Margetios Bazaars ================= Have you: - felt limited by standard ship configurations of your Planets race? - wanted to confuse your enemies with a fighter-bearing Large Deep Space Freighter? Torps on that Alchemy ship? - needed to get your hands on that 'special' ship? - wished to upgrade components like those Fed-guys? - wondered where your enemy bases really were? - Been curious about your own minefields? If these issues never concerned you, close this file now! Ah...you're still reading? Presenting 'Margetios Bazaars for VGA Planets.' Margetios Bazaars will provide services to meet those 'special needs' for the discerning Commander. Overview ======== Margetios Bazaars are part of an add-on utility for VGA Planets 3.5 that takes advantage of the AUXHOST features found in HOST 3.20. This add-on provides the capability for players to Build and Improve ships, Collect Information on enemy starbases and obtain reports on their own minefields. A number of Margetios Bazaars (defined by the Host Configuration) can be found wandering throughout the Echo Cluster. Margetios Bazaars travel about Warp5 in roughly straight lines, automatically wrapping the edges of the known map. You should be able to see all bazaars on your WinPlan starmap, however all players will receive Margetios messages detailing current bazaar locations for the current turn. Margetios Bazaars can provide many functions for you. Each function comes at a price. The price and corresponding Friendly Code list is provided each turn as a Margetios message. Moving your adequately funded ships to dock with these bazaars, you can request these special functions through new Ship friendly codes introduced with this program. To dock, simply move to any bazaar location. Ships serviced by a bazaar will move with it through space, allowing multiple requests in successive turns. Once a request has been serviced, the ship's friendly code will be set to '*.*' and it's warp to 0. Please note the Margetios friendly codes are case sensitive. The current codes supported by Margetios follow... +Sf - Swap ship for Margetios Fighter Carrier +St - Swap ship for Margetios Torpedo Chucker The default Margetios ship is a 5-engined cloaking vessel with a mass of 773, cargo and fuel capacity of 218 and 980 respectively and a crew of 847. The 'Margetios Clipper' has 9 Margetios beams and can be outfitted with either torpedo (+St) or fighter (+Sf) launchers. This configuration can be changed by your host. +Uw - upgrade Beam Weapons to Margetios standards +Ut - upgrade Torpedo Launchers to Margetios standards +Ue - upgrade Engines to Margetios standards Margetios beams, torpedoes and engines are of a tech-10 quality superior to those available to the typical tech-10 base. Through special arrangement, they may be purchased at your own starbases at considerable cost. Requests to upgrade equipment to Margetios levels are performed at the rates shown in the price list, regardless of the number of units upgraded. Upgrading 10 beams is the same cost as upgrading only 2. +Aw - add an Extra Beam weapon +At - add an Extra Torpedo launcher +Af - add an Extra Fighter Bay On request, Margetios Bazaars will add components to your ships. The components added will match those already installed on the ship. If the requested component is the first to be added, Margetios will install a Margetios-class tech 10 unit. Limits to equipment additions do exist. Ships cannot support both Fighter Bays and Torpedo Launchers at the same time. PHOST games allow up to 20 units of any component while HOST only 10. It is possible to add weapons to freighters or any ship class. ?I# - obtain race # Base info (eg. ?I6 for race 6 bases) Margetios will provide base information for up to 10 bases owned by the race you request. If more than 10 bases are owned, Margetios does its best to give representative information, albeit incomplete. Margetios Bazaars does offer a 'free' planet friendly code function. ?MF - your minefield status as of the end of the current turn The following is the sequence in which Margetios Functions are handled.... ShipRequests MoveBazaars PlanetRequests LocationMessages Contents ======== Margetios Bazaars contains two programs: MARGLOAD.EXE MARGETOS.EXE Place these programs in the same directory that HOST normally runs. Margetios Bazaars require access the the VGA Planets databases (HULLSPEC.DAT, BEAMSPEC.DAT, etc.) as well as the host databases (SHIP.HST, XYPLAN.HST, etc.). Margetios Bazaars also provides replacements for the following files.... BEAMSPEC.DAT ENGSPEC.DAT HULLSPEC.DAT TORPSPEC.DAT TRUEHULL.DAT These files should be placed in the HOST root directory as well as provided to all game players. It is advisable to create copies of existing files before any replacements are made. New Margetios files supplied... VPAUX601.BMP Provide this BMP to all Win-Plan users for inclusion in their 'bmp' sub-directory. VPA.MSG Provide this file to VPA players. An updated file, VPA.MSG recognizes the Margetios Bazaar locations and shows them as 'markers' on the VPA starmap. MARGETOS.TXT This documentation which shuld be provided to all players using the Margetios add-on. New Game Setup ============== Before Margetios Bazaars can be used the configuration program, MARGLOAD.EXE, must be run. The format is simply MARGLOAD # directory For example; to configure a new game in E:\ with 5 bazaars MARGLOAD 5 E:\PLANETS\NEWGAME Run MARGLOAD after the MASTER program has been run. It will update the UFO database as well as create a 'MARGETOS.INI' file in the game directory with default values. The default contents of MARGETOS.INI follow. You should change the values to suit the requirements of your game. PHost=N ; Runing PHost(Y) or Host(N) hull=26 ; Margetios Hull # ship=10000 ; Loaded Ship MC : +Sf or +St xbeam=1000 ; Extra Beam MC : +Aw xtorp=1000 ; Extra Torp MC : +At xbay=1000 ; Extra Bay MC : +Af mbeam=500 ; Margetios Beam MC : +Uw mtorp=500 ; Margetios Torp MC : +Ut meng=500 ; Margetios Engines : +Ue info=2500 ; Base Info MC : ?I# ; You can change the values but not the parameter format!! 'hull=26' refers to the hull used in the '+S' hull swap request. The HULLSPEC.DAT and TRUEHULL.DAT have been modified to reflect the creation of the 'Margetios Clipper' utilizing hull number 26. No race has been allocated this hull class. In the default host configuration, hull 26 is allocated to Race 3, 'The Birds' as the 'White Falcon Class Cruiser.' If this is a PHOST game, indicate such. PHOST supports up to 20 beams and fighter bays per ship while the HOST limits these values to only 10. HOST does allow more than 10 components per ship but will use a maximum of 10 in battles so the extras are simply deadweight. HOST Setup ============== MARGETOS.EXE is an Auxhost 2 program. Add a reference to your game's AUXHOST2.INI as follows: MARGETOS directory where 'directory' references the game directory. Both direct and relative directory references are supported by MARGETOS.EXE. Margetios will create a log in the referenced game directory for each execution. THE Author... ================ Margetios Bazaars are not freeware, almost. The files in this package are not crippled in any way. If the programs are of interest to you and your friends, I would like to hear about it! Contributions or comments for Margetios Bazaar development should be directed to: montcalm@islandnet.com On request, a 'personalized copy' of Margetios Bazaars can be sent electronically to an EMAIL address of your choice. Margetios Bazaars for VGA Planets 3.5 Design, Programming & Documentation: Montcalm Consultants Special Consulting: Don (Robo) Friesen, Blair Cusack Developed with: THE PORTABLE HOST DEVELOPMENT KIT Version 3.2.2.7 Copyright (C) 1995,1996 by the program authors: Andrew Sterian, Thomas Voigt, and Steffen Pietsch. All Rights Reserved. VPA: alex.ivlev@sharenet.com VGA Planets is a Trademark of Tim Wisseman Margetios Bazaars Copyright (C) 1996 Montcalm Consultants All Rights Reserved. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ THANK TIM WISSEMAN FOR HIS EFFORTS AND DON'T FORGET TO REGISTER YOUR COPY OF VGA PLANETS ------------------------------------------------------------------------