Host Addons

1BANCO is an Add-On for VGA Planets. This Add-On allows you to buy and sell minerals, supplies and fighters in the Corsarian’s Stock Exchange and, deposit money in the Bank (to collect interest). The Bank will even allow you to request loans!

The Corsarians are shrewd investors. They know they are bringing a valuable commodity to the Echo Cluster; as such, the prices of the Corsarian Satellites will rise, and fall, to meet supply and demand.

AMASTER is a universe master program for PHOST3/PHOST4 and probably TimHost, too. It creates a map, fixes it, generates wormholes and finally creates universe data.

AMASTER implements a clever way to find suitable homeworld locations. It is possible to create maps of any given shape.

AMASTER is intended to be portable and open source.

They are big, black and malevolent.
They move unspeakably fast and kill silently.
They are perhaps the most terrifying nightmare of the universe.

Perhaps they did not even evolve naturally.
Perhaps they are bio weapons.

If so, their creators surely regretted their crime for the short rest of their lives. I need not say more. We’ve all seen the movies – or haven’t YOU?

Yes friends – it’s the ALIENS. And this time they’re invading the Echo cluster.

“Anomalies” is an addon written for “VGA Planets 3”. It emulates & enhances the Anomalies known from the great Addon AHost. Since AHost is a bit buggy Armin Trott from Spaceport Hamburg asked his players for an emulation, that’s the reason why i programmed “Anomalies”.

Asteroid is an add-on utility for VGA Planets 3.5 that takes advantage of the AUXHOST features found in HOST 3.20. This add-on provides the capability for players to capture asteroids and tow them to planets for added mineral resources and the ability gather Quadbenium (a new mineral) from the surface of the asteroid and use it as a super fuel.

With the added space lane activity comes some risk. Each time an Asteroid is generated there is a chance that it might strike a planet. These Asteroids have no minds and wander blindly throughout the Echo Cluster. If they strike a planet damage will result.

Every VPL player asks herself sooner or later “What the hell did Tim have in mind of when he made the Red Wind class carrier hull tech 8?! It’s small, it’s almost unarmed, it doesn’t have any special mission…

…it’s all but useless!”Well, here’s the answer to that old question: The Red Wind is…

…a mobile KAMIKAZE fighter launcher! (“Banzai!” is said to be an ancient Terran battle cry, dating back to Japanese suicide pilots in world war II)

Blanks the score so players don’t have an idea of each others strength and size. This program runs in the Post-Host commands at the end of the host batch file.

Allow a host-defined cap on the total number of player-buildable ships in a THost game. This allows for smaller/faster games when hosting a game with fewer players.

Centaurian Legacy is an add-on for Tim Wisseman’s ever popular play-by-mail computer game, VGA Planets.

Long ago, well before any of the eleven races had arrived in the Echo Cluster, the concentration of stars was populated by an incredibly sophisticated and benevolent race of thinkers: The Centaurians… Born amidst the ion-rich star cluster of the Echo, the Centaurians prospered and grew into a mighty empire that spanned the entire sector. Their mammoth starships would inspire awe among anyone who was graced with their tremendous visages. For millennia, the Centaurians thrived in the Echo Cluster, a proud civilization and monument of intellect and ethics.

If you are tired of carrying colonists and supplies around the universe to colonize planets, this utility may help you.

It uses the auxhost feature of version 3.2 and whenever a player unloads 1 clan on an unexplored planet, on the next turn he/she gets 100 clans and 100 factories already built.

The basic premise was to attach some significance to the player’s homeworld. In “generic” VGAP there is no real penalty for losing the homeworld. In the early game, if that is still the only starbase, they are probably sunk, but in the later stages of the game, with multiple starbases, they can probably recover. This was what I sought to change.

“Crystalline Entity Reborn” is a remake of the original “Crystalline Entity” addon, rewritten and compiled with more recent equipment to be compatible with modern CPUs.

The idea of the Crystalline Entity is from the Star Trek: The next Generation series. It’s a really big lifeform that is able to live in space. However, as every lifeform it needs food to survive. The Crystalline Entity absorbs all life it can find on planets it encounters and transforms it into energy. That doesn’t mean it’s a killer, it’s only trying to survive. But as always, those who ARE the food don’t care much about this, they only want to destroy the thing that is going to kill them.

But the Crystalline Entity doesn’t just leave lifeless rocks behind, there are sometimes a few lifeforms that are able to hide themselves and survive. As a byproduct of the transformation of life into energy, new minerals are produced known in Planets as Neutronium, Duranium, Tritanium and Molybdenum. These minerals will be buried deep in the ground of the planet.

Explore Map will create individual xyplan.dat files for each specified player. Explore map will ‘hide’ planets that the player has not yet ‘seen’. Making universe exploration more inventive a scenario. As players fly out into space they will ‘see’ new planets. These are updated to each player’s personal xyplan??.dat file.

ExplMap works with both HOST and PHOST. However, some features will only be available in PHOST games (alliance support, xtern commands). Non-DOS versions can be built with the PDK.

Fallout is a small addon for use with VGAP 3.x. Fallout calculates radiation and its effects on clans and natives. Two new Fcodes are introduced to allow bombardment and flushing of radiation at planets.

PHost Add-on for the VGA Planets that adds ruthless Ferengi retailers in Echo Cluster. They buy and they sell ships, they sell information, and several things of the sort.

A sophisticated enhanced host for VGA Planets. Boosts game play with many new features. FHost does not replace the original host.exe or phost.exe, it’s just an enhancement Carrier Fleet Combat, Advanced Fighter Missions, Advanced Torpedo Missions, Stargates, Core Torpedo’s, Sunbuster Torpedo’s, Supernova, Plasma Sunscoops, Ramscoops, Deathstar Destruction Beam, Maintenance Ships and many new friendly codes. Winplan support. Highly configurable.

Available for DOS/32, OS/2, and WinNT/95/32.

Flag Ship is a new game scenario for VGA Planets, fully titled “Capture the Flag Ship”.

Each player gets a special ship they have to protect at all costs. This ship is selected by the host, but some hosts may wish their players to choose what type of ship their Flagship will be. The ship is limited by the race.

Upon losing their ship, either by destruction or capture, the player has all of their ships, planets, bases and mine fields destroyed. Which ever race captures or destroys the Flagship, may have a percentage of the planets, ships and Priority Build Points transferred to them.

Methods of gaining enemy assets are: Destruction by ship, destruction by planetary or base defenses, ship capture, tow capture by Crystalline or Privateers, force surrender as base, or ship transfer via the “gs#” friendly code.

The program keeps a ranking of the players, providing a reliable means for getting tournament winners.

This is supposed to be an all out ship hunt, with the idea of making players concentrate more on trying to destroy other ships, not capturing planets.

The winner need only be whoever is left playing.

The Flag Ship can be limited to a set range from any planets, or from its Home planet, or allow unlimited range.

Gryphon is a next generation, power add-on to space strategy game VGA Planets. It was written in 386 protected mode to allow me to fully exploit the architecture of newer processors and more power and more abilities than ever. Gryphon is the most feature-rich add-on to VGA Planets, providing new abilities designed for power (such as Asteroid Bases, Moving Mines, Fighter Steal, Fighter Base Assault, Antifighter Mines, Tanks and Combat Robots, Orbital Bombardment, and Warp Interdictors) and convenience (such as Ion Control, Exchange Ships, Sell mines/defenses/Starbases, Move Natives, and Space Gambling). Never before could you have and add-on with 40 new abilities and almost 100 configurable options for balancing them against one another. With Gryphon, you will never lack an appropriate tool to rain destruction on your opponents!

I have had several requests to make a program that make the race’s home world have some added value and added effects if it is captured by another race. So here it is.

Home World operates very simply. If the home world is captured from the original owner of the home world, some of the original owner’s planets and ship may join the new owner. If the original owner of the home world recaptures it from an invader, some of the invader’s planets may join the original owner. If the home world is destroyed, but not occupied, as when you capture the Crystals 100 temp home world, the effects are halved.

Any planet or ship that does join another race will probably have some damage or loss of crew/colonists, as the loyalists had to be disposed of before the ship or planet could join a new race.

Jump Gate is an add-on utility for VGA Planets 3.5 that takes advantage of the AUXHOST features found in HOST 3.20. This add-on provides the capability for players to Build, Attack, and Repair Jump Gates as well as using them as a form of travel. Four new friendly codes are introduced with this program. They are case sensitive and as follows:

BJG – Build Jump Gate
AJG – Attack Jump Gate
RJG – Repair Jump Gate
Jnn – Jump to Jump Gate ID# nn

With the convenience of controlled hyperspace travel comes risk. Each time a ship travels via Jump Gate, there is a small chance that an alien ship will exit the destination Jump Gate with the traveler. The aliens are a warrior race, intent on conquering all that they see. They will conquer the entire Echo Cluster unless stopped.

Jupiter is an add-on that combines the power and convenience from Nemesis and Gryphon with even more features, including alliance support, host-999, windows Help file, and windows config program with global on/off switches for Nemesis and Gryphon abilities.

This add-on program is an attempt to better the famous game of VGA Planets. With the many new racial special abilities and a few universal ones, this program will add a new dose of spice and excitement to any game it’s included in. The new abilities, ranging from Planetary Cloaking Shield to Genesis Device and from Advanced Terraforming to Cloak-Towing will surely add depth and cause new feats of strategy in the all-time favorite space strategy game. It was written in 386 protected mode to allow me to fully exploit the architecture of newer processors and more power and more abilities than ever. Jupiter is the most feature-rich add-on to VGA Planets, providing new abilities designed for power and convenience. With MANY configurable options and a special TEAM game switch, the host can customize the game to his preferences and the players may use the team game to exchange ships and racial special abilities. And yes, it does support Phost.

The Killing Floor is a combat replacement for VGA Planets that supports multiple ships fighting together, rather than facing off two at a time. It consists of two programs: the viewer (KFVIEW.EXE, used by the players) and the host add-on (KFHOST.EXE, used by the host). This is the Host Addon.

Lurkers
This is a multi-part VGA Planets Add-on. It will serve a two fold function. It will offer a target as a kind of Computer Player for people wishing to play as a group against a common enemy. It will also act as a background (add-on) to normal games of VGAP. This program can operate in three different modes.

Mode 1 – (Team)
This is the operating version where the LURKERS will be considered the “Big Nasty Bad Guys.” They have come openly and with hostility to the Echo Cluster. They are out to exterminate all of the existing races. They come armed for bear and all they want to do is destroy. The players will have to play together to withstand the attacks of the LURKERS and they can expect to loose some of their number.

Mode 2 – (Harass)
This version is a weaker and slower propagating version of Mode 1. This version of the LURKERS will move about the Echo Cluster and harass the different races randomly. Attacking quickly and nastily. They pick from the top scoring players and harass them for a short time, before picking a new target.

Mode 3 – (Ally)
This is the operating mode where LURKERS will be more of a background influence. They will sneak quietly into the Echo Cluster. Intent upon using one of the existing races as a puppet to bring down the other races. The will come quietly and select one of the races as an ally. The race chooses if they want to accept the alliance with the LURKERS.

As your ally the LURKERS can be ordered to defend planets for you and they will. They can gather spy information for you from enemy planets and they can even be persuaded to attack enemy planets.

In exchange they ask that you provide them with materials to build ships and occasionally you have to go attack targets that they select for you. If you are successful and accomplish your missions, they will stay happy and help you. If eventually you displease them (they loose ships attacking for you, you don’t make proper deliveries of resources, etc.) they will leave to select a new ally, and in leaving they will chastise you for failing them.

StormFront
StormFront is a 3rd party add-on for VGA Planets that uses the new third party features in VGA Planets host 3.2x. This program allows the player, through the use of a device that they build and attach to their ship, to manipulate the power and/or heading of an Ion Storm in a game of VGA Planets.

The Machines Of Yore is an add-on for VGA Planets that scatters machines of differing functions on planets throughout the cluster. One machine provides an unlimited source of moly, another provides a more efficient form of transportation, another destroys ships lightyears away, and there are more.

These machines were constructed long ago by a very intelligent and argumentative alien species. Fortunately, this very intelligent and argumentative alien species also killed each other off long ago. Apparently, some sort of argument developed as to what engineering software was the best to design new machines. There were other arguments, too. Some wanted to be the Empire of Yorians, and others wanted to be the Empire of Yoreans. And others wanted to be the Empire of Yorelites. And others thought “of” was too wordy so they wanted to be the Yorelite Empire. As more and more others were created, they started attacking each other. Eventually, they had completely eradicated themselves from the universe. Which turned out to be a great thing for the new species!

Another great thing for the new races, all the machines were built of non-biodegradable material and are 100% intact!

This add-on program is an attempt to better the famous game of VGA Planets. With the many new racial special abilities and a few universal ones, this program will add a new dose of spice and excitement to any game it’s included in. The new abilities, ranging from Planetary Cloaking Shield to Genesis Device and from Advanced Terraforming to Cloak-Towing will surely add depth and cause new feats of strategy in the all-time favorite space strategy game. With MANY configurable options and even a special TEAM game switch, the host can customize the game to his preferences and the players may use the team game to exchange ships and racial special abilities. And yes, it does support Phost.

Non-Aligned Worlds (NAW) is an add-on for VGA Planets 3.5 that takes advantage of the AUXHOST features found in host 3.2+. This add-on provides the capability for players to interact with a group of planets whose primary mission is to improve themselves economically. While the players within a VGAP game are attempting to increase their position using a combination of politics, economics and military power, the NAW keep their aims at providing a source of supplies for what they realize will quickly become an Echo Cluster in need to these same supplies to feed the growing war machines of the other races.

Many clusters of debris are floating around the map, they can contain almost anything, from minerals and ship systems to fighters and torpedoes. Some will also contain powerful relics.

You must intercept and tow the debris with ships or build a pulsed tractor beam device on a planet to collect the debris, before you can salvage it.

Successful salvaging of debris will tell you what you discovered, and unsuccessful salvaging may mean you lose some systems, minerals, or even lose a relic.

Many types of relics exist. They range from computer viruses that cause ships, planets and bases to do strange things, to viruses that may affect populations, to high powered explosive devices capable of destroying or damaging anything within the blast radius.

Starbase+ is an add-on utility for VGA Planets 3.5 that takes advantage of the AUXHOST features found in HOST 3.20. This add-on provides starbases with more inherent abilities. With this Addon, starbases can now lay mines, sweep mines. Transport starship components. Sphere is a host add-on product for VGA Planets. It will convert any VGA Planets map that adheres to the standard coordinate system (1000 to 3000) into a torus, allowing ships that travel off one side of the map to reappear on the opposite side (e.g. a ship on the southern edge of the map can travel 100 lys south and be at the northern edge of the map). The default “seam” is 50 lys from the edge of the standard (i.e. X or Y < 950 or X or Y > 3050) but this may be configured to accommodate “compressed maps” (e.g. a map of 350 planets with all planets between 1500 and 2500).

This should make the game a bit tougher. No longer can a player put all his forces on his front lines and leave his rear areas undefended. The increasingly popular “Invasion” games should be a bit more challenging as Homeworlds may come under attack from the other side of the map. It should also end the complaint of those players who find themselves stuck in a corner of the map without any decent planets – just move to another corner.nts and transfer megacredits to your other starbases on the map.

Stargate is a host side add-on program for the game VGA Planets. It is written in C and uses the Portable Host Development Kit (PDK) to access the data structures. This means that it should be easy to port it to many platforms.

The idea of Stargate is to allow faster movement through the galaxy (in-game). This is done by building stargates with starbases and ships, and then traveling from one stargate to another. Stargate uses four extended commands and some control messages.

The extended commands are:
– Build Stargate
– Deploy Stargate
– Use Stargate
– Destroy Stargate

This VGA Planets add-on is an effort to “populate” the VGA Planets landscape, a feature wished for in the Planets newsgroup and elsewhere.

It is a known fact, that the average distance between stars is about 3-4 light years (ly). However, not every star has a habitable planet. That is why the average distance between the VGAP planets is often tens or more ly. With the help of Super Nova add-on, these “uninhabitable” and therefore invisible on the maps stars can explode, or “go super-nova”, inflicting tremendous amounts of damage to the neighboring space, destroying or damaging ships, planetary structures, and other types of hardware. The challenge here is to make maximum use of these nova stars, towing them closer to the enemy territory and detonating them as close as possible to his planets or ships (and then possibly move in with your own starfleet, mopping up the remnants of the enemy’s damaged planets and shattered economy).

Wormholes are, quite simply, folds in the space/time continuum. Travel through a wormhole can allow a ship to travel huge distances virtually instantly. The biggest downfall to wormhole travel, however, is their unstable nature. They are *NOT* jumpgates. Ships must endure unpredictable amounts of hull stress on their way through a wormhole. Also there is no way to know whether or not the wormhole will still be there when the ship wants to return.

On the plus side, a ship traveling through a wormhole expends an insignificantly small amount of fuel. They can also provide nearby planets with an additional source of income from scientific and commercial pursuits.

Wormholes are, quite simply, folds in the space/time continuum. Travel through a wormhole can allow a ship to travel huge distances virtually instantly. The biggest downfall to wormhole travel, however, is their unstable nature. They are *NOT* jumpgates. Ships must endure unpredictable amounts of hull stress on their way through a wormhole. Also there is no way to know whether or not the wormhole will still be there when the ship wants to return.

On the plus side, a ship traveling through a wormhole expends an insignificantly small amount of fuel. They can also provide nearby planets with an additional source of income from scientific and commercial pursuits.