Fake Host Features
latest entries: june 18th, 2000

As not many players will know, there is more to Host than meets the eye. Obscure rules and friendly codes, if used properly, can have very interesting effects. The trick is to know these specialties and how to use them. Fortunately, if there is one place where people know the most amazing details, it is the alt.games.vga-planets newsgroup. Check out the following secrets disclosed by Julian F Waldby, Paul or Lynne Honigmann, Alexander Babanov, Eyvindt Moltke, Richard McAteer, Matthias Gietl, Tman, Andreas Huck, Jens Neumann and myself. Reports even include special host settings, accessible only to the most experienced hosts. One of the special tricks listed here was actually tested and confirmed by James Johansson. So read them carefully, and use them to your advantage!

Friendly code: "sex"
All your ships should have this code if they are not performing a standard FC outlined above. When you get 1000 units of this (measured in ship turns), the reinforcements from your Parent Colony in the Tango cluster arrives.

Friendly code: "TIT"
To perform docking manoeuvres with enemy ships and engage in transfer, set this FC on your mother ship, and TOT on the enemy/friendly docker.

Friendly code: "wax"
Try setting this on one of your starships when you get a chance. If you are a proper race like the Crystals, you can get a good sheen which causes a 5% chance of the AWE flag on enemy ships, allowing the poisonous spider bite in their hull which renders them helpless for 5 turns.

Friendly code: "ARG"
Used for ships out of fuel and about to be captured by Privateers. Signifies that the crew sabotage the ship. Does nothing immediately, but there is a 10% cumulative chance per turn that the toilets will explode, rendering the ship unusable by any but Lizards until Repaired at a starbase.

Friendly code: "gsx"
Renders a ship immune to the attacks of race x (x = 123456789ab)

Hidden Mission: "Propaganda"
If a ship's name is set to the word "Propaganda", this allows a ship in orbit round a planet to drop leaflets and transmit TV (old sitcoms) to the planet below which will lower the population's IQ to 0 and, thus, eliminate productivity (taxes, factories, mines etc). The ship cannot be attacked by the planetary defenses due to the Defense crews being addicted to X-rated pornography being beamed down.

Borg mission: "Fuse"
Host 3.23.03 and higher supports the ability for two Borg ships to weld themselves together into one gigantic Mother of a ship. The ship names, positions, courses etc must be identical; in this case 2 Fireclouds, for example, become a rather nastier 12-beam ship of higher mass. After 1 turn the ships are permanently fused into one mass. There is a downside to this tactic. The ships continue to fuse with any more they come into contact with thereafter; i.e. orbiting the same planet, intercepted etc. This can lead to your and our allies' entire fleets being welded into one huge, ungainly mass of scrap metal if you're not careful, ultimately leading to unstable navigation, gravitational collapse and the disappearance of your fleet up its own retros.

Ship Name: "Ariane V"
Converts the navigational computers of a spaceship to a steaming pile of befuddled transistors. Ship spirals out of orbit and impacts planet, spreading plutonium from its power supply and wiping out most lifeforms.

Minefield Friendly Code: "dmp"
Blows up 10% of the mines per turn, filling the skies with shrapnel and scratching the black paint off cloakers, decloaking them. Don't do this with Feds in the field, they get very upset if the polish on their nice shiny fleet gets damaged.

Lizard's flame attack:
Beaming down N kt of the fuel from cloaked LCC with fcode "IGN" causes flame attack to the planet below. Planetary loses are calculating as follows: N*1000 clans of natives, N*100 clans of colonists, all supplies and factories burn down, but no mines or minerals. Crystal's and Siliconoids are immune to this attack.

Bird's defence sabotage:
Hidden bird ship has a fair chance of bombing up to 30 enemy defences on the planet below. Chances are cumulative. The is no method to avoid this nasty attack except setting "bum" fcode on each planet where you suspect hidden Birds could be.

Fed's plug-n-pray mission:
Nova with tech 1 engines and fcode PNP could fly up to 162 ly per turn. Subject to 3 restrictions: warp speed should be 9, Nova should always have full fuel tank to implement this and waypoint should be at least 100 ly away from starting point.

Robot's "Kalosha" secret ship name:
Pawn bioscanner ship having been named "Kalosha" is capable to bioscan planets at a double distance. The only drawback is: every turn each player receives message titled "S-O-S" with coordinates of the "Kalosha". Also "Kalosha" could neither fly nor be towed at the speed more then warp 1.

The Crystal Web Assimilator.
The Crystals have a secret way of assimilating all enemy minefields within a distance of 500 LY into webmines. To do this the following is required: An Emerald Class Battlecruiser with Stardrive1, Heavy phasers and a full load of Mark 1 launchers. That is 510 Mark 1 torpedoes. Furthermore the ship has to be more than 162 LY´s from the nearest planets to avoid jamming from the planetary warp interdictors. All you need to do is setting a waypoint to more then 162 LY´s and
mission lay mines. Then every enemy minefield within a 500 LY radius circle will turn into webs that immediately will start sucking fuel from enemy ships.

Evil Empire Enhanced Imperial Assault.
Because of some omissions in the programming of the game a damaged Super Star Destroyer in some cases will be able to perform an Imperial Assault in spite of the normal rules. If a Super Star Destroyer has suffered damage it can perform Imperial Assault if it has no fighters and the friendly code is set to AAA. You still need to drop the usual 10 clans on the planet, but if the ship has fighters onboard they must be jettisoned for this feature to work.

New enhanced Give Starbase function.
If you want to give a Starbase to your ally you must remove all colonists from the planet and set the planetary code to GPx where x is the number of the race you want to give the Starbase to. This will furthermore turn all stocks of hulls into hulls of the same tech level belonging to the receiving race. So if a Crystal has 5 Diamond Flame Hulls and 5 crystal Thunder hulls stored at the base and gives it to the Cyborgs it will result in Cyborgs receiving a base with 5 Biocide and 5 annihilation hulls stored. This feature only works if the receiving race has no ships orbiting the planet the same turn.

Fascist HISSing.
The Fascists have finally found a way to imitate the well known Lizard HISS mission, but it is limited to the Ill Wind and the victorious. One of these ships can do this if it sets its mission to Pillage, and the friendly code to DUD, bit an additional condition for this to work is that the ship must have only one Laser beam and no torpedo launchers.has only one Laser beam. An extra bonus is that the mining rate on the planet is also doubled. And the function is also cumulative. So if you have 5 Ill Winds or Victorious´s , all with one Laser and no torpedo launchers doing the Pillage mission on a planet you will be able to tax the planet 3125 % per turn and have a mining rate of 3200 percent. This is the reason why you, as a Fascist player always should try to talk the host into allowing infinite income earned per planet per turn.

Privateer Engine Rob Mission
Privateers always seek new ways to steal from friends or foes. Late one night a band of their scientists happened to decode a message containing secret information about the Fed Superrefit mission. But they were too drunk, so they typed it in backwards and mixed it together with my grandmothers favourite cookie recipe. The result was quite amazing. They discovered the following: If a Meteor Class Blockade Runner is cloaking is orbiting a Starbase belonging to an enemy race where the enemy also have warships with Transwarp Engines orbiting it it is able to steal the engines from the enemy warships. All they need to do is sending a Meteor Class Blockade Runner with Stardrive1 engines into orbit of the enemy Starbase with the enemy warships, set a waypoint to more then 162 LY´s away, Warp Factor to zero, the primary enemy to the actual race a friendly code to MAD and mission Rob Ship. Besides this feature only works if the Meteor class blockade Runner has full tanks.

It will result in the Meteor Class Blockade Runner receiving the Transwarp Engines from the enemy warship, which will in turn be recycled and placed as parts on the starbase. The last feature is because the Host Anti-cheat functions doesn´t allow a ship with less that the normal number of engines. This is also a very mission for the Privateers after the 500 shiplimit is passed, because it means that the enemy cannot rebuild his warship before the base gets a new shipbuild or he uses the necessary number of Priority Build Points. The target race has one way to avoid loosing his ship. He needs to have the necessary number of Transwarp Engines in stock and the starbase mission set to fix/recrew the endangered ship. this is also the reason why you should never have more than one ship with transwarp Engines orbiting the same base, if you fight the Privateers, because you can never know which ship will be the next one robbed for it´s engines.

Friendly code: "H2O"
Setting this friendly code on a Merlin Class Alchemy Ship causes the ship to convert two units of any mineral in the cargohold into one unit of water. The water is then beamed down to the planet. On hot planets, it allows for a 50% increase in the maximum population. On cold planets, the water freezes and forms ice-rinks in the colonist settlements. As a result, colonists gain the Avian happiness bonus: plus 10 happypoints per turn.

Friendly code: "LOL"
Another function that kind of emulates the Lizard hissss mission. Only the humanoid races can use this code on a large deep space freighter. The freighter must be loaded with 601 colonist clans and 599 supply units, and must have it's warp set to 0. The ship may not be towed. When these conditions are met, the clans onboard the ship convert the supply units into a comedy club. One colonist clan turns out to be a group of comedians, and the other 600 clans Laugh Out Loud. This has a positive effect on the planet the ship is orbiting - any and all civil wars or riots are immediately ended, and the native population is doubled because the natives that were hiding before want to see what's so funny.

Friendly code: "Jim"
The Borg have finally found a way to get those pesky Amorphous worms to work for them, instead of just sitting there and eating clans. A Watcher Class Scout with a friendly code of "Jim" will lure the earthworms onboard, where they expect to meet their idol - Earthworm Jim. Instead, some less friendly Borg drones quickly assimilate them. No special conditions have to be met.

Friendly code: "Oh!"
The sneaky Privateers are using a new weapon against their long-time enemies the Lizards. Getting tired of losing planets to Lizard clans, Privateer command came up with this new tactic. By setting the "Oh!" friendly code, all the Privateer colonists on the planet start staring to the sky, and looking surprised. The Lizard clans that land, ready for a bloodfest, wonder what these Privateers are looking at and turn around to have a look for themselves. That's when the Privateers collectively stab their knives in the Lizard backs. Using this code, 1000 Privateer Colonists can effectively defend the planet against any number of attacking Lizards. Unfortunately for the Privateers, only the Lizards are stupid enough to fall for this trick.

Friendly code: "MBR"
Jealous of the Privateer ability to travel at double speed, the Lost Colonies have installed their Patriots with devices to kind of imitate that skill. For this to work, the Patriot must be loaded with 30 fighters. The fighters, able to travel 100 lightyears and back per turn to sweep mines, fly in formation to create a vacuum in which the Patriot can follow. This way the Patriot can move 200 lightyears in one turn. When ending this movement, the Patriot crashes into the leading fighter. This fighter must be replaced before the Patriot can travel at high speed again.

Friendly code: "LCC"
Also born out of jealousy, the Birdmen can use this friendly codes on their Fearless Wing Cruisers. When set, it makes colonists dropped from these ships behave as if they were Lizard clans, dropped from a Lizard Class Cruiser. So now the Birdmen too can take over enemy worlds by groundattack with a 30:1 attack ratio. However, this will not work against the Lizards as clans dropped this way will simply join the Lizard community on the planet.

Friendly code: (only for fascists or rebels): "DOH"
After doing stupid things like pillaging his own homeworld because not changing the mission when heading back, or rga ing own planets with falcons, because no warpfactor was set, the ships name has to be changed to HOMER S. and the fc has to be DOH. the ship has to invert its waypoint and head back from wherever it came from. when all those criteria are met, the planet will be as it was 2 turns ago (the money or happiness gained will be gone) AND a universal message telling about the usage of this mission will be sent out to all races PLUS a post will be made to this newsgroup (this is a new feature in host 3.32.001 that allows such things, when a dial up connection is detected during the hostrun).

new mission (not available for the fascists, because they are too aggressive and always charge and attack):
HIDE IN ASTEROID FIELD: the ship will disappear from the starchart. a little java plugin will be started - if the player successfully destroys all asteroids he will be able to hide there. if he only shoots down half of the asteroids, the ship will be damaged, but stay hidden. if the player is really bad (or there are a lot of asteroids - default is 30, host can change this number from 3 - 500) the ship will be either damaged, all its fuel removed and transported into open space, or it will be just killed.

another new mission (can be only set on carriers):
FLY INTO GORBIE AND SHOOT TORPEDO AT EXHAUST PIPE:

this mission is only available, if a working installation of "TIE FIGHTER" is detected on the harddrives of both players - the attacking one and the empire - there the mission with the attack on the Gorbie is started. with secret codes that Tim W. bought from the NSA, he will use the power supply for the processor cooling fan to make the fan spin in a certain pattern. this special pattern will cause the computer case to vibrate at a very special frequency that will be used to transmit the data from the two computers to Tim w. 's machine, where the fight is initiated. the attacking player got 3 runs with a single fighter, whilst the empire can either choose
to fly a tie - defender himself or take command of the anti - fighter - guns on the Gorbies surface.
If the attacker succeeds, the Gorbie will be destroyed, if he fails he will lose his attacking fleet (the mission can only be initiated by at least 4 carriers which need at least a hullmass of 500 kts together) and one of his starbases with 5 supporting planets will abandon his cause and join the empire.

New birdman mission:
INFILTRATE BASE AND PLANT DUMMY

Birdman capital ships can use this mission above enemy bases. they have to use a friendly code of "DUD". the ship that gets build will never be harmful in any fight - as soon as they engage in a VCR, instead of firing torps or launching fighters, they will shoot a flag, with "BOOM" written on it.

A special weakness in the fascists cloaking system can be exploited by any race! It turns out that the ancient technology stolen by the fascist empire to cloak it's ships leaves a detectable trail; the cloaking device creates an asymmetry in T (the temporal dimension) and this can be detected at very close range by a weak tachyon pulse. As it is close range, only proximal sources can do this. A minefield has a good chance (base 50%, configurable) of finding a hidden fascist if configured to do
so. Simply set the friendly code to "ff4", for "find fascist 4". If the ships decloak, it doubles the chance of collision (no longer cloaked!) and gives you valuable info. In case an ally of the fascists has borrowed their ships, just set "ffN" for "find fascist race (N)"

Gather Shipdata
Feeling put at a disadvantage by the Birdmen Super Spy and the Imperial Dark Sense, the Lizards, Fascists and Privateers have now cooked up a way to actually spy on enemy ships. To initiate the "gather shipdata" ability, a player must have a ship in the same position as an enemy ship, and must have some clans onboard. He then has to beam at least one clan to the ship he wishes to spy on. To tell that clan to 'gather shipdata', the ship's friendly code must be 'gsX' where X corresponds with the race-number of the enemy ship. The spying clan is always caught, but at the expense of a mere clan the player receives a message telling him all the details on the enemy ship, including at what starbase the ship was built.

Scorched earth-hissing
Instead of making the natives happy with their hissing audio-signals, the Lizards -who are at heart an evil race- can use their speakers to really piss off the natives. With a friendly code of "BsB" their ships will not play hisssing noises, but keep on blasting out the latest Backstreet Boys album. Naturally, the natives can't stand this. A whopping 30% of the native population will immediately kill themselves, the rest will grown unhappy. Two turns of backstreet boys-music are enough to plunge any planet into the worst civil war you have ever seen.

Remote RGA
An old favourite tactic of the Rebels is to use Falcons and perform Rebel Ground Attacks on enemy planets. However, more and more Falcons were getting captured so the Rebels now came up with this new skill. A Rebel Falcon orbiting a Rebel starbase can now perform an RGA on enemy planets as far as 500 lightyears. To do so, the Falcon must be set to warp 0, have a friendly code of RGA and the target planet set as it's waypoint. The Falcon's mission must be set to Rebel Ground Attack, the tank full and the ship's hold filled with supplies. What happens is the Falcon performs goes into hyperdrive, attack the enemy planet and return all in the same hostrun. Ofcourse, moving at such high speed damages the Falcon so in order for this to work the base must be set to fix the Falcon.

hehe - another secret feature of planets:

if you hold the planets with id 345 - 349 and set friendly codes of TIM WIS SEM ANR ULZ you will receive 5 PBP per turn for free.

however if you have planets 221 - 227 and set FCs of BUT ILI KE STA RSB ETT ER and planets 2 - 25 and fcs of AND THE STO RYA BOU TAV IRU SDE STR OYI NGT HEN EW VER SIO NOF DOS PLA NIS ABL OOD YLI E!! you will be automatically killraced.

this feature is the only cause why Tim hasn't released all of his source code yet.

From: "James Johansson" <[email protected]>
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 19:16:35 GMT

Hi
I Tried that second secret trick, and yes, I got killraced (But it was a heck of a job to gain all those planets). When I got killraced a picture of Tim wearing Yoda ears popped up laughing madly. Is this picture in the program code or is it sent in the message or can it be found in the BMP directory ?

Here some new hostfeatures which we are needed necessarily ;-)

*LADY_ROYAL_REVOLT_RATE*
*LADY_ROYAL_REVOLT_DAMAGE*
Now you can set the Percental Chance per Hostrun where the Clans on a LADY_ROYAL Ship loose their Money instead of winning each Turn. If this Happens
there will be a "Revolt" on the Ship (with Damage equal to the amount set in "Lady Royal Revolt Damage")

*BOVI_ASSIMILATION_RATE*
This feature set The Percentual rate of Clans that will be Assimilated by The Bovinoid Natives each Turn.

*CAPTAIN_IS_DRUNKEN_CONST*
Now you can set for Race 1, 10 and 11 the percentual Chance per Turn a Freightercaptain is Drunken (this will cause Random flight Route this Turn)

*BERSERK_FIGHTING_CHANCE*
Now for them Clingons, you set the Percental Chance / Turn they will fall under a "Berserk-Mode" in This Turn, they win EACH Fight against every enemy, but also might fight each other (there is a 20% Chance per Berserk-Mode that each Clingon ship will Fight each other Clingon Ship or Planet at the same Spot)

*BORG_!JUST!_APPEAR_SETTINGS*
If this switch is on, the BORG will Just Appear somewhere in the Universe (that means, all Battlecubes will just move to one Point in the Universe where the greatest Enemy-Fleet Stands.) the Percentual Chance to happen is exactly 5% per Turn. If this switch is enabled there is also a 5 percent chance that all Borg-Cubes are Teleported out of the Game.

*PRIVS_WONT_ROB_RATE*
This setting decides the Chance per Ship the Privs wont Rob this Turn, because they are not in the mood to do so. (this describes the anarchic government of the Privateers) instead of Robbing, they try to launch a Big Party with their Enemys and will (instantly) be Captured.

*FED's_SUDDEN_DEATH*
This means that the Fed's Life-supporting-Systems sometimes wont work (in almost every Part of Startrek, the Life-Supporting-Systems just went down several Times, they just made it work in the last Minute, this switch sets the Rate, The onboard engineers are not able to bring the life-support back to work in the right time, so all the Crew will die instantly) per Ship there is a 1% Chance/Turn the Life-support breaks down.

*DARTH_VADER's_QUEST Chance*
If this switch is on then there is a Chance of 5percent that the Player loose control of the evil empire because every Ship is set to intercept one randomly selected Enemy-Ship. If This happens the Empire's Ships can only travel 75 lightyears a Turn, but consume *NO* fuel. If the selected Enemyship is reached, the following thing happens: 90% (rounded down) of all Enemyplanets are now under control of the Empire (and all the Ships in Orbit, regardless of the Owner Race)# 60% of the Enemyships in Deep Space are Slain  If the Quest is in Progress, the Player of the Empire totally Loose control of his entire fleet. but not on Planets. if The Empire is on the Quest, all Empire Planets and Starbases are on 0 Defence. But every Ship that Fight against an Empire-Ship enters Battle with 66% Damage.

+ Origin: Short on Cargo Space, okay, Jettison 1000 Fighters, done.

New in Host 3.22.028 - New Fed Mission - 'Prime Directive'

The Feds now have a powerful new mission - 'Prime Directive'. Up to five Federation ships can execute this mission at once. To use 'Prime Directive', a Fed ship with both beams and torp tubes sets its mission to 'Super Refit' and its friendly code to 'NCC'. This has several effects.

First, the ship is renamed Enterprise. If more than one Ship is performing 'Prime Directive', the ships are assigned letter suffixes by id number so they can be told apart. The first ship is named Enterprise A, the second Enterprise B, and so on to Enterprise E.

'Prime Directive' ships are given elite crews and ordered to peacefully explore the universe. Good Karma surrounds these ships because of their peaceful nature and skilled crew. While on a 'Prime Directive' mission, a ship cannot attack, but it also cannot be destroyed. Any ship or planet attacking it simply loses and is either captured or destroyed..

The 'Prime Directive' mission also affects ship movement. PD ships can move through minefields unharmed. No matter what kind of engines they have, they consume fuel as if they were equipped with Transwarp drives, and their warp factor is increased by one. Thus, a 'Prime' ship can move 81 ly in a turn at warp 8, and 100 ly a turn at warp 9.

There are some downsides to this mission. All ships and planets within 300 ly can see 'Prime Directive' ships, even if they are in orbit around a planet, since they loudly hail every ship and planet in range. Also, 'Prime Directive' crews are too curious for their own good and they tend to get into trouble when off the ship. Whenever a PD ship beams cargo to or from a planet, one crewmember dies.

RESISTANCE IS FUTILE:
when Borg got cubes (!) with the ASCII codes for r, e, s, i, t, a, n, c, f, u, l as ids and sets them up in the right way, so that they battle in an pattern that the ids read: resistance is futile and all of them have to win, this is the end of the game. all other races ships are instantly assimilated, all planets are taken over by the Borg (yes, even the amorphous ones)

Friendly code: "PRN" (porn):
if this fc is set on a planet, all cinemas on this particular planet will instantly start showing only porno movies. this will lead to a great stimulation of native and colonist growth (double the normal amount), but 10 turns of PRN (cumulative, not consecutive) will decrease the native AND the colonist government by one, because of the lower ethics standard.

Planetary friendly codes

SPM
Setting this code on one of your planets will send the nearest enemy spam-messages. If kept for three turns in a row any captain within 20 lightyears will commit suicide out of agony.

CM#
This friendly code opens a communications channel to race #. Typical messages are the latest weather forecasts and directions to the nearest red light-district.

Ship friendly codes

MND
The engines are taken off the ship and are transferred into supplies. The ship will continue orbiting the planet as moon, defending it against enemy ships.

LUP
This is an acronym for Let Us Play: Starbase command and the captains of nearby enemy ships start gambling for minerals and cargo.

SM#
By using this code a ship can establish a black market-trade with race #, in order to gain knowledge of their techlevels and to trade worthless goods for MCs of the enemy.

TET
A cloaked ship with this friendly code can install Tetris on a Borg cube. The Borg crew will die after 3 turns due to a lack of regeneration and the cube can be taken over.

COP
This friendly code will make the captains of Super Star Destroyers behave like policemen, apprehanding all Privateer ships they can find.

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