Full Thrust Format for Email games

I'm in the process of putting together a VB prog for this. I found that
I needed 3 seperate groups of info:
1) Basic ship design info - mass, thrust, etc
2) Ship systems/damage - weapons, FC, FTL, Engines(2), screens, etc,
etc, etc
3) Weapon stats (even if you restrict to basic weapons only) - range
bands, reuseability, to hit chance, damage, effect of screens, etc

Whats really needed is a linked list of linked lists :-) unfortunately
VB can't handle this, so I'm having to use objects (nice concept, pain
to code :-(. Of course, with my current work load, when I get home I
don't feel like cutting more code so things are on hold for a week or
two.

I looked at getting Visual C++ but it costs $850 ($1800 for the full
version)

Michael "Wargh" Rutherfurd