
                                ---------------
                                Fleet Evaluator
                              for Vga Planets 3.x
                     version 0.9.7b by <cassa@geocities.com>
                     ---------------------------------------


Welcome to Fleet Evaluator for VGAPlanets.  This is a player utility that
keeps track of the critical "500 ship slot" situation.

By using all data it can extract from your (unpacked) .RST, and from all
other .RSTs you can put your hands on (eventually that long-distance ally
becomes useful! :), it fills a table of 500 slots, and it keeps it updated
turn by turn.

This is particularly useful for cloaking race players (Lizards, Birds,
Fascists, Privateers), that can send spies everywhere in enemy empire,
profiling the enemy fleet before attacking, or before deciding to go the
other way! ;)

After collecting all data it can find, Fleet Evaluator generates a number
of reports (ferep*.txt), which you can examine to find enemy strenghts and
weaknesses!

Fleet Evaluator becomes more useful as game advances, because it will have
more turns to collect data and so to update his 500 ship slot table. So,
insert it in your UNPACKX.BAT file at turn #1, and forget it until every race
starts to crank out ships like snow flakes... by then you'll understand why
it's so important to have such an utility! ;)



                           I N S T R U C T I O N S
                           -----------------------

Installation: - copy "feval.exe" and "hullspec.dat" in a directory of your
                choice (example: c:\vgap\feval\);
              - make a copy of "feval.ini", put it in your game data
                directory and modify it as you need;

Syntax: FEVAL [gamepath] [/n] [/i] [/r] [/l] [/a] [/s] [/oxxx] [/px:pwd] [/h | /?]
(All switches are case insensitive) 

Where: gamepath ---> path to your game data directory;
       /N       ---> (N)o report generation;
       /R       ---> (R)eport generation only;
       /I       ---> (I)gnore existing database;
       /L       ---> (L)ocal database+reports generation;
       /A       ---> (A)ctivity log;
       /S       ---> (S)trict check;
       /Oxxx    ---> (O)nly collect data from these races;
       /Px:pwd  ---> (P)assword for race "x";

/N = Data collection only, (N)o report at the end. Useful when loading several
     turns at once, since the generation of reports is the most time-
     consuming operation of all. Example: you start using Fleet Evaluator,
     but the game you are playing in is at turn 15 already. If you saved the
     old .RSTs, you can unpack and feed them one at a time to Fleet Evaluator
     using the /N switch, so the operation will be much faster. See also "/L"
     switch and "suggest.txt" file.

/R = (R)eports only, no data collection. Useful when you used the /N switch,
     so you have no updated reports. When using /R, Fleet Evaluator will
     ignore any game data, will load his database (fedb.dat) and create the
     reports. If a database cannot be found, this parameter will be ignored.

/I = (I)gnore database. This instructs Fleet Evaluator to ignore any database
     file already present in work directory, and to start from scratch a new
     database. The old database file will be renamed *.OLD before proceeding.
     If you use "/I" along with "/R", "/I" parameter will be ignored. How
     could FE generate its reports without data collection AND without loading
     its database? :)

/L = (L)ocal database+reports generation. If you use the "[gamepath]" option
     to specify a directory where Fleet Evaluator should search for game
     data, it will normally create its database + the reports in that same
     directory. With "/L" switch instead Fleet Evaluator is instructed to use
     the current directory to store all its data. 
     See "suggest.txt" for a convenient way of using this switch.

/A = (A)ctivity log. When this switch is activated, FE will create a log of
     his actions in the work directory (i.e. the "gamepath" directory, or the
     directory where FE was launched from if you use the "/L" switch also).

/P = (P)assword for race "x". Use this switch to feed turn passwords to the
     program. Syntax is: /Px:pwd, where "x" goes from "1" to "b". For example,
     if you want to tell that the Bird password is "IronEagle" you should
     write: 
     /P3:IronEagle
     Or, if the Rebel password is "123guessme":
     /pa:123guessme

/O = (O)nly read data from given races, the "brothers" switch. With this
     switch you tell FE to try and read data from selected races only. Note
     that this is NOT the correct way to strip your own race data from reports,
     there is a INI section for that purpose, while it is important that at RST
     level FE can put its hands on every single turn you have. A use that can be
     made of this switch is that you could have a shared PC at home to play  the
     same Vga Planets match on, so a single game directory could actually contain
     different races than your own, races for which you obviously don't have the
     password to read data from. :)
     Syntax is: /Oxxxxxxxxxxx, where "x" goes from "1" to "b". For Example, to
     tell the program to read only Fed,Bird,Robots and Colonies data, while
     ignoring files from any other race:
     /o139b



 - Program running

After running, a file called "fedb.dat" is created. It will be either in
"[gamepath]" directory or, if you used the "/(L)ocal" switch, in current
directory, and will contain all info Fleet Evaluator has found from your data.
If you don't use the "/(N)o reports" switch on command line to prevent this,
other files (ferep*.txt) will be created with a series of VPA-style reports,
which are the core of Fleet Evaluator work. See "suggest.txt" to have
suggestions on this issue.

Fleet Evaluator has an internal "stale turn" watchdog, so you can be sure it will
never let you feed it stale turns. Note that starting from this version (0.9.7b)
FE will always accept data from the _current_ turn. This part was modified to
allow you to feed your own turn to FE even while still waiting for your ally to
send his, so you can feed this second turn to FE later on and it will not be
rejected as stale because it has the same turn number of the last turn in database.


 - Screen output

While running Fleet Evaluator will show some self-explanatory messages, then it
will produce an output like this:

[...]
* Finding data for races oo3.oo..x.. - Turn number: 74
[...]

Explanation of conventions used:

1..9,a,b: race data was found, color meaning:
          Light gray (standard): no winplan data found (vpa/planets.exe user)
          Bright white: winplan data found and valid;
          Dark gray: winplan data found but not valid (vpa/planets.exe user)

x       : wrong password for race (check /P switch or INI file);

o       : race data was found but not read because of "/O" or INI file settings;


 - Important note

                                   *************
Important note about this version: you'll find in the reports a new series of fields,
about ship weapons, torps or fighters. These fields aren't currently used except for
your own ships (but you anyway know what weapons you have, don't you? :), and have
been prepared looking forward to next FE version.
                                   *************



                            L E G A L   S T U F F 
                            ---------------------

DISCLAIMER:
Fleet Evaluator is freeware. I, the author, am not responsible for any
problems that may come from the use of this program. I cannot guarantee in 
any way that this program will not damage your data or your operating system.

Make a BACKUP before running Fleet Evaluator on your data!


                                  A U T H O R
                                  -----------

Enjoy with Fleet Evaluator and if you like it or you need some special
modifications to improve the program, please send me a mail:

                             cassa@geocities.com
                                ICQ 9016231
                 http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/5167
                         


                                 C R E D I T S 
                                 -------------

VGAPLANETS is a trademark belonging to Tim Wisseman.  Players are encouraged
to register Tim's game.

				Tim Wisseman
				PO Box 204
				North Fork
				CA 93643

                         http://www.vgaplanets.com/
                         e-mail: cocomax@aol.com


I wish to thank Stefan Reuther (Streu@gmx.net) for having produced a complete
list of Vga Planets data files format, without that document this program 
could have never been written.

I want to thank Dennis Weise (dennis@weise.hl.uunet.de) for his kind 
beta-testing and suggestions.

I wish also to give credit to the following people for snippets of their code
I used:

Timo Salmi(ts@uwasa.fi) - A couple routines from tspa3570.zip package;
Erez Amir CIS:100274,701 Fax. (+9723)517-1077) -  Generic QSort routine; 
Jim Walsh CIS:72571,173 - CmdLine Unit;
The SWAG team http://www.gdsoft.com/swag/swag.html - Several snippets of code;

