I'm utterly confused over how turns work. The rules seem to suggest that a turn is processed the moment all the races in a star system have submitted their orders, or after 36 (48?) hours if one or more races doesn't submit any orders. That's all quite straight forward.

However what happens when a race has ships in more than one star system? All of the races in star system (A) submit their orders and that turn gets processed. But I have a ship in system (B) as well and not all of the races there have submitted their orders. So what happens to my orders for the ship in system (B)? Are they lost? If I submit a new set of orders in order to keep play in system (A) going, do I override the orders in (B)? If I do nothing with the ship in system (B), will the server remember my orders for that ship, or will the orders be lost and the ship will do nothing?

Finally how often are orders for the galactic view processed and how do they tie in with star system orders?

Imagine each system runs ina different time line. This is shown by the 'stardate' at the top of the screen - ie the turn the system opened, and the current turn within the system.

443.447 means the systems opened in turn 443, and there have been 4 turns since then.

When you submit orders they are stored against the ship in the DB. When a system processed the turn report will contain that systems new positions, AND any orders you have submitted for ships in other systems already. i.e. it remembers the orders, and you do not have to resubmit.

The galactic map is a special case, processing once every 8 hours only.

And it was a sod to code.