One-Eyed Willy’s Guide to a Good Game of VGA Planets

Posted on by James Rowe

One-Eyed Willy’s Guide to a good game of Planets

Steve Andrews, 2005

Everything here isn’t strictly true and should always be
seen in the context of an actual game. As Egg Shen would say: take what
you want and leave the rest:)

1. Start of game

  • Max factories.
  • Max mines.
  • Raise engine technology to level 10.
  • Lower tax rate to 0%.
  • Do not waste resources on defence posts or starbase defence.

2. What to build

  • Always use tech 10 engines, except for ships you intend to tow.
  • Use only tech 2 or tech 5 beams, except for mine sweeping ships.
  • Use only tech 5 or tech 10 torpedoes.
  • LDSF’s are the freighter of choice.

3. Colonising the cluster

  • NEVER set the mission to Colonize! This dismantles your ship at the
    planet. Instead beam down colonists.
  • Always have ships expanding your borders. Set the mission to Beam Up
    Fuel and drop off 1 clan at every world you come to.
  • Follow these ships with others which drop off enough colonists, supplies
    and MC to establish a proper colony.
  • On rubbish planets drop 1 clan to act as a listening post.
  • On planets you want to mine drop 200 clans max. 100 clans is a good
    number unless there are a LOT of minerals underground.
  • On planets with natives drop enough to maximise the tax or, in the case of
    Bovinoids, the amount of supplies generated.
  • The number of supplies and MC to drop is tricky. Play the long game
    and don’t bankrupt yourself is my advice.
  • The type of native government is very important. Anything worse than
    Feudal is poor for taxation.
  • If the temperature is above 15 or below 85 you can effectively ignore it.
    If it falls in the extremes be aware of population limits!

4. Managing your economy

  • Fuel is paramount. If possible make your ships travel with as little
    fuel as possible to complete their missions, anything which increases mass
    wastes fuel.
  • Early on don’t tax your homeworld since this maximises population growth.

5. Conflict

  • To initiate a fight a ship must EITHER: have the race of the other
    ship/planet set as it’s primary enemy and/or have it’s mission set to KILL.
  • For planets to initiate a fight they must use friendly codes of "ATT" or "NUK".
  • For ship v ship combat to occur the ships must not have the same friendly
    codes. If the friendly codes are the same the ships will not fight.
  • Minesweep to detect minefields. Be aware you can lay a minefield to
    destroy a minefield.
  • Don’t lay 1 large field, lay several overlapping fields.
  • Even high planetary defences are useless against anything larger than a
    scout. If you are going to maximise the defence of your starbase make
    sure it has at least 40 fighters otherwise most capital ships will win against
    it.
  • Simulate all expected battles before committing to an attack