What Is VGA Planets?

By: Tim Wisseman

VGA Planets is a graphical, multi-player, play by electronic mail, space war game. This game simulates combat in space between galactic scale empires. The game emphasizes colonization of space and the development of the planets that you will find, colonize and/or conquer. How well you develop these resources will determine what kind of starships (freighters and capital ships) you will be able to produce and how well you will be able to defend your space and attack your neighbors.

This game is designed to be a strategic and tactical game of warfare, but you will also need to be able to build an economy and service your empire. With a well developed strong economic base you will have a greater potential for winning the game.

As the leader of your empire you are responsible for all of the decisions that effect your growth and production (excluding, of course, being attacked by your neighbor). You will decide how to best develop your planets with the resources available to you. You will decide what type of starship(s) to be built at your starbase(s). You are the mastermind behind your race and you are in a race to see which empire can first conqueror the universe.

At the start of the game you are left with a homeworld, a low tech starbase, and two low tech starships. These are the only things left of your former empire since the nastiest Ion Storm ever recorded hit the Echo Cluster. You will need to manage your planets population, money, minerals and other resources very wisely, for these are your only sources of production early in the game. If you manage them well you will be able to expand quickly expand and broaden your economic and mineral base quickly, while still keeping a wary eye on your potentially dangerous neighbors. Remember while you are growing and becoming stronger so are your neighbors.

VGA Planets is designed to be able to handle from two to eleven players in a play by mail (electronic mail) game format. The game is designed to be played as a Net or Bulletin Board System (BBS) game (as long as file transfers are permitted and available), although it can be played solely on one computer. Many of the Net players are playing using E-mail and UUENCODE.

WINPLAN is the latest version of the VGA Planets Player Client. WINPLAN offers the users of VGAP a lot of integrated functions that were formerly taken care of by external utilities. WINPLAN offers auto-plotting of minefields (based on minesweep messages), plotting of Ion Storms, Explosions and a whole lot more.

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.

How do I start?

Player Files
VGA Planets for DOS (DosPlan Shareware 1.0 Mb) –
VGA Planets for Windows (WinPlan Shareware 3.7 Mb) –

HELP! Winplan SETUP ERROR!

I just downloaded the shareware version or tried to install from my floppies to my new windows 98 machine and I get a setup error! Help!

You need to do a manual install and bypass setup using a batch file program.

What you need to do is copy all the files from your floppies to a temp directory on your system, you can make a new temp directory (if you like and name it anything you wish). If you are using the shareware files pkunzip with the files into a temp directory. Download and unzip this manual install file set MANINST.ZIP into the temp directory.

The batch file will copy all the 16 bit system files that winplan uses to the directory c:\windows\system\

The batch file will then install a working copy of winplan to a directory named: c:\plan1\ you can move that folder (directory) any place on your system and winplan will still run fine.

Download MANINST.ZIP

Host Files (Not needed if joining an established game)
Host Support Files v3.2x – Support and utility files needed for Host
Host v3.22.046 – Latest Host Executable.