Donovan's VGA Planets Helppages - History

11-08-2003
New: In host 3.22.047, a Loki and Glory Device check were added right after auxbc.ini
New: added mass of ship components (Mark Beilke)
Fixed: # of webmines swept for Phasers (Joerg Oberle)
Fixed: example for overpopulation eats supplies (Sören Winter)
 

22-06-2002
New: Added another cobol fuelscoop line in host order
New: Formula for resolving groundcombat equation (thanks once again Akseli)
New: Added Winplan bug as possible cause for Tim Continuum strike (Don Friesen)

20-05-2002
Fixed: happiness change for colonists and natives in ship-planet combat
Fixed: population growth exception on hot planets and maxpop for Crystals not mentioned on proper pages
Fixed: tested shareware version (what works and what doesn't) and updated helppages & friendly code info accordingly
New: added some entries to the alphabetic menu
Updated: transferring & cloaked ships, now describes 3.22.046 rules
Fixed: clarified a bunch of texts, corrected some errors in spelling and grammar

10-08-2001
New: Starbases build their free fighters right after primary starbse orders but before dumping parts
New: Improved and clarified information on the left/right side VCR thingy (courtesy of Sirius)
New: Page added for 'VPA features', introduced in host 3.22.036
New: Clarified texts for processes where 'VPA features' are involved
New: Added 3.22.036 VPA features config switch to host configuration page
New: A ship set to warp 0 and mission intercept gets it's mission reset (new rule in host 3.22.039)
New: Rewrote alliance page to reflect two alliance levels introduced in host 3.22.039
New: Planetary friendly codes don't get changed after combat or groundcombat (new rule host 3.22.041)
New: Firecloud running into webs can no longer be chunneled to (bug removed in host 3.22.041)
New: Renamed in host-order "repair with supplies & make torps" changed to "mass check, repair & mkt"
New: Mass check, repair & mkt also includes cargo-trimming routine (double-loaded ships)
Fixed: A planet needs defenseposts to NUK, even if it has a starbase
Fixed: Hissing also works on unowned planets
Fixed: Rules for starbase techlevels and damage from combat
Fixed: The gsX friendly code also works for shareware players
Fixed: Advanced cloakers, when cloaked, are not affected by Ion storms at all (not decloaked, not dragged, not damaged)
Fixed: Missing table for planetary beamslots on details page
Simpliefied: Fuelconsumption formulas (INT, TRUNC)

24-06-2001
New: after being taken over by a ship, a planet's Fcode is randomized (new host rule)
New: to NUK a ship, a planet must have defenseposts and/or a starbase (new host rule)
New: false bioscan info from Evil Empire's planets (was in winplan helpfile but not in these docs)
New: more precise data on ships being slowed by minehits (was in winplan helpfile but not in these docs)
New: you can intercept your own cloaked ship (bug in host.exe fixed)
New: 'lfm' fighterbuilding doesn't work over unowned planets (thanks Akseli)
Fixed: Lizard ships with more than 100% damage vs enemy planets (thanks, Akseli)
Fixed: Planets with less than 20 defenseposts have no chance of blockin a bioscan (thanks again Akseli)
Removed: Types of industrial activity listed previously was based on phost data-files (DOH!)

31-05-2001
Fixed: Aries advanced alchemy cannot be disabled by NAL
Clarified: bioscan scans both owned and unowned planets.

28-05-2001
Fixed: you cannot intercept your own cloaked ships
Fixed: clans dropped from a damaged SSD won't initiate normal groundcombat either
Fixed: one-sided alliance won't prevent ship-ship combat
Fixed / Clarified: text on overpopulation eats supplies
Fixed: formula for crew lost in Ion storms
Fixed: colonist happiness drops 10 points when planet is taken over
Improved / Clarified: text on combat
New: more complex/detailed stuff moved to details page. Should keep the main text more readable and understandable.
New: taking over a planet through ship vs planet combat kills 25% of the natives and reduces their happiness
New: added text on Engine Shield Bonus to combat text
New: hitting a mine can cause a ship to travel a shorter distance
New: included several messages for events and actions into the helppages
New: printer-friendly version (same pages, but black text on white background) available.

28-01-2001
Clarified a number of texts
Added "Borg gather enemy debris" to indexes and host order
Fixed text on minefield friendly codes where minefield owner has no planets anymore (Akseli Mäki)

01-01-2001
Fixed several typos (Akseli Mäki & Kai Rosenthal)
Added info on # of structures and sensor sweep classification
Text for robbing and transporting / dropping cargo changed (Akseli Mäki)

08-10-2000
Clarified text on battle value for ships with non-numerical friendly codes (Mark Beilke)
Added: Super Refit automatically loads torps to ship (Matthias Gietl)
Clarified text on Super Refit
Added: a cloaked ship that hits a mine will be immediately decloaked if damaged beyond 'damage prevents cloak' level (Akseli Mäki)
Fixed: host order - cheat detect is right after clientside actions (Akseli )
Improved: information on Ion storms (Stefan Reuther)

15-07-2000
Added: Loki doesn't decloak if damaged beyond 20% (Matthias Gietl)
Added: Lizard and Crystalline colonists are immune to Glory explosions (Viva the Fat Man, Tman)
Added: Misc. "beta" info on Ion storms (Stefan Reuther, Matthias Gietl, Akseli Mäki)
Added: Mission, waypoint and speed-settings after force surrender and gsX (Akseli Mäki)
Added: Starbase dump parts returns 100% of invested minerals (Akseli Mäki)
Text changed: defenseposts are (intentionally) multiplicative to the race-defensefactor in groundcombat - I thought it was a bug.
Updated for Host 3.22.027:

• Tow-drop chunnel is no longer possible
• It is now impossible to both clone and build at the same base in the same turn without using priority points
  -building a ship prevents cloning
  -towing the cloning ship no longer prevents cloning
  -having a Firecloud present no longer prevents cloning
• Planets with 0 defenseposts can no longer NUK (NUK trap is now impossible)

13-05-2000
Fixed: towing - rules to break free
Fixed: maximum colonist population is a hard limit, overpopulation will die also on normal planets.
Added: planets can never capture ships in battle.
Fixed: incorrect colonist clangrowth formula (temperature instead of 100-temperature)

09-04-2000
Reorganised available information, renamed a number of pages, combined separate pages into clusters of information. Fixed a couple of mistakes, spell-checked all the pages, included many hyperlinks. Improved text and layout, added alphabetised index. Minor fix: changed "last updated" date on frontpage, it still listed 1999 as the year :-)

Several pages and bits of information added:

• Host configuration settings
• Messages
• Clientside actions
• Friendly code listing
• UFO objects
• Warpwell calculation after each individual ship (Dines Petersen), warpwell for hyperjumping ships (Can Deniz & Tanascius)
• Battle mechanics added (Tman, Tanascius)

19-03-2000
Updated version. Pages renamed ("VGA Planets helppages"), also renamed the main HTML file. Helppages now with two options. There's still an index based on order of actions, but now also an index by category (space, ships, planets, bases). Next to some re-editing, adding crossreferences and copying information to appropriate pages, the following fixes:

• Formulas for planetary defenses in battle (Tanascius, Mark Beilke)
• Cobol also scoops fuel in shareware (at least with host 3.22.026, Tero Rissa)
• Clarified: lock towbeam does not require fuel, towing/towcapturing does (Akseli).

12-02-2000
Major update, lots of stuff added, improved and fixed. Many thanks to Stefan Glasauer (reminding that colonize didn't tell how many clans were put on the planet yet), Tristan Mackey (lots of info in pillaging, the correct RGA/Pillage order, his idea for a cloaked sonar which lead to extra testing on beam transfer codes and pointed out some errors and typos), Can Deniz (mines destroy mines), Tanascius (deciphered the movement code and came up with the "Tanascius formulas"), Dines Petersen (pointing to separate 'planets NUK fuelless ships' battle phase and coming up with two very clear maxpop formulas), Simon Jenkins (lots of help on sneaky NUK mechanics) , Matthias Gietl (pointed out several mistakes, errors and typos, glorydamage vs. starbases plus some forgotten chunnelers, but I'll still kick his ass in the Species game :-) ), Rob Smith (correct place for the lady royale in the host order), Timo Kreike (loads of information on the queue, priority points and his table of max population with different climate death rates - I hope the Elite Site gets back online soon), Mark Beilke (loads of things, among which pillaging and the effect of glories on planets, and ships slow down because of minehits) and all the other people I'm probably forgetting.

Next to a big bunch of typos and fixed formulas, the major fixes & improvements in this version are:

• Fixed hostorder: Lady Royale makes money before robbing
• Fixed hostorder: bum is after ship-beamtransfers
• Fixed hostorder: pillage is always before RGA
• Fixed hostorder: minedecay and mines destroy mines can be regarded as two separate actions
• New in hostorder: added groundcombat with cargodrop
• Clarified hostorder: all mission 9's (rob, hiss & others) happen in ship ID in the same phase
• Clarified info: tow, locking towbeam and towcapturing are different things in different stages
• Added info on NUK-battle mechanics
• Added info on planetary defenses in battle
• Corrected / completed: enemy ships with warp 0, no fuel and/or matching friendly codes chunnel along.
• Corrected: minedecay (first percentage, then one extra mine)
• Corrected: mines destroy mines - practically always
• New: groundcombat
• New: priority build points
• New: detailed info on shipqueue mechanics
• New: added formulas for maxpop at a given temperature (formulas by Dines Petersen)
• New: scores
• New: exact movement formulas (aka "the Tanascius formulas")
• Added: info on negative effects of large meteor impacts
• Added: more detailed mechanics of pillaging (how exactly does it beam up supplies & cash)

17-10-1999
Important update: movement and fuel-usage formulas, tow-conflict resolutions, correct hyperjump info and warpwell calculations from actual host.exe 3.22.026 sourcecode. Fixed typo and added info on Super Refit, corrected minimum chunnel distance, corrected pillage info, pop and trg don't need fuel, starbase unloading enemy or allied clans joins them to your own population, fixed typo in ship-ship battles, corrected formulas for native and colonist growth and overpopulation / max. population (100-temp instead of temp), Cobol does scoop fuel when intercepting. Special thanks to Tim Wisseman and Don Friesen for providing yet another peek inside, and Can Deniz and Tristan Mackey (Tman) for pointing me to errors and typos and providing correct information.

24-05-1999
Added links in texts, fixed some formulas (mainly truncation and rounding in happiness and growth), fixed order in which stuff is robbed (thanks Brian!), added "towbeam is locked before cloaking" and added line in hostorder, added mines destroy mines info (courtesy Ken Anderson),  fixed error in superrefit text - refit is not before cloning - and corrected some typos.

05-05-1999
Fixed several typos, added/improved info on clan growth, 'mkt' is done at four times in the hostrun along with "fix with supplies", corrected chance of superspy being detected.

12-03-1999
Added possibility to clone and build in the same turn by towing in (and then running out of fuel) a Firecloud.or chunneling in two other Fireclouds, Courtesy of Can Deniz and Michael Henderson.

11-03-1999
Fairly large update: added overlapping minefield information (courtesy of Ken Anderson and Can Deniz), concentric minefields (courtesy of Ken Anderson), added extended and improved information on growth, happiness change, maximum population, overpopulation, Pillage and RGA (courtesy of Host-sourcecode provided by Tim Wisseman). Added Trans-uranium mutation. Fixed host-order in several places: taxing is before assimilation (courtesy of Peter Poulsen and Can Deniz), Auxhost 1 is after client-side actions and cloaking (courtesy of Mark Wilmot). Added some actions in the hostorder for clearer explanation of economic and growth processes. Changed layout a bit, clarified some things here and there. Included a plain text Host-order. Included background in the zipfile and modified readme.txt.

05-02-1999
Added happiness reduction from pillaging, corrected happiness reduction from RGA. Based on info from Siberian Snake.
Added two lightyear minimum movement for Gravitonic ships in warpwells.

14-01-1999
Starbases load torpedoes onto ships after movement, in the "other starbase missions" phase. Tested and posted in the newsgroup by Can Deniz.

13-01-1999
Fixed several mistakes and some typos, after being pointed to them by Tibo. Fixes are:
-included torps and fighters in "own transfers"
-typo in Loki page (2nd rule said loke instead of Loki)
-minefield friendly codes rule 3 and 4 were mentione twice
-alchemy page handles three alchemy ships while it said in the first line "two"
-slight addition on experience in the ion storm damage page
-cloning and building at the same base in a turn is possible when player has >20 PBPs
-ship to planet battles are also inticed by a PE setting, kill is not needed
-included Avian happiness change in page on happiness
-amount of taxes to be earned is limited by # of clans

12-01-1999
Fixed mistake in mines decay page, decay is 5% for mines and webs instead of the minesweep factors (4 and 3) I had written there.
Fixed wrong link to "force surrender" page from starbase page.
Changed colours of hyperlinks in host order, all (unvisited, active and visited) are now black.

29-12-1998
There was some confusion about ship to ship transfers and ship to foreign ship transfer, so I updated the hostorder to include ship-ship and ship-planet transfers at the very beginning of the hostrun, changed "cargo transfer (ship to ship)" into "transfers (ship to foreign ship)", wrote a new page to go with the ship-ship and ship-planet transfers and clarified the ship to foreign ship page.
Made some more modifications to text in hostrun.htm to prevent confusion, order has not changed.

28-12-1998
Update: "build fighters in space" questions sorted out - usage of 'lfm' friendly code takes place at same time as normal "build fighters" mission.
Updated hostorder.htm, buildfighters.htm and beamfcs.htm. Thanks to Tibo, who helped sort this out.
Updated frontpage, link to offline version (zipfile) was bad. Thanks to Kexwurm, who reported this.
Updated index.htm, it was pointing to files (hostorder.htm and front.htm) on my hardisk instead of those at my ISP - result: online version wasn't accessible. Thanks to Mark Beilke (aka Beerbelly) for reporting this.
Updated assault.htm, clarified the text a little.
Realized the offline version of these pages have no backgrounds, decided to leave it that way.

24-12-1998
First put online.