IMT - New Employees' Handbook     Strictly company confidential

General strategy

IMT is not suitable for playing in universes where hull plan trading is disabled, because you absolutely have to acquire some kind of minelaying technology to survive, and low tech agro-dome hulls are pretty useful too. Your growth rate is a healthy 113. In 20 turns your population can grow from 5 million to 150 million. Population may be further boosted by Chups becoming Troops. How are you going to feed them? If you let them starve, troops will begin to mutiny as their happiness drops below 40.  You could trade for food... ...or you could use the Reticulan Med Lab and Protein Scoops to convert any available protein sources to food. For this to work you must proactively seek out worlds with lots of natives and prisoners to capture. IMT's combat strategy has always been "weak and wasteful". Throw lots of troops into high risk attempts to capture prisoners / natives for processing into food. The troops are essentially free (ex Chups). IMT is weak in the early stages of a game. In mid game, it flourishes because of the cash boost from the Metals Exchange. But in late game, IMT can fall behind fast breeder races because the amount of "free cash" generated by a Metals Exchange is dwarfed by the revenue from a few planets with 50 million population (and such planets need no infrastructure to create money - they just sit in one place, farm and breed, where an IMT player is shipping minerals around desperately trying to keep up). IMT has a potentially high growth rate / income too, but it is limited by food. To compete in the late game, you must get food sources like farms built by allies / agro dome ships producing food as early as possible. Population grows by compound interest and will eventually become your major source of income. Due to a lack of cloakers and hyperships, but having immediate access to fast scouts (tech 1 Midshimans Gigs), IMT is refreshingly straightforward to play. No need to build farms etc. Just get out there, hoover up natives and stuff, and generally wreck the environment while other races are micromanaging theirs to preserve their farms, bases etc. You don't care if planets disintegrate - you can rebuild bases on asteroids! You need a bit of territory simply because you need Natives to eat. But you don't need much territory to get lots of minerals, i.e. cash. Apart from a small well developed core, make small bases over a wide area with your fast Gigs to stake a claim to a sacrificial buffer zone, and stop enemies grabbing Contraband and Natives from your neighbourhood before you do. (See Host 160 and 194 release notes on Dustoff Pods.) Don't bother wasting resources on developing these outer bases at first - they are undefendable. These outer bases can be useful bargaining counters later, though. Neighbours are usually very happy to have peaceful relations with you, perhaps co-settling planets, once you point out how much money they can make sending THEIR metals to YOUR Exchanges on their borders. For a slight commission, of course. In fact it is not unusual for IMT players to be supporting both sides in a war and profiting from both. However, be careful of prisoner-taking races like EE, etc. You are weak for the first few turns, a tempting target. Concentrate on podding minerals home from the colonies, and building up tech levels. Once you have Planet Tech 6 (Metals Exchange) and Hull Tech 6 (London class cruiser, some measure of protection against hyper-races) you are probably firmly established. Use the fast and expendable Veeps' Gigs to cart pods to/from your periphery. Be very careful not to let base happiness drop below 40. New bases should be set up with 100 food and med units as a precaution. If happiness is plumetting, consider moving troops off-planet to avoid riot effects.

Corporate Assets

Grav Acc	Midshipman's Gig: expendable scout. A tech 1, cut down version of the tech 4 Veep's Gig, it lacks a pod or tachyon scanner., but has a Gravitonic Accelerator. Combat: whilst it is useless against ships, it is an excellent anti fighter weapons platform due to its high attack bonus. Accompany fleets with MG's armed with a holo decoy, turbolaser, positron cannon, pulsed laser. You'll lose some, but they will destroy a greater value of enemy fighters. The Grav Acc makes this a very rapid response unit, groups of these are useful for intercepting fast enemy Wings in your space. Scout. Note that it is essentially blind with the grav accelertor turned on, though; (example: could not see a ship with warp sig of 5733 at point blank) so if scouting, use the grav acc on alternate turns. Your other ships can't see squat at point blank. That's why fleets and minesweeping Gothams need MG's or VG's with them.
HD Stress Amp Laser Mining Drill Ore Processor Rust-effect paint job	Sheffield mining platform: Looks weak, but try simulating it with a level 1500 shield in "Ram" mode. I have used 4 Sheffields and a GP to destroy a blockaded enemy homeworld with HD Stress Amplifiers, as I couldn't afford a superweapon. This increased HD Stress by about 300-400 points/ turn. Sheffields will give you all the minerals you need - except fuel, which is one reason you still need to build mines on colony worlds. If the Sheffields have ramped up the HD Stress of those worlds, there will be up to 10,000kT per planet (or asteroid belt) of all minerals. Beware though - laser mining drills are great for stripping planets quickly, but are wasteful. You get more minerals with conventional mines. They increase HD Stress so quickly they can only hang around a planet for about 8 turns. You can move fleets of Sheffields around to deliberately disintegrate as many planets as possible - creating a "scorched earth belt" of planets useless to most other players. This reduces incentives to invade your zone. Tom Schoenkte developed a technique where he built at least 1 Sheffield every turn. His economy shot ahead of everyone else's. He used the cash to buy Protomatter Cannon tech, and began a cycle of disintegrating / reforming planets to create massive amounts of metals and thus cash. Don't let Sheffields fall into Crystal hands.
Mine Sweeper Array	Gotham: a single Gotham is dead meat in most encounters, but in swarms, it is meant to be a very cost-effective anti-fighter PD platform. This has yet to be proven    8)     One drawback is that its low ordnance capacity rules out many interesting large weapons. However, as enemies generally expect to be facing weapons, docking assault pods of crew to the ship and setting them to Board Enemy Ships is an effective trap: enemies send weak ships against the Gothams expecting little resistance, and are captured. Its mass is too low to be a good minesweeper: it tends to be almost destroyed by one exploding Nova minefield, then it has to spend some time repairing itself before it continues. Mine damage is slightly random, and I have seen a Gotham receiving 120% Life Support damage from a Nova (all the crew died) although the three Gothams next to it took less than 50% and were OK. It is a good idea to always dock a Resupply Pod with 500-1000 Repair Units and 500+ Ordnance docked to your Gothams, otherwise they tend to accumulate so much damage and lose so much ord on extended trips, for example when minesweeping, that they become effectively useless. Fortunately they have three bays so there are always some spare. Here's a decent loadout for a fighting Gotham: Tylium Thrusters (expensive, but they provide the energy required for the weapons, and they're very tough); 2 Disruptor Cannon; 6 Pulsed Lasers; a Turbolaser, 2 Autoblasters and a Holo Decoy. A group of 10 of these (cost: 17,500mc) is a flexible minesweeping tool which will tend to capture any mid tech ship thrown at it.
Mobile Ord Factory Mobile Repair Plant	Metro: With its large attack bonus, and 18 small weapons backed by Exotic tech to take down shields, it is a very, very effective swarmer. Note that Small Weapons bounce off shields 25% of the time. Despite this, and a 1% soft spot and poor armour / shields, and lack of large weapons, it is deceptively tough due to the very low damage modifiers of 10-20% (the lowest of any hull in the game). And there's always a chance (never lower than 1%) that small weapons will hit their target, no matter what its evasive bonus is, so numbers of weapons do count. And it's cheap! This is your main carrier.  Always include some fighters in large fleets to incease your options, and force enemies to dilute their attacks. Greg Misick, a very experienced player, suggests the following fighter mix for the docked Wing: "A mixed wing, 8/1/1 - set to quick strike.  Such a Wing should sit off at missile range and fire missiles until its ord runs out, then move in for beam strikes - you could go 9/0/1, but I think that the mid range beams are going to help - in fact 7/2/1 is probably better but costs more. - gives you an average beam range of 54 versus 20 and is only a little more costly and boosts up yoru armor 1.5 points each to somehting over 7 - 7.7 so 8 by the magic of rounding.  So, Ideally the wing will sit off out of range of stuff for 300-350 tics and then then dive in. " One decent weapon combination for Metros is: 18 Streak Missiles plus 1 Holo Decoy plus 4 Turbolasers. Cheap and effective. If you are really short of cash, use microsandcasters instead of turbolasers.
Tachyon Emitter	Veep's Gig: improved Midshipman's Gig, tech 4. Includes pod bay Tachyon Scanner (but no Grav Acc, so significantly slower than Midshipman's Gig) Economic warfare: (drive-by smuggling): dock Gold Pods of contraband and drive to within 120LY of large enemy bases, sell them to that base. The cash ends up in the pod, but the enemy base gets the crime and converts colonists to useless "rogues". High levels of crime will eventually lead to the base self-destructing. This form of attack was toned down because it was "too powerful" and you can no longer sell 1000kT of contraband to a base right away; you have to do lots of little sales and grow the number of rogue colonists slowly, like any drug baron growing his market. It used to be that selling just 1kT generates as much crime as 1000kT, but that loophole may have been patched by now. You can sell multiple types of contra to increase crime further. You get morest cash by selling the enemy the types they prefer. Set the pods to "sell contra to enemy" and "transfer to ship". Crime continues to rise for many turns thereafter. Useful side effect: although there is a chance the enemy will kill your Gig, selling contraband they like in this risky manner generates more cash than you would get if you simply sold it on one of your own bases. Economic warfare: cheap enough to be a disposable Chup Pod Delivery Platform.
Grav Well Generator Reticulan Med Lab * Siren HAARP Bullistic Battle Computer *Unique, despite it being a standard Tim device!	London: A decent warship, and lots of  useful Devices. The Bullistic Battle Computer is a "Device", or more accurately a property of the hull, hard-coded into Host. It is always on. It improves the accuracy of 500mm guns and Antimatter Guns by +100%. There's only one other hull with a BBC (the EE Super Star Cruiser), which is so expensive that it would be stupid to fit such low tech weapons to it. But the London is a relatively cheap swarmer, and cheap effective low tech weapons are just what it needs. NB: these two weapons get bonuses versus bases. The Reticulan Med Lab will generate up to about 900mc / turn and lots of food if you have an empty cargo hold and are over a planet with lots of natives who are not yet in bases. You can use several Londons in parallel to convert several batches of natives in one turn - which is an excellent way to prevent, say, Insects from falling into Robot hands. Remember to empty the cargo hold each turn to maximise room for native-conversion. It also generates hundreds of food, which can be taken home or used to quick-start new colonies. Example: 400,000 natives will yield about 35,000mc of cash, but it will take 1 London about 40 turns to get it. All types of natives except Chups can be converted. The Grav Well Generator uses 10kT fuel / turn. And the ship has a high Warp Drag factor. So Londons often run of fuel while travelling. Always keep at least 300kT of fuel on these things. Nevertheless, it is a jolly good idea to protect your homeworld from unwelcome hyper-visitors with the grav well generator. The Siren HAARP works after movement. It will top up the London's crew from enemy ships within 20LY, it will top up to 20% of the London's crew of 1300 (ie it can steal 260 crew from enemy ships). Keep the London's crew levels above 50% (to avoid affectig combat performance). A "sentry" London on your borders could knock an enemy ship out of hyprspace and suck 260 crew out with its Siren HAARP.  This would leave Rebel Falcons, EE Migs / RU25's / H Rosses, Borg B200's, Privateer BR4 / BR5's and other small ships crewless. Solorians are immune to this Device. I don't know if the Siren HAARP can affect multiple ships in one turn. The London works best in multi-ship battles, where more maneuverable enemy ships cannot maintain standoff range. At close range the Bullistic Battle Computer becomes useful, because unless you can get close the Antimatter Gun is pretty useless. This leads to... The Ashran Cruiser Swarm tactic [Ashran won the 2007 P4 League so pay attention!] - A cruiser swarm is a perfect compromise between fleets of a few large battle ships and masses of crappy ships.  There are very few ships that can work as a cruiser swarm.  You need cheap, solid medium size ships with lots of LW mounts, attack and defense bonuses and useful devices.  The London is perfect in this role, 'cause it is very, very dangerous with its Bullistic computer, which is not to mention that with this loadout it is lethal to ground bases: 4 Anti-Matter Guns, 2 Sandcasters [if you can afford the first two Large Weapon anti-shield Exotics, use 5 AMG's + 1 SC. This lets you take out heavily armoured or shielded opponents while still focusing on one weapon type to ensure simultaneous fire, which is trickier for PD to defend against and ensuring all shots hit the same target in crowded melees.] 2 Positrons, 5 Meson Guns, 3 Xenon Beams [Pulsed Lasers look cost effective, but this combination of small weapons simply works much better] 3 Micro Sand Casters, 2 Turbo Lasers [Personally I suspect this would be better as 2 TL's, 2 MSC's and 1 Holo Decoy - HD's are useful multipurpose PD's - Paul H] This is very cost effective in money and minerals. See race-specific notes below for other weapon combinations. Versus big ships: This cruiser swarm configuration is exceptionally effective at consistently capturing large enemy ships such as Cubes on a mc-for-mc basis. Against small swarming ships: Tip: don't use Ram here. That way you capture more and suffer fewer losses. London Cruiser Swarms are very cost effective in equal-cost fleets. Against fleets of similar medium tech ships: Expect losses, but on a mc-for-mc basis, the London Cruiser Swarm wins, usually capturing some enemy ships. Ashran tested PTTs on Londons, and it is very effective.  However, it starts to get more expensive than ideal in a swarm-type ship, and lacks some of the advantages of the AMGs, like the ability to capture ships and decimate ground bases. The London is even a decent resource match for Ill Winds with 9 PTTs and an SC, one of the most destructive bang-for-the-buck ships in the game!  The Ill Winds win more often, but never without losses, and about 1/3 of the time the Londons pulled a victory.  The main thing going for the Londons seems to be their overall sturdiness, because the Ill Winds run out of ammo before destroying them all.  From there it's really the luck of movement to see whether the Londons can concentrate enough fire before the Pulsed Lasers on the Ill Winds take them apart. In one-on-one battles with similar tech ships from other races: the London generally loses, but the best weapon choices for those ships generally make them significantly more expensive than the London. You can often fine-tune the London's weapon loadout and attack settings to improve its chances in these battles - don't depend on AMG's in one-on-one battles. Further experience showed that the Antimatter Gun loadout wasn't always the best combination - it depends on the race. See notes on fighting CoM and Crystals below.
Mobile Repair Plant	Great Western: the primary IMT heavy ship o' the line. The GW does best at destroying mid tech level ships (up to tech 8). It can take a lot of punishment and is good at Ramming these lower mass ships. Most people equip it with Photon Torps. It's slightly better with PPC's, but due to its 120 attack bonus it is effective with either. By end game, with attack exotic techs, these weapons become yet more effective. It isn't usually cost-effective to equip it with higher tech weapons. The hull is cheap, but the cost of one of these is greatly increased by the large number of engines etc. The GW can be towed by a Gotham to save money on the GW's engines. The GW has sufficient power to tow a VOF. Recent Host changes (Host 193) have been generous to the GW - its PD weapons have been improved because it has high mass.
Ore Processor DTMS-N Fuel Converter Mobile Ord Factory Mobile Repair Plant Agro Dome Zero-gee brothel * * (ie, Show Lounge)	VOF: The bulldozer of space. The largest, least armed ship around - yet one of the most dangerous. Yes, it's a converted asteroid; and it has so much armour it can take 2 superlaser hits. But no weapons. (The IMT board is keen to point out that the Antimatter Maul is merely a metals recovery tool.) It doesn't need weapons. When Host changed to add inertia, and reduced knockback of large weapons, it became more dificult for small enemy ships to dance away, and the VOF is a berserk monster when set to Ram! With a mass ratio of 181 fold over a Lizard Serpent, we have seen it run over and destroy 10 such ships in 40 ticks.  Ramming is still effective against enemy tech 10 hulls, because nothing is as massive / armoured as this monster. Its Achilles heel is fighters. Tip: don't build these with armour. They can generate free Repair Units from Duranium, and then use these to Repair Armour (a switch in the Damage screen) in about 4 turns. Devices include the moneyspinning Zero-Gee Brothel (Show Lounge) which churns out 1000mc/turn if parked over a high population world; an agro dome, which is your only food supply; and money-saving Mobile Ord Factory / Mobile Repair Unit Thingy. The Ashran Industrial Scale Recycling Process: This end-game tactic was developed by the visionary, ruthless Veep Ashran Gildowan. Four Great Pyramids tow four VOF's to a battle. All eight ships are set to Ram + 2nd Wave. Each ship is set to a diferent attack vector (1-8). If the enemy delays his ships, you are guaranteed to have a massive ramming monster crushing his entire fleet on tick 300.  If he doesn't delay them, they'll be in the center of the map when you show up as a closing circle of ramming death with no escape.  By spreading the Veggies around the circle, each of the Anti-Matter Mauls should find a unique target as his fleet spreads a little. ( Given the cost of the Mauls and their tech, you could drop that from the strategic equation without losing much.) (Version 2 for the official IMT release would be one Great Pyramid multi-towing 7 Veggies.)
Particle Fountain, Ore Processor Scalar Wave Amp, Scalar Wave Damper, DTMS-N converter, Grav Well Generator, Grav Acc, Spindizzy	Great Pyramid: Protect these valuable super-tugs. Although it is also a super-powerful Rammer, losing it will likely strand whatever it was towing in hostile territory. The most interesting device on this ship is the Spindizzy, allowing planets and fleets to be towed. The GP is fast, speed 360 with the grav acc going, and it can tow a planet (base) and entire fleet to project IMT's military force rapidly and effectively. (Although it can't use Spindizzy and grav acc simultaneously - max speed with Spindizzy is 180.) It is very poorly armed with conventional weaponry, but can mount a protomater cannon if you can throw money away on superweapon tech 5. Tip: don't build these with armour. They can use free Repair Units from the VOF, to Replenish Armour (a switch in the Damage screen) in about 2 turns. Rebuilding planets with the PMC is expensive. (Superweapon tech 5). Effect: Restored planet have about 600-650 soil - possibly interesting for allies. There will be minimal metals in the new planet, but its high stress will generate more - until it explodes again. Costs for restoring planet: 1000 ord. Tom Schoen mentions: When flying your Pyramid over an asteroid with a base (40k MC, loads of cols, rep, ord and a valuable alien hull plan), never leave that Proto-Matter Cannon on. Never.
Mechs IMT's mechs and ground combat stats are deliberately poor, because IMT has plenty of Chup mercenaries.
	Sloane 24x24 Ranger: A.k.a. "The Meat Grinder", this monster armoured truck is a weak mech; but it has one amazing power. The Protein Scoop will grind up: natives in your base; natives loose on the planet; and prisoners in your base and convert them to Food. 20 "bodies" (natives or prisoners) make 1kT of food - about 5 times the yield of a Ret Med Lab, but unlike RML's, no supplies or mc are created. The Protein Scoop will convert up to 500-1000 bodies per mech per turn (this capacity is decided randomly each turn). It chews up a random number of one type of native, etc first... then if it has not yet reached its maximum capacity for the turn, it grinds up some of the next type... and so on. If it still has not reached full capacity (500-1000 bodies per mech) after one cycle, it stops. This spreads out the casualties between different native / prisoner types. Each turn it grinds up a type of native in a base, the happiness of those natives at that base drops by 0-50 points. I have seen drops of 30 points in one turn when there is just one or two types of native in a base, though it's usually just 5 or 10. It has no effect on enemy happiness when you grind up prisoners of that race. Although I have seen a 50 point happiness drop on a homeworld when 1/20th of their population was held prisoner, this was due to the normal POW code, there's no boost from harvesting them. The Protein Scoops do not work on Chups and their happiness is unaffected. The Protein Scoops have no effect during ground combat. Base logs will give you messages like "Protein Scoops produce 232 food units". (That was after 5 Sloanes ground up 4500 insects.) Note: A hunting lobby within IMT considers it more "sporting" to chase wild natives, outside the base, rather than tame ones herded into a pen inside the base. Ie you get to roar around native streets and farms at 40 km/hr in a tank, demolishing buildings like James Bond, scooping up hapless stragglers.
	Bushwacker Fighting Vehicle: main use: capturing prisoners. This is the best mech to use when you want to capture prisoners. It is weak against troops, so it kills few personnel in the early ground assault phases. All mechs are worth "500" during the Capture phase of ground combat, so it is as good as any at capturing the remnants.
	Driller Killer: this well armoured converted mining machine is good against troops and moderately OK against other mechs. It is a good unit for defending your own bases against ground assault, when you are more interested in maximising damage to enemy forces than capturing them. It can give, and take more damage than your other mechs in combat. It can mine and smelt 30kT of ore per turn. Drop a podful of these on a planet and strip it like a swarm of locusts!
Fighters
	Type 1 Fighter - Dirac Delta Drone (kamikaze anti-fighter fighter): A classically wasteful IMT design, throwing masses of cheap rubbish at enemy Wings until they are crushed by the sheer power of economic muscle. In sufficient numbers, this is a fairly cost effective anti-fighter fighter. If you spend about 1.3 times the cost of an enemy Wing, it will win when set to "anti fighter". It will take large losses, but these can be reduced by increasing the ratio beyond 1.3 Like other races' Type 1 fighters, it still dies in droves. But it packs a real punch in its beams. It can kill a 40-armour-point Lizard fighter with one shot. The catch is that its weapons have no range to speak of (30 - typical fighter weapon range is 80). It needs to get right up to an enemy fighter or ship to fire, well within range of all ship-mounted point defences. So the Dirac is useful against certain types of enemy which your other fighters / ships can't kill, but expect heavy losses. Combat quickness of 150 allows them to dash in quickly to fire before they die. Note that it is useless for ground defence (all relevant stats are zero). Wing size should be "bigger than the enemy Wings". Don't use lots of little DDD Wings against a large swarm of cheap enemy fighters; sheer numbers of beams in a Wing count as they fly past each other. These fighters are basically dead meat against specialised anti fighter ships like the Loki. Usefulness versus ships: nil.
	Type 2 Fighter - Saturday Stovepipe Special (anti-fighter fighter): These are useless versus cheap trash (they are just overwhelmed by sheer numbers) but quite cost-effective versus the better fighter types. These fighters will die against anti-fighter ships, whatever their attack settings. Probably because beams are much less effecive than missiles vs ships. (They have no missiles.) In the early game, go for swarms of DDD's as an anti-fighter defence. Later, when you are constrained more by the capacity of your carriers than the number of fighters you can build, quality will count and switch to SSS's or mixed wings for anti-fighter work. Usefulness vs ships: low.
	Type 3 Fighter - Bismuth Zepplin (heavy wallowing slugger):  Slow for a fighter (combat quickness just 30), it is rock hard against heavily armoured enemy fighters and it is very effective agaist ships too, but being slow, it is vulnerable to swarms of cheap enemy fighters and may need protection with  Diracs. No beam, but its missile firepower is fantastic, especially as the generator is powerful enough to fire it continuously, and the 250mc cost reflects that. These fighters should be set to stand off and kill things from max range.  It has the best travel range (100) and is used to auto-intercept and guard an area. Missiles are ten times as likely to get through a base's shields as beams, so use this fighter rather than the DDD or SSS when attacking bases. Theoretically the best anti-ship fighter, but due to its low combat speed, it is useless versus ships with a high attack bonus - no VCR occurs if they are set to 2nd wave, it never catches them! The BZ is best used with a setting of "Quick Strike and Run".
Unique Selling Points
	Metals Exchange Converts metals to cash. This is the core of your economy. 1kT Dur --> 2mc (the commonest metal) 1kT Trit --> 3mc 1kT Moly --> 4mc (this price structure used to be 4-3-2mc, it was reversed in host 212) Like most IMT designs, there is a hideous flaw with the Metals Exchange, actually this wasn't intended by the race designers but in hindsight it fits the race concept rather well... due to some hurried programming by Tim, you cannot switch it off. It is capitalism gone mad. It will convert ALL metal in your base (but not allies' bases on the same planet) to cash for the rest of the game. For this reason, you must not build it on your homeworld, but a nearby colony.
	Chupanoid Mercenaries Chups in bases where there are already troops or HG, join IMT as troops. Recruitment rate is faster if there are more troops present. Each troop or HG recruits up to 9 Chups per turn. This unsettles colonists, whose happiness drops slightly. The number of Chup recruits thus rises exponentially each turn, but Host 211 implemented a limit of 5,000 new troops per turn this way. Flip side... Chupanoid Mutinies If a base's happiness drops below 40, and there are unconverted Chups in the base, there is a chance the troops will mutiny. This means troops convert back to Chups, eat food, and crime rises up to a potential ceiling of 199. On the positive side, the colony breathes a sigh of relief that the rebels are gone, and its happiness actually rises slightly if >100 mutineers defect. The Chups in the base, numbers now swelled by AWOL troops, get happier too after their looting spree. Note that a base with less than 100 food will lose happiness quickly. Happiness rises with >100 food; government centres; various exotic Devices. This is a management challenge for franchise holders and an attack opportunity for enemies. Things are either very good or terrible. A space based attack can trigger a Mutiny and soften up bases for Ground Assault. Be careful out there. Further info on Chups: see here
	Spindizzy The general idea is that a Great Pyramid can turn on its Spindizzy and tow anything normally towable, plus planets (ie solar systems), and fleets ("multi-tow"). You can combine this method of movement with other rapid-movement techniques such as chunneling, jump-point generators, wormholes or jumpgates, but planets won't travel by such methods. The rest of the rules define boundary conditions such as getting too close to other planets. Spindizzies do not sweep out a volume of space: if you don't start at the same point as the spindizzy at the start of a turn, you won't get dragged along with it. Key rules To tow planets: set the planet as the Great Pyramid's Tow target (the Client says there's an error but will do it. If you target the base, the target will shift to the planet.) A Spindizzy can tow a planet, with the base upon it, and an unlimited number of ships, wings and pods at the same starting point. The star moves too - it tows the entire solar system. The range of the effect is 2LY. A spindizzy uses 500kT of fuel per turn, unless there are no targets. This is in addition to the Great Pyramid's normal fuel use. If this seems a lot, consider how else you would move an entire fleet at speed 180. Although the Great Pyramid's grav acc will reduce fuel use as normal, when the Spindizzy is active the grav acc does not double the GP's speed up to 360, its max is 180. Tow contests The spindizzy stops working if the Great Pyramid has >=20% system damage. It does not tow ships or wings using the command code NSD. NSD code means that the captains are aware of the possibility and will keep out of range. Bases and pods have no choice but to be towed. Many people, including the race designers, don't think there should be an opt-out for the Spindizzy. It should be a double edged sword. A spindizzy can overpower any ship regardless of engine type / number. It ignores normal tow rules of engines and mass. If two spindizzy ships have a contest, for example if one IMT player wishes to disrupt a megafleet towed by another, the outcome is contested by assigning each ship a tow rating of 20000 + (ship experience * RND + 10) for each object in the towed swarm. Does this mean if two swarms cross paths, a different mix can result? Two Spindizzy ships competing for the ability to tow something will compete using a random value between 0 to 10 + the ship experience. A Spindizzy ship cannot affect another ship with the Spindizzy enabled. Spindizzy will break all other active tows if those tows are under the effect of the Spindizzy. If the result of a Spindizzy contest results in 1 of the Spindizzy ships not having any targets then it will shut down the Spindizzy effect to save fuel. Miscellaneous Like normal towing, ships towed by a Spindizzy are sensor-blind but, on the plus side, immune to mine hits. The Great Pyramid doing the towing is not immune. Towing a base with your fleet allows you to build and tow specialised "attack bases" of your own, or other players' with area-effect structures... Spindizzy effects cut out if a towed planet gets within 5LY of another planet When under the effects of a Spindizzy, pods and wings cannot undock from a ship. They will just continue to be swept along with the Spindizzy effect. (Though if the fleet encounters a hostile target en route, they will undock and attack normally.) A pod/wing cannot dock with a ship/base unless it is under the effect of the same Spindizzy ship effect. A jumppoint cannot be generated from within a Spindizzy effect. A planet will not move with the Spindizzy effect if the Spindizzy ship is jumppoint jumped or warp chunneled. Ships/wings under the Spindizzy effect will not auto-intercept. The Spindizzy was introduced in Host 211. If any of the above is unclear, see that Host's release notes.
	What Spindizzies cannot do Will not move buoys, minefields, jump gates, or worm holes. (Ie apart from planets and stars, it does not move normally immovable objects.) Does not sweep out a volume of space as it moves along. It only tows things which were at the same position at the start of the turn. Will not take a planet through a jumpgate or wormhole with the Spindizzy ship. RCS Gravity Rift disables Spindizzy Cannot tow ships with gravitional stabilizers (Solorian Ragnarok, Solorian Solar Collection Array, Binary Class starport.) Cannot tow a planet that is already within 5 ly of another planet. Not usable by non IMT players, even if they steal the ship. (In code terms, it's a race-specific wildcard, bit 25.)

Early game tips
You start with a London, Gotham and Midshipman's Gig.
If you are surrounded by close, angry neighbours it is likely better to get Hull Tech 6 first, for Londons. Usually though, you should race for Planet Tech 6 as quickly as possible, to get a Metals Exchange. You can pick up food from the surface of nearby planets for the first few turns - so getting Londons' Ret Med Labs as a food source is not so urgent. The income from a Metals Exchange will dwarf the income from Ret Med Labs. Incidentally, you can usually beam up thousands of kT of free metals from the surfaces of nearby planets, with Gothams.
Set your home base's command code to your player number (i.e. if you are player 6, set it to 006) - see Bank of IMT below
Do not build a Metals Exchange on your homeworld as it converts all metals.
Taxes should be set to Ultra Conservative to maximise happiness of colonists (and, later, Natives if you get any).
Turn the London's Grav Well Generator and Siren HAARP ON from turn 1 and leave them on. Note that the GWG eats some fuel though.
Send this ship out to form bases, etc. Turn on the Reticulan Med Lab so when it stumbles across natives, they begin turning into cash, supplies and food immediately. Ideally, it will find a native-rich world where the Reticulan Med Lab can start turning local natives into cash.
Create bases wherever your ships pass, to prevent Rebels or Privateers stealing Natives or Contraband with Dustoffs.  A London above a populous native world allows you to build a government centre there and pump cash directly into your central account.
The starting London is armed with a sandcaster and turbolasers for a fighter-killer and homeworld defense ship. Set it to Attack Soft, Standoff Range 999, First Wave, random attack vector, "sandcasters fire only at fighters". It is also armed with phasors to kill incoming assault pods.
You must decide whether this ship is best used getting lots of start up cash by exploiting nearby natives, or defending your homeworld (The Evil Empire could attack as early as turn 8, for example).
Send messages to other players - begin building relationships. You will need to trade for minelayers, food etc later. Don't trade Sheffields to Crystals.
IMT is short of firepower in the initial turns, which is why tough neighbours like the Lizards are dangerous.  But by dragging everything back to the core as quickly as possible, and using tachyon scanners to illuminate cloaked menaces, you can make the best use of what defenses you have.
Tom Schoen, whose economy was very impressive, gave me this tip: build a Sheffield every turn. It doesn't need engines - just tow it with a Gotham. Your economy grows exponentially.

The voodoo economy - something from nothing

Selling metals

First get the metals: Use the Sheffield Mining Platforms' HD Stress Amps [or Great Pyramids in the late game] to increase planets' HD stress. Planets generate a small amount of metals every turn, naturally. The quantity varies with HD Stress and increases exponentially above 100 [one hundred], so run it up to near  850. Above 1000, planets tend to disintegrate into asteroid belts, destroying bases. HD Stress fluctuates a bit anyway, which is why you only run it up to 850 - it gives you some reaction time in case of imminent disintegration. Note that you will get 2x more metals out of a planet by using mines (planetary structures) than if you use a laser mining drill, but it takes longer.

A base's population will perish if a planet breaks up under them.

Once planets have disintegrated from hyperdimensional stress, the resulting rich asteroid field can still be mined. After being mined out, it can be reassembled into a somewhat unstable planet (with new minerals!) using the Protomatter Cannon on the Great Pyramid, though it will be many turns before you can afford Superweapon Tech 5. A planet can be cycled many times through the asteroid / planet / asteroid cycle, generating metals each time through the wonders of HD Stress Physics.

The Bank of IMT - your basic bribery tool
IMT government centres don't act like other races'. They send money to the central account of race X, where X is the last two digits of the base's command code. For example, if you are player 14, you normally want your bases' command codes set to 014.

• Neighbours are unlikely to attack when you are making them money, so even if the sums don't seem worth it, offer your financial services, turning their spare metals into cash. They can't capture a Metals Exchange, it's unique to IMT.
• Government centre transfers are cheaper for IMT. For every 100mc transfer, the base only spends 75mc. This is variously known as a "commission", "slush fund" or "free money".
• This can make it worthwhile for allies to use you for their own government centre transfers. IMT offers valuable "don't bite the hand that funds you" financial services!
• Bribe A to attack B (and B to attack A). Without multi-turn delays ferrying cash around.
• Recipient gets a 'message from Host' confirming payment from IMT.
• To reduce shipping time and banking delays for your dependents - er, clients - your base should be in their territory, with a Metals Exchange and Gov Centre. They dump metals on the base and within 2 turns they get cash in their central account. All that remains is to determine your commission. You should bleed metal-rich races more to prevent them getting more powerful than you, and charge races with poor mining skills less so your rivals remain evenly matched.
• Ideally, both sides in a war end up protecting your Exchanges in their own territory while killing each other and paying you for the privilege.
• Scavs only get half cash if techs are too high. This bypasses that limitation. Food, or useless natives please!
• Some races are late developers and are short of cash when you are beginning to have excess. IMT probably peaks in "relative strength" around turn 15, this is a good time to buy allies.
• A money laundering service can be offered, Allowing A to pay B via IMT. This bypasses the usual problem where Rebels see that A and B are allied.
• You can support races under attack even if your enemies block direct access to them.

Combat

See also: tactical tips on the ship, fighter and mech pages on the Klingon Kommand website. But in general:  

Unlike most races, you  can go for a swarming strategy AND a few heavy ships, ideally with some Wings and a towed base thrown in to make things complicated for the enemy.

Do not forget your Ramming Bonus, which helps the Sheffield, Great Western, VOF and GP against smaller ships. Curiously, using Ramming and Standoff Range are not mutually exclusive, so perhaps you can get the 40% attack bonus without having to scratch your paintwork? (Sounds neat, but in fleet actions you're bound to get within 125 units of an enemy at some point, and thus would be liable to ram even with Standoff set.)

Most IMT Megacorp ships are designed primarily as big cheap freighters. They can carry lots of armour and some very large weapons, but in combat, they all have flaws and are not outstanding in quality. So concentrate on quantity, with a few big ships thrown in to keep your enemies worried. And don't forget your Ramming bonus!

IMT's unique military power is the Spindizzy, which will multi-tow an entire fleet, plus a planet, for low fuel cost. Like all towed ships, the towed fleet is immune to minehits. You do not need to own the planet / base to tow it, consider abducting a Privateer happy farm or Robot insect nest into an awkward area. And of course claim that they paid you to tow it there.

Miscellaneous tips

IMT's "Spy" rating is very high. Most races' Spy rating is around 5%. You are unusually good at gathering information and sabotage.  IMT itself is relatively immune to Spy attacks. Remember Spying works much better if the attacker's mana level is high.
If you disintegrate a planet, the natives die. (Host 195)
Border zone natives are liable to being poached by your neighbours' Public Space Ports, so if you can't have them, stop anyone else getting them using Londons (Ret Med Labs) and Sloanes.
Use the food to breed more hordes of Chups. Even Borg can't assimilate Chups. Since you can create new Chups very easily by feeding them, you could perhaps create a galactic Tribble-like plague of these indestructible locusts, severely hampering the high-growth races by devouring their food stocks.
You don't have a fuel drill so need normal mines to get fuel. But you have ridiculous amounts of metals from high-stress planets / asteroid belts, so don't worry too much about normal mines. You can always use the VOF's DTMS-N converter to get fuel in a pinch.

The dangers of Laser Mining Drills
Karnak Prime points out:
I'm not sure it is immediately obvious to everyone (certainly not from the help files) that devices like the laser mining drill and particle fountain perform mining functions at a rather expensive cost - namely the loss of 50% of the available ore.  Whereas with conventional mining 87.5% of the ore can be converted into metals (75% from the mines, then another 12.5% from the smelters.) At least it was not obvious to me, until Grandadmiral THRAWN kindly pointed it out to me. When playing the Lizards, for example, I never even turn on the Particle Fountains on the Saurians, because I don't want to waste 37.5% of my ore.

Karnak is quite right, and there is another reason not to use them. I have found that creating asteroid belts is good fun and all, but the asteroid belts themselves are unstable. They occasionally reform into planets, which destroys the base. Tim has tweaked Host so you get a warning message when asteroids reform into planets... keep an eye out for these, and watch HD Stress closely on such planets. You may only have 1 turn to evacuate it before it disintegrates again - and destroys the base.

Risk / Opportunity assessments of other races

• Feds:  Their fleets are based on Swarms. Their economy appears to be a much slower startup  than IMT's, so they will probably be  peaceful neighbour with many other enemies to worry about. Likely to appeal for help when someone else attacks them. Heaps of food to trade. Most useful hulls: Nocturne, Banshee or Loki minelayer / minesweepers. Never short of food, they have a prodigious breeding rate.
  
• Lizards: A Great Western can take out a (cheaper) T Rex, primarily because  the  GW can mount a Large Turbo Laser Array. You can beat them if you spend enough money, but you'll need plenty of Chup troops supporting your bases against their ground assaults. Be careful as the big Lizard ships are very fast and can outflank you if you're not careful. Their starting ships are much tougher than yours, but until they get prisoners their economy is much worse so your techs will outstrip theirs. However, if they capture an enemy homeworld, their income will probably leap to ~300,000mc/turn. They have no mineral shortages; one possible defence is disintegrating planets between you and them - they can't make bases on asteroid belts (or ground assault them). Most useful hull: Lizard class cloaking minelayer / sweeper; though its Psi-Ops Hisser does not work for non-Lizards. Note: Lizard hulls of all types don't look so tough when facing a VOF set to Ram.
  
• Birds: very dangerous. The tech 3 Bright Heart and tech 9 Darkwing may be expensive, but they have no soft spot, lots of defences and lots of weapons. Your heavy ships can't kill them on a mc-for-mc basis but swarms of Metros can. Your Veeps Gigs' Tachyon Scanners will not reveal their Resolutes or Darkwings, so minefields are the only defence. Their Bright Heart can drop minefields from cloak. Bird Deth specs are a pushover .
  
• Stormers: A Stormer Deth Spec with photon torps
can be countered by a London set to Ram, either using Ashran's "cruiser swarm"weapon mix, or simply Disruptor Cannon, Streak Missiles, Turbolasers and a holo decoy. Their cheap Victorious, armed with Photon Torps,  can kill just about anything you throw at it (they need four to take out a VOF armed with LTLA's, but it's still cheaper than the VOF). They can Swarm as effectively as you can, or better. They are hungry for prisoners . On the other hand, they have their own problems - such as Lizards, who are not a paticular problem for you - and a poor economy if they cannot get prisoners, so maybe a deal can be struck. The Tachyon Scanner on the Veeps Gig will show their cloakers, but also your own ships of course. See comments about Pop ships under Centaurs, below.

• Privateers: In combat, no problem.  It is their other abilities which cause trouble - for example bases can drive your happiness to over a hundred negative points in just a few turns, just by having medium sized bases within 200 LY. Keep the Londons' grav well generators switched on all the time, and  Wings of Bismuths set to auto-intercept enemy ships appearing in your area.  If there are Privateers around, you should trade for minelayers quickly. If these are immediate neighbours, not much can be done at first except to send out the London to kill the bases stealing your stuff. Nevertheless, Privateer players regard IMT as a difficult race to invade, and prefer to milk you in a host / parasite relationship. If you have a hoard of more than 10,000mc on a base, consider converting it to contraband to stop it being sucked away by Money Taps.Most useful ship: for combat, possibly the BR5 torpedo boat (excellent swarmer with 15 photon torps),  but avoid MCBR as they can space your crew and take it over at will. The Lady Royale and Dwarfstar have some useful money-making devices, and the Dwarfstar can lay grav mines too. Opportunity: low mining rate --> interested in trading for metals?
  
• Borg: the London grav well generator / intercepting Bismuths trick is a good initial defence against their B200 probes.  A great Western can take out an Annihilation Cube, with or without Exotic Tech, and this holds true for fleets too; simply because unlike the Cube it can mount LTLA's, but it'll cost about 20% more than the Cube. Mind you, the Borg will probably capture some of the GW's since they can use boarding lasers to capture  them as the fight begins (GW carries 20,000 crew, who can be overwhelmed by 136,000 drones and one boarding laser. Each Annihilation can carry up to 2.5 million drones, who act as Troops in boarding actions. ) Borg can't offer you much, even Chunnelling is not so interesting as you have the Spindizzy.
  
• Crystals: a minelaying bunch of troublemakers, and if you are stupid enough to convert their masses of excess metals to money, and give them Sheffields, they will dominate the game. With no glory devices or barbitic mines to sweep areas of mines they look like trouble at first. But there are strategies for dealing with them, basically if you have to fight them, make sure they are your only war, then focus your entire economy on them. Crystal players are lazy, depending on their massive economy to win for them, and cannot handle people who are prepared to micromanage a serious counterattack and keep soaking up their precious ord. If you can bottle up a Crystal player his economy will collapse because he runs out of HD Stress, this means his ord supplies collapse and his population implodes as the food runs out. It's tedious work, but satisfying when he finally drops out. Gothams are cheaper than Rubies and Crystals are not used to facing players who can outproduce them.As an ally, though, they make an immensely powerful combination for they generate ridiculous amounts of spare metals.
  
• Anti-Crystal strategies:
• Cowardice: a perfectly valid strategy if they get to opowerful. If you find these guys are your neighbours, and acting aggressively, physically relocate your population to a less risky area!
  
• If you end up trapped in Webs, remember you can still move at 6LY / turn... and your large ships are less affected by mines, so if forced to attack, perhaps you could use their Construction Bays to build a Swarm once you're deep enough into Crystal territory? Beware their X Field (they get this at hull tech 6) which can blow up ships with Mobile Ord Plants (+ Repair plants?) if you leave them switched on. Get Gothams and fighters up to the border quickly, to prevent web minefields creeping into your area. 
• Weaknesses: Crystals are usually short of Ord, wach how they sweep their own minefields in areas they're no longer needed. If you keep sweeping their mines, eventually they will run out of ord unless some idiot has given them a ship which raises HD Stress. They will try to capture Sheffields and high HD Stress planets from you, to generate more Ord. You must not let them capture Sheffields. They themselves are especially vulnerable to ord-using weapons. They favour lots of small Wings; mount some anti fighter weapons if possible; sandcasters are ideal.
  
• Use no-weapon, very cheap minesweepers, perhaps with docked assault pods, to remove as many of their minefields as possible. Mix in occasional armed Gothams so he needs to tie up at least 2 Rubies per Gotham. If these can sweep a few minefields before he takes them out, and all he captures is unarmed junk, you are winning the resource war.
• The unarmed minesweepers should tow armed, engineless minesweepers. Being towed means they cannot hit mines; being engineless means they are immune to the X Field. These defend or destroy the unarmed towing ships. (Set them to Attack Disabled.)
• Don't forget you can sweep all Cloaked mines, even - at a reduced chance - Barbitics.
•  A really good Crystal player will send his ships round in packs of, say, 5 Rubies and an X Field ship (eg Onyx), and  try to trap your Gothams with multiple overlapped Webs. What happens is:  you sweep the one uncloaked field you saw, then find  another 5 have blown around you and your engines are gone, and the X Field has sucked your Repair Units away. To counter this, send Gothams out in packs too. If he lays 5 cloaked web MFs and you have 5 mine sweepers, you can sweep all the mines he just laid - and if your crew is more experienced, they can sweep them on the same turn they're laid, which prevents them being detonated next turn. You simply need to have more sweepers in a pack, than the Crystal has layers.
• Experienced minesweeping crews are a huge bonus versus Crystals. (Increasing the number of training centres at your shipyard increases ship experience when built, unless they are "Quick Built".)
  
• Use a Veeps Gig near the Crystal border to reveal cloaked web fields with its tachon scanner, so you know what you're really facing.
  
• Alternatively, use weaponless mineweepers, and tow in Wings inside a carrier to keep your fighters safe from laser mines....have the fighters simply there set to attack enemy but not letting them intercept (range 0) so that on tick 50 of the turn after he captures the ships, you destroy them....then you can try for a run with the wing to get a target of opportunity, there is a chance that you will have cleared any laser mines....  perhaps 2 wings is best, to give yourself the option of running after a nearby target and destroying the assets which the Crystal should not have.
• An Emerald is quite dangerous against the standard London configuration of Antimatter Guns etc., particularly when the Emerald is fitted with Photon Torpedoes. However like most Crystal ships, it has almost no armour so you can use a London with five Disruptor Cannon, a Sandcaster and ten Pulsed Lasers to capture it (or fit six Photon Torps to destroy them if you're in a hurry, because the DC's will require a long VCR to capture the Emerald, and in finely balanced fleet battles it is best to just blow up the enemy ASAP before they ht your ships).  The sandcaster chews through their shields rapidly, and with no armour to speak of the DC's quickly get to work killing the Crystal crew. The famous Crystal power of "absorbing energy from non-ord weapons to recharge the Crystal weapons faster" doesn't do them much good, as far as I can see, because they can't fire faster than the max fire rate of the weapons, and PTT's (a fvourite Crystal weapon) are slow. Therefore, you capture them. What's more, these Londons cost about half what an Emerald does.
  
• Evil Empire: in a game with EE, it is crucial that you keep a London at your homeworld with its GWG turned on, from about turn 5. The EE will have located your homeworld by turn 5 and will know the armaments on the ships there, the numbers of fighters at your homeworld etc. The EE can field a number of big ships with 20 Large Weapon mounts, which can potentially overwhelm the equivalent-tech IMT big ships (who need to devote some weapon slots to anti-fighter defences - it's actually the Type 3 fighters in their fleets you need to worry about). A Gorbie can trash three VOF's. So switch to Plan B (swarming).  To kill a Gorbie cost-effectively, one technique that used to work is 40 Metros set to Ram with a little Exotic Tech to boost their small weapons. The Gorbie can only shoot one at a time. If they have turbolasers too, they will sort out any EE fighter wings in the battle as a bonus. The EE will struggle to take you on face-to-face unless they have a large economic advantage. Their H Ross has a scalar wave damper which can save planets which are about to disintegrate.
  
• Robots: always interested in buying Tritanium - this gets converted to colonists, leaving them short of it for shipbuilding. Like IMT, they lack a mine sweeping hull. In fact they lack any hulls to get very excited about except the Q Tanker (special power: refuels wings within 100LY- watch out for that trick) and the Cats Paw minelayer (nice large ord capacity).  However, you can't use Robot hull plans (a racial power) so don't bother trying to trade for them. No particular conflicts of interest, but they lay lots of mines, which can be difficult to see (due to IMT's awful scanners) if not lit up with a tachyon scanner. Robots get on well with wild Chups, don't bother to explode Chup pods in their zone.
• One particular problem with Robots is that their Instrumentalities carry an "Eye of Madagon" device, which rapidly destroys food within about 200 LY. And they start with one of these ships. In order to take out their well-armed starting Instrumentality, [4 micromissile launchers: these will decimate your fighters; 8 photon torps and 15 tachyon guns, so he will want to use extreme standoff range, and he will probably have a few hundred fighters on board] you will need:  holo decoys vs their PTT's and fighters... Their type 1 & 2 fighters have very little armour and are vulnerable to sandcasters. A London with a sandcaster will destroy hundreds of these fighters with little damage (but note that type 3 Robot fighters have built in sandcaster immunity!). Alternatively, the fighters can be countered cost-effectively with swarms of Veeps Gigs (set them to Target Soft, arm them with a turbolaser and holo decoy each). To pick off their outlying worlds, use Bismuth wings - these have a range of 100L and can travel through Nova mines without damage. Their economy is even better than IMT's, but their options are more limited.
• Prioritise destroying any insects you come across with the Reticulan Med Lab to deny Robots income. Pod them home if necessary to destroy them faster.
  
• If trapped in Nova minefields: one Nova doesn't kill you. The damage is:
  Hull: (2000/(<Hull Mass>+1)+2)*2                ;             System: Hull damage * 2.         A ship with e.g. Hull 120 takes about 37 Hull and 75 System damage. You  should be able to escape, especally as engines aren't affected, though Veeps Gigs tend to suffer >100% System damage - thus the crew dies and they are lost, so don't send VG's into Nova mined areas. (Amusingly, if the Robot tries to board the remains with boarding lasers, the lasers do enough extra damage that they disintegrate and he gets nothing.)
• To avoid getting trapped in unseen Nova minefields you should always have at least 1 MineSweeper  with active sweeping in your fleet. Don't forget: Bots can't cloak their Nova (barbitic) mines, so all their MFs can be easily swept - if they are not laid in the same turn. To counter that, if possible you should try to get some experiance for your Minesweepers, so they clear freshly laid MFs
• Their Gun Zero will potentially damage all ships except Veeps Gigs and Gothams, which are too light for it to affect. On the plus side, the Gun Zero is inaccurate, and will probably only hit a quarter of the ships within its 250LY range (though Great Westerns will get hit about one in 2 times for about 20% damage - a Gun Zero's accuracy and damage is mass-related. The VOF and GW are likely to get hit a lot, for massive damage, though.) You can greatly reduce the numbr of Gun Zero hits by minimising warp signatures - it can't hit ships they don't spot. He has to scan it himself, his allies' scans don't help him. Don't use tachyon scanners near ships you're trying to hide! It is important to keep ships well stocked with Repair Units when fighting Robots.
• The Gun Zero's effectiveness is based on the mass of its targets so you can attack even through overlapping fields of fire. Wings and small ships are not affected by Gun Zeroes; you need to take Gothams into Robot space anyhow. GZ's don't hit every turn, and the damage they do to Great Westerns, VOF's and GP's seems to be miniscule. GZ's do do a lot of damage to Londons (eg 76% if hit), Sheffields and Metros, though.
• Nearby Insect nests will steal 7.5% of your colonists every turn, and this is cumulative (eg 3 planets with nests within range --> about 20% of your population dies every turn). If this happens, load colonists into ships /pods and evacuate the area. The range keeps growing as the Robot population grows - it is typically 250 LY by mid game. If you can tow planets with Great Pyramids, you could conceivably tow your homeworld out of range... or tow the Robot nests into enemy territory? Crystals are immune to Insect Nests, by the way.
• Use tachyon scanners to see Nova mines and Q tankers, which are tricky to spot.
• They are vulnerable to: fighters, which can travel through nova mines without trouble; swarms of ships under 100kT hull mass, which are immune to Gun Zeroes (Feds and Scavengers can take Bots apart); EE H-Ross - a hyperjumping ship largely immune to mines which can lay laser mines; other players' barbitic mines, which can be used to chain-detonate the overlapping nova minefields a Robot player has carefully set up; Insect and Tritanium shortages will limit their growth.
  
• Rebels: Rebels tend to accumulate lots of natives with their Native Dustoffs early in the game.  You want that potential food. Ground Assault with chup mercenaries..? Rebels are inconvenienced by the London's Grav Well Generator. Long range wings can be intercepted by Midshipmas Gig swarms. Quite a few hulls worth trading - or Spying - for.  Against their fighters, I found it best to use a wing of 500 Diracs and a separate wing of just 20 SSS's, rather than mix fighter types in one Wing. However, the combat code keeps changing.
• Lost Colonies: their ships are well armoured (so don't Ram) and you'll need Londons with PTT's to handle those. But the main problem presented by the CoM is their 400LY range, ultra hard fighters. If you cannot get laser mines, try intercepting with swarms of Midshipmans' Gigs. A Wing of 500 Diracs will slaughter a typical CoM 50/0/50 Wing and only costs 25% more. (For some reason, if you make your IMT wing 490/10/0, it's slightly more effective againt CoM fighters.) Another tactic against  CoM is a London with 6 Sandcasters, which will mince any CoM wing. You will lose many Metros versus the CoM, treat them as totally disposable carriers and bring along spares to pick up surviving Wings ater battles.
  
• Peoples' Army: the original intention was they would get bonuses against IMT, although I don't think these were ever coded into Host. A weak ship list in combat (except the marvellous Off World Colony, which can whip a VOF). Perhaps good to trade hulls with, and leave someone else to play the bad guy and kill them (which is easy). It would be prudent to stop them hogging the Resource Points in late game by limit their growth by exploding pods of chups in their region, and turning natives into food. (They won't know where the Chups came from if the pods are still docked to a ship when they detonate.)
• University Alliance:
• Scavengers: in a test game, Sparrow played Scavengers and took out an IMT player almost as an afterthought, whilst fighting a major war on another front. Although their ships crumple like paper in one-on-one sims, that is not how Scavengers fight. Their incredible breeding rate and cheap ships means they have a powerful economy and large fleets early on; IMT is still weak when Scavengers are strong around turn 8.  Whenever ships are destroyed you can count on their component weapons and other bits being teleported to the Scavenger homeworld and used against you; that's why Scavengers don't care much about losing their own ships! Experienced players who are good at making alliances often play Scavengers, they are usually a major threat. You'll just have to outperform their econmy, give them gifts of exploding Chup pods to limit their growth, and stomp these rival scrap metal merchants ASAP. Scavengers are handicapped in late game by doubled tech costs and halved income if they exceed certain tech levels. Scavengers are immune to barbitic mines so even if you trade for a minelayer, it's no defense.
• Draconians: this race is due to be revitalised soon under the direction of Hilmar Benne. It looks like it will become more interesting - sweeping up and consuming all life, much like IMT consumes minerals.
• Enforcers:
• Coalition: The RCS can become an incredible economic powerhouse if not killed quickly, due to double food production / incredible growth. They are very weak early on. If fighting them, their organic armour ships are immune to small weapons (even, I strongly suspect, bonuses from exotic techs, and the normal "special" powers of some small weapons); and the Maelstrom is immune to mines [see Host 211 release notes]. The Poppy fighter has immense range and is immune to laser mines (unless you can catch them in an exploding laser minefield) and, since other mine types do no significant damage to wings, wings of Poppies can fly unhindered around space, faster than most ships. Race is dependent on Insects and other natives, so destroy these wherever possible?
• Aczanny: This race cannot mine metal at all until tech 6, and then their mining rate is still very low, so they are very willing to trade for metal. Most useful hull: the cheap Phaeton minesweeper / laser mine layer (max speed 400!), or - if they will allow it - the tech 10 Nest starbase, with its excellent 650 scanning range.
• Centaurs: not yet tested, but theoretically they have the right mix of abilities to slaughter IMT. Fast swarmers who can ignore losses, minelayers, loads of point defence on cheap ships to eliminate fighters. The London's GWG will be very useful against them. If you can afford them, Energised Sandcasters chew up their ships and Wings very effectively. (Their ships have little or no armour so even normal SC's are good until they buy SC Immunity.) Build lots of AA guns on your bases. Centaurs can HYP their Raffa pop ships to land near your planets (10LY is near enough) and blow their Glory Device. This increases the planet's HD Stress by 150 per pop, so if you have already ramped it up to 900 or so, your planets could disintegrate. So keep your Londons' GWGs running, and Wings near planets set to auto-intercept incoming enemies. Opportunity: they have a low mining rate and may be keen to trade for metals.
• Solarians: I think you can't use Solarian hull plans (they are not clonable), so they are not much use as an ally. Their ships create ridiculous amounts of fuel. Their Coronas are much better in Laser Mining than IMT Sheffields, and afterwards they can chunnel the metals to the Metal Exchange. They have a hull which can chunnel IMT bases.
• Other IMT players: cut a deal.

Fighting against IMT

• IMT Megacorp are weakest before turn 12. Privateers have a chance of easy pickings if you're prepared to lose a ship or 2.
• Mobile planets laden with ion cannon and AA guns sound dangerous. But you can use AVOID BASE commands to prevent them entering combat.
• IMT desperately needs allies to plug gaps in its defences. If you can diplomatically isolate them so they cannot get minefields or other critical devices, you are a long way towards overcoming them. But eventually they will get these through Spy missions, so capitalise on your advantages as soon as possible.
• Lower IMT's happiness with prisoners, Exotic Tech (Poison Propaganda), Spying, River Royales. IMT haemorrhages population if happiness drops below zero. As happiness drops, the probability of Chup Mutinies rises.
  
• Spying against IMT to reduce Happiness might be quite effective. Attacking bases from space with ships also reduces the population's happiness, even if they survive.
• If you see a Great Pyramid early in the game, try to take it out. It is unlikely to be equipped with a Protomatter Cannon until mid to late game, and it may not be fully armoured, so is probably very weak. The GP is the only way IMT can move quickly. Grav mines will stop a GP and, thus, an entire fleet in its tracks.
• IMT concentrate on quantity, not quality. Swarms can be vulnerable to Wings of heavily armoured fighters, pop ships, exploding cloaked minefield traps etc.
  
• Assume IMT's larger ships will fight with attack setting "Ram."
• Scavs can outswarm IMT, but since IMT ships can also mount large weapons, you may need a 2:1 superiority or so to win.
• IMT ships have poor shields. Ionic Gun Arrays might be quite effective as they can arc through huge amounts of armour once the shields are down, although IMT ships tend to be quite resistant to Systems damage.
• IMT ships are fairly slow and can be easily outmaneuvered, except the Gig and Great Pyramid.
• Don't try to fight IMT in Ground Combat if there are Chupanoids on the planet. IMT can have unbelievable numbers of Chup troops.
• Attacking IMT's large ships, with a fleet all on the same vector to concentrate fire, can sometimes backfire. In one game, ten Saurians and LCC's attacked on the same vector, only to be run over and destroyed in 39 ticks by a poorly armed VOF set to Ram. The VOF outmassed them by a factor of about 181:1. Later simulations showed it was very lucky, we couldn't repeat the effect, but it can happen.
• Glory Devices can make their planets, which are often high HD Stress, disintegrate.
  
• The Feds, Peoples' Army and Arborians are rumoured to get bonuses when attacking IMT ships.
• Use long range World Crusher superweapons against mobile bases. And remember, they need a Great Pyramid to tow them. Superlasers may be useful if you can get near the bases.
• The large IMT hulls (Great Western, VOF) are vulnerable to Tachyon Guns backed by Exotic Tech because they lack small weapons of their own, so you can use standoff range to keep out of range of anything except Photon Torpedoes - and those are easy to shoot down and greatly disadvantaged by Holo Decoys.
• The VOF can be countered with fighters. It can't ram those.

"Base-less" rumours

• IMT Megacorp ships vent atmosphere because they're shoddily built, and have huge soft spots
• IMT Megacorp ships deliberately vent atmosphere as a show of wealth
• Planets wobble in their orbits as IMT ships pass by
• Natives absorbed by The Corporation are never seen again; the Peoples' Army has a 20% attack bonus when attacking IMT ships
• Privateers are just another branch of IMT Megacorp
• All IMT personnel hate the Veeps (High Guard). Chups are employed to watch the Veeps' backs.
• IMT staff are a rough, tough bunch of miners who like nothing better than whoring, gambling on their Vaggen War Hounds' fights, and drinking Blood Wine.
• IMT crew are armed to the teeth with illegal handguns in case the Chups run amok.
• Veeps routinely purge excess staff by accidentally forgetting to feed Chups until they run amok.
• Veeps routinely transfer excess staff to Lizard training camps.
• IMT can only be stopped by lawyers. They pride themselves on sticking to contracts.
• Once made, IMT is unable to break an alliance. ("Contract.")
• IMT Driller Killer mechs have underground duels with sandworms on Amorph planets.
• If there is more than one IMT player in a galaxy, the price of metals crashes due to competition
• The Veeps Gig has a built-in, always-on soil steriliser (unshielded Orion drive) built into its hull so do not let them orbit round your worlds on"peaceful trading missions"
• IMT can use pods of ore as interplanetary weapons aimed at enemy bases.
• IMT Megacorp is just a front for the Privateers
• Even the Borg consider IMT a locust-like blight.
• The Gotham's minesweeping device is simply a long stick welded to the hull, a masterpiece of cost effective retro-engineering to meet changing market requirements. Sweeping consists of poking mines and hoping they explode safely. About 25% of the time, the Gothams blow up too.
  
• The IMT Megacorp racepack was compiled by a master hacker without Tim's permission. In effect they bootstrapped themselves into existence like a rash young startup dot-com.
• None of IMT's special powers are actually coded into Host yet
• IMT is an anagram of a famous game designer, a shameless bid for special treatment
• The Great Pyramid's sharp edges have been the subject of numerous Health & Safety complaints