Welcome to PAW PBM'S VGA Planets. The game was written by Tim Wisseman from
America. The game was designed to be run by Modem. However, over here in the
UK the costs of phone calls are very expensive and so we have converted a
game to be played by mail. The game you have here is the low-tech version of
the game and so you will be unable to raise any of your tech levels above 6.
In the full game tech levels can reach 10.
PAW PBM is a company formed by Andy and Paul Walker to run multi-player games by mail and modem. If you would like to play a full game of VGA Planets against 10 other human opponents please write to:
PAW PBM
12 BINFORD CLOSE
WHIPTON
EXETER EX1 3JZ
or Tel: 0392-498022 or 0272-586085
We sell several versions of the game and at the time of writing this 14\3\94
the prices are as set out below.
10.00 pounds sterling Play by Modem version. Registered copy of the game that
allows you to reach level 10 on all techs. You can host games on your own
computer but if players wanted to do their own turns on their own computers
he/she would need their own registered copy of the game or the game will not
work. 1 x 1.44 disk only.
20.00 pounds sterling Play by Modem Boxed version. Registered copy of the game that
allows you to reach level 10 on all techs. You can host games on your own
computer but if players wanted to do their own turns on their own computers
he/she would need their own registered copy of the game or the game will not
work. 1.44 disk with game and 1.44 disk full of the latest utilities to go
with the game including windows mapping utility.
20.00 pounds sterling Play by Mail Boxed version. Registered copy of the game that allows you
to reach level 10 in all Techs. You do your own tun on your own computer and
post it back to PAW PBM who put it through their own version of the host
program. Turns run on 10 day deadline, you will be playing against players
from all over the country. Turns cost 1.50 per turn after the first 2 free
turns. You can host games on your own computer and players can do their own
turns on their own computers but only up to Tech level 6 . For your money you
recieve a smart boxed version of the game with an A2 star map,
11 race leaflets, colour rule book, instruction leaflets on the extra
features and 3 disks. One disk for the Low Tech version, one disk for the full
players version and one disk to return your turn on. You also receive a disk
mailing envelope to keep your return disk safe in the post. We provide 10
other players for your game that are as keen on the game as you are so you
can have a truely great game of VGA Planets.
Please tell us what race you would like to be, (several choices in order of
preference).
25.00 pounds sterling Play by Mail and Play by Modem version. Both versions of
the game so you have the benefits of both types of play. In the play by mail
version all ships have 1.5x speed, also players use the message system a Lot
so the deplomacy side of the game is exploited to the full.
(0.00)
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PLANETS1.DOC
(1.00) INTRODUCTION TO VGA PLANETS
(1.01) THE SCENARIO
(1.02) HELP!
(1.03) GAME MAIL PACKETS
(1.04) THE HOST.EXE PROGRAM
(1.05) BBS HOST SYSOP
(1.06) INDEPENDENT HOST
(1.07) PLANETS ON ONE COMPUTER
(1.08) PLANETS ON MANY COMPUTERS IN THE SAME BUILDING
(1.09) PLAYING PLANETS FROM THE HOST DIR IN A MULTICOMPUTER GAME
(1.10) PATHS
(1.11) Xmodem and Ymodem
(1.12) Windows
(1.13) Program Crashes
(2.0) PLANETARY ECONOMY
(2.1) MINERALS
(2.2) MINERAL MINES
(2.3) FACTORIES
(2.4) DEFENSE POSTS
(2.5) SUPPLIES
(2.6) TAXES AND POPULATIONS
(2.7) METEOR IMPACTS
_________________
PLANETS2.DOC
(3.00) STARSHIPS
(3.01) TECH LEVELS
(3.02) NEW SHIPS
(3.03) WEAPON BANKS AND FIGHTER BAYS
(3.04) FIGHTERS
(3.05) WEAPON KILLING/DESTRUCTIVE POWER
(3.06) STARSHIP FIX / RECYCLE
(3.07) FUEL
(3.08) CARGO
(3.09) PRIMARY ENEMY
(3.10) SHIP MISSIONS
(3.11) STARSHIP NAVIGATION
(3.12) FUEL
(3.13) REPAIRS IN SPACE
(3.14) COLONIZE MISSION
(3.15) ALCHEMY SHIPS
(3.16) MINE FIELDS
(3.17) ORDER OF COMBAT
(3.18) COMBAT LAWS/RULES
(4.0) STARBASES
(4.1) DEFENSE AND FIGHTERS
(4.2) A BASE'S ROLE IN SHIP BUILDING AND ARMING
(4.3) STARBASE ORDERS
(4.4) PLANETARY / STARSHIP FRIENDLY CODE
(4.5) STARBASE SCANNER
(4.6) STARBASE FIX COMMAND
(5.0) THE STARCHART
-----------------
PLANET3.DOC
(6.0) VICTORY CONDITIONS
(6.1) LIST OF STARSHIP TYPES
(6.2) A REVIEW OF THE RACE FLEETS
(6.3) PERSONALIZED RACE NAMES
(6.4) RACE.NM AND THE HOST
(6.5) RACE.NM AND THE REMOTE PLAYER
(6.6) RACE.NM AND THE LOCAL GAME
(6.7) RACE.NM AND BBS SYSOPS
(7.0) STARTING THE GAME
(7.1) STARTING IF YOU ARE NOT HOSTING THE GAME
(7.2) THE GAME FILES ( A BRIEF LIST )
(7.3) LIST OF PLAYER FILES
(7.4) LIST OF ALL THE HOST FILES
(8.0) SUPPORT
(8.1) REGISTRATION
(9.0) NEW FEATURES IN VERSION 3
-----------------
PLANET4.DOC
(10.0) RACE ADVANTAGES
(10.01) PLAYER 1 ( The Solar Federation )
(10.02) PLAYER 2 ( The Lizards )
(10.03) PLAYER 3 ( The Bird Men )
(10.04) PLAYER 4 ( The Fascists )
(10.05) PLAYER 5 ( The Privateers )
(10.06) PLAYER 6 ( The Cyborgs )
(10.07) PLAYER 7 ( The Crystal People )
(10.08) PLAYER 8 ( The Evil Empire )
(10.09) PLAYER 9 ( The Robots )
(10.10) PLAYER 10 ( The Rebels )
(10.11) PLAYER 11 ( The Colonies )
(10.12) A QUICK OVERVIEW
(11.0) NATIVE RACE ADVANTAGES
(11.1) HUMANOID
(11.2) BOVINOID
(11.3) REPTILIAN
(11.4) AVIAN
(11.5) AMORPHOUS
(11.6) INSECTOID
(11.7) AMPHIBIAN
(11.8) GHIPSOLDAL
(11.9) SILICONOID
(12.0) NATIVE GOVERNMENT SYSTEMS AND TAXES
(12.1) COLLECTING TAXES FROM NATIVES
(12.2) COLLECTING TAXES FROM COLONISTS
(12.3) TAKING OVER PLANETS WITH COLONISTS
(13.0) DEFENSE AND ATTACKS
(13.1) PLANETARY DEFENSE
(13.2) GROUND WAR
(13.3) SHIP TO SHIP MATH
(13.4) SHIP DAMAGE EFFECTING WEAPONS AND ENGINES
(14.0) SHIP WEAPON AND ENGINE STATS
(15.0) MOUSE DRIVER SCALING FACTORS
(16.0) HCONFIG.EXE
(16.1) CONFIGURE STARSHIP RECYCLE RATE
(16.2) CONFIGURE METEOR IMPACT ODDS
(16.3) CONFIGURE MINE FIELDS
(16.4) CONFIGURE ALCHEMY SHIPS
(17.0) ERROR MESSAGES
-----------------
(0.02) SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
The game can be played on any IBM compatible with VGA graphics
and a 286 or faster CPU with a hard drive.
(1.00) INTRODUCTION TO VGA PLANETS
VGA Planets is a graphical multiplayer play by turn war game
that simulates combat in space between galactic empires. The
game emphasizes mining, colonization and the construction of
starships. The players compete against each other economically
and militarily on a galactic scale.
Although there is an economic component to the game, it is
mainly a tactical and strategic wargame. Although the player
with the best economy usually has the best potential to win,
it's not the purpose of the game -- and the scoring system
reflects this.
The game system allows players to construct their own starships
by selecting various components and placing them on a given hull
type. This game can handle from two to 11 players.
To begin the game, you are given a planet, a starbase, and
two ships. You have to manage your planet's population and
resources wisely. You can create more ships and expand your
domain through colonization or conquest of neighboring planets.
Of course, the other players are attempting to do the same thing.
The game can also be set up so that players start with just
freighters and no homeworlds.
VGA Planets can be compared to a 11-player chess game in
which all players move all their pieces simultaneously, one turn
at a time.
(1.01) THE SCENARIO
Ten years ago a small fleet of freighters left your home
world in a quest to find new worlds to colonize. Half way
through your journey you lost all contact with fleet command.
You then begin to fear the worst, a full scale galactic war may
have broken out and your small fleet may be the last of your
race.
You left home with four very special ships that were equipped
with tech 17 Bussard Ramscoops which gather low grade matter
from the interstellar medium and converts it to antimatter
fuel. The tech 17 Bussard Ramscoop Fuel Ships served you well
until you lost the last one a year ago when the final
out, your fleet was then forced to make the rest of the journey
burning low grade neutronic fuel. Your fleet finally arrived at
your goal, the small Echo open star cluster on the outer tip of
third major arm of the Milky Way. This open cluster contains 500
planets that are all named after the stars from your home star
sectors.
The last fuel base you passed is over 7000 light years away
and you are unable to build new CLBF coils. In fact, the only
know source of CLBF coils is small super high tech research
station ran by a group of Andromedians near the galactic core
30000 light years away. The coils are shipped to all the major
homeworlds by Endoane traders. A shipment of supplies which
included 20 new CLBF coils was following one year behind your
fleet until it was lost to an unknown band of pirates. The
highest tech level ever achieved by your race has been tech 10,
so it is really very unlikely that you will ever be able to
build any CLBF coils on your own. Unless you
reestablish contact with your homeworld or a supply shipment
shows up you can regard this as a one way mission.
Upon arrival at the first world you came to all your
starships were landed on the planet's surface to be converted
into raw materials for the building of mines, factories and one
low tech starbase. A small local system freighter and a small
capital ship were built when your starbase was completed.
You soon learn that you are not alone. Moving across your
starcharts are enemy races that have followed you to this star
cluster. You must now put every effort into building the most
powerful fleet of war ships possible before you are attacked.
Your best hope is to send small freighters in every direction to
drop off colonists and supplies so that they can grow in numbers
on new planets and extract the minerals that your starbase needs
to build more ships.
You need to act fast because your enemies will most likely be
trying to expand also. Pay close attention to the starchart,
because you can see your enemy's ships as they
travel between planets. Good luck . . .
(1.02) HELP!
In the game you can press <H> on most screens to see a help
screen that explains this part of the game to you.
(1.03) GAME MAIL PACKETS
Players upload their turn (TRN) files to the host. The host runs the actual calculations involved and produces a result (RST) files that are sent back to the players.The players run the local program to view their situation and set up their orders for the next turn.
Players then run a UNPACK program that decodes and expands the
game result file (RST) into several data files. Then the main
program PLANETS is run to play the game. When you are playing the
game you can order your starships around, build new starships,
receive messages and do many other fascinating activities.
When a player has completed their game turn they exit the
PLANETS program and run a program MAKETURN that packs the new
data into a TRN file that is sent back to the host computer.
After the TRN files from all the players are gathered
into one directory by the person hosting the game the program
HOST is ran to decode all the TRN files at once. New RST files
are generate by the HOST program. These new RST files are then
sent back to all the players.
NOTE: If any player miss out on a turn the game will continue
just fine. Their ships and planets will continue
performing their last order. Ships will continue the
same coarse and speed and planets will continue to mine
minerals and produce supplies. A missed turn can't be
made up! The host cannot use old TRN files. They are
meaningless to the host.
(1.04) THE HOST.EXE PROGRAM
All the TRN files of the players from all the players who are
taking part in the current turn must be in the game data directory
when you run HOST.
You can only run HOST once per game turn.
Running HOST outside the directory that contains the game
universe data files DOES NOTHING!
TRN files from other games are rejected by HOST and erased.
A person hosting a game called me up and told me about the
following problem:
Nine people are currently playing a game. One person somehow
lost their RST file. So they had the person hosting the game
run HOST again. The player with the missing file then put the
new RST file on floppy and went home. They next day everyone
puts all ten of their TRN files in the host directory and
HOST is run. Everyone notices none of their new commands are
recognized and the HOST says all but one file is stale.
What went wrong?
Answer: When HOST was run the second time all old TRN files
and RST files became stale files from last turn. Only the player
that lost the RST has a fresh file after they grabbed the new
RST file after the HOST program ran. All ten of the other
players missed TWO turns because of this. The last turn because
they had not turned in their TRN files yet and the current turn
because the files that they did turn in were stale and had to
be rejected.
Only ran HOST once per turn.
You may wish to make a backup directory to store all the
current RST files after you run HOST, just in case someone
loses their RST file.
Don't let anyone talk you into running HOST before the
players have turned in their current TRN files.
HOST needs all the TRN files all the players who are
going to be in on the current game turn, because all the action
and interaction between players TAKES PLACE AT ONCE, when HOST
is ran.
Stale File: A RST or TRN from a previous game turn.
The HOST program rejects all stale TRN files.
The player with the stale file will miss a turn.
If you unpack a stale RST file, all your data files
will be stale and you will end up producing a stale
TRN file when you run MAKETURN.
Fresh File: A RST or TRN from the current game turn.
When a person misses a game turn, they MUST get a fresh
RST file from the host computer. Or they will end up making a
stale TRN file.
(1.05) BBS HOST SYSOP
Just how many turns there are per day are completely up to
the person hosting the game. You may wish to have only one game
turn per day. If you are a sysop you may wish to just put in a
little batch file that is run every day at clean up time that
has your machine copy all the PLAYER TRN files into the proper
directory, perform a game turn ( run HOST ) and copy the
PLAYER RST files into a directory from which the players can
then download their file.
If the host crashes while running it will log the error to
the error log file and exit to dos.
When you have 250K or more of free memory you can run HOST
from a DOS shell.
The game administrator has the option when first starting the
game to give each race their own password, so that even if a
player downloads another player's RST file that
player will be unable to open it without the real player's
password.
Players can change their password during their turn, but the
change does not take effect until the next turn. Players can
also turn off the password check by changing the password to
"NOPASSWORD".
Once a day the person acting as the independent host
downloads all the TRN files sent to him from all the players
in the game. The files are moved into the planets data directory
and HOST is run. The result files (RST) are then mailed
back to all the players.
The independent host should be sure to tell all the players
what time the TRN files have to be in by, when the next turn
will take place and when they can pick up their new RST file.
(1.07) PLANETS ON ONE COMPUTER
A group of people can set up a game on one computer and take
turns playing out their turn. After everyone has had their
chance to play out their turn the game administrator will then
exit the PLANETS program, run MAKETURN, HOST and finally UNPACK.
All this will perform the math and file data file building for
the next turn. Players can then again take turns playing
out their turn.
All the files remain in one directory on the computer. You
may use the TURN.BAT file to run all the above files in the
correct order and return to the planets game automatically.
(1.08) PLANETS ON MANY COMPUTERS IN THE SAME BUILDING
All the computers must have the planets player files
installed in a directory. One computer must act as host and have
the host files installed. You can use a network to transfer RST
and TRN file back and forth or you can use a pair of floppies.
