Frequently Asked Questions

Frequently Asked Questions:

Aren't Gates and Never Dawns / Afterlifes overpowered?
Well - That depends. It depends on whether you look at the ships themselves or at the whole race. If you just do not want to have ships in VGAP that are even stronger than a Gorbi (without fighters), you obviously do not like the Tech 9 or Tech 10 ships.
However, you can also look at what a Never Dawn means:
If a Shadow has a Never Dawn he has a base with 35mio minions. Since by normal growth he can never have more than 20mio, he must have gained 15mio minions by evil acts and NEPs. The first just depends on the other players and the second means a constant fallback of the power of The Shadow. A NEP makes The Shadow stronger after a period of about 10-15 turns - but it weakens him while these turns pass by.

If a Shadow even has an Afterlife, he has a Gate. Afterlifes are limited to 3 per Planet Gate and 7 per Asteroid Gate. However, a Gate is most probably on a planet and that means that The Shadow is very vulnerable now. Once a Shadow has a Gate he can be killed forever by just destroying the Gate. Ways to destroy a Planet Gate are:
1. Ground Assault it and then bomb it to pieces (once there are less than 50mio in the base)
2. Enough NEOs and orbital Bombing afterwards.
3. Super Laser the planet.
4. Drop pods with 5mio Chupanoids (but be prepared - the Universe will never be the same again :)
5. Have enough pods with Chupanoids explode in a 300 distance so that at least 5mio Chupanoids appear at the planet with the Gate. Once again: The Universe will look differently after that :)
6. Kill the majority of the Base Frequency Seal Devices in the Orbit. That will make the planet gain massive HD Stress per turn. If a Gate does a NEP the game is lost for The Shadow.
7. Use Glory Devices
8. Use a Ragnarok Device
Actually The Shadow needs an Afterlife eventually. He has no tools at his disposal to fight fighters with Sand Caster Immunity combined with ships with Sand Casters. Only the Afterlife with their T3 fighters and the Nemesis Torpedo can defend against such combinations.

A Gate on an asteroid is very hard to create. But it can only be killed by:
1. Enough NEOs and orbital Bombing afterwards.
2. A Proto-Matter Cannon that rebuilds the asteroid into a planet.
3. A Ground Assault by a race that can live on asteroids and if needed: orbital bombing afterwards.
4. Establish a base with a race that can live on asteroids and put 5mio Chupanoids in this base the same turn. The Gate will attack the base and 'capture' 5mio Chupanoids the next turn. That will create an UNEC at the Gate and the game is won. This is the only way to use Chupanoids against asteroid bases and Gates on asteroids.
5. A Ragnarok Device
6. If you don't have have less light than dark powers: By chance The Elders with their Proto-Matter Cannon might appear. Use them to destroy the Gate.
7. If you don't have less light than dark powers: Put a big fleet of ships above the Gate. Destroy the ships of The Shadow the turn they spawn before they get fighters. Destroy them with PTT and fighters with SC immunity. Eventually The Elders will appear. Use their Proto-Matter Cannon to destroy the Gate.
The fact that ship building at a Gate cannot be blockaded ever, might make this seem rather overpowering, but you do not need to destroy the Gate on the asteroid to neutralize it. Just put a fleet in the orbit with massive numbers of Photon Torpedoes. Since The Shadow has no fighters when his ships spawn and he only has 1 Holo Decoy per spawned fleet (Tech 1- Tech 10), his ships are very easy to kill this way. However, that also means a massive use of ordnance per turn. The penalty for allowing The Shadow to create a Gate on an asteroid that is.

Why is it so hard to create a Gate on an asteroid?
Bases on asteroids already stop growing at 5mio minions. You need to gain 45mio minions just by evil acts and NEPs. The NEPs have to be done in an area that has several very big bases that all do NEPing. A NEPed base is lost and thus The Shadow looses support of about 10 big bases to gain one Gate on an Asteroid. Let alone the danger that someone interrupts The Shadow in the process of NEPing.
Isn't The Shadow overpowered on large maps?
Usually: Not.
It is true: The more planets are on the map, the more planets The Shadow will own. But his bases are all scattered. If the density of the planets and the density of the other players is the same, the size of the maps does not matter at all. Then, double as many planets mean double as many players and that means that the emerging 100.000 minion bases are shot down at the same time they were shot down on a smaller map. The Shadow will have the same problems creating a coherent empire. He might manage to create more than one coherent empire. So: yes, The Shadow is more powerful on larger maps, but not overpowered.
However: Larger maps mean more micromanagement. More micromanagement means that more players are dropping. Dropping players are very evil and thus give a Shadow a considerable growth advantage. A ghost empire that is not attacking the emerging bases anymore will soon be flooded with his minions.
Additionally the micromanagement when playing The Shadow is constantly low. This means a growing advantage the bigger the map. If many players drop The Shadow is overpowered. That is intentional: Ghost empires with no leader inevitably support The Shadow. But I'd rather say the unreliable players are the problem than calling The Shadow overpowered.
Isn't The Shadow overpowered on small maps?
Well :)
Again it depends. It depends on whether very early rushes succeed. Since the minions, gained by evil acts, are distributed among all of The Shadow bases The Shadow gains the more big bases the less bases he has. Since he usually has very few bases in the beginning, an early rush can overpower him on a small map. Early rushes are really evil, so it is perfectly in line with the race idea that The Shadow gains more power by them. However - in special maps of less than 100 planets and a Shadow, you should know what you are doing when rushing somebody early.

The problem of race balance is a problem that is directly connected to the very basic idea of VGAPlanets itself. Different races gain different advantages by different production factors. Different game setups mean a different distribution of these production factors. Borg and Rebels are overpowered when there are many natives, hyper jump races are overpowered when the distances between planets are vast or on big maps, Robots are overpowered when starting populations are low..
Often players forget that games are self balancing: The more people think that you are overpowered the less overpowered you are.
Isn't it boring to play The Shadow?
Depending on your style of play, in the beginning: yes.
Evil is slowly crawling into the galaxy. You do not have any ships until turn 6-8. You are not able to fight until turn 15-20 and you will never be able to distribute resources.
However, allies increase the power of The Shadow exponentially. Use your free time in the beginning, when you can do nothing but scan, to do diplomacy. You are not truly evil, that is just what others say and you can use your forces to do good, to come in troubled times and support empires against a common enemy...
The Shadow is based on Sci-Fi and that is the way to have fun playing it. Never speak as 'The Shadow', but use strange people to talk to the governments of other races. If you want to play a chess type of VGAP game The Shadow is still interesting, especially for your opponents, but that is not the way I had in mind when designing it. If you are into tactics and strategy only, you might be interested in the possibility to just control the ships and fleets and not having to do the economy that takes so much time with its micromanagement when trying to play professionally.
Why do the higher tech ships have a multitude of the hull mass of i.e. a Gorbi?
The hull muss is not only a measure for the size of a ship but also for the density of the materials used to build it. Since the ships of The Shadow are made of Negative Energy his first ships are very light and have low density. The ships in tech level 8-10, however, pack a massive amount of negative energy and thus are very 'heavy'. The hull masses of 6000kt,7000kt and 11000kt are, by the way, not totally out of line. The Off-World Colony, for example, has a hull mass of 10000kt.
Doesn't The Shadow change the way a VGAPlanets game is played and will hosts allow The Shadow in their games?
The 'problem' that races in a VGAPlanets game change the way it is played is neither new nor automatically a problem.
If you play the Federation and have an Evil Empire in your game you know that you have to be careful leaving your home world unprotected. If you play the Rebels or Privateers and have a Crystal nearby, you know that you have to make peace or search for a new home and some allies. If you play the Evil Empire and have a Robot next to you, you will have to be careful and as Robot you have to be careful if a Colonies of Man player joins the game.
To judge whether The Shadow means a problem to a game has to be judged by the way and the extend to that a Shadow changes the game for the other races.
A Shadow starts next to no race and next to all races. Thus he influences them all at the same time. This, however, makes it easier to foresee what might happen. With a Shadow in your game you need to build a few ships just to blow up emerging 100k minion bases. If you do that, you won't have much of a problem in the first 25 turns. After turn 25 you will slowly see 'empires' of The Shadow, regions that have been colonized coherently either by luck or by NEPing. These regions will send ships into your space. It won't be many ships but they will come continuously, because The Shadow cannot have many ships at once, but it doesn't cost him a thing build them. You have to defend against them and it should not be a problem to do that until other players begin to kill each other. *These* are the two ways in which The Shadow changes your game. Firstly you are constantly under slowly increasing pressure from turn 10 on and secondly you cannot first kill the rest of the universe and then tend towards The Shadow.
I have invested quite some time to make sure that the extend to that these characteristics of The Shadow influence your game is 'balanced'. Balanced means that you have a good chance to survive, even if The Shadow concentrates on you, and that you have a very good chance to kill The Shadow once and for all, if you concentrate on him (attack him) early. Kill 1/4 of his population, which he cannot move, and you have won. You don't need to expect large fleets as a defense.

Due to the alien approach to The Shadow it is very hard to judge whether I have succeeded or not. The only ways to find out are your comments, which you can post on the Newsgroup, and games.
Why should The Shadow be integrated into VGAP4?
First of all The Shadow creates a completely new gaming experience. No resources, no micromanagement. Just ships and it often doesn't matter if they are destroyed. The only thing you need to have a look at is the HD (Delta) Stress of planets. Otherwise it might happen that a base grows enough to be a Gate and explodes by HD Stress the next turn. But this is really the only thing that can go wrong if you're not paying attention.
However, The Shadow does not only create a new gaming experience for his player, but also for his enemies. Shadow ships come in waves and defense won't help you at all against The Shadow. Shadow Bases are very vulnerable (if they are not a Gate). So any big fleet of yours can cut through Shadow space easily, especially because The Shadow cannot assemble a big fleet. He can only come in waves and if your fleet is big enough these waves cannot harm you.
While bloody beginners will be able to play The Shadow without a problem and can even be dangerous The Shadow is also interesting for masters of VGAP! Mastering the art of NEPing is quite a task and how much HD Stress is enough for a base to grow, but not too dangerous once if it shall become a Gate? How do you create a Gate on an asteroid?
If you are neither a bloody beginner nor want to master The Shadow you will still really like it if you have few time. Micromanagement is a word The Shadow doesn't know. Even late game turns are mostly just about sending ships around and once in a while checking the HD_Stress in the data grid.
Actually The Shadow is the best race for an early try for an AI. It would be very easy to write such an AI.
Finally The Shadow fills a hole in VGAP4. There are many evil races, but no race that really 'crawls' into the galaxy and delivers any (role)playing experience like the Shadow does.
Against which Races is The Shadow Good / Bad?
1. The Solar Federation (Light green - harmless)
  They don't have labor camps and have no use for prisoners. If not some other race already fights them you could do it on your own. Your small ships can easily be boarded by their ships that can beam through your shields, but your big ships do not have to fear them. Also you don't have to fear their mines. The Black can take 60, the Never Dawn 70 and the Afterlife can take 110 Barbitic mine hits. Just don't care about anything, but layers of 15 minefields or more. They have no way to stop you hyper jumping in later. These Guys are easy prey for you and that's good, because they can mount a Proto-Matter Cannon and that's really a nasty thing, because it can destroy any of your asteroid bases easily. Should you really try to create a Gate on an asteroid you should make sure that there is no Federation around.
2. The Lizards (Blue - make them your friend)
  Lizards are not a nice enemy. They are extremely good fighters at the ground (1 Lizard Trooper is as strong as 1800 minions) and can board your ships with their Tech 10 ship. 8000 Lizard Troopers are as strong as 48,000 minions when boarding. That means that they can board anything, but your two best ships. The Never Dawn can be boarded with two T-Rexes. In addition they have a Grav Well on that ship to keep you from moving in or out via hyperjump. Fortunately the Lizards tend to sell prisoners as slaves and that makes them very nice guys. Help them capturing prisoners instead of fighting them. The Scalar Wave Amp is a real nice device to speed up the growth of your bases and on the high stress planets of the Lizards you can live quite well (they tend to create minerals with high stress). Finally the Lizards have the Loki that can tachyon scan if somebody wants to pod some Chupanoids on your planets while cloaked. Try to be friend with the Lizards.
3. The Birds (Red - exterminate at all costs as soon as possible!)
  Nasty! Really nasty! These people can cloak and they can cloak well! They can even carry cloaked pods of Chupanoids around. Be careful here! The last thing you need is somebody to first create an UNEC and then use the extra Chupanoids to kill your first Gate. Kill them as fast as possible. Don't be tempted by their labor camps. You would regret it later!
4. The Stormers (Red - exterminate as soon as possible!)
  And again a race with a fully cloaked ship that can dock pods. Not as bad as the Birds these ships can be decloaked by ordinary Tachyon Scanners. However, the Stormers are very hard to fight at the ground and can board all your ships except for the Afterlife with ease. Their troops are 8 times as strong as your defending crew and their big ship can carry 20.000 Troops. That's enough to board anything but the Afterlife! Better kill them before their Glory Devices begin to destroy the many layers of minefields around your bases..
5. The Privateers (Green -This is the easiest kill out there)
  Funny guys! Really! They are completely harmless. Privateers try to steal stuff from other races and that's really nice, because other races get upset and put them in labor camps. Never fight a Priv! He can do nothing to you, but will always be good to motivate some evil acts against himself. And he is breeding real fast - so more victims! Theoretically these people could become a major threat, because they can live on asteroids. But you would not let it come that far - would you?
6. The Cyborg (Light green - harmless)
  The only race that can board an Afterlife. But basically they are harmless. Unfortunately their economy is quite good and they neither work in labor camps nor do they have people work there. Kill them if you have nothing else to do or to 'save' the universe and make some friends.
7. Crystals (Violet - This is your Worst Enemy)
  The first race you should really avoid. REALLY! This is your worst enemy. Usually you don't care about mines- but these mines make you stop. Forget about hyping out of such a trap. Without any repair units your ships will perish like flies in their webs. Size doesn't matter at all here and you don't have that many mine sweepers. At least you don't have to worry that they could use your ships against you. Unfortunately the Crystals want to have your high stress worlds and it is very hard to ally with them. They just cannot stand your negative energy rays.
  A tip: Just avoid him and get other races to do the job.
  If you really need to fight the Crystal wait until you have Afterlifes (if ever). They are completely immune to mine hits and detonating mines. However, Afterlifes need to go into Crystal space without any escort.
8. Evil Empire (Blue - make them your friend)
  The Emperor is your friend. Nothing does he desire more than prisoners. Help him! If you need to fight him beware the hyperjumping ships. They can also put down Chupanoids and you really don't need UNECs.
9. Robots (Dark Red - Your second worst enemy)
  The second race that you should avoid at all costs. Their mines are especially nasty and your big ships are killed by his Gun Zeroes with just three shots (Two hits: 98% hull damage). The chance to be hit is 60% per GZ per ship. Additionally there's no jumping through his empire and to make it worse: The Robots have the Eye of Madagon. They can make Chupanoids be happy and put them into pods - release them at their convenience. Robots try to kill all life - offer them to help - you have basically the same mission - yours just includes him. If they don't want to be your friends make other races go after them. Only with Afterlifes you have chance to reach the Robots small bases - Still beware his Gun Zeroes! 3 hits in one turn kill you.
10. Colonies of Man (Light green - harmless)
  Finally a race again that is ready for the slaughter. They have no mines, no cloakers, no hyperjumpers - nothing. Beware his fighters if they have Sand Caster immunity. Since they usually don't take prisoners try to kill him before he gets SC immunity. If that's not possible he still needs to build enough fighters to be really dangerous. No fear - a usual enemy like you have killed many in the other dimensions.
11. The Rebels (Red - exterminate as soon as possible!)
  These Guys believe in goodness. They fight the Emperor. Kill them before they hyper jump and drop Chupanoids. Their native dust off makes it very easy for them to gather the Chupanoids from an UNEC and drop them at a Gate.
12. Solorians (light red - potentially dangerous)
  Flames that somehow have become alive. What's really good about them is how fast they breed. Remarkable. They have hyperjumping ships that can dock pods - so be careful.
  Their only nasty weapon is their Ragnarok device. The pure star matter kills all minions in a 200LY radius. But to be honest: That thing is just too expensive. If you're still live at the time they can build it you have overpowered him several times.
13. University Alliance (Light green - harmless)
  A normal race. Try to kill them or have them put into someone's labor camps. Weak ships, weak troops, no good weapons.
14. United Enforcement Authority (Red - exterminate as soon as possible!)
  Their exploding grav mines can hurt you a lot and the Jump Point Generator is nasty, right? :). The Pax can be used to hyperjump and drop pods with Chupanoids. Be careful.
15. The Scavengers (light red - potentially dangerous)
  Small rats in small ships trying to trade. The only thing they are good at is breeding and that fits well into your plans. Kill them late so you can kill more. Just beware the cloaking ships that can dock pods of Chupanoids and drop them at your high population planets. These ships are immune to barbitic mine hits.
16. The Centaurs (light red - potentially dangerous)
  Horses in ships without weapons. A wonder they managed to build spaceships at all. Unfortunately they breed real slow. So it doesn't make much of a difference if you kill them now or later. Beware the hyperjumping ships than drop pods with Chupanoids!
17. People's Army (Light green - harmless)
  Fast breeding very flexible race. Let them breed with their terraformers and soil reformers, until they are enough to have them killed or kill them yourself. No fear here.

How to fight The Shadow?
The Shadow crawls slowly into the galaxy. First bases will appear between turn 10-20. If you don't indent to play with the fire (which I leave up to you :) you will attack all bases of The Shadow as soon as possible. Have a special scan on high HD Stress planets in your vicinity. The Shadow grows extremely fast on planets with very high HD Stress levels. Do not fear that The Shadow might focus on you. He does not care that much about losses as you do. Good scanner ships are very useful to find his scouts, which are really hard to detect in the beginning of a game. If you find that The Shadow has a base on one of your planets do not panic. The chances that a ground assault against you takes place, even if The Shadow wants to, are marginal. Bases with 100k minions build his first three ships and none of these are capable of fighting any decent early warship of (almost) any other race. Unfortunately the tech 3 ship has two blaster cannons. If you have no raid shelters you might therefore suffer losses due to orbital bombing. Alternatively you could have told The Shadow that you might be interested to support him to some extend. The Shadow has a great desire to find people that support him. He has almost nothing to gain from bombing your first small bases so he will probably accept to not attack you. If you make clear that you cannot accept any of his bases on your planets he might understand and allow you to remove most of them. Play with the Shadow - he will also play with you.

Blaster Cannons, 500mm Guns and Anti Matter Guns are the weapons of choice to destroy bases if you are no Lizard. Try to not fight the Shadow by ground assaults if possible. If you loose, all your killed personal will join the Shadow base as 3 minions per person. If you win, your losses will still join the other Shadow bases in the universe as 3 minions per lost soldier. If you need to fight via ground assault use ground assault units, fighters or few, very strong troops/High Guards.

If a Shadow base reaches 500k minions it will build the Restless. This is a nasty ship, but no real threat. You can use mines - one hit of any mine kills it. Or try fighters - the Restless has no defense against them. The first ship with any anti fighter defense comes at bases with 1mio minions for the Shadow. Alternatively you can use ships with many point defense weapons. The 6 mass drivers of the Restless are easily countered this way.

Here comes the first rule: Never allow The Shadow to have a base with 1mio minions! This is most important!

Shadow bases with 1mio minions will build the Moloch and you probably have no way to defeat even one of these ships without taking heavy losses.
1mio minions will typically be reached at turn 30. Much earlier on planets with 800 or more HD Stress, much later on planets with 200 or less. If The Shadow really managed to build one or even several bases with 1mio minions in your vicinity you have a problem. You can offer him your support - and he will not decline, but backstabbing The Shadow is not easy, because he has many small, hardly visible scanners and ships spawn constantly at his bases. In addition there are big barbitic minefields around his bases that overlap several times.

If you did good work in the first quarter of the game and there are no bases with 1mio minions near you, eventually you will still find some. How do you fight these bases?
There are a few very good weapons against The Shadow:
First: Fighters with Sand Caster Immunity. None of the first 5 ships of The Shadow has any defense against these. Your ships with Sand Casters will easily be able to kill the Shadows anti fighter fighters that bases with 5mio minions build. The only anti fighter PD weapons the Shadow ever has are on the Drowning and the Black. These ships are built at bases with 10mio and 20mio minions.
Second: If your fighters are real bad you could try to use Photon Torpedoes. The Shadow is always very vulnerable against Photon Torpedoes, because he has no PTT on his own and only very few Holo Decoys on his tech 3 ship, the Dice.
Third: (Barbitic) Minefields are good weapons against all Shadow ships below tech 8, that is bases with less than 20mio minions. He has only few minesweepers and these are easily destroyed by almost any ships with weapons. If you can make The Shadow sweep mines and escorting Dices you can be proud :)
Last but not least: Board the Shadow ships. Since they cannot repair damage, an exploding minefield is enough to make them boardable by any race out there. The low tech level ships have very few crew and even the bigger ships have few crew considering that minions have combat rating 1.

The T1 fighters of The Shadow can be countered with almost any ship that is able to take some beating. The Carrier, Melted, is easy to destroy by weapons with high blast rating. As soon as you killed the Carrier, all of The Shadows fighters will vanish at the end of the turn.

The first warship that can move fast and has heavy weaponry spawns at bases with 10mio minions. The Drowning is very hard to detect, but is also blind on its own. That's why you should always try to kill all Signs you see! They might look harmless, but they are the only eyes The Shadow has. Without his eyes he will not know where to attack and you might even try to mislead him into thinking your bases are somewhere else. The Drowning is the best anti fighter ship of The Shadow (ignoring the Afterlife). It has 10 Turbo Lasers and up to 4 wings of his T2 fighter, Beakers. Again Photon Torpedoes are good against the Drowning and minefields can hinder its movement. Remember: Shadow ships cannot repair.

Eventually you will be confronted with the Black. This ship spawns at bases with 20mio minions. It is the Drownings big brother considering the stealth rating and scanner range. Just a bit better at hiding and worse at scanning. The Black cannot scan at all. It is the slowest of all battleships of The Shadow with speed 100. The weaponry is fearsome. 15 Sand Casters, 5 Ionic Gun Arrays. To fight the Black use the typical weapons listed above. Especially good are ships with more than 3000 armor. The Black cannot harm these ships at all. All other ships need to keep distance to avoid the 15 Sand Casters. Once the shields are down the long range Ionic Gun Arrays are very powerful. So it makes sense to use ships with heavy shields that try to keep distance at all costs if you have no ships with more than 3000 armor. Once again fighters with Sand Caster immunity are deadly weapons against the Black. Do not fear to loose them, but use enough to harm the Black. 4500 armor and 6000 hull mass are not easy to wear down. Fortunately the ships cannot repair after battles. Minefield are no good weapon against the Black anymore (except to make it boardable). A hull mass of 6000 can take 60 barbitic mine hits and 180 detonating barbitics...

Slowly The Shadow should be put into defense now. If you do not manage that, your chances of survival drop each turn. The Never Dawn is the last warning before a Gate opens. It uses a World Crusher Missile to destroy your bases without base shields. In addition it can hyper jump 850 light years and goes 190 per turn. Up to five wings of The Shadows T1 fighter can be docked and are 700 fighters each. This is not a good fighter, but in numbers it is still dangerous. The typical anti Shadow weapons excel also at the Never Dawn. Just minefields are even less effective than against the Black (hull mass 7000) and boarding probably needs several ships to succeed. Use masses of fighters and PTT and you won't have a problem. By the way: The 30 Tachyon Beams that are on the Never Dawn can never be bolstered with ET. So they are only effective against very small ships or against ships with no shields and armor left.

It makes sense to have a look at damaged ships of The Shadow now. If you notice that they have suddenly repaired all their damage you know that a Gate has opened.

Here comes the second rule: Never allow The Shadow to have a base with 50mio minions! This is essential!!

You can expect all Shadow Carriers to have a full fighter squadron now. But the worst thing: Eventually you will have to fight Afterlifes and for the first time: Bigger fleets of The Shadow that come in via the Afterlifes Jump Point Generator. These fleets will also have Dices (mine sweepers) and Molochs. You probably haven't seen these ships in offense before. Fortunately the Nemesis Torpedo of the Afterlife also destroys his own small ships, so its not that easy for The Shadow either.

It should be clear by now that it is next to impossible in a typical game to overpower The Shadow in the long run. Once The Shadow has opened a Gate it is pointless to even try and defend until you have won. The Shadow ships cost no resources at all, but yours do. A Shadow is extremely underpowered until he has bases with 1mio minions, he is balanced if he has bases with less than 50mio minions, but he is vastly overpowered once he has a Gate. Even Crystals and Robots, the two most effective races when it comes to defend against The Shadow get problems when Afterlifes appear. They might be able to defend longer than other races, but time is never playing for you. It is always the friend of The Shadow and he knows.
Gates are very vulnerable! I have described how to destroy Gates in the first question of this FAQ. All races can destroy a Gate on a planet. Only few can destroy a Gate on an asteroid. It is costly to neutralize a Gate by putting a fleet above it, but if you don't have more dark powers than light powers The Elders will eventually appear this way and their Proto Matter Cannon can also kill Gates on asteroids.

However, do not let it come this far! A Shadow with a Gate is supposed to be fought by more than one race. My guess is that in a game of newbies The Shadow will easily win against all the other races. But in a game of experts The Shadow doesn't stand much of a chance without an ally. And even with an ally he will have a hard time to defend himself from attacks with pods of Chupanoids. The key is to go for the bases of The Shadow. His ships respawn; they are not meant to last.
How to win with The Shadow?
You start with nothing. The first turns you can watch and learn. Some races will attack your bases, others won't. There will be bases where no other race is around. Use your Signs to scan. Try to not show other races where the Signs come from. Some of your bases will be on planets with real high HD Stress. These are your best worlds. It makes a major difference if you grow 10 turns with 15%, 20% or 45% growth rate. Try to find some allies. Allies on the same planet increase your growth rate dramatically! And allies do not destroy your newly spawned bases. Once you reach 100k minions your bases become visible. Do not try to protect them too much - but be aware that if 1/4 of your population dies in a turn you are done in! It can be wise to TNT a base that grows too fast, but is just next to an enemy.
Bases with 500k minions spawn your first small warship. The Restless is well described by its name. It is nice to put people into the 'defensive frame of mind'. Nothing is more important than to make people defend themselves - no matter what your losses are. If they start to attack with a big fleet you have no chance. Interrupt freighters, pods, small bases. Keep your enemy small and with no self confidence. Make him overestimate you.
Your first goal are bases with 1mio minions. The Moloch is fearsome for your enemies. They cannot attack this ship without an attack plan. Without PTT or SC immunity it is almost impossible for them. Order your Molochs to automatically lay max size minefields per turn. Fly around a bit if there is no danger so that you can cover more space with your mines. All your bases should always be kept in a massive amount of barbitic minefields.

Put a special eye on planets with Chupanoid natives. These are a main weapon against you and if you loose in games with experienced players you will probably loose, because of Chupanoid attacks. If possible put a Moloch at these bases - even if it takes many turns to get there. If you see that another race has managed to build a base at the planet try to blockade the base. Try to make all the Chupanoids join and then do orbital bombing. Do everything you can to keep other empires from gaining Chupanoids. They need only 1mio of them and eventually a 10mio base of yours (or a bigger one) will blow up. If this doesn't kill you (and also the possible resulting chain reaction doesn't) you still have an area of 7 planets (or way more if there was a chain reaction) that each have 1mio Chupanoids. This area will be much harder to secure and your enemies will again try to get the Chupanoids on these planets. Should they succeed to collect 5mio Chupanoids you cannot really try to create a Gate on a planet. It's just too easy to kill with cloaked ships, hyper jumping attack fleets or even some NEOs in a row. The Shadow is the strongest race in VGAP4 when it comes to offense, because he never runs out of resources and can sustain one attack ship after the next without a problem and as long as it takes. But when it comes to defense you have no tools against hyper jumpers or cloaking ships and these ships can easily be used to kill you in one single blow when they have enough Chupanoids.

After the Moloch comes the Melted. Together with the Moloch the Melted is more a defense ship for the Shadow. The only two you have - and later in the game they can also go into the offense, but at the time the Melted appears you need it to gather enough fighters. 20 turns pass by until a Melted is full with fighters - that's a long time in VGAP. Do not be afraid to use the Meted before 20 turns have passed if you need to, or to give an empire a death blow.

You will need to wait for bases of 10mio minions to finally go for a real war (and not just disturbing the enemy). The Drowning is a good warship with good anti fighter capabilities. It might be a bit vulnerable to mines, but the tech level is too low for it to be perfect :)
Use the Drowning to really attack your enemies. You can now try to attack bigger bases, lone warships of the enemy etc. Do everything to keep your enemies defending. As soon as your enemies can go for offense you have a problem. Your waves of a few ships are no good against bigger fleets of ships - so do not give your enemies the time to build these up. Use your Signs to find attractive targets and get going. Do not fear losses - you could say that loosing ships is the main advantage of The Shadow :)

20mio minions in a base - you have the Black. The Black is a killer for all ships that have less than 3000 armor. Together with one or two Drownings it is good against all ships out there. Drownings are also needed to defend the Black against SC immune fighters. Intensify your attacks - try to get big bases - home worlds, go for the big thing - if you loose you have still shown your enemy that you are willing to go for his valuable positions. That helps to keep him playing defensively.

Now you need to think about empire management. Many bases will have very high HD stress and delta stress. Focus on a few big bases and NEP the others. NEPing is very important as it creates many bases with more than 10k minions. These bases can be used to support your number of ships. Think about Gates. You need to decide weather you want to have a planet Gate or an asteroid Gate. But be aware that many games will end without any Gate at all. Asteroid Gates are the best of the best the Shadow has to offer, but asteroid bases stop growing at 5mio minions. You need 45mio minions from evil acts and NEPs. If you NEP a 25mio base you gain 5mio minions on 10 planets. Do it 5 times and you have gained 25mio minions. (This calculation does not take into account that minions double when NEPed and can join bases that double once again via NEP.) Be careful not to create a Gate unwillingly this way. To gain 25mio is probably enough for a planet Gate, but an asteroid Gate needs additional 20mio, 4 additional NEPs of BIG bases. NEPing is the art of playing The Shadow. A good NEPer is a good Shadow player - and the other way round!
By the way: To be immune to a few NEOs in a row you might want to have 10-15mio minions more at a Gate - that is 60-65mio minions. That's also 2-3 additional NEPs.

With your first 35mio base you get Never Dawns. These are real attack machines! Jump to your enemy, blow up bases at will. Drive around at 190. This ship is more powerful than many races flag ships and it is always outfitted real good. Be careful with grav mines. If they explode or if you hit one you will receive damage to your hyperdrive. Hyperdrives do not work if damaged and you have no way to repair the Never Dawn (except for the Appearance of a Gate). Your enemies will become real nervous when they realize you have Never Dawns! That's good! Make them defend themselves - that is your only chance.
Be careful not to loose Never Dawns too often to races that have less or as much dark powers as light powers! This might encourage The Elders to appear!

Finally: The Afterlife. Afterlifes are your salvation! They have several purposes:
a) They are one of the very most powerful ships in the game.
b) They join your fleets! They can tow your Molochs which are good for laying mines in enemy empires.
c) They can make Molochs and Dices jump via the Jump Point Generator. This allows you to protect your fleets from Photon Torpedoes. The Dice gets a whole new purpose!
d) Afterlifes can kill swarms of small ships extremely effectively with their Nemesis Torpedo.
e) Nemesis Torpedoes are also good at killing enemy fighters - even with Nemesis Torpedo 'immunity'.
f) The Number of the Beast is the most powerful fighter in the game. Even slightly more powerful than the Centaurs T3! Since swarms of Turbo Laser ships are ripped apart by the Nemesis Torpedo (which TNotB is immune to) this fighter only has to fear a massive number of enemy anti fighter fighters with Nemesis Torpedo immunity or bases with much AA guns. However, what TNotB has to fear the most is that his Afterlife is destroyed. That's also what your enemies will try to do, because TNotB is restored the next turn if the Afterlife survives in any way, but is destroyed if it doesn't.
g) The Nemesis Torpedo and TNotB are real good at killing bases with base shields.
h) Afterlifes are your only hope against races with web mines, because all your other ships cannot repair their engine damage and thus are quickly neutralized by web mines.
i) Afterlifes are your only hope to fight a Robot. His deadly Nova Mines are no hindrance for your high mass ships, but his Gun Zeros rip all you ships apart within a few turns. The Afterlife can only be killed by Gun Zeroes if she takes three hits in one turn. If you are careful that is very unlikely to happen.
Beware loosing Afterlifes to races that have less or as much dark powers as light powers! Your enemies have a real good chance to receive help from The Elders if they kill an Afterlife!
Negative Energy Overloads (NEOs) - what are they good for?
NEOs happen if 13mio life forms die in one turn at one point of space, but not at the surface of a planet.
It is highly improbable that this happens without the will of the owner of the life forms. A NEO cannot happen until the late game.
Generally you can say that a NEO (and several NEOs also :) support The Shadows cause. He gains 7*13=91mio minions per NEO. These minions are always distributed equally among all his bases - thus all his small bases will suddenly grow above 100k minions. In medium sized games or if the Shadow is small it can even make all his bases grow above 1mio minions. This doesn't mean that suddenly all the bases get Molochs, because The Shadow can only have 1 Moloch for every 5 bases.
However, NEOs strengthen The Shadow considerably! ... in the long run.
In the short run, however, a NEO will kill 5mio minions per Gate (but the Gate also gains minions due to the NEO). Since Gates do not grow it is quite possible that you close the Gate this way. Two NEOs in a row additionally kill all The Shadows ships. Two NEOs and a hyper jump to the (now closed) Gates of The Shadow, which can be blockaded now, are an easy way to kill The Shadow. Just remember that new Shadow ships will spawn also when a NEO happens. A NEO is also effective against Gates on asteroids. The Shadow will try to always have more than 60mio minions on his Gates, but that is easier said than done.
There are other situations when a NEO can make sense.
Imagine the Shadow fleet is closing to your population centers. It is the late game you have hundreds of millions of people. Why not sacrifice 26mio to protect the rest? This is especially useful for fast growing races like Crystals, Scavengers, Privateers or People's army, but with enough ET and good farming all races can eventually grow enough colonists to do NEOs. Still - in the long run it is completely nonsense to do NEOs. You need to know what you want to achieve with the NEO(s) and it will probably always hit The Shadow unprepared. Use the surprise to have Afterlifes vanish, or even killing all Shadow ships at once. UNECs are always a good idea after two NEOs, but think about it twice.
The first NEO will always be the most valuable for The Shadow as it most probably boosts all his bases above 100k. The fact that they are now visible isn't that bad usually.
Why are there so many log messages in the rules page?
In my opinion VGAP uses way to few logs. Logs are a way to learn VGAP by playing it. For example: You get the log message: "We are The Shadow - we don't trade with contraband." Now you know. Without this message you might have had to ask in the mailing list / newsgroup, browse through the guides etc..
Logs also add atmosphere to VGAP! I always liked it when I received a log message that I had never received before in VGAP (happens quite rarely nowadays).

If you have any questions you can always post them at the Newsgroup: alt.games.vgaplanets4. I read it daily.