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Ministers are your computer controlled assistants. At your request, they can control areas of your empire so that you don't have to.

There are two types of ministers. There are Global ministers and Individual ministers. Global ministers are ministers who control things at an empire wide level. For example, the "Ship Construction Minister" is a global minister who will add new ships to the construction queues throughout your empire. Individual ministers are ministers which control certain actions but only for individual ships or planets. Individual ministers can only control those ships or planets that you make available to them (by turning on the minister icon in the Main Window). An example of an individual minister is the "Defense Minister" who will give orders to your ships to defend against enemy threats. The Defense minister can only give orders to those ships that you have turned on the minister control icon for.

If you choose to use ministers, you can activate them by going into the Ministers Window and turning on those that you wish to use. In this window, be aware that there is an option at the bottom of the list called "Automatically use Individual Ministers for newly built vehicles". This is used when you want any newly constructed ships or colonized planets to be automatically set to have minister control on. This is useful if you want the AI to completely control a section of your empire without you having to always go and set the individual minister on for every new ship or planet.

	Design	Controls the construction of new designs and the making of them obsolete.
	Ship Construction	Controls adding and removing new ships or units from the construction queues.
	Expenses	Controls overall expenses such as removing items from the construction queues if we do not have enough resources.
	Production Output	Controls construction queue settings such as Emergency Build. Also tries to ensure that the planets stay happy so that production is maintained.
	Research	Controls the adding and removing of research projects.
	Intelligence	Controls the adding and removing of intelligence projects.
	Politics	Controls the sending of and replying to political messages.
	Repair	Will clear ships orders and send them to a repair location if they need it.
	Resupply	Will clear ships orders and send them to a resupply location if they need it.
	Scrap	Will send ships to space yard locations and scrap them if they are old or our maintenance cost is too high.
	Retrofit	Will send older ships to a space yard so that they can be retrofitted.

	Facility Construction	Will construct new facilities on the selected planets.
	Transports	Controls the selected transport ships and moves population and cargo to where it is needed.
	Carriers	Controls the selected carriers so that they will load fighters and engage in combat.
	Colonization	Controls the selected colonization ships and sends them to nearby planets to colonize.
	Attack	Controls all of your selected attack ships and sends them on missions to attack your enemies.
	Defense	Controls all of your selected attack and defensive ships and sends them on missions to defend your empire from attack.
	Exploration	Uses any of the selected ships to explore new locations.
	Patrol	Uses any of the selected ships to patrol your planets.
	Mines\Satellites	Uses any of the selected ships to transport mines and satellites and drop them in space.
	Fleets	Controls the selected fleets and uses them to attack and defend.
	Stellar Manipulation	Controls any selected ships with stellar manipulation abilities.
	Ship Cloaking	Controls the cloaking and uncloaking of your ships if they have the ability.
	Space Yard Ships	Controls the selected space yard ships and sends them to repair your ships and construct new items.
	Troops	Controls the selected ships to transport your troops to other planets and to drop them on enemy planets.

	Automatically use Individual Ministers for newly built vehicles	This is used when you want any newly constructed ships or colonized planets to be automatically set to have minister control on. This is useful if you want the AI to completely control a section of your empire without you having to always go and set the individual minister on for every new ship or planet.
	AI should not make changes to the empire during a Simultaneous game	This is used when you are playing a simultaneous game. Normally, if you do not submit your turn file when the host processes your turn, the computer will automatically take over your turn and play it for you. Now it may be that you don't want the AI to make any major changes to your empire while you're away. Turning this option on means that if the AI does take over control of your empire, then it won't make many change.