Unique (Un)necessaries

Unique (Un)necessities

Misc Info - not to be found in any doc....

INDEX
(click on topics)
Clans Eaten by Amorfs
Cobol Class Reserach Cruiser
Further Reading
Informer INF.DEF update
Mission Ordering
Pillaging Amorfs
Rebel Ground Attack/Pillage Mission
Sun Tsu's Art of War
Tim Continuum Attacks
Winplan 3.5 Message Files

Sun Tsu's Art of War

You could try to get your copy of Sun Tsu's ART OF WAR at the archives of the Gutenberg foundation.
Please take note of their policy!

(That is why there are no links - you'll have to do this by hand. - Timo)

The adress is: ftp://uiarchive.cso.uiuc.edu//pub/etext/gutenberg

Sun Tsu's text translated into English with footnotes:
/etext94/sunzu10.txt
/etext94/sunzu10.zip

Sun Tsu's text translated into English without footnotes:
/etext94/suntx10.txt
/etext94/suntx10.zip

Further Reading:

Try Machiavelli's "Il Principe" (the Prince) dating from about 1500. It has a beautiful and useful section about kings, kingdoms and armies.
Quite interesting with respect to alliances, mercenaries etc...

Available at your local bookstore, or get the free on-line version by gopher (176 kB plain text).

Clans Eaten by Amorfs

The number of clans that will be consumed by a native population of Amorph's is
dependent of the happiness of the Amorfs: use the following formula:

#clans_eaten_by_amorfs = 91 - native_happiness (when native_happiness <= 87)

Note 1. minimum is 5 clans
Note 2. for 99% correct - may vary by one clan...

Rebel Ground Attack/Pillage Mission

When performing a Rebel Ground Attack on your or enemy planets the colonist happiness will drop by 50 points, and more if they don't like your tax rate.... The native happiness will increase with 30 points.

When performing a Pillage Mission on your or enemy planets the colonist happiness and the native happiness wil drop by 2 or 3 points, and more if they don't like your tax rate... (I've noted a drop by 6 points for the colonist happiness.) This is also dependent of the goverment type of the natives: how lower the government type how faster they go unhappy.
[It's difficult to obtain true values. - Timo]

Winplan 3.5x Message Files

>>> NOTE: only tested for WINPLAN 3.5x <<<

There is a way to copy the messages you wrote to a new .TRN.

Why:
Two turns ago my host simply forgot to process my .trn! That really hurted, I can tell you! And it was just this .trn file with about 20 outgoing messages - its size was about 54 kB.

Next turn you have to do it all over again: building ships, attacking planets AND writing messages. As I didn't want to write those again, I decided to look for a better way, and there was!

The mess35X.dat file contains the outgoing messages. Looking at the type definitions of Planmap II, one could see that this file doesn't have any timestamp or such kind. (You can find the type definitions at A.M. van den Bos' WWW site: http://wwwtios.cs.utwente.nl/~bos/hotlist.html.)

So the procedure I used is rather simple: before unpacking your new .RST, save your mess35X.dat file to another name or directory, then unpack your new .RST file. After that you simply replace the new mess35X.dat with your saved one.
[Well, and if you noticed that your .TRN wasn't processed only then when you unpack your .RST, you could easily use your backup, don't you? You do have a backup, don't you? (I always analyse my results first in a separate directory using third party utilities and some self-written stuff.)]


Useless to say I've tested this myself on my own .TRN's and nothing went wrong at all. No stale file, no TC attacks, nothing at all. I think this should also work for the shareware/registered v3.0 version (because the fileformats are the same), but I didn't test this and I don't intend to do so.

Glory Devices

 It's not commonly known, but when you set off a Glory Device:
1. You'll get one PBP for your own exploding ship.
2. If you succeed destroying a ship with one (or more) Glory Devices, you'll also get PBP's for the enemy ship. Same conditions apply as for regular attack. (1 PBP for every 100 kT, rounded up.)

And: if you actually do have the 'luck' to hit an enemy ship with a Glory Device, you'll get a message telling you it's name, ID, shiptype and damage%... Life is full of surprises, isn't it?
(A Glory Device attack is simply treated as an ordinary attack.)

When you are on the wrong end of a Glory Device attack, you'll get a similar message telling you your ship got hit by a level 6 shockwave of a GD and that the damage is xx%.

Informer INF.DEF Update

 For all those guys who use Sean Martens' vgap-utility Informer.
With the coming of HOST 3.21 the layout of it's messages have been changed so the message filters have to be modified.

Thanks to Alec Habig ([email protected]) for the new minefield filters.

I use these modifications:

For the modified Exploration mission:

[NEW]
[TYPE] PLANETS ; based on exploration mission
[ID] 6 "ARE ENEMY COLONISTS" ; 'ARE ' added
[ID] 7 "LIVING ON THIS" ; THE -> THIS modification
[RACE] 9
[NAME] 4 1 -1
[VALUE] 5 1 ; Used for temprature
[VALUE2] 11 1 ; Used for clans


[NEW]
[TYPE] STARBASE ; based on exploration mission
[ID] 6 "ARE ENEMY COLONISTS" ; 'ARE ' added
[ID] 7 "LIVING ON THIS" ; THE -> THIS modification
[ID] 12 "STARBASE"
[RACE] 9
[NAME] 4 1 -1

For those f**cking ION Storms:

[NEW] ; Modified type added
[TYPE] IONSTORM
[ID] 1 "ION STORM WARNING"
[X-COORD] 4 1
[Y-COORD] 4 2
[VALUE2] 8 1 ; Extracts ion storm voltage
[VALUE3] 9 1 ; Extracts ion storm heading
[VALUE4] 10 1 ; Extracts ion storm speed
[VALUE5] 11 1 ; Extracts ion storm radius
[NAME] 14 3 -1 ; Extracts state as name

[NEW] ; Modified type added
[TYPE] IONSTORM
[ID] 1 "ION ADVISORY"
[X-COORD] 4 1
[Y-COORD] 4 2
[VALUE] 3 1 ; Extracts ion storm id number <- not in STORM !!!
[VALUE2] 8 1 ; Extracts ion storm voltage
[VALUE3] 9 1 ; Extracts ion storm heading
[VALUE4] 10 1 ; Extracts ion storm speed
[VALUE5] 11 1 ; Extracts ion storm radius
[NAME] 14 3 -1 ; Extracts state as name

For the new Glory Devices:
[NEW]
[TYPE] OWNEXPLOSION ; from message about our exploding Glory Device
[ID] 1 "GLORY DEVICE"
[ID] 4 "HAS EXPLODED"
[X-COORD] 5 1
[Y-COORD] 5 2
[NAME] 2 1 -1

[NEW]
[TYPE] ENEMYMINEHIT ; treat less than 100 % as ship smoking
[ID] 9 "WE HAVE BEEN HIT BY"
[ID] 8 "GLORY DEVICE"
[X-COORD] 11 1
[Y-COORD] 11 2
[RANGE] 12 1 0 99
[NAME] 5 1 -1


[NEW]
[TYPE] ENEMYEXPLOSION ; Treat 100% glory device hit as explosion
[ID] 9 "WE HAVE BEEN HIT BY"
[ID] 8 "GLORY DEVICE"
[X-COORD] 11 1
[Y-COORD] 11 2
[RANGE] 12 1 100 20000
[NAME] 5 1 -1

New additional Minefield filters:
[NEW] ; from msg about us laying enemy mines
[TYPE] ENEMYMINES
[ID] 5 "TORPEDOES INTO"
[ID] 12 "STYLE"
[IDN] 5 "WEB"
[X-COORD] 7 1
[Y-COORD] 7 2
[RACE] 12
[VALUE] 10 1
[DISCARD]

[NEW] ; from msg about us laying enemy web mines
[TYPE] ENEMYMINES
[ID] 5 "TORPEDOES INTO"
[ID] 5 "WEB"
[ID] 12 "STYLE"
[X-COORD] 7 1
[Y-COORD] 7 2
[RACE] 12
[VALUE] 10 1
[DISCARD]

;NOTE - I added the .not. style field here so to distinguish between laying
;mines for us, and laying mines for them.

[NEW]
[TYPE] OWNMINES ; from msg about us laying mines
[ID] 5 "TORPEDOES INTO"
[IDN] 5 "WEB"
[IDN] 12 "STYLE"
[X-COORD] 7 1
[Y-COORD] 7 2
[VALUE] 10 1
[DISCARD]

[NEW] ; from msg about us laying web mines
[TYPE] OWNWEBMINES
[ID] 5 "TORPEDOES INTO"
[ID] 5 "WEB"
[IDN] 12 "STYLE"
[X-COORD] 7 1
[Y-COORD] 7 2
[VALUE] 10 1
[DISCARD]

Put these definitions in your inf.def file. Don't forget to make a backup first - you never know...!
You can leave out all ';'s and everything behind it: these are just comments.

Cobol Class Reserach Cruiser

 When you use an unregistered v 3.0 version of planets and you're using host 3.2x, your Cobol Class Research Cruiser just won't scoop fuel - no matter the mission you choose.... I don't know why - it's reported to me by several people.

Mission Ordering

 There are always many questions about the mission ordering. I always use Eden Tan's fabulous Infolist when I want to know a detail about the mission ordering for sure. When it's not there (or when there is a new version of HOST.EXE with new switches) I always take a look at theHOST.LOG file of the newest HOST.EXE.
Get yourself the version of HOST.EXE your host is using, use MASTER.EXE to create an universe and set the correct settings with HCONFIG.EXE. Run HOST.EXE for once and copy the HOST.LOG to your documents directory. Et voila, you've got yourself the most usefull list of mission ordering!

Pillaging Amorfs

 There are just two ways to get rid of Amorfs: The first is to set off a Glory Device on their planet and the second way is to pillage them to death. For both ways you need to be the Fascists or when you're not the Fascists you need their help. The first option is the quickest and the most clear - go read the docs.

I used the second option once on a planet that was absolutly unimportant: less than 500 kT of each mineral in lousy concentrations, amorf population of 8 million, far away from my homebase. The only good thing about it was the temperature: 50 degrees.
Pillaging those 8 million Amorfs took me about 20 turns. In the beginning you will only kill 20% a turn, but later on you will kill about 45% a turn because the Amorfs will begin to riot. (Nothing better than Amorfs in a Civil War!)
It is true that Amorfs will eat more clans when they're upset, but for pillaging you only need to beam down one clan.

Tim Continuum Attacks

 To state this very clearly: I am a honest player, and I will never cheat in any imaginable way. I have however experienced some (unjust!) Tim Continuum attacks. Maybe it was a host.exe checksum error, or a winplan failure....I don't know.
Until then I had only heard of those attact and I didn't know what to expect... I'll write this awful experience down here, just to share it with you....


1. The host.log says:

Universe Mass Check Two 
Planetary Check 
Ship Check 
Base Check 
Data Status:  The Empire of the Birds         >> RED << 
Missing Mass 
RACE : The Empire of the Birds
        Money:  382
     Fighters: -12
     Duranium:  23
    Tritanium: -366
  Molybdenium: -429
2. You will then receive a lot of messages like: 
(-d0000)<< Distress Call >>

ALL starbase fighters have 
disappeared! 
We don't know why!
and:
(-p0009)<< Distress Call! >>

Arcturus  ID:  9 
Our tritanium dump has 
EXPLODED!
and:
(-p0009)<< Distress Call! >>

Arcturus  ID:  9 
Our molybdenum dump has 
EXPLODED!
3. All other players will get messages like:
The Tim Contunuum is attacking: 
Birdmen
4. Well, and then you're sour! Your nerves are shaking, you start wondering what went wrong and even more: what has happened to your valuable ships/economy/planets/bases etc!

What does the message in the host.log mean?
It means that host.exe thinks that 23 kT duranium and 382 MC are missing, and that there are 12 fighters, 366 Tritanium and 429 Molybdenum extra on your planets!

What does host.exe do about this?
-Host.exe does nothing about your missing stuff as fas as I can see....
-But in the case of the extra fighters/minerals it's different! Host will start at your planet with the lowest ID and will remove every kT of the mineral that has been 'tampered' with. It will do the same to the next planet until the full quantity (or more!) of the mineral has been removed.
In the example host.exe will start at planet ID #9 (my lowest ID planet) and will remove every kT of Tritanium and Molybdenum. If there was less than 366 kT Tritanium host.exe will do the same to the planet with the second to lowest ID. And so on, until host.exe got his 366 kT Tritanium back. The same applies to the Molybdenum of course. :-(
And for the fighters: host.exe will remove all the fighters of your lowest ID starbase! That's a nice feature of VGA Planets you didn't know, did you?
And I guess when host.exe is not satisfied, it will take the fighters from your next starbase... as simply as that. :-(

Timo, 11/03/96

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