Let the war gaming begin. Over the coming months, a group of senior Lib Dem MPs will be scenario planning for a hung Parliament. They have form. Nick Clegg used to be a professional trade negotiator, Chris Huhne conducted city negotiations and Vince Cable was a professional scenario planner when he was Chief Economist at Shell (the company was a world leader in horizon planning).

They will be using whiteboards, mind maps and the game theory principles of John Nash.

But what will this mean in practise. There were some intriguing clues at Spring conference in Harrogate, so here is a guide. It's not the faint hearted. Sorry.

1. Despite some policy overlap, there is no great love for the Conservatives at any level of the Lib Dems. "We remain a centre-left party" said one figure. "Many of us regard the Conservatives as the opposition and Labour as the competition," said another.

2. There are even personal problems at the top. There were reports of an early awkward incident involving Clegg and Cameron. Dave invited Nick and Miriam for dinner. Fearing this could store up problems for the future, Nick said no. Dave has been "dismissive" of Nick ever since. So insiders point out there is no personal chemistry there.

3. Despite this, senior figures believe it is vital that the party remains "equidistant" between Labour and the Tories (This is a significant change from Paddy Ashdown, who was famously in negotiations with Tony Blair pre-1997, and Sir Menzies Campbell who openly talked about his friendship with Gordon Brown). They believe negotiations can only be effective if both Labour and the Tories credibly believe there is a chance of a deal.

4. There is an assumption that should the Tories be the largest party in a minority Parliament, the Lib Dems will probably support them in some form. This seems unlikely, at this stage, to be a formal coalition. But they recognise it would be electoral "suicide" to do the reverse and prop up Gordon Brown to keep him in Number 10 if the Tories are the largest party.

5. What really interests them is what happens next, in the event of a rapid second general election. A Tory minority government will probably only be a short term affair. The Conservatives would govern for a few months, but then go to the country to "seal the deal" like Harold Wilson in 1974. Labour, possible fearing the consequences, will be much more willing to negotiate at this stage. If they do begin private or public talks, this would put pressure on the Tories to enter negotiations too. Having engaged both parties in negotiations, it will be in the words of one Lib Dem, "game on".

6. The Lib Dems will not, initially, insist on PR as part of any deal because this automatically gives Labour a huge advantage. However senior Lib Dems are intrigued by the personal position of David Cameron. He is instinctively hostile to PR. But in evidence to the Power Commission on democracy a few years ago, Cameron apparently told the committee that while the First Past the Post system should remain, he believed that of different types of PR, the Single Transferable Vote system was fairer to AV, which Labour would offer. Lib Dems would prefer STV because it's more proportionate than AV.

7. They believe there could be constitutional chaos of there is a Hung Parliament. The Standing Orders which govern what happens are complex, contradictory and out of date. Some Lib Dem legal experts think the confusion could even be exploited by Gordon Brown to try and cling on to power even if Labour is not the largest party.

8. The consent of the wider party is annoying but still important. When Paddy Ashdown was talking to Blair, Lib Dems like David Howarth managed to change the party rules to ensure that he couldn't do a deal without the approval of the party. Thus the "quadruple lock" was born, and still exists somewhere in the mists of the Lib Dem constitution. Broadly party figures are relaxed about this. They believe that the party must, essentially, be given some way of validating (or even rejecting) a deal done by the leadership. This helped keep the Lab-Lib Dem deal in the Scottish Parliament alive for the whole of the duration of the first Parliament.