THE PORTABLE HOST Frequently Asked Questions Version 3.2.2.12 This file provides answers to many common questions about PHOST. Questions from both players and hosts are addressed. The questions are broken up into two parts: I. Common Questions II. Bugs -- real and otherwise Index of Questions ================== I. Common Questions ------------------- 1. How do I get the latest version of PHOST? 2. How do I set up a new game? 3. How do I convert a HOST game to PHOST? 4. What's the difference between HOST and PHOST? 5. What's new in PHOST? 6. What files do I need to convert when hosting on a non-DOS system? 7. How do I create an alliance? 8. When do alliances take effect? 9. Will PHOST work with the Planets 3.5 interface (WinPlan)? 10. Will PHOST be available for the FOO platform? 11. How do I use an ALTLIST with PHOST? 12. Can I switch between using PHOST and HOST? 13. What happens if I delete the AUXDATA.HST file? 14. Can I use VPHOST with PHOST? 15. Can I use PHOST with add-on programs (Starbase+, RacePlus, etc.) ? 16. What are all of the special friendly codes? Which ones are registered-only codes? 17. WinPlan crashes when I try to view my battles! How do I use PVCR with WinPlan? 18. I get errors when trying to build the Linux PHOST distribution. II. Bugs -- real and otherwise ------------------------------ 1. Why did my fighters/torps disappear? 2. Why does PLANETS say I have 2 battles but PVCR only shows 1? 3. Why did my ship run out of fuel? PLANETS said the ship would arrive at this planet with exactly 0 fuel but the ship ran out of fuel before it arrived. 4. PHOST reported that a minefield was 999 LY away but this isn't true 5. PHOST reported that a wormhole was 999 LY away but this isn't true 6. Why do VPUTIL and WinPlan crash when I try to watch my battles? 7. Why can't I see these enemy ships on my viewer? PLANETS says they are out of scan range but they clearly are not. 8. What happened?! All my starbases disappeared, ships are in the wrong place, everything is wrong! 9. Why does PVCR show this ship as sustaining 10% damage but when I look at it in Planets, it only has 8% damage? 10. Why does my ship show up as having no damage when in fact it has 1% damage? 11. Why am I getting all these warnings saying my host data is bad? 12. Why can't I tow/transfer to/intercept/etc. this ship? PHOST gives me a yellow alert and says that it's impossible. 13. Why did my ship fail to cloak? 14. Why did my ship, which was undamaged, enter battle with discharged beams and tubes? 15. I'm using the Starbase+ add-on and I get an error message when the starbase program runs. 16. Why did my ship not fight the enemy ship? 17. There's a ship listed by Informer and I can lock on to it in the starchart but it's not visible/I can't intercept it/it doesn't belong to any race/etc. 18. Why did I get a red alert when I submitted my TRN? It's only the first turn of the game and I'm not cheating! 19. I'm trying to cancel a build order from my starbase but the build order keeps showing up next turn. 20. I'm playing in a game with Jumpgate/Asteroids and I can't see any UFO's. EchoView's UNPACK35 doesn't work either. I. Common Questions =================== 1. How do I get the latest version of PHOST? The latest version of PHOST is available at the following official distribution sites: http://www-personal.engin.umich.edu/~asterian/phost.html (Michigan, USA) ftp://ftp.teleport.com/users/goldman/VGAP/phost (Oregon, USA) ftp://ftp.fu-berlin.de/pub/pc/msdos/games/vgaplanets/phost (Germany) 2. How do I set up a new game? The file INSTALL.DOC describes setting up a new game for both DOS and non-DOS systems. For DOS systems, setting up a new game is very similar to doing so using the original HOST. For non-DOS systems, there are two ways to master a new game: 1) Use the PMASTER program that comes with the PUTILS distribution to master the game on the non-DOS platform that you are using. 2) Master the game under DOS, transfer the new files to the non-DOS system, then use PCONVERT to convert the files to the format of the native platform. The first method is the easiest and doesn't require transferring files from the DOS system to the non-DOS system. The second method allows you to take advantage of special utilities that exist for DOS only, such as PLANMAP or VPUTIL, which allow you to customize the initial universe to a larger degree than what PMASTER allows. 3. How do I convert a HOST game to PHOST? The file INSTALL.DOC describes the steps necessary for conversion. On DOS systems, this requires nothing more than setting up a PCONFIG.SRC file and running PCONFIG. Then, PHOST is used instead of HOST. On non-DOS systems, the game files must first be processed by PCONVERT. See UPGRADE.DOC for instructions on converting a HOST 3.1x game to PHOST 3.2.2.x. 4. What's the difference between HOST and PHOST? The file DIFFS.DOC describes all of the known differences between HOST and PHOST. 5. What's new in PHOST? The file DIFFS.DOC describes new features found in PHOST. Briefly, the biggest features are: * Alliances (see ALLIANCE.DOC) * Wormholes (see WORMHOLE.DOC) * Alternative Combat (see CONFIG.DOC, PVCR.DOC, PCONFIG2.SRC) * Cheat checking (see INSTALL.DOC) * Auxilliary Data Files (see UTILDATA.DOC) * Command Processor (see COMMANDS.DOC) * New Configuration Options (see CONFIG.DOC) If you are already familiar with PHOST 3.15, then read through the file NEW32.DOC for a list of changes between PHOST 3.15 and PHOST 3.2. 6. What files do I need to convert when hosting on a non-DOS system? See the PCONVERT.DOC file for this information. Briefly, PHOST uses the following files: PDATA.HST -- required, must be processed by PCONVERT SHIP.HST -- required, must be processed by PCONVERT BDATA.HST -- required, must be processed by PCONVERT MINES.HST -- required, must be processed by PCONVERT NEXTTURN.HST -- required, must be processed by PCONVERT GEN.HST -- required, must be processed by PCONVERT HULLSPEC.DAT -- required, must be processed by PCONVERT ENGSPEC.DAT -- required, must be processed by PCONVERT BEAMSPEC.DAT -- required, must be processed by PCONVERT TORPSPEC.DAT -- required, must be processed by PCONVERT TRUEHULL.DAT -- required, must be processed by PCONVERT XYPLAN.DAT -- required, must be processed by PCONVERT AUXDATA.HST -- if present, must be processed by PCONVERT, otherwise this file is generated by PHOST RACE.NM -- required, need not be converted PLANET.NM -- required, need not be converted PCONFIG.HST -- required, must be generated by PCONFIG 7. How do I create an alliance? See the file ALLIANCE.DOC. You must send a command message (a message to yourself) with the words 'allies add 5' to offer an alliance to race 5, for example. Use any race number from 1 to 11. The other player must do the same for the alliance to take effect. 8. When do alliances take effect? See the file ALLIANCE.DOC. Alliances do not take effect until both players offer each other alliances. If only one player offers an alliance, then the other player derives no benefit from this offer until he too offers an alliance to the first player. 9. Will PHOST work with the Planets 3.5 interface (WinPlan) ? Yes. PHOST 3.2.2.x is compatible with WinPlan. The only caveat is that you must not view PHOST-generated battles with the WinPlan built-in VCR. You must view them externally from DOS (see Question #17 below) or with the DOS Planets 3.0 client interface. 10. Will PHOST be available for the FOO platform? Only if we can find access to a FOO machine. Since we will not distribute source code, we can only release object code for machines which we have access to. Sorry, but there's nothing we can do. 11. How do I use an ALTLIST with PHOST? You simply place all non-standard data files in the game directory. PHOST searches for all global data files in the game directory first, and if not found, then in the main (root) directory. For example, if there is a HULLSPEC.DAT file in the game directory, PHOST will use it. If not, PHOST will look for a HULLSPEC.DAT file in the main directory. 12. Can I switch between using PHOST and HOST? Yes, BUT....you must be careful with the AUXDATA.HST file. When you use PHOST to host a universe that was hosted using HOST on the previous turn, you must ensure that the AUXDATA.HST file is deleted prior to running PHOST. 13. What happens if I delete the AUXDATA.HST file? PHOST uses the AUXDATA.HST file to store auxilliary information. If you delete this file (which you may have to do if you run HOST after running PHOST) then PHOST will re-create it but you will lose the following information: * The PHOST build queue order will be lost. All pending ship build orders will be added to a new build queue in increasing order of planet ID's, starting at a random planet. * The original natives info will be lost. PHOST keeps a record of the native type that was present on a planet when a base is built. If the AUXDATA.HST file is deleted, PHOST will assume that the natives present on a planet on the current turn are the ones that were present when the base was built. This is only important when a shareware player takes over for a registered player and base tech levels are downgraded. * All alliance information will be lost. Players will have to re-form alliances. * Cheat checking will be slightly weakened for the turn in which AUXDATA.HST has to be recreated. * The version number of PHOST that was last used on this game will be lost. If a newer, incompatible version of PHOST is used on older data files, there may be unpredictable results. PHOST normally prevents this from happening by checking the version number in the AUXDATA.HST file. 14. Can I use VPHOST with PHOST? Yes. As of PHOST 3.15.1.5, VPHOST should work correctly with PHOST, as far as file-level compatibility is concerned. Note, however, that VPHOST processes TRN files on its own and removes them before PHOST has a chance to see them. With PHOST versions prior to 3.2.2.10, this means that command processor messages are not seen by PHOST and all command processor functionality (such as alliances) will not work. With PHOST 3.2.2.10, a new PHOST command line flag -V was introduced to overcome this problem. VPHOST makes backup copies of the players' TRN files, in the form of PLAYERX.ORG files (for example, PLAYER5.TRN is copied to PLAYER5.ORG before being processed and deleted by VPHOST). The -V flag causes PHOST to look for PLAYERX.ORG files instead of PLAYERX.TRN files, and to only process command processor commands from these files (all other information in the TRN file is ignored since it is assumed that VPHOST handles it). Also, VPHOST strips the combat configuration information from VCR files. PVCR notices that this information is missing and will look for a PCONFIG.HST file on the player's system. This file must correspond to the same configuration used by the host, else the player's view of the battle will not match what actually happened (as determined by PHOST). The host should either send the PCONFIG.HST file (if PHOST is running under DOS) to the player, or, preferably, the PCONFIG.SRC file and the player can then run PCONFIG to generate the PCONFIG.HST file. 15. Can I use PHOST with add-on programs (Starbase+, RacePlus, etc.) ? Yes, PHOST is currently compatible with all known add-on programs. There are some items to take note of, however: * The mechanism by which add-on programs are invoked is slightly different. The HOST mechanism (AUXHOST) automatically invokes external add-on programs by executing the files AUXHOST1.EXE and AUXHOST2.EXE (if present), or AUXHOST1.BAT and AUXHOST2.BAT (if present), and also executes the command lines found in AUXHOST1.INI and AUXHOST2.INI (if present). PHOST does not require nor does it use these AUXHOST files. Instead, PHOST requires the host to manually execute the add-on programs (quite possibly from a batch file). This may sound like a shortcoming but it is in fact an advantage (see INSTALL.DOC for more details). The -1, -2, and -3 flags of PHOST are used to support add-on programs (see INSTALL.DOC). For example, suppose that the RacePlus add-on is being used. This add-on runs in both the AUXHOST1 and AUXHOST2 phases. Thus, in a HOST setup, an AUXHOST1.BAT file may be created containing the line: RACEPLUS 1 MYGAME and an AUXHOST2.BAT file may contain: RACEPLUS 2 MYGAME With PHOST, the same effect can be achieved by creating a single batch file containing the following: PHOST -1 MYGAME RACEPLUS 1 MYGAME PHOST -2 MYGAME RACEPLUS 2 MYGAME PHOST -3 MYGAME Other add-on programs would be inserted in the appropriate places in the above batch file. * Some add-on programs require configuration parameter values from an HCONFIG.HST file that is assumed to reside in the game directory. PHOST does not use or generate such a file so you should either: - create an HCONFIG.HST file manually using the HCONFIG.EXE program that comes with HOST 3.2, or - Use the '-c' switch to PCONFIG (DOS only) to generate the HCONFIG.HST file at the same time that you generate the PCONFIG.HST file. 16. What are all of the special friendly codes? Which ones are registered-only codes? Here is a current list of special friendly codes for both planets and ships. A brief description is provided for reference. The 'Reg. Only?' column indicates whether this code is only usable by registered players. Planet/ Reg. FC Ship Only? Description --- ------ ---- --------------------------------------------------------- mkt S Yes Build torpedoes in space with minerals + megacredits mdh S Yes Drop only half of your torpedoes when Mine Laying mdq S Yes Drop only one quarter of your torpedoes when Mine Laying msc S Yes Scoop up your mines and make torpedoes when Mine Sweeping alt S Yes Alchemy ships only manufacture Tritanium ald S Yes Alchemy ships only manufacture Duranium alm S Yes Alchemy ships only manufacture Molybdenum NAL S No Alchemy ships do not perform their alchemy function HYP S No Hyperwarp-capable ships perform a hyperjump NTP S No In combat, the ship will not launch fighters or torpedoes ATT P No Planets with this code will attack ships in orbit NUK P No Same as ATT but fuelless ships are attacked too mdN S Yes Drop only 10*N mines (100 when N=0) when Mine Laying miN S Yes Lay mines belonging to race 'N' when Mine Laying (N=1..9,a,b) WRS * S No Scan for wormholes WRT * S No Travel through a wormhole lfm S No Load minerals necessary for fighter building dmp P Yes Starbase will recycle all components in storage bdm S Yes Ship will beam down all credits to a planet if in orbit gsN S Yes Give a ship to race N (N=1..9,a,b) nat * S Yes Alchemy ships build Duranium and Molybdenum, no Tritanium nad * S Yes Alchemy ships build Tritanium and Molybdenum, no Duranium nam * S Yes Alchemy ships build Tritanium and Duranium, no Molybdenum cln S Yes The ship with this code will be cloned btt S No Transfer torpedoes to enemy ships with the same torp type btf S No Transfer fighters to enemy ships with bays btm S No Transfer money to enemy ships bum P No Beam up money to enemy ships in orbit pop S No Ships with glory device will explode unconditionally trg S No Glory device will explode if enemy cloaked ship is detected con + P No Send the PCONFIG.SRC file in the UTIL.DAT file next turn nbr S No Priv/Crystal ships can tow without capturing fuelless ships The '*' beside an FCode indicates that it is specific to PHOST. The '+' beside an FCode indicates that it functions differently from HOST. 17. WinPlan crashes when I try to view my battles! How do I use PVCR with WinPlan? WinPlan cannot handle PHOST-generated battles. You must use the PVCR.EXE program that comes with PHOST (also available in the player files subset distribution) to view these battles. Once you create a PIF file for PVCR, viewing your battles is just one mouse click away. Here is what you must do if you use WinPlan: 1) If you do not have a copy of the DOS Planets distribution (either shareware or registered) then you must get this distribution (available at many archive sites) and extract the RESOURCE.PLN file. This file should be placed in the main WinPlan directory. The remainder of the DOS Planets distribution can be discarded. This file contains bitmaps for the ships. Perhaps in a future version of PVCR, the *.BMP files from the WinPlan distribution will be read directly and the RESOURCE.PLN file will no longer be necessary. 2) Install PVCR as VCR.EXE in the main WinPlan directory. 3) To view a PHOST-generated battle, open a DOS window (full-screen) and enter the main WinPlan directory. Let's assume that you are player 3 and that your game is in the VPWORK4 directory. Then, you would type: vcr -s -p 3 vpwork4 The argument to '-p' is your player number and the game directory should follow all command-line options. Type 'vcr -h' for a list of other options. A small batch file for the above one-liner could be created to absorb some of the details. Perhaps even a PIF file under Windows (a shortcut under Windows 95), so that a single double-click will open up the VCR's for a game. 18. I get errors when trying to build the Linux PHOST distribution. The Linux operating system is in a transition from a.out binary file formats to ELF formats. PHOST is currently compiled using a.out formats so if your system is using ELF formats you will get several link-time errors and will be unable to build PHOST. If you have retained a.out compatibility on your ELF system, you can build PHOST by simply adding the following flags to the compiler command: -b i486-linuxaout Look inside the 'Makefile' file for an easy way to do this. II. Bugs -- real and otherwise ============================== 1. Why did my fighters/torps disappear? This is a bug in the PLANETS client program. If you transfer fighters/torps from one ship to itself, then your fighters/torps will disappear. This may also happen when transferring fighters to a torp ship or vice versa. PHOST will attempt to correct for this bug by returning fighters/torps to the original ship. 2. Why does PLANETS say I have 2 battles but PVCR only shows 1? See the file PVCR.DOC for a full explanation. Briefly, PHOST relies upon a list of configurable parameters for defining combat behavior. These parameters must be the same for both PHOST and PVCR for the battle to appear the same to both host and player. Thus, PHOST must transmit these parameters to PVCR. It does so by generating an extra battle at the end of every VCR file which contains this information. PVCR automatically recognizes this extra battle as really being configuration information and does not attempt to display it. PLANETS does not know about this arrangement and thinks that this configuration information is really a battle. 3. Why did my ship run out of fuel? PLANETS said the ship would arrive at this planet with exactly 0 fuel but the ship ran out of fuel before it arrived. The fuel consumption formulas used by the original HOST and the PLANETS program are not exactly known. PHOST must approximate the fuel consumption (see FORMULAS.DOC). Therefore, it is possible (though unlikely) PLANETS may tell you that you only need a certain amount of fuel to get to your destination but in reality PHOST may require more. HOST sometimes also requires more fuel than PLANETS predicts. It is very very unlikely that PHOST is to blame for your ship running out of fuel (but if it is, please send a bug report to the PHOST bug reporting address). Some other things to consider are: * Did your ship try to cloak? Remember that fuel is removed from a ship prior to movement if the ship is cloaked. * Is the UseAccurateFuelModel configuration option ON? The UseAccurateFuelModel configuration option uses a different formula for calculating fuel consumption. In the majority of cases, this formula will lead to *lower* fuel usage than what PLANETS predicts. There are some cases however (e.g., low mass ships or short distances) in which the actual fuel consumption is *higher* than what PLANETS predicts, and your ship may run out of fuel. If the UseAccurateFuelModel configuration option is enabled, you must invest the time and energy to learn and use the fuel consumption formulas in the FORMULAS.DOC file. 4. PHOST reported that a minefield was 999 LY away but this isn't true. PHOST only reports summary messages for minefield scans. That means that no matter how many ships scan a certain minefield, you will only receive one message about that minefield. Since this message is a summary, it does not make sense to report distances to ships since more than one ship may have scanned this field. Thus, the distance is reported as 999 (since some utilities expect to see a number in this position in the message). The minefield's co-ordinates and radius are always reported correctly so this distance information is not really necessary. 5. PHOST reported that a wormhole was 999 LY away but this isn't true. As for minefields, PHOST only reports summary messages for wormholes. The same reasoning applies here as for Question 4 above. 6. Why do VPUTIL and WinPlan crash when I try to watch my battles? You should not view your battles using VPUTIL or WinPlan. VPUTIL does not call the VCR program but instead calls VPVCR which bypasses PVCR's auto-detection mechanism. Thus, the old VCR program is passed PHOST-generated battle information, which is not a good thing. Similarly, WinPlan does not allow PVCR to handle the VCR file and is not able to properly display the PHOST-generated battle. You can use the DOS Planets client program to view your battles. Note, too, that you can view your battles without starting PLANETS at all. Typing 'vcr -s -p 5 gamedir', for example, will view all battles for player 5 in the directory 'gamedir'. Also see Common Question #17 above. 7. Why can't I see these enemy ships on my viewer? PLANETS says they are out of scan range but they clearly are not. The DOS Planets 3.0 program has an internal limit of 50 enemy ships. If more than 50 enemy ships are scanned in a given turn, then the excess ships have only their position, owner, and mass reported and the client program reports that they are out of scan range (showing only the position, owner, and mass). PHOST has an option, AllowMoreThan50Targets, which controls whether or not the number of ships listed in the RST file is limited to 50. When this option is ON, all enemy ships within scan range have full information reported, but DOS Planets will crash if you attempt to use this RST file directly. You must use an external utility, such as VPUTIL and/or VPUNPACK, which can correctly handle more than 50 scanned enemy ships. The original UNPACK utility will NOT WORK if AllowMoreThan50Targets is enabled. 8. What happened?! All my starbases disappeared, ships are in the wrong place, everything is wrong! If you've set AllowMoreThan50Targets ON and are NOT using a program that can handle these extra targets, you may experience very strange behavior in Planets. Note that the UNPACK program that comes with DOS Planets CANNOT HANDLE more than 50 targets and must not be used if the AllowMoreThan50Targets option is ON. You must use a utility like VPUTIL 3.0 and higher or VPUNPACK 3.0 and higher to unpack your RST file. 9. Why does PVCR show this ship as sustaining 10% damage but when I look at it in Planets, it only has 8% damage? Did the ship have supplies? If so, remember that ships repair themselves with supplies both before and after combat. 10. Why does my ship show up as having no damage when in fact it has 1% damage? This is a bug in the PLANETS 3.0 program. When a ship has 1% damage, PLANETS shows it as having no damage. 11. Why am I getting all these warnings saying my host data is bad? Two reasons: you're either using CPLAYER or you're using PHOST to take over a HOST game in-progress. CPLAYER is notorious for cheating but PHOST won't let it cheat. And since CPLAYER modifies host data files directly, its actions will sometimes show up as inconsistencies in the host data and will be flagged (and corrected) by PHOST. If you are running PHOST on a game that has been using HOST, then you may also find some inconsistencies in the host data files simply because HOST does not always "tidy up" after itself. 12. Why can't I tow/transfer to/intercept/etc. this ship? PHOST gives me a yellow alert and says that it's impossible. To prevent cheating, PHOST makes sure that you can actually "see" the ship you are trying to tow/transfer to/intercept/etc. For interceptions, for example, PHOST remembers whether or not the ship you are trying to intercept was visible to you on the previous turn. If it wasn't (it was cloaked, perhaps) then you are not allowed to intercept it. The previous turn's ship visibility information is stored in the file AUXDATA.HST. If this file is stale or corrupt, you may experience yellow alerts. The most common cause of this problem is a stale AUXDATA.HST file. This can be caused by running PHOST for one or more turns, then running the original HOST for one or more turns, then running PHOST again. The last run of PHOST sees an AUXDATA.HST file that was only valid some turns ago and it may determine that your actions are invalid because you cannot "see" the ship you are interacting with (which was only true some turns ago). The solution to this problem is simply to delete the AUXDATA.HST file if PHOST is to be run after using HOST for one or more turns. PHOST will automatically recreate this file. Note, however, that some information will be lost (like the build queue). See Common Question #14 above. 13. Why did my ship fail to cloak? Your ship may have failed to cloak due to not having sufficient fuel, having too much damage, or because of cloak failure. If the CloakFuelBurn config option is greater than 0, then your ship needs a certain amount of fuel at the start of a turn for cloaking to succeed (see FORMULAS.DOC). This fuel is consumed immediately before the movement phase. If you finish a turn with 0 KT of fuel, then you uncloak. Similarly, if you suffer damage during a turn, possibly due to mine hits, then you uncloak if your damage exceeds the DamageLevelForCloakFail config option. Note that a bug in the PLANETS 3.0 program (see Question #11 above) shows ships with 1% damage as actually having no damage. Thus, your ship may be prevented from cloaking because it has 1% damage but this damage is not seen in PLANETS. Finally, all cloaking missions (including Super Spy) suffer a random chance of failure on each turn (configured by the CloakFailureRate config option). 14. Why did my ship, which was undamaged, enter battle with discharged beams and tubes? A bug in the PLANETS 3.0 program (see Question #11 above) shows ships with 1% damage as actually having no damage. It is possible that your ship appears undamaged when in fact it has 1% damage, hence the initially discharged beams and tubes in battle. 15. I'm using the Starbase+ add-on and I get an error message when the starbase program runs. The Starbase+ program requires the presence of a HCONFIG.HST file in the game directory. Since PHOST uses a PCONFIG.HST file and does not use or create an HCONFIG.HST file, Starbase+ won't run properly. Use the HCONFIG program that comes with HOST 3.2 to create a dummy HCONFIG.HST file in the game directory. The configuration should match the PCONFIG configuration in all minefield-related items (such as sweep rate, sweep range, etc.) Alternatively, run PCONFIG with the '-c' switch (DOS-only) to generate an HCONFIG.HST file that matches the game's configuration. 16. Why did my ship not fight the enemy ship? There are several reasons why a battle that you think should have happened did not happen: * The enemy ship was out of fuel * The enemy ship matched your friendly code. If you have a habit of setting your friendly code to the same thing, or if you set them in patterns, after capturing some of your ships your enemy may have guessed your friendly code correctly. Also, with the new friendly code ordering of HOST 3.2, only completely-numeric friendly codes determine battle order. Thus, it is natural to set your ships' friendly code to numbers like '001', '002', etc. to determine their order. If you enemy does the same thing, you will have matching friendly codes. It is best to use more random numbers such as '153' and '257' to determine battle order. Even then, there's a 1 in 1000 chance of matching. It may not sound like a significant probability but...it can happen. * Neither one of the two ships had beam weapons. In HOST, if both ships have no beam weapons, then they will not fight, even if they have torpedoes or fighters. This is not true in PHOST; two ships will fight even if they have no beam weapons. * Did you remember to set a Kill mission or the correct primary enemy? * Remember that planets don't attack ships unless this is enabled in the configuration. Also, the Rebels and Klingons may be made immune to planet attacks by special configuration options. And if the Imperial Assault mission is enabled, the Super Star Destroyer is also immune to planet attacks. 17. There's a ship listed by Informer and I can lock on to it in the starchart but it's not visible/I can't intercept it/it doesn't belong to any race/etc. This is a common occurrence when using the Jumpgate add-on and DOS Planets. Sometimes, ships known as "Alien Marauders" will come out of jumpgates along with other ships that travel normally through them. The Jumpgate add-on maintains these ships with an owner race of 12, but the DOS Planets program was only designed to work with races of 1 through 11. Thus, these alien marauders are not displayed properly. As a result, the Jumpgate add-on cannot be used (easily) with the DOS Planets client. 18. Why did I get a red alert when I submitted my TRN? It's only the first turn of the game and I'm not cheating! Is your game using an alternative ship list or a custom planetary map? If so, make sure you've followed your host's instructions regarding the setup of the custom data files. Otherwise, if you are using one ship list and your host is using another, then when you build a ship it will cost a different amount from what PHOST thinks it should cost, and the difference in minerals and money is what triggers the red alert. Similarly, if you are using the wrong universe, a red alert will occur when you beam things on or off the planet, since PHOST will wonder how it is that things can move from one place (the planet) to a different place (your ship). 19. I'm trying to cancel a build order from my starbase but the build order keeps showing up next turn. Both MAKETURN and WinPlan exhibit this problem once the 500-ship limit has been reached (when used with HOST 3.2). Under DOS, the solution is to use VPUTIL or VPMKTRN to compile your TRN files. There is currently no known solution under WinPlan using HOST 3.2. When PHOST is used, however, WinPlan users will be able to cancel their build orders. MAKETURN, however, will still not work. VPUTIL or VPMKTRN should be used for DOS Planets players. 20. I'm playing in a game with Jumpgate/Asteroids and I can't see any UFO's. EchoView's UNPACK35 doesn't work either. The UFO information used by some add-on programs (like Jumpgate and Asteroids) is only sent in new-style (3.2) RST files. You only get a new-style RST file under the following conditions: - You are playing in a HOST 3.2 game and you submitted your last TRN using the registered WinPlan client program (i.e, you used the MAKETURN program built-in to WinPlan) - You are playing in a PHOST 3.2 game, you submitted your last TRN using the registered WinPlan client program, and your host is not running PHOST with the -T flag. - You did not submit a TRN on the last turn and you are playing in a HOST 3.2 game or you are playing in a PHOST 3.2 game with version 2.9 or lower. As of PHOST v2.10, PHOST will remember whether or not the last valid turn you submitted was from WinPlan. Not submitting a turn no longer provides you with a 3.2-style RST file. EchoView's UNPACK35 program was meant for old HOST 3.2 versions in which DOS Planets players received new-style RST files. The latest HOST 3.2 and PHOST 3.2 programs render the UNPACK35 program obsolete.