# Anybody play VGA Planets?



## Wycen (Nov 11, 2008)

Before you go looking for it, it is an obsolete game.  It is the kind of game you play because your friends come up to you and say 'here, try this'.  You, like your friend, were recruited by current players and that's the reason you play, until you either decide you like the retro game or decide to go with something that actually has graphics and a reasonable user interface.

VGA Planets 3 & 4 are supposed to be 4X games, but frankly if you want a game like this I'd suggest MOO 2 or even MOO 3!  

But since my friends are playing and I got a copy for free, now that I'm more familiar with at least 1 race, I'm wondering if any ENworlders out there play or have heard of it.


----------



## Man in the Funny Hat (Nov 12, 2008)

Wycen said:


> Before you go looking for it, it is an obsolete game. It is the kind of game you play because your friends come up to you and say 'here, try this'. You, like your friend, were recruited by current players and that's the reason you play, until you either decide you like the retro game or decide to go with something that actually has graphics and a reasonable user interface.
> 
> VGA Planets 3 & 4 are supposed to be 4X games, but frankly if you want a game like this I'd suggest MOO 2 or even MOO 3!
> 
> But since my friends are playing and I got a copy for free, now that I'm more familiar with at least 1 race, I'm wondering if any ENworlders out there play or have heard of it.



Oh I've heard of it alright, but never played it.  I started playing on computers before anybody even heard of this newfangled internets thing and you young punks came up with your websites and blogs.  In those days the thing to do was find yourself a good BBS - and EVERY BBS worth your time was sponsoring one or more games of VGA planets.

It always seemed like it would be an interesting game but your description of how you got into it is correct.  You kind of had to have somebody tell you all about what it was AND how to play - THEN you had to wait until the next game started.  It was just never an itch I felt I needed to scratch.


----------



## Andor (Nov 12, 2008)

I've played it, it was a lot of fun as I recall. A buddy of mine used to host a game on his BBS back in the Air Force.


----------



## Wycen (Nov 13, 2008)

Before we started our friendly 5 player game, we gathered for an exposition, so that the 3 who played could show myself and the wife of another player what it was all about, (we play a 4E game together and did 3.5 before that).  Of course, that was really only useful for turn #1.

Despite its flaws, I look forward to the next turn being processed, but since I'm more of a casual player, I'm leary about signing up for an online game.  There is a lot of info out about how the programming works, and thus a whole lot of tips and tricks that wouldn't occur to you until it's too late. 

I wanted to point out Space Empires 4 to my friends but at the time I couldn't remember the name.


----------



## Steel_Wind (Nov 18, 2008)

VGAP 3.5x was, and remains, the single best mutiplayer strategy game for the computer. Ever.  It has never been surpassed in its depth and strategic complexity. Yeah it starts slow, and the ending is a monster of micro management where a competent Borg player should nearly always win if the other 10 players have been stupid enough to let him live. But the middle game? The best strategy game on a PC. Ever. _Diplomacy_ with Star Tek, Star Wars, TNG and BSG. Totally, totally rocked.

Unfortunately, Tim Wiseman lost his way with Planets 4 and the hobby crashed and burned. 

VGAP 3.x sold over 100k copies. The overwhelming vast majority of those purchases were not in a store. Not an online purchase with Visa, or Mastercard or Paypal. You had to snail mail Tim CASH or a Money order back-in-the-day.  Envelopes. Stamps. Dough.  And the shareware players were so motivated that they did it, too.

Now THAT was a game community.

And it sold  well. Even made the CGW top 100, in an age when that was the shiznit.

Yeah I played VGAP. Wrote a fair number of the racial strat guides too, including all that technical this before that turn processing strategies that really are the key to victory in a tight spot.  Sorry about that element of the game, but even that part had chesslike elements to it that glittered brightly at 3:00 a.m.. 

If you are not liking it much - it's because it's very early on in the game.  Give it time. It becomes a consuming passion.  But yeah, the graphics get in the way of enjoyment. 3.5x needs a serious graphics update.

P.S.: You don't need a friendly 5 player game. You need a cutthroat take-no-prisoners 11 races game. The game is about conflict and scarce resources. 11 players is the only way to fly.


----------



## Evilhalfling (Nov 18, 2008)

We played a 5-6 man game in college, the freeware version as a hot-seat game.  I was a merciless midgame player – sacking system after system and preying on the weak.  My Roommate was a better administrator and long term player – in the long run he would have rolled over the entire universe. 
He managed to get all the components from the tech planets together, in huge numbers, while I was more likely to have a fleet with 1-2 max techs, out demolishing other people.  (played as Federation and Klingon) 
In the two long games we played he only managed to get his uberforces in motion late in the second game.  Although his defenses had rebuffed attacks made before then.   

My wife liked the game as well, especially if she didn’t start next to me.  She was generally part of a coalition, in one game helping to wipe out the Borg.
It was really funny how well playing style matched to personality.


----------



## Wycen (Nov 25, 2008)

Yeah, I took over for a dropped player in an online game.  There are 10 races left and of course I'm playing the race just about to die, but that seems to be the case for our friendly game as well, so I'm going to learn how to fight a guerilla war one way or the other.  I decided to try the online game playing the romulans because we are going to start a second game with 10 or 11 players as soon as the noobs, (and with not even 40 turns under my belt I qualify as well), pick races.  I'm interested in trying the a cloaker race, (except the Orion pirates because they have to rob and I haven't learned enough about the game to do that yet).


----------



## ][avok (Feb 2, 2009)

*VGA Planets 3.0 Hosts*

VGA Planets 3.0 is alive and well (we don't discuss version 4 in the 3.0 community).

Popular hosting sites still online:

Circus-Maximus.com
RC World
Planetsserver
The Starbase

Best Regards,
][avok


----------



## Gnerphk (Sep 4, 2015)

Necro response to an obsolete thread?  Well... no.  It's necro, but it's not obsolete.

VGA Planets is back, and it's been revised for web browser, oddly enough.

The following link will sign you up using my referral code (which is only fair because I'm writing this):
planets.nu/#ref=13963

The funny thing is, I've been meaning to create an account here -- I've done the odd search here, but never bothered to post.  But tonight I happened to type the Planets web address in the wrong window, it led me to the necro thread, and I couldn't reply without creating an account.  No good deed, eh?


----------



## Janx (Sep 4, 2015)

Nothing wrong with updating a thread.

Played VGA Planets back in college with the floppy disk method...

Good times, but the 3rd half of the game does get fiddly with all the planets and ships to manage


----------



## Gnerphk (Sep 4, 2015)

"3rd half" - Heh.  It's a good description.

It does get quite complex; that's true.  I guess that's why I like it so much, TBH -- the game changes while you're playing, and you've got to stay on your toes.

I don't mind the timeframe of "approximately a year for a full game", though.  That's nothing new to me.  )


----------

