing players is often half the fun.

You start the game with a courier. It is effectively the 1.1 litre engine of the Phoenix universe. It is a good little ship to get you going but all in all is really only a training ship. It is not a warship, nor is it a particularly good trader. It does have a few defences, but these would be no match against serious opposition. It also starts with a cargo of kastorian delicacies that are worth something. The quicker you can find a market for these the better.By way of comparison most human ships are approximately 100 hulls compared to a Courier’s 20 hulls although often the purpose of the ship defines the size. The hull strength determines the damage that a hull can withstand so the size multiplied by the hull strength determines the maximum damage a ship can withstand. A light hull Courier can withstand 20*25=500 damage while a 100-hull warship can withstand 100*400=40,000 damage. This should give you some idea of what is out there. At this stage of the game, it is best not to get too cocky.Your ship has a cargo capacity of 400mu’s. While reasonable, there are many trade ships with capacities in excess of 6,000mu’s. These tend to be haulers, dealing with bulk transport. Your limited capacity means that it is best to deal with smaller goods that have high values. You can find out about many items and their local worth simply by issuing ‘tech manual’ orders for the items.

Anywhere you know about. A better question however is where should I go. The answer to this should be determined with some conversions between yourself and the rest of your affiliation. Charging off in a random direction is likely to end in destruction. There are maps of the peripheries out there and some even label which affiliation claims domain of which system. This can be very helpful. If you want to sell your initial cargo, it is best to do so to your own affiliation or to one of its allies. This is just starting advice and once you know the game better you will know where to trade and with whom.Your affiliation may also have some survey work lined up. There is never a shortage of worlds to check over.

You can play the game for free as long as you never perform special actions, surface explorations and want to run positions other than ships and ground parties. While you do not have a political position, each position that you own has its own stellars (money) rather than a central account. KJC’s advice is to learn the game a little better, do some trading or scanning then, if you want to go further, set up a political account.

To begin with it is best to avoid trouble as your courier is simply not up to it. If you are serious about getting into trouble, you shouldn't be needing to read this FAQ!

There are number of ways of getting more ships. The three standard routes are Create Poltical Position, beg your affiliation and buy one from the EEM. The simplest one is to start a political position using the Create Political Position order in the editor (note that this means that you will become a paying customer). Using the order automatically generates two more ships for you. They are a heavy hull broadsword class ship and a caravel freighter. The second method is to beg your affiliation for another ship. This will largely depend on how well you get on with your affiliation. It is often the case that they have a few spare ships laying around that they could transfer. It is more often though a question of why should they? The final method of getting ships is to buy them from the starbase Balmoral. This is done through the use of a special action. It is unlikely that you will be able to afford more ships for some time though.

While a frequently asked question, it is quite an advanced one and requires good understanding of the game. Yes it can be done, this said, most players that initially want to go down this road often end up controlling an already established affiliation.There are two methods of carving a niche for yourself in the Peripheries. The first method is to create your own affiliation from scratch while the second is to take over where somebody else left off.

Creating your own affiliation can be achieved by leaving an affiliation and taking all your assets with you providing you have 1 million stellars in your political account. Once you are independent, you issue a special action declaring your new affiliation, i.e. giving it a name and a three-letter acronym. An example would be Periphery Defence Force (PDF). The Game Master will then put this data into the game and promote your political to a Periphery Director.

Alternatively should you bump into a faction within the game that are not represented by an affiliation, you can leave your affiliation and use a special action to become the representatives of the faction you have found. For example, a player finds an isolated world populated by a technologically advanced group of humans that apparently ended up there some decades ago by accident. The player issues a special action and declares that he will represent these people in the game from this point onwards. Note that there are often consequences to these sorts of actions.

As stated above, more commonly a player can take over an established affiliation. From time to time the real world interferes with the game and players have to leave. As a consequence a small faction such as either of the ones mentioned above becomes uncontrolled. Presuming that you know of this (through rumours, talking with players etc), you can ask to take over the affiliation. All assets will be transferred to your control.