RETURN TO SWITCHBOARD |
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11A. Dreadlord Battle Manual |
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11K. The Evil Empire |
Return to Strategy Sub-Menu |
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11B. Colonel's Thoughts |
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11L. The
Robotic Imperium |
1. Introduction to VGA Planets |
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7. Minefields
Sub-Menu |
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11C. Early
Game Strategy |
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11M. The
Rebel Confederation |
2. Race Information Sub-Menu |
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8. Combat
Sub-Menu |
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11D. The
Solar Federation |
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11N. The
Missing Colonies of Man |
3. Friendly Codes Sub-Menu |
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9. Ion Storm
Sub-Menu |
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11E. The
Lizard Alliance |
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4. Planet Information Sub-Menu |
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10. Misc.
Information Sub-Menu |
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11F. The
Empire of the Birds |
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5. Starbase Information Sub-Menu |
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11. Strategy and Strategy Guides |
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11G. The
Fascist Empire |
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6. Ship Information Sub-Menu |
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12. Add-on
Information |
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11H. The
Privateer Bands |
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11I. The
Cyborg |
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11J. The
Crystal Confederation |
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COLONELS THOUGHTS: |
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My impressions about VGA
Planets |
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1.0 Overview |
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My
name is Eduardo Fonseca, or if you prefer: Edy. I am 30 years old, a musician
and a graduate in communications. I live in |
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Belo
Horizonte MG, Brasil and my E-Mail address is:
fonseca@inetminas.estaminas.com.br. |
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I
realize the time spent writing these words could be used for studying music
or other things, however I know I can |
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contribute
a little of my experience and "know-how" to other VGA Planets
players, from novices to experts. I have been |
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playing
Planets since March 1994 when I saw it for the first time. During this
period, I've been learning as much as I can |
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about
this wonderful game. Now, as I have collected a little VGAP knowledge, I have
decided to detail what I have learned. |
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I
do not intend to teach you how to play VGA Planets. My goal is give you a
little help in key areas .. without it, you could |
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spend
a lot of time only to arrive at the same point. Let's take a good sense to
use only your own resources. It is very easy to |
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play
5 Meteors, 2 Falcons, 4 Fireclouds, 1 Darkwing, 10 Virgos etc, right ..
FORGET THEM. Here we will use only our |
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own race ships and HCONFIG
defaults. |
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2.0 My philosophy |
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1.
DON'T BE FOOLED INTO THINKING YOU KNOW EVERYTHING ABOUT VGA PLANETS. We play
with |
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human
brains and they are all brilliant, providing lots of new ideas and tricks.
Everyday new ideas are discovered .. new |
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players
showing their style. This game is continuously changing .. it never stops. If
you don't read or only play in same place |
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with
same players, you will never learn new things. You stop in time and may be
destroyed when a new different opponent |
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with new strategies
appears against you. |
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2.
DON'T PLAY FOR SCORE. If you play for
points, you cannot build your needed battlecarriers. You are wasting |
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money
and minerals while you should be building warships, fighters and torpedoes.
At the end of turn 40, I typically have |
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about
20 to 30 Virgos with 100 fighters each. At least 1 of my opponents was
destroyed and I started a new attack against |
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other. "The Higher you fly, the deeper
you go" -- John Lennon. |
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3.
TRY TO AVOID PLAYING MORE THAN 2 GAMES AT SAME TIME. Planets is a "way
of life" .. focus yourself to |
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do
the best you can. If you play lot of groups you divide your energy. You play
the first game well, the second so so while |
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neglecting
the details of the others. Two games are enough. A great Commander manages
only 1 or 2 armies .. why should |
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you have more? |
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3.0 The first turns |
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The
first turn is one of the most important turns of the game. In general there
aren't a lot of things to do. Yes .. you are |
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right
.. in this turn you decide which planets to colonize and where you should or
should not go. In the first turn, you build |
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your strategy of
colonization. |
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At
my HomeWorld, I build factories and mines, continuing to build until the
world has reached 300 factories and 400 mines. |
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I
need duranium quickly .. the typical concentration of 15% makes mining too
slow hence I look for this ore in nearby |
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planets. |
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With
the StarBase. I increase the Hull to tech level 6, the Engines to 10 and both
the Beams and Torpedoes to 4. (What!! |
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You're not a Registered
player? Why not? What are you waiting for?) |
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The
2 small ships: Don't reveal yourself and don't go recycling your 2 small
ships .. they are very useful. Explore those |
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planets
close by and transfer 5 to 10 (necessary) clans, 5 - 10 supplies and
sufficient $$$ (3 times the supplies) .. you need to |
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control
these planets quickly. If you need to travel through deep space in order to
explore new planets, accelerate your ships |
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to
warp 7, 8 or 9. You have to know your neighborhood to decide which planet
you'll colonize first. Always, take care with |
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your
fuel (although as Colonies this is less important.) Then, return with your
ships. The 10 first turns are crucial. If you do |
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well in the first 10
turns, nobody will stop you. See table 1 for thoughts on the best way to tax
your clans. |
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4.0 Colonization |
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The
first 2 ships will show what you have nearby. You should only carry the
necessary clans to colonize these planets then |
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return
to the HomeWorld. For example: if you have 10 nearby planets, you should
carry only 10 clans dropping 1 clan in |
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each
planet before returning home. Don't be crazy traveling through deep space
getting all planets you can .. return home |
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bringing
back Duranium. It is much better to colonize planets with 100 - 1200 clans
each time than to own a lot of planets |
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but never return to them. |
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After
checking out these planets, the second step is colonize them properly. You should build 2 medium sized war ships
in |
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turns
two and three, your first Large Deep Space Freighter (LDSF) the fourth turn.
Set your ship's primary enemy to Rebel |
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(to
avoid any disgusting Rebel Ground Attacks) and drop those initial clans,
supplies and $$$ at the nearest planet as you |
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build
a second war ship and return home with all minerals, mainly Duranium, to
scout your LDSF. |
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Don't
be a "penny pincher". Drop lots of supplies and $$$ to quickly mine
clean the planets, building all factories, mines and |
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16
defense posts at least to hide your colony. This investment in planets has a
quick return. If you have rich planets, build as |
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many
mines as possible. If your natives become upset, find the best number of
factories and mines. A well colonized planet |
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provides
everything you need: Supplies, minerals, $$$, clans, StarBases, defense
posts, the works.. I see lot of players building |
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only 100 mines over the
planets... fools!!!!! |
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Try
to build colonies in close planets. The HomeWorld provides the initial clans,
but soon, the fuel becomes scattered and it |
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becomes
very difficult to return home. I often see ships stopping without fuel as
they return to their HW. The best |
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procedure
is to drop your clans in order to build other Home Worlds (CyBorgs being the
exception). Try to leave your HW |
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quickly
unless you have very good planets near it. In most of my games, I finished
with more clans in other planets than in |
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my HW. As these colonies
grow quickly, you can later use these clans as a source for colonizing other
planets. |
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Remember:
DON'T LEAVE YOUR FREIGHTERS ALONE. The freighters are not explorer ships.
They do one of the |
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most dignified missions
.. carrying your clans to other planets. Use warships to explore the
starchart. |
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5.0 Hints and Strategies |
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I
love my WINPlan. (Have you ever looked at VPA? It is a freeware product
without some of the glamour of WinPlan but I |
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find
it much easier and quicker to do things, especially work between ships and
planets or building on starbases!) It gives me |
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everything
I need. I love it's BMPs, Wavs, Mids etc.
Strategy, that you have to develop yourself. Nobody can teach you
how |
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to
think. |
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You
must read a lot, learn from other players, monitor your opponent's movements
and study, study and study. A great |
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commander
has lots of experience, fighting lots of battles in lots of situations.
Winning and loosing battles. Don't
play only |
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in
front of your computer. Most of the good ideas appear when you are far away
from your PC. |
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A
good player never shows the ship's bearing. If you must stop in deep space,
stop halfway between planets. Your enemy |
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will never know from
where you came or where you're going. Stopping halfway, you could be saving
fuel too. |
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Try
to imagine what your opponent is thinking. If you know what is in their head
you have nothing to worry about. So, |
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don't
be obvious! Try to confound your enemy when you are in their territory. Stop
in a place in the middle of 2 or 3 |
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planets
when you prepare your attack. Your enemy will not know which planet will be
attacked. Stop 4 - 6 LY from a planet |
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and
attack other one. IMPORTANT: A single ship won't win the war .. you must
arrive at least, with 6 - 8 war ships (2 or 3 |
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Battlecarries,
2 Mediums War Ships, 2 Support - with fuel/supplies/torpedoes/fighters) to
defeat your enemy. |
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When
you enter an opponent's territory you must take clans and supplies. There are
2 ways to do this. |
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1 |
Keep
them as cargo in the offensive fleet. This is dangerous due to the excessive
use of valuable cargo room. You attack the |
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enemy
planets, beam down the clans then build defense posts using the supplies and
$$$. But this is dangerous as you will |
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likely
lose ships in battles and, unfortunately, you lose those valuable clans as
well. |
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2 |
The
better strategy is to carry the supplies and clans in a background fleet.
This background fleet has 1 or 2 battlecarriers and |
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some
medium ships. After battles, some ships will be damaged .. it would be
prudent to quickly build a StarBase to fix any |
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damaged
ships. You can do it arriving with your support fleet carrying the necessary
minerals. (I like to have what I call 'A |
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Base
in a Can' .. a LDSF with the minimum minerals and cash required to build a
base so I don't have to rely on finding the |
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minerals
on the surface! Drop everything on the planet and build the base that
turn...pickup what you can when you move |
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on.) You can fix them using supplies, but they
are not as readily available as you would like. |
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Use
the Warp Wells. (VPA is useful here. One of its functions is to automatically
use Gravity Wells...you set your waypoint |
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to
a planet and VPA corrects it to the minimum distance to acquire that well.
Neet!) Fuel is one of most
important |
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components
of the game. Without it you cannot be attacked (except by planets with NUK of
course), but you cannot do |
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most
missions. Your ships will be vulnerable to tow capture, could surrender at
any StarBase, and, without fuel you STOP. |
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All
ships with warp set to more than 1 is affected by Warp Wells. When a ship is
going to a planet, set it's waypoint 3LY |
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short.
You could be saving 1 or more units of Neutronium per ship. It seems like
nothing, but when you have a total of 100 |
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ships
in your fleet you will be saving 100 Kt fuel. Which planet build it every
turn? Imagine the situation: A Super Transport |
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Tranwarp
with 2.600 cargo towing a full Merlin (2.700 cargo). Traveling 80LY from a
planet to another using warp wells, |
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you are saving about
20Kt Fuel. There are 24 points you can choose: |
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x I prefer use exactly 3.0 LY, but you can set
to |
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x
x x 2.1; 1.2. If you set 2.2 you
will be outside the planet. |
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x x x x
x |
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x x x |
P
x x x |
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x x x
x x |
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x x x |
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x |
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Use
of the Borg Chunnel: It's very easy to see when a Firecloud will engage the
Chunnel in the deep space. In general Borg |
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keep
the ship at warp 0, or there are always other ships at the same point. If you
want to run the risk to catch ships arriving |
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at
shields 0% or to travel into a chunnel go ahead. There are 2 ways to an enemy
ship travel trough a chunnel: The Cloaked |
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and
Warp 0 ships. The cloak one okay, but how can I arrive there with warp 0?
Easy: Tow your "voyager" with another |
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ship.
In one of my games I had a Virgo towed by a Cobol. I was fighting against the
Borgs and I saw a Merlin at the same |
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point
of a FCC. They were trying to escape to save his Merlin but my Cobol towed
the Virgo to the same point he engaged |
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the chunnel. In the next
turn, I destroyed 2 FCC, the Merlin and took over the Planet. |
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I
play the Borg a lot. I frequently have multiple FireClouds at planets. The
turn before I chunnel, I move at least 1 Cloud |
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with
sufficient fuel outside the planet's gravity well. The turn I chunnel I move
whatever other ships are to go over the |
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Cloud
while setting it's FC to the target ship and it's warp to 0. This way I can
select which ships will be chunneled. Having |
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multiple
Clouds around a planet allow me to select multiple locations or simply to
confuse the enemy. I leave a Cloud |
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around
the planet to allow return-trips. One of my first strategies is to move out
with a Cloud, find a decent planet then |
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chunnel
ships with what I need (often a 'Base in a Can') before moving on with the
Cloud. I like to keep a group of Biocides |
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with a Cloud for rapid
deployment to those hot areas. |
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To
be safe, I typically set inactive FireCloud Fcs to numbers greater than 500
to avoid an accidental Chunnel. The first time |
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this happened to me I
was really confused but the feeling didn't last, nor did that fleet which
chunneled! (Michael "Whump" Patrick) |
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6.0 Taxes and Rates |
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This
is a general rule for all races, except for Lizards (Hissss mission) and
Federation (2 times MC rates). I build in the first |
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turn
all mines and factories and keep them for all turns. (Okay...I'm lazy! I use a product call
Randmax to build as well as to |
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set
taxes for both natives and clans. Randmax has many options although I find
the standard ones work quite well. It will |
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automatically adjust
rates to maximize returns without messing up the happiness levels. Look into
it!) |
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Race 1 - keep the safe rate to 8%. Race 2 - rate 25% when Happiness.
arrives at 100% |
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TABLE |
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Race 1 |
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Race 2 |
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Turn |
Rate |
Happ. |
Clans |
$$$ |
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Rate |
Happ |
Clans |
$$$ |
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2 |
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8% |
82 |
3.127,2 |
14 |
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0% |
88 |
3.221,6 |
14 |
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3 |
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8% |
82 |
3.187,3 |
14 |
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0% |
94 |
3.387,7 |
" |
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4 |
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8% |
82 |
3.248,6 |
14 |
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0% |
100 |
3.551,8 |
" |
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5 |
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8% |
82 |
3.311,1 |
15 |
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86 |
3.581,4 |
15 |
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6 |
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8% |
82 |
3.374,8 |
15 |
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0% |
91 |
3.760,5 |
" |
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7 |
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8% |
82 |
3.439,7 |
15 |
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0% |
96 |
3.948,5 |
" |
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8 |
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8% |
82 |
3.505,8 |
16 |
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0% |
100 |
4.145,9 |
" |
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9 |
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8% |
82 |
3.573,2 |
16 |
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### |
86 |
4.180,4 |
16 |
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10 |
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8% |
82 |
3.641,9 |
16 |
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0% |
91 |
4.389,4 |
" |
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13 |
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8% |
82 |
3.856,1 |
17 |
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### |
86 |
4.879,6 |
17 |
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17 |
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8% |
82 |
4.161,4 |
18 |
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### |
86 |
5.695,9 |
18 |
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21 |
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8% |
82 |
4.490,8 |
20 |
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### |
86 |
6.648,6 |
20 |
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25 |
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8% |
82 |
4.846,3 |
21 |
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86 |
7.189,6 |
22 |
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It's
no use tax your colonies with the safe tax. At the end of turn 17 you'll have
the same money but 21% less clans. At turn |
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25,
we have 48% more clans (The Borg will never get more than 20% tax rates. If
you set taxes to more than 20% (say 50%) |
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you get the returns of a
20% rate but the negative happiness adjustments for the higher value! Very
bad!! ) |
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7.0 The fleet |
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This
is one of my favorite parts. As I have played many times with the Lost
Colonies of Man (LCOM), I'll describe little |
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things
about them. LCOM is a fighter race, however you need to build some torpedo
ships .. Cobol (of course), Tranquility |
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and
Cygnus. You have to lay mine fields and frequently the torpedo ships are very
useful against other warships, planets and |
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StarBases.
Remember: The Colonials sweep with fighters, so you DON'T need high tech
beams .. X-Ray Lasers and Heavy |
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Phasers are the same
against fighters. |
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1.
Taurus: Good Fuel room, but not so useful. With Disrupters, it's good to
avoid HYP ships. You can build a few and |
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leave them as a
"watch dog" over a planet. |
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2.
Cygnus: Very good torpedo ship. This ship I use for the 2nd combat after
Virgo. With mark 7 - 8 you easily destroy a |
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planet and other medium
warships. |
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3.
Cobol: They are my "Crown Jewels". NEVER trade them, except with
allies. Your enemy stops when they run out of |
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fuel,
you...NEVER stop. In my opinion, this is the most important ship of The Lost
Colonies of Men. Tech 4, very cheap, |
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good
cargo room (250 Kt), build fuel while towing other ships - mainly VIRGOS. The
LCOM must have lot of these ships. |
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As a Bioscanner ship - do
you want more? |
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4.
Patriot: Ship for 1 combat. Cheap ship with terrible fire power. LCOM must
have lot of them to patrol, to protect |
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freighters and attack
enemy ships. |
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5.
Tranquility: Nice ship. Good fuel and cargo room. It is very good to lay
mines and transport and build torpedoes. Never |
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6. Aries: Redundant
ship. It's very good to trade with other races. |
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7. Gemini: The best
fighter building ship. With 400 cargo room it's good to transport minerals |
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8. Sagittarius: Do you
like to waste your money? 'Nuff said! |
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9.
Lady Royale: Gambling ship. You can use them in conjunction with your
"watch dog" ships while it earns $$$ for you. |
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You
don't need to move them. Beam up 160 clans, set Fcode to "bdm" and
let them work! |
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10 Little Joe: Well I
never built this ship, because I never saw it's use, so...no opinion. |
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11. Scorpius: The same
of Little Joe. Massive ship, use 231
tritanium... |
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10.
Virgo: The Battlecarrier. It is a very expensive ship with 8 engines. If you
use Transwarp in the early stages of the game |
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you
are wasting money. Build them with Nova drive 5, Heavy nova drive 6 or
Quantam 7 and tow with Cobol. (I would |
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even
go as low as tech-1 to tech-3, towing them around as re-enforced rocks!) You
can build them with low tech beams. |
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You'll
se there is only a little difference of X-laser from Heavy Phaser. (With
those large fighter carriers, I seldom put more |
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than
minimum tech weapons on. Most of the battles these ships have should be
handled by the fighters they carry .. if the |
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fighter
bays are empty the ship isn't likely to last too much longer! As you point
out, a laser is the same as a phaser against a |
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fighter...zap...poof!) In my games, near turn 70, I have at least
50 Virgos of all kinds (Transwarps, stardrive, X-laser, Heavy |
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Disrupt, etc). There is
no enemy able to destroy your fleet.
In combat you never use more than 120 fighters. |
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8.0 Appendices |
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This
is my first attempt to document my impressions of VGA Planets. There are lots
of things I missed, but slowly, I'll add |
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them to this document. |
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9.0
Thanks to: |
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Antonio
Castro - my teacher, Bernardo and Bruno Veo, Helbert Cesar, Luiz F. Fonseca,
Auro Lessa - great commander, |
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Eduardo
Amaral, Carlos Luis Santos, Guilhermo Vidal, |
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Michael
"Whump" Patrick - for his comments and revison, and all VGA Planets players and Mr. HOSTs. |
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Special thanks to: Tim
Wisseman, Dan and Dave. |
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Eduado "Edy"
Fonseca |
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Belo Horizonte MG, Brasil
- 30/11/96 |
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fonseca@inetminas.estaminas.com.br |
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