Software Vault: The Games Collection 1

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Text File | 1992-09-14 | 38KB | 746 lines

VGA Planets(tm) Version 2.1 (9/12/92) (0.0) ABOUT VERSION NUMBERS This is version 2.1 and will work with all pervious other version 2.1 releases. There are two major bug fixes in this program. One in HOST.EXE that fixes the problem with it crashing when a starbase is built. The other fix is in MAKETURN.EXE. It now sends messages correctly. All names that may be considered by some to be trademarks have been removed. From now on the date that the program was last updated to take care of any bugs will be shown on the main title screen. If there is not a date shown at the bottom of main title screen then it is a version from before (9/12/92). See PLANETS2.DOC section 9.0 to see a history of bug fixes. (1.0) INTRODUCTION TO VGA PLANETS VGA Planets is a graphical multi-player play by turn war game which 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. The game system allows players to construct their own starships by selecting various components and placing them on a given hull type. The game can handle from 2 to 11 players. The game is designed to be a BBS or Net game. This game can also be played on one computer alone. This is NOT a door game. The game can be played on any BBS that supports file transfers, with or without the sysop's help. VGA Planets can be compared to a 11 player chess game. The game is a play by turn game much like chess. The game can be played on any IBM compatible with VGA graphics and a 286 or faster CPU with a hard drive. (1.1) 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 anti-matter fuel. The tech 17 Bussard Ramscoop Fuel Ships served you well until you lost the last one a year ago when the final cobalt-lanthanide-boronite fractionator coil (CLBF coil) burnt 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 a 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 are able to 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 planets 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 was built as soon as 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 will be able to see your enemy's ships as they travel between planets. Good luck... (1.2) HELP! In the game you can press <H> on most screens to see a help screen that explains the that part of the game to you. (1.3) GAME MAIL PACKETS The game works in much the same way as a mail reader program. The game is played offline in the same way that a mail reader reads mail offline. The game is moderated by the one computer which is playing host. The host computer generates game results mail packets ( named PLAYER1.RST to PLAYER11.RST depending on which races are active in the game ) that are then transported to the players where ever they are... you can attach the files to EMail, use a BBS SIG to post the files to, send the packets over the Net or pass the files around on floppies. The players then run a unpack ( UNPACK.EXE ) program that decodes and expands the game results mail packet into several data files before running the planets main program ( PLANETS.EXE ) to actually play the game. When you are playing the game you will be able to order your starships around, build new starships, receive messages and perform many other fascinating activities. When a player has completed their game turn they exit the PLANETS.EXE program and run a program ( MAKETURN.EXE ) that packs the new data into a PLAYER1.TRN ( for player one ) file that is sent back to the host computer. After ALL the .TRN files from all the players are gathered together into one directory by the person hosting the game the program HOST.EXE is ran to decode all the .TRN files at once and generate the new PLAYER1.RST ... PLAYER11.RST files which are then sent back to all the players so that they can do this all over again. In many ways HOST.EXE acts like a mail server. NOTE: If any players miss out on a turn the game will continue just fine. Their ships and planets will continue performing their last order. Ships will continue on 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 can not use old .TRN files they are meaningless. (1.4) 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 host directory when you run HOST.EXE. You can only run HOST.EXE ONCE per game turn. Running HOST.EXE outside the directory that contains the game universe data files DOES NOTHING! .TRN files from other games are rejected by HOST.EXE and erased. My main play tester called me up and told me 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.EXE again. The player with the missing file then put the new .RST file on floppy and went home. They next day everyone puts all nine of their .TRN files in the host directory and HOST.EXE is ran. Everyone notices none of their new commands are reconized and the HOST.EXE says all but one of the files are stale. What went wrong?!? Answer: When HOST.EXE 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.EXE program ran. All eight 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.EXE ONE TIME per turn. You may wish to make a backup directory to store all the current .RST files after you run HOST.EXE. Don't let anyone talk you into running HOST.EXE before the players have turned in their current .TRN files. HOST.EXE 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.EXE is ran. There is no reason for a anyone other then the game host's computer to run HOST.EXE. Stale File: A .RST or .TRN from a previous game turn. The HOST.EXE 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.EXE. Fresh File: A .RST or .TRN from the current game. When a person misses a game turn. They MUST get a fresh .RST file from the host computer. Or they will end up with a stale .TRN file. (1.5) 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.EXE ) and copy the PLAYER*.RST files into a directory from which the players can then download their file. If you have 120K or more of free memory you can run HOST.EXE 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 is able to download another player's .RST file that player will be unable to open it without the real player's password. I strongly advise the sysop set up the BBS in such a manner that the .TRN files can only be uploaded by the proper players, unless you feel that you can trust your players. For example: I am player 2 ( The Lizard Player ). The file that I upload to the BBS host computer is "PLAYER2.TRN". The file that I download from the BBS host is "PLAYER2.RST". Nobody else should have the ability to upload a file named "PLAYER2.TRN" and mess up my turn. Most BBS's are set up in such a way that I can upload my new "PLAYER2.TRN" over top of my old "PLAYER2.TRN" file and no one else can upload a file by that name. The .TRN and .RST are very small files and compressed by the game's programs. I really don't see any need to compress the files any more. I have never seen a UPLOAD (.TRN) take more then 2 SECONDS and a DOWNLOAD (.RST) no more the 20 SECONDS. (1.6) INDEPENDENT HOST An independent host is a BBS user ( or Net user ) that is hosting a VGA Planets game on their own computer. The independent host uses the BBS only for a means of transferring the .RST and .TRN files to and from all the players in the game. The easiest way of moving the files around is to attach the files to Email. 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 and places the files into the planets directory, performs a turn and mails the .RST files 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 then next turn will take place and when they can log back onto the BBS to pick up their new .RST file. (1.7) 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.EXE program, run MAKETURN.EXE, HOST.EXE and finally UNPACK.EXE. All this will perform the math and file data file building for the next turn. The players can then once 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. (1.8) 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. If you are going to be using a pair of floppies: .................................................................... Label floppy one ".RST result files". Place the ".RST result files" floppy into the host computer and copy all the *.RST files from the Planets directory onto it. Pass the floppy around to each player so that they can copy the file that belongs to them into their Planets directory. (HINT: player 2, the Lizard player, has the game installed in directory c:\PLANETS, so... the Lizard places the ".RST result files" floppy into drive a: and types "copy a:\player2.rst c:\planets" ... wham... bam... The Lizard player then passes the floppy along to the next player who hasn't yet gotten their .RST file yet.) Players must run UNPACK.EXE to unpack and decode the .RST files. The players may then run PLANETS.EXE and play the game. After they finish their turn they then exit the game and run MAKETURN.EXE which generates a .TRN file. Label floppy two ".TRN the players turns". Pass ".TRN the players turns" around to each player that has finished their game turn and ran MAKETURN.EXE already. The players then copy the .TRN file in their game directory onto the floppy and pass the floppy along to the next player. (HINT: player 1, the federation player, has the game installed in the directory c:\PLANETS, so the fed player places the floppy ".TRN the player turns" in drive a: and types "copy c:\planets\player1.trn a:" wham... bam... The fed player then passes the floppy along to the next player) After all the .TRN files are gathered they are all copied into the hosts directory from the floppy ".TRN the players turns". The game administrator will then run HOST.EXE which will decode all the .TRN files and generation brand new .RST files. The whole cycle repeats... .................................................................... (1.9) Playing planets from the HOST dir in a multi-computer game. You ready shouldn't play planets from the host directory if you are hosting a game where files (.TRN) and (.RST) are being transfered back and forth over modem or net. Set up another directory to play the game. The danger in playing from the HOST directory is you may clobber the in coming .TRN files by mistake when you run MAKETURN and the .RST files when you run UNPACK. If you do everyone but yourself will end up STALE! files and their commands will be thrown away. But if you MUST! play from the HOST directory then make sure you copy all the players .TRN files into the HOST directory AFTER!!!! you run maketurn to make your own .TRN file. After you have ran host you must copy all the other players .RST files out of the HOST directory and into a safe directory (the down load directory) BEFORE!!!! you run UNPACK or you will clobber and erase all the players .RST files before they get a chance to grab them. NEVER run TURN.BAT in a multi-computer game! TURN.BAT is for local games (one computer, one game directory). Please write your own batch files to make sure you do it right every time. For example: maketurn copy c:\updir\*.TRN c:\planets\ host.exe copy *.RST c:\downdir\ unpack.exe planets.exe ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ (2.0) PLANETARY ECONOMY The planetary economy is based on mining, factory production, taxes and population. (2.1) MINERALS There are 4 types of minerals: Neutronium is the super dense mineral used for fuel on starships. It is far too unstable for use in building ship components. Duranium is a very strong mineral used to build the frame work of starship components and the armor skin of starbases and fighters. Tritanium is a mineral that is able to withstand very high pressures and temperatures. It is used widely in starship construction. Molybdenum is used mainly in high power energy wave guides. It is important for weapon construction and engine construction. High tech components tend to use greater amounts of molybdenum then lower tech components. (2.2) MINES Mines extract minerals from the planet core as long as at least one of the four minerals are present. If no minerals are present mines are completely useless. The cost of building a mine is 4 megacredits and a supply unit. The maximum number of mines that can be constructed on a planet is limited by the size of your colonist population. Starships and colonists can take a mining survey of the planet which will show you a graph of the amounts of minerals remaining unmined in the planets core and a listing of the amounts of ore that have been mined so far and are ready for use. The survey will also tell you the number of mines present on the planet. The rate which your mines can extract ore out of the ground depends on the concentration of the ore. There are five grades mineral concentration. 1. very scattered 2. scattered 3. dispersed ( three mines can extract a KT per turn ) 4. concentrated 5. large masses ( one mine can extract a KT per turn ) The amount of mineral in a planet is rated at five different grades. 1. none 2. very rare 3. rare 4. common 5. very common 6. abundant (2.3) FACTORIES Factories produce one supply unit each turn. The cost of building a factory is 3 megacredits and one supply unit. The maximum number of factories that you can build on a planet is limited by the size of your colonist population. (2.4) DEFENSE POSTS Defense posts protect the planet from attacking starships. The cost of building a defense post is 10 megacredits and one supply unit. The maximum number of defense posts you can build on a planet is limited by the size of your colonist population. (2.5) SUPPLIES The supplies produced by your factories can be carried by starship to new planets to be used to build new factories, mines and defense posts. You can also sale supply units for one megacredit each. (2.6) TAXES AND POPULATIONS By taxing the colonist and native populations you can generate megacredits for building mines, factories, defense posts, a starbase and starship components. The populations will become upset with you if the tax rate is too high or there is over population. They may also become upset if there are too many mines, factories or defense posts, if an environmentalist movement begins within the population. Over a number of turns the populations of a planet may become very unhappy. If they ever become too unhappy they will start a riot or even a civil war. If this happens they will kill each other and destroy your mines, factories and defense posts. The tax rate tends to slow down the birth rate. You can use this factor to prevent over population. Keep in mind that a population with a tax rate of 0 will cause the population to expand at the maximum possible rate. A planet's climate will also effect the maximum population and the birth rate. Temperate warm planets provide the best possible conditions for all lifeforms. Desert and arctic planets are the worst possible conditions for life. If the population is ever greater then the population that the planet's climate can sustain the planet will consume supplies in order to survive. If the climate is too harsh you may have to make regular freighter runs of supplies to the planet to keep the colonists alive. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ (3.00) STARSHIPS Starships are built at starbases out of three basic minerals, Tritanium, Duranium and Molybdenum. The starships travel at very high speeds between planets performing various missions. The funds needed to build starships is taken directly out of the planetary economy. The starships transport cargo and colonists as well as battle enemy ships. (3.01) TECH LEVELS There are four different tech levels at every starbase. These four tech levels are, starship hulls, starship engines, starship beam weapons and starship torpedoes. The tech levels range from 1 to 6 in the evaluation version of this game and 1 to 10 in the expanded registered version. You must spend megacredits for each leap in tech level you take. The cost of each jump in tech levels increases as you move up in tech levels. Your choice of starship components increases as you increase your tech level. The cost of high tech starship components is far most then basic low tech versions of the same components. Every starbase's tech levels are independent of all other starbases. When you build a new starbase all four tech levels start at level 1. (3.02) NEW SHIPS The most important part of a starship is the hull. At hull tech level one you have a choice of only about 3 different types of hulls. At higher tech levels you may have as many as 20 different types of hulls, depending on the galactic empire race you as playing. The hull is the spaceframe that all other starship components are mounted on to form a ship. Hulls require anywhere from one to as many as ten engines depending on the type. As a rule smaller ships have only one or two engines. Some hulls come with fighter bays. These ships are able to carry and launch fighters. Some ships have areas that you can mount torpedo launchers. Starships that have torpedo launchers can carry and fire torpedoes at enemy ships. There are 10 different types of torpedoes and torpedo launchers. Most ships are able to have beam weapons. These are the main weapons used on starships. There are 10 different types. Beam weapons are very useful at destroying enemy fighters as well as firing directly at the enemy ship. From the starbase's starship building screen you are given a chance to pick the components that you wish to put together to form a ship. If you lack a part you can call a sub screen that allows you to build a new part, such as a engine, a weapon or even a whole new hull. After you have decided on all the parts to put together to form a new ship your plan is submitted to the starbase. Your new ship will be completed the following turn. (3.03) WEAPON BANKS AND FIGHTER BAYS There are different types of weapons systems that a ship may have. The main weapon system is a beam type weapon ( lasers, phasers, etc ). A beam type weapon draws its power from the ships engines, so as long as an engine is working the weapon will have energy to fire. The auxiliary weapon system can be a torpedo launch tubes or fighter launch bays. A fighter takes up one kiloton in the cargo hold. In combat the fighter is moved from the cargo hold into the fighter launch bay to be fuel and armed. Fueling and arming a fighter can take up to 2 minutes. A ship with a greater number of fighter launch bays will be able to get more fighters into combat sooner. Fighter bays are designed into the hull and unlike torpedo launchers can not be added. Some races ( such as the federation ) have very few, hull designs that include fighter bays. A starbase has room for up to 60 fighters to be used in defense or to be transferred to a ship with fighter bays. The torpedo launch tube aims and arms standard torpedoes. A standard torpedo takes up one kiloton of cargo space. In combat the torpedo is moved from the cargo hold into the launch tube. Arming and energizing the torpedo takes 20 seconds on most ships. The torpedo is the most powerful weapon on any starship and have a range second only to fighters. (3.04) FIGHTERS For use on starbases as a long range defense against attacking enemy starships. Starships with fighter launch bays can carry fighters to attack enemy ships at ranges far greater then torpedoes or beam weapons. A starbase can hold up to 60 fighters. Some of the larger carriers can hold over 200 fighters. All fighters fire very powerful tightly focused energy beams that do a good job of wearing down an opponents shields and can punch holes in vital parts of enemy ships. Fighters are very good at defeating very large and heavily armored ships. Fighters can be destroyed by enemy fighters that are able to gain a weapons lock as the fighters passes within close range of each other as they close in on the enemy ship. An enemy ship can fire a beam weapon at a fighter to destroy it. Very few ships, however, are able to defeat a large scale fighter attack with beam weapons along. (3.05) WEAPON KILLING/DESTRUCTIVE POWER The damage done to an enemy target is measured in two different ways, killing power and destructive power. Killing power is a measure of how deadly the weapon is to the crew of an enemy ship. If a crew is killed off the ship is rendered helpless and is easily captured. The destructive power is a measure of how much damage can be done to the superstructure, engines and weapon systems of an enemy ship. Torpedoes have the most power at long ranges and beam weapons are most powerful at close ranges. (3.06) STARSHIP REFIT After a starship has returned from a mission or has just been constructed you can use the starbase to refit the ship. When you refit a ship you have the chance to load torpedoes or fighters onto the starship if it is capable of handling them. Use the planetside transporters to beam fuel and cargo onto and off of the ship. New ships begin the game with no fuel. (3.07) FUEL All starships use neutronium for fuel. Neutronium is a superdense material found at the core of many planets. It is also know as "neutronic" fuel. The fuel is millions of times denser then common elements such as lead or gold. The fuel must be stored in a very powerful inertial damping field to prevent damage to the starship's superstructure. The amount of fuel that a starship can carry is limited by the strength of the inertial damping field only and not the cargo room available on the ship. (3.08) CARGO The cargo that a ship may carry includes supplies, colonists, tritanium, duranium and molybdenum. If a ship has one or more torpedo launchers the ship may carry torpedoes. If the ship has one or more fighter bays the ship may carry fighters. You can have the ship unload cargo onto a world that you currently do not own. After one or more colonist clans are unloaded onto a planet that planet then becomes yours the following turn, unless there are enemy colonist already on the planet, in which case a planetside war will take place. Cargo can in an emergency be jettison into deep space to make the ship lighter so the ship can travel faster or to prevent an enemy from seizing the cargo if the ship is in danger of being captured. Ships can transfer cargo from and to any other ship located at the same location in space. The command is designed mainly for fuel tankers so they can transfer fuel to ships that are in need of fuel. (3.09) PRIMARY ENEMY You can set the primary enemy of each ship. This is a standing order to attack any ship that belongs to the primary enemy race that is located in the same position in space. (3.10) SHIP MISSIONS Each ship can perform one of eight various missions that include exploration, patrol, defense, kill, transportation, colonize, tow and intercept. The exploration mission orders the ship to spy on planets to see if any enemy colonists are living there and if they have a starbase. The kill mission orders the ship to attack all ships of any race other then your own that are located in the same position in space as your ship. The colonize mission orders the ship to disassemble the starship when it reaches an unowned planet and to use the ships parts to make supplies for the colonists after unloading any colonists, cargo and fuel on the ship to the planet's surface. The tow mission orders the ship to lock a tractor beam on any ship that is at the same position in space. The amount of fuel the towing ship will burn is proportional to the sum of the masses of both ships times the warp factor. If the ship that is the target of the tractor beam has a warp factor greater then the ship using the tractor beam the target ship will brake free of the tractor beam. If both ship are using tractor beams on each other the ship with the higher warp factor will tow the ship with the lower warp factor. The intercept mission orders the ship to intercept ships by ID number. You can use list and view commands to find the ship ID number of the ship you wish to intercept. Your ship will follow the intercept target ship until your ship runs out of fuel or the target ship disappears behind a planet. No matter which mission a ship is on when it enters a battle, the ship will do it's very best to win the fight. Mission in no way affects the way in which a ship will fight. (3.11) STARSHIP NAVIGATION Your starship can be in orbit around a planet or in deep space between the planets. Your ships which are traveling through deep space will show up are green dots on all your maps and charts. Your ship will also show up as a red dot on all enemy charts in the same way enemy ships will show up on your maps as red dots. The navigation map shows planets as white dots. Any planets that you own will have blue circles around them. If you have any ships in orbit around any planets they will show up as green circles. The WAYPOINT is a point in space that you are setting a coarse to travel to. The waypoint shows up on the navigation map as a green circle with a green line running to your current location. Use the arrow keys or the mouse to set a new waypoint. If you set your waypoint on an object such as a planet or a starship the green circle will turn yellow and the name of the new waypoint will appear under the navigation map. The distance is the number of light years to your current waypoint. The number of light years a ship will travel in a light year turn increases as a square of your warp factor. Speed Distance traveled in a game turn Warp factor 1 1 light year Warp factor 2 4 light years Warp factor 3 9 light years Warp factor 4 16 light years Warp factor 5 25 light years Warp factor 6 36 light years Warp factor 7 49 light years Warp factor 8 64 light years Warp factor 9 81 light years Your E.T.A. is your estimated time of arrival at your waypoint in months (game turns). E.T.A. is based on your speed and distance. (3.12) FUEL The amount of fuel needed to reach your current waypoint is dependent on the ship's mass and warp factor and the type of engine the ship has. Tech one engines (stardrive 1's) are very poor engines and waste large amounts of fuel at speeds above warp factor one. Tech six engines are very fuel efficient at speeds up to warp factor 6. At speeds above warp 6 the engine begins to waste large amounts of fuel. The engine construction screen will show you a graph of the fuel efficiency curve of each engine type that you have the both then engine tech level and materials to construct. It is a very good idea to invest the best engine technology possible. With high tech engines your ships will be able to travel very fast and use very little neutronium fuel. Engines may be the most important factor in expanding your empire faster then your enemies. The weight of your ship is the sum mass of all parts that make up your ship. The mass includes the hull, engines, weapons, cargo and fuel. The amount of fuel your ship needs to burn in order to move increases proportionately to your ship's mass. The max weight is the maximum mass your ship may have when it has a full load of cargo and a full fuel tank. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ [ Continued.... SEE PLANETS2.DOC ]