The Killing Floor (TKF)

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 resolves combat in VGAP using fleet battles; rather than the single ship combat that is standard in VGA Planets. TKF totally changes the you have to must look at general strategy, and more importantly, battle tactics. It makes the most fundamental changes to almost every aspect of the game: ship building, combat, economic expansion, diplomacy, ship trading... the list goes on.

Under TKF, the smaller ships in a game are given more emphasis. Since they can attack en masse they can simply overwhelm anything in their path; ie, 3-4 Patriots (8 beams, 24 fighter bays, 120 fighters) can take out any individual ship, including the positively monstrous Federation heavy carriers (when they get them).

The biggest individual general change to game strategy is simply this:
One of the base principles of war set out by Sun Tzu was to outnumber your enemy at the point of contact; TKF makes this worthwhile, where VCR could not. If you can concentrate your firepower, when the enemy must divide his, you will win every time. Under the normal VCR program, concentration of forces was far less important, since the point of contact was limited to ONE SHIP fighting. Under TKF, general strategy is made simpler. You'll have to learn how to think slightly differently, think a little bit against the way that we've always had to with VCR installed. For newbies, this will be easy, but for people who've lived and breathed single ship combat for years, it could prove difficult. Using TKF requires a fundamental difference in the way that we approach combat using VGAP, the impact is especially felt in the mid and end games... and if you haven't prepared for it...

The roles of fighters and torpedoes are different now. Fighters are best used when the enemy doesn't have them, and the best defence for a fighter, is more fighters.

Additional information: The Killing Floor mission briefing (in the VGA Planets museum)