The game consists of a macromanagement part for the empire management, and a wargame part for the battles. For each button on every screen you can see a tooltip that will give you a good explanation for its use. I also recommend to start with the Training Camp, that is an interactive tutorial for the game. Play it to learn playing this game in a easy way!
On the startup menu, you can click the button “Check Online” to have the program check if a new version of the game has been released.

You can win or lose in one of the following way:
1) if you have enabled “Kill Leader” in Victory Conditions when starting a new game, the game will end if the leader is killed in the wargame part (that is if you destroy the mothership Wasp or Ogre in a battle)
2) if you have enabled “Galaxy Conquest”, the first faction to control the 75% of the whole Galaxy will win the game
3) No matter which option you selected, the faction that loses its homeworld starsystem, will automatically lose the game