VGA Planets General Strategy

On these pages you will find a number of articles dealing with general strategy, which are not specific to any particular race. They can deal with certain aspects of the game, strategies for multiple races or give you general guidelines on how to successfully survive in the Echo Cluster.

Currently available:

Newsflash
Timo Kreike's collection of newsgroup postings, sorted by race and subject. Dates back to '97 but still very useful. If you're wondering what to do with your race X against enemy Y, this is the place to look.

Playing VGA Planets at the expert level
Golden Dragon tells of life in the big leagues, with some extremely useful tips even if your opponents are not all experts.

How to play with the Big Guys
The universe according to Thomas Voigt, with economical as well as strategical tips and guidelines. Written for Phost games, but general strategy applies to any host.

Nuke This!
Up to and including host 3.22.026 the Privateers had an unbeatable weapon, guaranteed to capture any ship. If your host isn't using the latest host, this is the document for you.

The Dreadlord Battle Manual
Ramutis Giliauskas' manual to playing VGA Planets. Written back in 1994 it is still considered one of the essential guides to a solid empire.

Waging war in VGA Planets
General tips on warfare and strategy by Maurice Bernsen. Once you know the basics of setting up your empire, read how to obliterate your enemies here.

Winning with Blitzkrieg
According to Ramutis Giliauskas (a.k.a. Dreadlord), taking out at least one of your enemies early is a tremendous strategical advantage. To prove it, he tells you just how to do it.

The art of War - VGA Planets
Does a strategy guide written well over 2000 years ago apply in any way to a modern day space conquest game? You betcha - Richard McAteer connects the dots for you.

The underground guide to guerilla warfare
Admiral Kvorak tells tales of terror without the use of any large battleships. Some sneaky cloakers, attacking in the right places and picking the right battles can bring any enemy to his knees without a massive use of resources.

Havoc's guide to VGA Planets
Or, as it is labelled, Havoc's finer points of VGA Planets strategy. Havoc has thoughts and ideas on anything ranging from fuel management to diplomacy.

The art of diplomacy
Emperor Bondservant introduces NAGging into VGA Planets, and provides useful pointers to the how and why of diplomacy.

Carrier Races
Find out why exactly Steel Rat (among many others) is so fond of the three big carrier races. Read why they are so hard to stop, and then read how you just might give it a try.

The Aries Maneuver
Kai Rosenthal has come up with a nice way to get rid of Lokis, clearing a path for your sneaky cloakers.

Rebel without a clue
What would the fighter races do if they didn't have cheap fighters? What could they do? Andrew Burns explains.

Survival guide to VGA-Planets
Jurjen Niezink started this survival guide out to be true to the name - a document containing information to survive in the harsh Echo Cluster. As he himself writes: "This "Guide" is currently nothing more than a list of ships which a player playing a certain race, should and shouldn't build (according to me and some of my friends)."

Early-game strategy
Jurjen Niezink writes about what he thinks is the most exciting part of a game - the first fifteen to twenty turns.

The H-files
Last updated in 1997, the H-files are still a good source of information. Containing many people's opinions and ideas, nabbed from the alt.games.vga-planets newsgroup, there's bound to be something of use for you in there. Just keep in mind this was written in 1997 or before, host updates since then may have changed a fact and tactic or two.

BANE's fleet review
Since Geocities deleted BANE's old pages, I've put them up at my site. Didn't edit anything yet, other than removing the Geocities code that it enforces on each HTML page. BANE is a long-time VGAP veteran so it might be wise to read his stuff carefully, there's some tactical advice (i.e. where to use which ship for) to be found in the reviews as well.

My impressions about VGA Planets
Eduardo Fonseca shares his knowledge of VGA Planets. Some good general stuff in there, ranging from frame of mind (don't be over-confident) through tips for the first turns, colonizations and tactics.