(Use this link to jump to November 1998 editorial.)
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Comments: This site features a clean building so its pages load very quickly. Game setups are pretty similar, with some add-on where needed, and endgame is mainly decided by voting. Great emphasys is given to players' communication: a "bios" section let everyone show personal information, and the ICQ phonebook, although restricted to NV users, is very useful on contact purposes. NV recently moved to its current address, so now even turncheck replies should be sent at once, without the delays required by the previously used dial-in connection method. Cassa |
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"Welcome to the NAVGAP VGA Planets Web Site! While exploring this site, you will find information and services useful to you, whether you're a beginning player, a veteran player, a host, or merely a VGA Planets enthusiast."
E-mail:
navgap@navgap.dartmouth.edu (Stephen Simms) |
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Comments: With its 60 games and over 400 players Spaceport Hamburg rightfully belongs to the "big ones" club. "Big" is also the right adjective to describe its continuously running "Andromeda" turney, an add-on stuffed games bonanza which anybody can join at any time. The webmaster took the pain to write an easier-to-use autohost program by himself, so SH can offer automatic updates of scores, player activity and turn status. Visiting this site you can feel the personal touch of an enthusiast host which is enjoying his "work". On the other side, it's a shame that here and there heavy graphics and jumbled pages slightly depreciate the overall SH value. Cassa |
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"Like any big port, Spaceport Hamburg is a huge place, where new visitors
could get lost. So let me give you a hand ( and lead you through the streets
of Hamburg, i will show you...)."
E-mail:
armin.trott@on-line.de (Armin Trott) |
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Comments: Ratt 359 is a PHost/TKF oriented hosting site. The host will be eager to set up a game tailored to your special needs, if you want to, with alternative hand-made starmaps, different shiplists and commonly used add-ons such as PWrap and Explore Map. Besides, R3 boasts the quickest turnfile handling I've seen. Send an e-mail with your turn attached, take a deep breath and... the reply is in your mailbox. Not bad, indeed. Cassa |
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"Ratt359 now has 2 independant autohost sites!
'autohost@disturbed.net' and 'ratt-vgap@spiff.net'
Both use Phost3 and pscripts to handle Hosting tasks.
Hosting Schedules are game dependant as are game configurations."
E-mail:
ratt@spiff.net (Matt Rathgeb) |
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Comments: Planetsserver offers a unique feature: it allows its users to remotely configure, run and maintain an entire game from themselves. A little assortment of game setups are granted by two different personalized shiplists and three starmaps. PS has a good load of active players (about 400 at time of writing), which can can have their turns handled both by e-mail or browser applications. Cassa |
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"Free full featured automatic host for VGA-Planets."
E-mail:
team@planets.unix-ag.uni-hannover.de (PlanetsServer team) |
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Comments: Solar Flare boasts the best graphic look among the TT Host sites (hint: use the "no frames" version if you have less than an ISDN connection). A local forum is available to exchange tactical comments or just have some chat with other SF visitors. A huge FlagShip tournament is running here, luring players from all around the world. Although a large site, SF is generally well organized and tidy, it only suffers the same flaw pointed out in other host sites using PHCC: the excessive length of players and games lists, which causes the users a long download time, repeated with every list update. Cassa |
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"VGA Planets on Solar Flare hosts games daily and 3 times per week. Newbies,
beginners, experienced and expert players all welcome. Many add-ons used.
Different maps featured. Host 3.22.023 used. Winplan and DOS Shareware
available for download."
E-mail:
markzed@solarflare.co.uk (Mark Zywina) |
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Comments: A visit to Cobos Vga Planets site starts with the sight of a striking index page, in all dark-green nuances. Maybe Kerr has a weakness for the Lizards? :). Anyway, the same page offers some link to download commonly used player utilities and host add-ons. The subpages lead to a small tactics database, a classic "hall of fame" and a handful of links to other VGAP-related pages. Host automation is ensured by AutoTroll Jr. freeware hosting application. Cassa |
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"Welcome to the Cobos VGA Planets site. Games are open to all players with all
kinds of experience and registered versions are not essential."
E-mail:
cobos@globalnet.co.uk (Kerr McIntosh) |
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Comments: PlanetMaster is home of the PHCC automatic host application. It uses an internal ranking system to reward the players with military-style decorations (from "Ensign" to "Admiral") for both their skills and their reliability. Cassa |
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"Come and join the greatest Bavarian VGAP host." E-mail: PlanetMaster@masters-burghausen.de (Bernd Ruf) Web site: http://www.masters-burghausen.de/planetmaster/index.html |
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Comments: Arena is a simple PHost-oriented site whose games are generally configured with that classical couple of "reality flavour" add-ons that by now everybody know: PWrap (map borders become "crossable" so the corners are no more useful to hide in) and Explore Map (you only see the planets near your ships, so you have to move to see other planets). Alternative game setups and shiplists are available on request. The site offers an internal ranking page and a PHost documentation section. Maybe there is space for some other useful subpage, like a "detailed player info" page? Cassa |
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"The Arena is a hosting project of Kai-Uwe Clauswitz, who enables me to host on
his machine, Kero van Gelder (who wrote the scripts for autohosting) and Jurjen
Niezink (coordinator of players and starmaps). The goal is simple, host as many
games as requested by players." E-mail: jurjen@su1401.phys-chemie.uni-marburg.de (Jurjen Niezink) Web site: http://su1401.phys-chemie.uni-marburg.de/~jurjen/ |
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Comments: The Vga Planets Zone is a PHCC based automatic hosting site. The player ranking system is the same as "PlanetMasters" (PHCC home site), so players are divided in military-style groups like "Fleet Liutenant" or such. There is a drawback in using PHCC software that here is revealed in full: the pages it generates become greater and greater with players joining and game adding. Do you like downloading a 250k+ HTML page just to see a single player's score? Or 130k (plus graphics!) to see game info before deciding to join?. Cassa |
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"Here you will find a wealth of informational links on the game. More importantly
though you will always find a game looking for players. I am Also always looking
for new game ideas. So if you have one let me know."
E-mail:
gutter@riconnect.com (Gutter Boy) |
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Comments: Wolf 359 offers some very interesting personalized game setups, with predefined starmaps and host program settings. Here new teams are welcomed and supported first, then challenged and possibly thrashed by the veteran players. It's the right place to test the strenghtness of your local VGAP team. Cassa |
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"Wolf-359 and its partner Babylon 7 provide top class Teamplay games for players
all around the world. All Wolf-359 affiliated teams are encouraged to have a team
page, either on this server, or a link to a page elswhere. This is totally free,
and I am happy to help in the design of a team page, and to post updates as
required." E-mail: wayne@ecn.net.au (Wayne) Web site: http://www.ecn.net.au/~wayne/ |
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[ November 1998 Editorial ]
"Why a top ten hosts list?", some of you could be wondering. Well, the idea came shortly after I completed the "docs + tactics" section, when I suddenly realized that no VP site is an island: I needed to add some link to mine too.
But, I had up to here of all those excessively ("All Vga Planets Links!") long listings I saw on many sites: dry data dump with no personality at all. Not to talk of the fact that maintaining such a list is near impossible, so after a while it decays in a dead link graveyard.
I decided that instead of running after all existing VP links I would have listed only those which, in my humble opinion, deserved attention. Being the Net scattered with a lot of such good sites, I've been forced to limit myself to ten names, not to make my list useless. So I fired up my browser and started.
From that first effort the Top Ten Sites (here in its August 1998 version, still to be updated) list was created. It listed what I thought were the best ten sites available in general.
Then I decided to make a separate section for hosting-oriented sites, because their purpose is different from that of generic VP sites: they had to support the hosting activity of their webmaster, so it was just unfair and of no use to compare those with the general ones.
So, here is the Top Ten Host Sites list: hope you find it useful. And hope to hear comments from you at my cassa@oocities.com address.
Cassa
... any question?
Q: "... what if I wanted to decide which the best host sites are by myself?"
A: You can use these links as a good starting place:
- NAVGAP Host Sites List: http://navgap.dartmouth.edu/hosts.html
- VP Host Webring: http://www.webring.org/cgi-bin/webring?ring=host;list
Q: "... why aren't Robo and Spinward Main listed?"
A: I'm only listing free hosts. If you really like those hosts, though, write me and I could change idea. I'm always open to constructive suggestions.
(Top Ten Sites) |
(Main page) |
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You can send comments about this page to cassa@oocities.com. Thanks to Geocities for hosting it. |