From: letoile@uhavax.hartford.edu Subject: Re: Strategic sci fi exploration game 'Lo everyone, Chris (other Chris) asked: --QUOTE-- > Have you tried VGA Planets? It is a computer-moderated shareware PBEM (or > PBBBS, though I'm not sure anybody does that any more) game of space > exploration, exploitation, and conquest. Has anyone tried _Stars!_ either? I think it is in roughly the same genre. How do these two compare? --END QUOTE-- As it happens, I just got Stars!, and I played VGA Planets (I think) two or three years ago. They strike me as *extremely* similar. Stars! has more flash (in better graphics and a step-by-step online tutorial), and, in my opinion, more substance. The alien races are described only generally, and aren't ripoffs of every cheesy sf series from TV or film. You can design your own using a dozen or so general concepts (Galactic Traveller, Alternate Reality), another menu of detail attributes (Advanced Remote Mining, No Ramscoop Engines), and a small host of environmental tolerances and racial abilities (ie how many factories every 1000 people can operate, reproductive rate). Stars! also has a starship design sequence that seems directly lifted from VGA-P, with various equipment and hulls plugged together as they become available through research. And I forget what VGA-P's research method was, so I can't comment on that. Stars! has a bunch of stuff that VGA-P has never attempted, like mining planets with ship-based robots and flinging mineral packets from planet-to-planet using linear accelerators (which in fact is described as "the closest Stars! comes to a doomsday weapon" for those lacking the technology to catch them). The combat sequence is also a could-be copy, with battles occuring in the computer and played back by a "VCR." If I recall VGA, though, it could only fight single ship battles. Stars! can do whole fleets (admittedly I've only gone in with 54 so far).I can also happily say that unlike VGA-P, you cannot strip a planet of all mineral resources in ten turns with a hundred mines and 20,000 colonists. The short version is, comparing Stars! to VGA Planets is like the old theories about what World War III would be like; like World War II, only a lot more so. I think it's fairly nice. It hasn't proven nearly as addictive to me as, say, MOO2, Ascendency (a tragic almost-classic), or non-period specific construction kits like Empire II. - Chris /--------------------------------------------------------------\ | The days ahead will not be shaped by questions and answers, | | the lore of experts, the reasoned judgement of earnest | | beings gathered around tables. Cherished belief, powerful | | emotion, and the image that plays in the mind in the moment | | before sleep comes -- they will write the story of the days | | ahead. - Michael Paul McDowell, Tyrant's Test | |--------------------------------------------------------------| | letoile@uhavax.hartford.edu | stormwaltz@geocities.com | |--------------------------------------------------------------| | http://www.geocities.com/athens/parthenon/9499 | \--------------------------------------------------------------/