Imperial HQ

You will often find these stations in racial galaxies or quadrants, as they were the means of imperial control over the various peoples of the galaxy. The HQ is where you start the game, and the location of your racial HQ is pre-programmed into every life pod on your ships. The pod automatically returns you to your Imperial HQ upon your untimely demise, and the government issues you a light trade vessel. You can also collect and place bounties on other players in an HQ.

If your alignment is high enough, you can check the Imperial HQ for information on the planets for the galaxy you are currently in.

Imperial HQ protected by an imperial beacon

Bank

Banks are what they are in real life - places to deposit money. You should visit a bank to safekeep money gained by trading or kills, since you lose all your money when you die. The banking business is so profitable, that the banks can afford to give all their customers a 2% interest on any of their accounts daily.

A bank from the current sector

In banks you can create accounts for depositing money. Account information consists of a 4-digit account number and a password. You can have two types of account - one with unlimited access for all players (only the account number and the password needed to take funds), and one with limited access (you can access the account, but only the merchants with their IDs on the withdrawal list may take money). The limited access account is the best type for an alliance account, since it may not be wise to allow every alliance member to withdraw funds from the account. See the alliance section for more details here

An example of account setting options:

Starbases

Starbases are giant remnants of the old empire. There are 3 types of starbases:

• Imperial Naval bases - still under the tight control of the inactive Imperial Navy
• Commercial Starbases - merchants that are qualified for Imperial Protection can safely dock
• Abandoned bases - control of these was lost during uprisings and the Imperial Navy has deemed the costs of recapturing them too high.

Also, all bases you can dock at have very versatile janitors, and for a fee of 10,000 credits you can rename your ship.

An imperial starbase:

Imperial sectors

These are sectors like any other, except that they are marked by an Imperial Beacon and are heavily patrolled by the Imperial Navy. They are a safe haven for merchants that qualify for Imperial Protection, as the beacons envelop the ships with an impregnable shield.

Always make sure you are protected, if travelling through or logging off in imperial sectors!!

Technology Dealers

As with the Starbases, there are 4 types of Technology dealers:

• Basic technology dealer - deals in shield generators, armor plates, power generators and cargo hold expansion sets.
• Advanced technology dealer - deals in advanced ship systems, such as active screens, targetting computers, scanners, jump drives, etc.
• Weapons dealer - deals in destructive hardware (note that you can only install non-racial weapons and the weapons belonging to your race)
• Drone dealer - deals in combat drones, scout drones and mines

Some pictures:

Ship Dealers

The Ship dealer is the seller of top-of-the-line vessels. There are 2 kinds of ship dealers, one deals only in non-racial ships (can be boarded by anyone), whereas the other sells only ships of the race that the galaxy or quadrant belongs to. While universal ships are available to everyone, this availability is also their main weakness. They have to be capable of being piloted by so many different races, that they start to lose performance. On the other hand, race specific vessels can be highly specialised, and are that more capable of succesfully completing the task at hand.

On request, ship dealers can deliver ships to bases, which is useful if you don't want to trade in your current ship. If you order a delivery, it costs 250,000 credits and the ship takes 30 minutes to arrive.