(written by Megalomaniac)

Well, this should be a short article. Control the most planets. Game over. You won. As it turns out, it’s not quite that simple. When you look at the planets scoreboard, there are several other columns including one labeled military and one labeled score. In addition, what happens if there is a tie in planet count at the end? Well, it pays to be the Colonies or at least to be the higher ID race, as the ranking algorithm will show you as first winner. You will get your 4x achievement points. However, the lower ID race which appears as the second place winner will also get 4x achievement points so long as they end with an identical planet count. This is how you score in your standard, diplomatic planets games. Those achievement points are crucial to advancing in rank. Experience is required as well but you mostly get that for showing up enough times whether you win or lose.

Originally, Nu used to rank winners according to military score. Military score is based on the original VGA Planets add-on called Autoscore. Autoscore awards 1 point each for megacredit and 5 points for each mineral used in the construction of warships defined as any ship with a beam, torpedo tube or fighter bay. The values of the engines, beams and torpedo tubes and on board torpedoes and fighters are calculated as well. In addition starbase defense posts, planetary defense posts, minefields and starbase defense fighters are totaled but subsequently divided in half as a penalty for not being a mobile military asset. A fighter on a ship would be worth 125 military points because it costs 100 megacredits to build the fighter and 5 minerals which are multplied by 5. If this fighter were stored at a starbase, it would lose half its value and only be worth 62.5 military points.

Military score is no longer routinely used to determine victors in Nu games. There were peculiarities such as a stardrive 1 engine, xray gemini loaded with 400 fighters being worth 50,755 military points while a transwarp drive engine annihilation with 10 heavy phasers, 10 mk8 tubes and 320 torpedoes is worth 38,965 military points. The Gemini would boost military score tremendously although it was poorly suited to destroy any ships or planets. The races that could build fighters in space for free would have a huge boost to their military scores even if these fleets were ineffective in actual combat.

So if military score is no longer the standard for declaring the winner, why bother learning about it? Those who fail to properly understand and utilize data from the military score will not reach their full potential. In addition, a higher military score facilitates the destruction of ships, starbases and defense posts. This will directly translate into achievement points which is the primary rate limiting step in promotions to higher ranks.

The true utility of the military score is the intel that it provides, particularly in those crucial early turns of a new game. With a little common sense, you should be able to determine many of the ships built by the other races. Bookmark this webpage and study it well:
http://onebit.ca/cgi-bin/vgaplanets.py/Shipyard

Although the combinations of various ship builds might seem daunting, recognizing the strengths and likely strategies of each race will narrow down the possibilities tremendously. The Borg, Evil Empire and Rebels are likely to build their hyperspace capable ships early on. You can determine their engine and beams with relative ease. The Lizards are likely to build their ubiquitous lizard class cruiser and it should not be terribly difficult to know the beams on their ship if you assume transwarp engines and mk4 torpedo tubes. Bioscanning ships such as the Federation Brynhild class escort, Robotic Pawn class baseship and Colonial Cobol class ships will be built early on. The privateers of course will build many MBRs and careful tracking of his military points will tell you if they are equipped with only xray lasers and no torpedo tubes. The Crystals will build Rubies and Emeralds initially with mk4 tubes and you can reverse engineer the beams. I pay special attention to the Birds in the opening turns to track how many Resolutes they are building as these ships can put a swift end to your homeworld if you are unprepared.

Examples of early builds:

As the turns progress, minefields will be laid and fighters in space will be built so it will be more difficult to deduce the ship builds. Also, if you wish to disguise your ship builds early on, it would be prudent to consider building a defense post, starbase defense post or torpedo or two so your incremental military points on any given turn don’t exactly total to a typical build which will be broadcast to all your more observant opponents. If your opponent knows from your military score that you have mostly built probes and weakly armed ships, you may find yourself eliminated with the loss of your homeworld within the first 15 turns. The astute player tracks how many Resolutes and MBRs are built early on and will take appropriate defensive measures if they have not definitively identified their immediate neighbors assuming an early homeworld strike is in progress. Even in the mid-game, the military score can be manipulated in ways that disguise your ship builds. If your enemy is closing on one of your starbases believing it to be poorly defended, you can build your best warship while simultaneously laying minefields elsewhere or transferring ship fighters to a starbase so you get your best ship built but the military score increment will be blunted to the extent that your enemy believes you have built a weaker warship and continues his attack only to be unpleasantly surprised. Even when the ship limit has been reached, the military score can protect you against nasty surprises. Did the crystals just lose 3450 military points without losing a warship? Perhaps they just converted 100 mk 8 torpedoes into a minefield measuring 100 light year radius in an area beyond your mine scanning range.

Lastly, there is the scoreboard column simply labeled score. It is the original VGA Planets scoring system which awards 120 points per starbase, 10 points per planet, 10 points per warship and 1 point per freighter. It is not used in determining victors on the Nu site and is of historical significance.

MEGALOMANIAC

Fezzik: We face each other as God intended. Sportsmanlike. No tricks, no weapons, skill against skill alone.