There's absolutely no way to get this installed and running in Windows 11, is there?

Not by itself no. Win 11 is a 64bit OS. You're going to need to setup a virtual desktop with something like VMWare Wordstation Player and Virtual Box. (I prefer VMWare)

Once you have the virtual client installed you can then install your flavor of windows. For my setup I did Windows XP Pro SP3. I found an ISO file here.

Key's can be found here.

Installation instructions:

Windows XP Professional - Installation in VMware

Some other instructions (no video)
https://www.tutorialsfreak.com/nmap-tutorial/windows-xp-installation-on-vmware

There was also the old Windows XP mode that was put out years ago for Vista and Windows 7. It's pretty much forgotten about however you may still be able to use it. I've heard of folks putting on Windows 10 however I'm not sure if it will run on Windows 11.

Some info about Windows XP Mode virtual machine an be found here.

Last but not least Gil, if you have an old computer handy that's still in working order, you can use that for VGAP. XP, ME, 98, etc. They'll all do the trick. Also if you have a Windows 10 installation that's 32bit instead of 64bit you can probably use that to. It will probably take a little tweaking as NTVDM will probably need to be added.

I have a couple of old laptops hanging around, I'll give that a try first.  With all respect and gratitude to BM for the great job he did dragging winplan into the enforced 64 bit era (damn you, Microsoft!) the enlarged map on the ship etc. screens makes the text too tiny for my old eyes, even with glasses.  

Posted by: @gilgamesh

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I have a couple of old laptops hanging around, I'll give that a try first.  With all respect and gratitude to BM for the great job he did dragging winplan into the enforced 64 bit era (damn you, Microsoft!) the enlarged map on the ship etc. screens makes the text too tiny for my old eyes, even with glasses.  

Maybe a bigger screen will help. If you have an HDMI out on your computer/video card you can plug it into a TV.

Once you installed my Winplan32 version, just run the old Winplan exe from the same folder and it should work. (I think). It's the missing references that is mostly the issue. 

There is also the original upgraded Winplan32 version that is the same as the old Winplan only for running in 64bit. 

@bitmask Thanks!  Tim's Winplan will not launch.  Where can I find the original 64 bit upgrade, please?

And trying another possibility, I pulled out an old Windows 7 machine, and it starts, but won't boot.  

Got a repair or installation disk that came with it? Seems like it's missing the hard drive or CD-DVD ROM.

@havok If I did have one, it was a long time ago.  This may need a trip to the local PC repair shop.

@gilgamesh Try this exe that I found on my backups
https://vgap.innernet.co.za/wp-content/uploads/winplan3.5.84.zip

@bitmask I'll play around with it but at first glance, it looks GREAT - thank you!!!

@bitmask I'm loving using this original version, thank you!  The only thing I'm noticing is that the planet build buttons don't seem to map and properly.  Scrolling through the planets, the build panel will sometimes disappear, and buying 10 factories might result in selling 10 supplies instead.  It may just be incentive to get my randmax.ini working properly again - it's definitely my favourite version so far.