General Overview of VGA Planets 4 VGA Planets 4 (VGAP4) is a competitive, multiplayer Email game of Space Warfare. Each player controls one empire in a galaxy. As in other Space Wargames, players explore the area around them, gather or develop resources, research technologies, build infrastructure and create space and ground combat units to defeat their neighbors. However, VGAP4 differs significantly from most other Space Warfare games in several ways. VGAP4 is an Email game. The time between moves is more leisurely than real time games or games played on a single computer. The duration of a game long is usually long. A typical game might have a turn due two or three times per week, and the game as a whole take three to six months to reach its conclusion. VGAP4 is a multiplayer game. Skill at negotiating and diplomacy are important. Most of the other players will be enemies to be crushed. Some may be allies, temporary or permanent, and some may be members of pre-assigned teams. Skill at getting the most out of your partners, skill at creating a functioning alliance, and skill at leading your enemy into a committing disastrous blunders are all important. VGAP4 is a _competitive_ game between human beings. The objective is not to grow your empire to Tech Level 10, nor get a certain size of population or fleet. Those are only tools for achieving your real goal: beating the player in the empire next to yours. If you can defeat the other player by achieving Weapons Technology Level 10 before him, do so. If you can defeat him before either of you get to Weapons Technology 10, that's terrific too. The point is not how many "points" you have on any absolute scale, but that _you_ are defeating _him_ on a relative scale. Because you have human opponents, the winning strategy in VGAP4 tends to differ from the winning strategy in other Space Wargames. In many similar appearing games, the key to victory is well thought out, patterned play to maximize searching, to optimally develop technology, and to build infrastructure rapidly. In those games, players work out a "perfect plan" of the most efficient way to expand and develop. They then use that plan over and over in each successive game. Against human opponents, patterned predictable play will lead you into an ambush and a one-way trip to an enemy Labor Camp. Human players, unlike steady computer opponents, will confront you with a combination of brilliant threats, clever traps, and incredibly bone-headed blunders.VGAP4 rewards players who do the unexpected, whose next move cannot easily be foreseen, and who can react rapidly to opportunities or threats that suddenly arise. Any wargame favors aggressive, offensive play over a passive defense. In VGAP4, the player's empires are fairly robust, but the game system does allow attacks to develop rapidly. The game system is rich enough to provide many different ways to damage your enemy. Space battles, orbital bombardment, and ground infantry battles are all there. So are subtler ways to reduce your enemy's economy, happiness, income and productivity through covert, non-combat means. VGAP4 gives great advantage to the offensive minded player because you can combine ships, fighters and ground troops into a mutually supporting attack, and do this at a time when you have arranged that your enemy's economy is in ruins his a population in revolt. If you can get the most from your friends, deceive your enemies, seize sudden opportunities, respond rapidly to unforseen threats, and are tenacious and thoughtful enough to push relentlessly once you gain an advantage, you will do just fine here. It's as simple as that. Differences Between The Shareware And Registered Versions The shareware version of the game does not have any time limits, it does not have any turn limits. Registered players: Can upgrade to higher tech levels than shareware players. Get a 40 point spy bonus. Have a maximum colonist population of 50 million instead of 30 million. Natives grow twice as fast. Native migrate to public space ports twice as fast. For the latest information on how to register planets 4 you can send an email message to: Tim Wisseman Email: cocomax@aol.com The regular price of planets 4 is $30. All registered planets 3 players can buy version 4 at the discount price of $15. These prices will be good until at least the year 2002. My mailing address is: Tim Wisseman PO Box 204 North Fork CA 93643 USA To enter your reg code into planets4.exe: Start the program, click the register icon on the toolbar, on the screen that pops up click the register button. You will see 6 boxes, place your reg code into the boxes. You have the option to enter your name email address and city on the lines under the reg code, this information will be sent to the host every turn and will be logged in a host side log file for the host to see. Other players will not see this information. Differences between VGAP3 and VGAP4 (source: Paul Honigmann, Klingon Kommand, www.furfur.demon.co.uk in 09/2002) Key rule changes: There can be up to 30 players in a game. There can be any mix of race types in a game. There can be many players playing the same race. Fuel and metals are made from neutronium ore by smelters. Tech levels are universal, once a tech is reached all planets can use that tech level. Spies are an important element of strategy. Battles are now resolved with fleet combat, not one-on-one fights. Economies have more elements to manage, but once set going more or less manage themselves. Winning conditions are customisable and more specific. Other differences Every command you enter into version 4 can be reversed at any time before you send in your TRN. Game setup In the game you can bring up a races screen that will display WHO is playing and what race they are playing. That aspect of the game will be open for all to see. Tim wants the players to have about the same level of knowledge as the host. Many VGAP3 games do not finish with an outright victory because players lose interest in playing the losing side for many weeks running. Even the winners often prefer a swift, decisive victory to a long drawn out campaign. To make the game more playable, winning conditions are being made configurable and less nebulous. Tim is adding interesting victory conditions and other ways of winning other than beating up the enemy, as an option. (If someone is losing a war but meets a secondary winning condition, they may get reinforcements.) VGAP4 also introduces "spoils of war" to enable the winners to push forward without having to tediously assimilate an area - which should encourage more aggressive play and reward players who attack. In VGAP3 some people tried to win by sitting on the fence for an entire game. If you're losing a war then your race will tend to get unhappy as ships are lost, etc. Races that become very unhappy defect to another race. Their number one choice will be another race of the same type belonging to another player. Maps The default map will be the echo cluster map, but support for 3rd party maps and map editors is already built in. Tim has already written a map file compiler for anyone that would like to make a custom map. All that you need is a text editor and the map compiler. It maps a MAP file that MASTER fuses into the universe data file when the universe is made. The map data is passed to the players in their RST files, so you never have to send map files out to the players. The map compiler allows you to generate custom starmaps with a unique topography for your own game. Each star would have one planet and no asteroid belts. But you can go further than this using a scripting language to adjust the chances of a wide variety of stellar / planetary conditions in each universe. [I was not sure I had that right so I checked with Tim, who confirmed: "Yes, that is correct. You can use map to add your basic planets and then use the scripting language to add a few extra odd ball planets. You can use ether one or both to make a new universe."] For example, it is possible for a star to have more than one planet. Tim says he can easily add a chance of >1 planet around stars to master.exe, although in the initial Beta release, if you want this, you will have to manually change the script which master.exe uses to build the map from. Players can also BUILD planets out of asteroid belts with a "protomatter cannon" during the game. Although such a planet would have climate in the range of 40 to 50, it would have very high Hyperdimensional Stress levels (not usually a problem). This is probably a good way to strengthen your home system's economy and defenses. If you want to have starting asteroid belts you will have to use the scripting language instead of the map compiler to give yourself more control. Note: some ships can mine an asteroid field. VGAP4 keeps data on an asteroid field's mineral supply and quantity. The starting scripts define the homeworld climates, tech levels, and starting units for each player. A DICE() function allows you to introduce randomness into the setup of each star/planet. You can create an immensely complex script if you wish, or you can say "for every group of (e.g.) 6 planets, create them according to the following semirandom rules, then repeat". Exquisite uncertainty Scanner reports are no longer as cut and dried."Unknown contact, of 300kt moving at 70 ly a turn 120 LY from your base on planet 123. . . . race unknown." To get a better look you will need to send a ship in closer to get an ID on the object. Combat: One of the features about Version 3 was that battles were a bit predictable, and players could run simulations to maximise their chances of winning a space battle. "Hmm, if I send my torp ships in first to knock down their shields, I have a better chance of surviving, unless he disrupts the order by intercepting ship X..." - This favours careful players, which is a Good Thing, but some people were a bit obsessive about it. (Like me!) Then along came "The Killing Floor" addon, allowing fleet battles for Version 3, instead of sequential one-on-one battles when fleets met. Suddenly, it became a lot more difficult to predict what an outcome would be. TKF introduced several new variables: a fleet of small ships could take out one large one, could concentrate on (say) taking out enemy fighters to shield your big carrier, could barge in on a suicide run... suddenly it could take several hours to sim important battles, which is Sad, and rather handicaps inexperienced players who don't understand all the variables. Unfortunately, there were a maximum of 500 ships in a Version 3 game, which meant that you might easily be risking half your ships in a big fleet battle, so massive simulation sessions were the order of the day. But now... we have VGAP Version 4. And its array of variables makes predicting large battles almost pointless, at least at present (with Version 4 still in Beta release). People are discussing a simulation tool, but consider the following list of options and then decide for yourself how long it would take to predict the outcome of a big multiship battle. I suspect that, for a long time after the introduction of Version 4, even the best players will have to plan fleet actions more by their gut feelings than calculation. More ships is obviously better. But high tech weapons are more vulnerable to being damaged and, being more expensive, mean you'll be fielding fewer ships overall... then again, the Nemesis Torpedo can take out a whole fleet of fighters small ships if they're clumped together... including your own... Welcome back to an uncertain universe where even a newbie might think of a clever twist to scupper an enemy. Combat options Variable numbers of ships (umpteen types), fighters (3 types) Ship hulls can be refitted by all races, so you cannot count on a ship having the same weaponry as it did last time you fought it Individual ships can be set to various modes: aggressive; flee; strike once then run; escort another ship; hang back; ram; fire at ground targets... Ships can attack in 2 waves, allowing throwaway units to soften up an enemy first Fleets can attack in a compact group from one direction, to take out a particular ship; or from several directions, to surround an enemy who might try to flee There are about 20 different types of torpedo, beam, point defense weaponry etc... all with different effectiveness vs each other and armour, shields, and old fashioned killing power Ships' armour is worn away in combat, but they can scavenge extra armour from the ships they destroy Most ships have soft spots where critical hits might do immense damage High Guards make more effective fighters, if you can afford to train crew Ship devices such as the Mind Crusher, Boarding Laser, Crew Abductor and Self Destruct can affect battle results Fleets can have multiple waypoints during a turn. They could fight more than one battle in a turn. Try predicting the outcome of several fleet actions in a row...