Not complaining but just noting there is no official documentation on fopnu, save for color codes.

When someone asked, what the levels in channels can do, we began simple testing and discovered some interesting behavior.

1. channel level powers are not dynamic, in reference to the user targeted. I as mod see option to set owner to "normal" which can't happen, so when an equal or higher level user is selected, there should be no menu option to change the target's level.

2. Owner cannot lower the level of a user that was assigned a level by another op or manager. Owner can demote the manager or op and that would affect the level of users that manager or op had assigned to others. Owner can raise level of such a user but can't lower it if the level was set by another.

3. mod has no power to change anyone's level, can't raise normal to mod and can't change any level equal (mod) or greater than themselves. So the Set Level menu item should not appear for mods unless there will be more lower levels than "normal" added in the future which the mod could then change.

Those things aside, other than changing levels and managing bans etc, what power are inherent for mods, ops and the owner?

It appears a mod or above is needed to keep a channel open.

an the basic connection side, how does a fopnu client find other fopnu clients to connect to? I understand the old winMX process relying on peer IP cache servers but assume fopnu didn't replicate that. So when i startup, how does my fopnu know where to go to join?

Once connected, how does my fopnu learn what channels exist when the Add channels is executed?

in further testing, we found that:

A Manager level user can assign levels to other users up to the level below manager. They cannot set another to the same level as themselves. They can promote others as OP or as Mod and can demote them (only the ones they personally promoted) back to Normal level.

An Op level users can promote others to Mod level and demote them back to Normal level.

A Mod level has no power to promote or demote anyone else, since they are only 1 level above Normal.

Testing:
User2 is set to Manager level by Owner.
User2 sets User3 to Mod level.
Owner can not lower User3 to Normal level.
Owner can also set User3 to mod level or higher, but can't lower User3 level to less than what another Op/Manager has assigned.

Owner demotes User2 to Op level. This affects the assigned levels to others made by User2, causing User3 to drop to Normal. Interesting. I was expecting perhaps assigned levels would be reduced to 1 level below the demoted user2's level, thinking since User2 was lowered to Op, then maybe User3 remain at Mod, since that level is still manageable by the Op/Manager. But instead, Used3 dropped to Normal.

Owner then reassigns Manager level to User2 and that causes User3's prior level to be automatically restored to Mod.