Imperial Space Command

Imperial Space Command is a video game in the strategy genre developed by IBM and published by IBM originally released in 1986. It is currently playable on DOS.

You command the Imperial Fleet of the One True Civilization, descendant of a legendary Empire that united humanity in a galactic Golden Age, but perished in a horrific civil war. As interstellar travel ceased, the struggling and isolated remnants descended into a Dark Age, and the knowledge of yesteryear was gradually lost. However, on your planet conditions were favorable and, generations later, a new culture has emerged. Artifacts of the old Empire were unearthed and studied, forgotten arts were relearned, and space travel was reinvented.

But when the first test flights began to explore near space, a terrible truth was unveiled: there are Others out there. Your planet was not alone in rediscovering lost technologies and embarking on a new space age; multiple competing empires are emerging, each claiming the same imperial legacy. A new galactic conflict is brewing, and only one outcome can prove the legitimacy of your claim: complete and total victory.

Imperial Space Command is a turn-based interstellar war game for up to 8 players (any of whom can be human or computer controlled). Multiple human players can play without communicating with each other at all; they make their moves using separate player diskettes, and a Game Master processes the disks after each turn, as well as the moves of the 'robot' (AI) players. There are also forces that are not players (renegades). The complex rules involve many variables, adjustable from the Game Generator at the start of each game.

One crucial, long-gone technology cannot be duplicated by either side: the powerful engines that powered the Imperial ships of yesteryear. These indestructible marvels of engineering have survived intact through the ages, but their inner workings remain impenetrable, and no new ones can be built. Ships of different sizes and capabilities can be built, but only a limited number of existing engines can be used to power them.

The path to victory will involve exploring and colonizing planets; creating government units to cement the loyalty of your colonies and production centers to gather wealth; collecting taxes and a depository/treasury system to manage that wealth; building, equipping, and managing ships and fleets; and engaging in ship-to-ship combat, planetary bombardments, and invasions to defeat rival empires and renegade forces. To top it off, your colonies are at risk of plagues, revolutions and states of anarchy.

It is possible that we have multiple downloads available when different versions exist.