Re: Galaxy vs VGA Planets

From: atreis@news.delphi.com (ATREIS@DELPHI.COM)

Date: Sat, 01 Jan 1994 22:17:41 +0000

rnovak@nyx10.cs.du.edu (Robert Novak) writes:

>thecat@felix.nervous.com (Roberto Nucci) writes:

>>I play and host VGA Planets game, but don't know anything about Galaxy... Can
>>someone make a comparison ?

>Galaxy is text-based and requires no client program, for starters. From
>what I recall of VGA Planets, you have a binary client which is machine
>specific to a MS-DOS compatible PC, which is used to handle the graphic
>representation of the turn files. Galaxy can be played from any machine
>that can create and send Internet email (or theoretically, fidonet email
>or any other network's email).

>There is probably a lot less initial detail in Galaxy. The strategy can
>get very thick later in the game, but it starts out pretty simple. I
>can't go into much more comparative detail, since I had VGA Planets on my
>system for about half an hour and have been playing and hosting Galaxy
>for nearly a year with as many as 19 games in the process. Hope this
>helps a little bit.

Just thought I would add a few things as someone who has been playing
Galaxy games for two years now (a bit longer, actually) and played
VGA Planets games fr about four months.

VGA Planets contans more details, such as what sorts of resources a planet
has and the amounts of those resources, individually.  Galaxy has a
generic indicator of the resources on a planet.  VGA Planets planets
contain whether attributes which can make it more difficult for the
population to survive.  Galaxy has a population limit per planet.  This
is pretty similar.  Except that in VGA Planets the population of an
occupied planet may revolt if you tax (something you can't do in Galaxy
either) them too much.  It is also in VGA Planets able to completely
deplete a planet's natural resources, making that planet useless for
anything but production using materials shipped in from other places.
In VGA Planets you also have internal politics to worry about in keeping
all your planetary populations happy.  This is not a concern in Galaxy.

In Galaxy, however, the external polcs become much much more important.
If one misuses one's resources in VGA Planets and runs out, then that
person will most likely drop out of the game pretty quickly.  In
Galaxy, a person must be destroyed.  With the much larger number
of players found in a Galaxy game a much greater importance is placed on who
is allied with whom, and how strong those allliances are.  This is
especially true toward the end of the game.  A large player can very
easily be knocked out of the game in Galaxy by a group of smaller players
that get upset at that person's policies.  This is not so much the case
in VGA Planets.  (It can happen, but it is much less likely.)

When a race pulls ahead in VGA Planets, that race generally stays
ahead.  This is very much not the case in Galaxy.  VGA Planets is
very good as a complex strategy game in which you have to deal with
both internal and external matters.  Galaxy, however, is much better
as a game of war strategy.  Dealing with the externals of war, the
war itself.

Hope this helps some.

>If you want to look at the Galaxy rules, email rnovak@nyx.cs.du.edu with
>subject "sendme galaxy docs" and my server will mail them back to you.

>Rob

atreis@delphi.com
'REX' in Galaxy bigun
'Far_Star' in Galaxy nugib

References

Galaxy vs VGA Planets
thecat@felix.nervous.com (Roberto Nucci)
Wed, 29 Dec 1993 11:49:36 +0000
Re: Galaxy vs VGA Planets
rnovak@nyx10.cs.du.edu (Robert Novak)
Fri, 31 Dec 1993 16:20:13 +0000