Video Game / VGA Planets

VGA Planets is a 4X shareware computer game originally created in 1992 by Tim Wisseman, in which up to 11 human players each take charge of a nascent space-faring empire modeled more or less directly after a race or faction which has appeared in three successful pop culture franchises over the last few decades, namely Star Wars, Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica. So yeah, you can for example play a race of "Klingons" who team up with "Cylons" to fight "The Galactic Empire". Each of these empires come with special extra abilities based on those of their inspiration, and uses them in an attempt to expand their control and take over "The Echo Cluster", which is a (somewhat) randomly-generated 2D star-map with (normally) 500 planets, some seeded with native races who (mostly) offer perks to their colonizers. There is no official winning goal, with the players establishing beforehand among themselves how many conquered planets/obliterated opponents equals victory for the empire in question.

VGAP was originally a play-by-email game, with each player coding in the actions of his spaceships, planets and starbases, and producing a file to send the game's host, who would compile all the resulting interactions and produce a collection of files, one each to be mailed back to each player. The shareware came in where you could play the game for free, but suffered a technological limit when it came to building new starships away from your homeworld. If you paid for a copy, Wisseman would snail-mail you a set of floppy disks.

Eventually Wisseman drifted away from updating the game, and officially granted permission for an upgrade to be produced by other hands, leading to Planets Nu, which is still in active development and based around a single hosting website instead of the original e-mail model. It is possible to play the original version, but almost all activity in the game nowadays is centered around the Nu website. While you buy a yearly subscription instead of some software, the Nu version is still shareware, with the same technological handicap imposed on free players. Conversely, Nu games explicitly establish victory conditions that end the game, generally pegged at "capture and hold 200 planets for five turns." The Nu people are also moving the game's aesthetics away from the direct homages of the original version, including redoing all the ship graphics to be 3D and less overt copies of those appearing in the various franchises. Some games also feature a new twelfth faction, The Horwasp, while the Klingon-expies have been renamed from "The Fascists" to "The Hordes of Fury."

Be aware the game has a fairly steep learning curve, and individual matches can easily run for a year or more. The Nu site offers Beginner's games with simplified rules, and games where you play in a team alongside a more experienced player who shows you the ropes.

See also Stars! (1995), a similar game.

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VGA Planets includes the following tropes:

• 2-D Space: The game is played on a 2-D map.
• All Planets Are Earth-Like: Averted to a degree, planets don't have a climate per se, but do have an individual temperature ranging from 0 to 100 degrees; most factions' colonists do better the closer the temperature is to 50.
• All There in the Manual: The Nu site has a backstory/training sequence if you want to plow through it, and works from the idea that you are a representative of your faction sent out to conquer a newly-discovered sector, rather than being the supreme leader.. but none of that is necessary to play the game: There are 10 or so enemies out there. Beat them!
• Anti-Air: Planets can construct defense posts that attack incoming ships, and even launch a few fighters of their own, but they tend to get overwhelmed quickly by even mid-range ships. Starbases pack a lot more firepower.
• Arbitrary Headcount Limit: There usually can only be (roughly) 500 ships in a game; encourages the players to attack each other, and cuts down on processing and logistic snarls- even with that limit, doing up a turn when you have 100+ ships and planets can take a long time.
• Asteroid Miners: The Nu version includes "debris fields" in some games which can, with some difficulty, be mined.
• Assimilation Plot: The Cyborg auto-convert natives to more Cyborg. (Though they can't use this power on another player's populations.)
• Balance of Power: You don't have ally with anyone, but most games end up being this sort of conflict between various teams all scheming against each other.
• Bird People: In Nu at least, the Birds are depicted as looking like this, rather than being Vulcan offshoots. Also Avian natives.
• Boarding Party: You can capture enemy ships if you kill the crew before physically destroying the vessel. Capturing fuel-drained ships by this method is the Priveteer's main way of attacking.
• Broad Strokes: Some of the faction inspirations, such as the Orions and Gorn, didn't have a whole lot of canon info about them when the game was originally created, leading to this trope.
• Bug War: What you're fighting if the Horwasp option is included in Nu games.
• The Cameo: In the original version, a cartoony Mikhail Gorbachev is the graphical representative of the Evil Empire. The Nu version goes with a more Palpatinesque guy. Their Death-Star expy is still called the Gorbie.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: An option in games, but word does tend to get around if you do it constantly, both in game and out in the general community. Note that this is totally legal in gameplay terms, but one of the debate points in the game fandom is how far you should go with this attitude if winning at all costs is your objective. And whether the victim should indeed complain/report outside the game when it happens.
• Colony Drop: The Horwasp can lob big rocks at enemy planets.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: The various factions' top of the line warships are not equal, and an unprepared player will quickly find themselves suffering a string of these. The Cyborg in particular tend to start bulldozing opponents if allowed to get up to full strength.
• Death World: You can be stuck trying to colonize one of these, with very high or low temperatures and hostile Amorphous natives.
• Deflector Shields: All ships are equipped with these, which must be knocked down before the ship can actually be damaged.
• Difficulty Levels: Some races are definitely easier to play than others. The Federation and The Colonies are both considered a good starter faction, for torpedo and fighter-based play respectively.
• The Dreaded: With their giant self-repairing ships, Firecloud transport-networks and native-conversion abilities, the Cyborg tend to get singled out as an example of this. (Again, appropriate considering the original Borgs' reputation.) Also The Crystals with their web-mines.
• The Empire: The Evil Empire faction is a mashup between the Galactic Empire in Star Wars and communist Russia, though the Nu version has toned the latter way back.
• Enemy Mine: Again, games often involve a lot of cold-blooded scheming.
• Energy Weapons: Capital ships are equipped with these and either torpedo tubes OR fighter bays.
• Expy: As noted, every race is openly patterned after an existing pop-culture space empire or faction, though the Nu version is steadily moving away from the more overt copying.
  • Star Wars: The Empire and The Rebels
  • Battlestar Galactica: The Colonies and the Robots
  • Star Trek: The Solar Federation, the Fascists/Hordes of Fury, the Birdmen, the Lizards, the Crystals, the Cyborg and the Privateers.
  • The Horwasp faction in Nu is a riff on the Bugs from the novel Starship Troopers.
• Faster-Than-Light Travel: Engines are installed as being warp 1-10 during a ship's initial construction; only the Solar Federation can later upgrade those engines. Higher speeds can be specified for a particular ship at the cost of much higher fuel consumption.
• Fauns and Satyrs: Ghipsoldal natives.
• The Federation: The Solar Federation. Modeled after the protagonists in Star Trek. And yes, making peace with everyone and keeping your word can actually be a successful strategy if you're playing them.
• First Contact: You normally start with a single homeworld, starbase and space freighter, and once you start poking around with your expanding fleet of ships, sooner or later this happens with whoever happens to be your neighbor(s) this time around. You can decide to attack immediately, or try negotiating.
• Fish People: Amphibian natives.
• Fragile Speedster: The Privateers have a collection of weak but speedy ships.
• Fog of War: In a standard game, you can see all the planets on the current map, but you need to have a ship or colony in sensor range to see any enemy ship movements. It's also possible to run a game where out-of-range planets are initially invisible as well.
• Gambit Pileup: Eleven players all scheming against each other tends to lead to this.
• Healing Factor: Cyborg ships are able to auto-repair themselves, while everyone else has to get the damaged ship to a starbase, or beam aboard Supplies.
• Heroic Sacrifice: You almost certainly will be deliberately sacrificing ships and their crews to wear down more powerful opponents.
• Honor Before Reason: Maybe not as bad as, say, Diplomacy, but having this attitude in a game can definitely get you killed.
• Hopeless War: It's easy to get bogged down in one of these, where you've lost, but the opponent beating on you still has to slog around and wipe out every last one of your assets before you're officially booted from the game. Oftentimes players will simply quit/officially resign instead of suffering through this. Some Nu games set a "fight or fail" lower planet limit to at least cut back on the pain.
• Horde of Alien Locusts: Nu has games featuring a new faction, the Horwasp, which is pretty much this.
• Hostile Terraforming: The Crystals possess a ship which can slowly heat a planet to 100 degrees.
• Insectoid Aliens: Insectiod natives.
• Lizard Folk: The Lizards/Gorn from Star Trek, who gain a ground-attack advantage due to their strength. Also Reptilian natives.
• Lost Technology: Another option in Nu, with a small collection of artifacts which can crop up on planets and grant extra undocumented powers to the ship that is hauling them.
• Mile-Long Ship: The biggest Cyborg and Empire ships are examples of this. And yes, you have to find a way to destroy them.
• Mutual Kill: It is possible for two battling ships to blow each other up.
• Negative Space Wedgie: Ion Storms, which can sweep across a player's territory, causing various kinds of damage and delays.
• Orbital Bombardment: As soon as a planet's Anti-Air gets destroyed by an attacking ship, no matter how many colonists there are on the surface, they all get wiped out.
• Our Minotaurs Are Different: Bovinoid natives are minotaurs IN SPACE.
• Our Wormholes Are Different: Another option in some games are naturally-occurring wormholes that spit your ships out at some distant point on the map.
• Paranoia Gambit: A useful tactic if you're playing the Birds or Privateers.
• Perpetual Poverty: Some factions have to scrounge much harder for Megacredits to fund their construction efforts; the Birds in particular tend to have this problem.
• Planet Destroyer: In some Nu games, the Empire's Gorbie ships (the Death Star expy) can inflict the required Earth-Shattering Kaboom. "Debris disks" are officially said to be remnants of this sort of attack in a previous war.
• Plant Person: The Nu version has Botanical natives in some games.
• Portal Network: Doesn't exist at the start of the game, but the Cyborg player can essentially create one with their Firecloud ships.
• Rage Quit: A common problem in the game; there's always a long list of games on the Nu website looking for replacement players.
• Ram Scoop: The Colonies (of Battlestar Galactica) are the only race which has this technology, giving them a noticeable tactical edge, as everyone else is constantly scrambling for fuel to power their ships.
• Rape, Pillage, and Burn: The Fascists can at least do the pillaging part to enemy planets.
• Real-Time with Pause: Everyone is given X amount of time to submit orders to their forces, then can only sit and watch as the results get spewed out.
• Regime Change: In the Nu version, if someone misses submitting three turns in a row, they get dumped, and the slot in the game is publicly advertised as being available to be taken over by a new player. (Players can also simply resign.)
• Resources Management Gameplay: Mineral supplies are not unlimited, and shortages are eventually inevitable, especially fuel. If a game goes on long enough, you will need to build ships that can convert Supplies to minerals and fuel.
• Settling the Frontier: And do it quick, before someone else gets there first.
• Shout-Out: As noted, the basis of the whole game. Along with the "big 3" franchises, the original in-game graphic for the Neutronic Refinery Ship is/was a homage to Babylon 5, while Amorphous natives are Sandworms from Dune.
• Shown Their Work: Wisseman made a great effort to include faction-bonuses based on what the inspiration franchise has detailed over the years. For example, because of having a base on the ice-planet Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back, the Rebels in the game can maintain larger colonies on cold planets than other factions.
• Silicon-Based Life: The Crystals are these. They are the only race more comfortable on hot planets. Also Siliconiod natives.
• Space Clouds: The current version of Nu sometimes features nebula, which reduce ship scanning range and disable cloaks.
• Space Fighter: Honoring their source material, the Star Wars/Battlestar Galactica factions specialize in producing swarms of these loaded on board carriers, while the Star Trek-based factions concentrate more on torpedo-slingers. (Though neither side of this divide is forbidden from using the other attack form in their fleets.)
• Space Mines: Depositing circular fields of these is a major part of the game. The Crystal race, based on Star Trek's Tholians, in particular lays "web mines" which suck fuel from affected ships along with dealing damage.
• Space Pirates: The Privateer faction, loosely inspired by the Orions of Star Trek, can steal fuel from enemy ships and then seize their helpless victims as war-prizes.
• Space Station: You construct these in orbit around planets, and use the facilities to build, stock and repair your ships. Also can ably defend their host planet with energy weapons and fighters.
• The Spymaster: A successful Bird/Romulan player pretty much has to be one of these; the faction has advanced cloaking ships and is able to snoop info about enemy planets unavailable to other players.
• Standard Sci-Fi Fleet: To a degree. While the warships are mostly different, everyone uses pretty much the same freighters and mineral-processing ships.
• Standard Starship Scuffle: How ships battle, coming at each other one-on-one in assigned numerical order no matter how many ships from any hostile parties simultaneously arrive at Point X. The two combatants approach nose to nose with no player input as they blast away with whatever lasers, torpedoes and/or fighters they have until one is destroyed or captured. Figuring out what order to arrange your ships for these fights is vital to success; all versions of the game have included a battle-simulator so you can test this in advance.
• Stealth in Space: Some races can build ships that possess this ability. The Birds/Romulans and Priveteers/Orions in particular have this as their main shtick.
• Subspace or Hyperspace: A handful of small ships are able to use this to jump across the Cluster; with the original graphics, the Rebel version is of course modeled after the Millennium Falcon while the Empire's is Boba Fett's ship.
• Taking You with Me: The Fascists/Klingons do this with their ships' kamikaze "Glory Devices".
• Terraform: Along with the aforementioned Crystals, a couple of other races have ships in their arsenal which slowly raise or lower the temperature of a targeted planet in the direction of 50 degrees.
• There Can Be Only One: Averted with the Nu version, two players can formally ally and win an official joint victory, though they have to conquer more planets than a solo winner.
• Tractor Beam: Any ship with two or more engines can generate one of these and tow another ship around (if not actively pull them in); there are a variety of uses for this function for all players, and for the Privateers and Crystals, it's how they capture enemy ships which have been drained of their fuel.
• We ARE Struggling Together: It's real easy for players to keep pounding on each other when they should be working together against bigger mutual threats. (Again, don't let the Cyborg get too powerful!)
• You Require More Vespene Gas: Building ships, starbases, torpedoes and fighters requires varying combinations of three types of minerals and "Megacredits". A fourth substance must be mined for ships to be fueled, and factory-produced Supplies (along with more Megacredits) are used in planetary construction and ship repair.
• Zerg Rush: Throwing a swarm of small cheap ships at a more powerful and expensive opponent is an option, although as noted they still attack one at a time.