Planetarion

Some round changes explained

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 11:30:55 +0000

Now as the round is on it's way most will have had a chance to play around with some of the changes made this round, but while testing in the beta and in r32.
Most of the changes should be rather easy to understand on their own, but I thought I'd give a short explanation of things just in case.

Alliance access system:
The settings etc in this should be easy to understand on their own.
The general idea is to give the alliances themselves control over what the various member groups have access to, and what kind of access they have.

As a quick explanation, you give access in terms of no access at all, access to view, access to create. The create access is in some cases split into just adding new and editing existing.

As an example, the defense access setting has 4 options, "no access, view own, view all, view all/update". The "no access" obviously means that members can't see nor access the page at all. "View own" means the will see their own reported incs. "View all" means they have access to see all the reported incs, with defense sent, status and notes, but they can't edit the notes nor update status.
"View all/update" gives full access, they'll see all with the option to edit notes and status.

It is possible to add custom groups as well, and this shouldn't really need any explaining. There isn't any limit to how many groups you can add, but please don't abuse this, there really shouldn't be any point.

Alliance defense system:
Besides the access system changes this has had another minor, yet hopefully very useful change. As those having taken part in the beta might have noticed, the update button on the bottom of the page has disappeared. If you change the status of a reported fleet, it will update instantly, if successful the drop down box should get a border color, in current skins this is green. If there's some kind of conflict the border will in current skins be red. If a conflict happens, generally this would be someone else having changed the status of the same fleet since you loaded the page, you'll get told what the new status is and asked if you want to overwrite that change.

The same change has been done to the notes as well, except if someone has updated since you loaded the page, the two notes will be "merged" and timestamps gets added to each.

You'll still have to reload the page to catch new incs and def, but the changes should make it easier for those handling defense calls easier and not overwrite each other.

Bcalc:
Not an overly large addition, but it should be helpful when dealing with multiple fleets and/or when planets having split their ships.
If you right click, left for those using opera, on the fleet headers, (those saying Fleet 1, Fleet 2 etc) you should get a small context menu with a few options. Those options only apply to the fleet you clicked so you can do stuff just on a single fleet in a calc with multiple fleets.

Might add more things like that if it's found useful and if anyone has other things that would be nice to have in this specific menu please let me (Cin) know.

Round 32 Is Open

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 18:22:35 +0000

We're pleased to announce signups for Round 32: Question of Honor at http://game.planetarion.com/signup.pl.
Ticks will start at 20:00 GMT on Friday, 26th June for 7 weeks.

In addition to the previous announcements, the asteroid capture rate will be changed to:
min(25,25*(target_value/your_value)^0.5).
This will fix the capture rates between 25% and 15%, and is a less drastic change than previously announced measures.

The list of changes is as follows:
- Alliance limits will be changed to a maximum of 70, with 60 counting towards the limit. Merge limit will be upped to 60, but it will not be possible to merge past tick 672
- A variable cap rate (so the smaller the person you hit, the less asteroids you can capture from them)
- A more fully integrated IRC system
- Ships in production will now count towards score
- Alliance accesses are now customisable, and some alliance pages have been tweaked or rearranged to be more user friendly
- Usernames have been restored on signup and login
- News page format has changed slightly for incoming fleets

General Update

Sun, 14 Jun 2009 16:51:25 +0000

Round 32 has two more major changes:
the new alliance limit will be 70 and not 80 as previously announced. 60 Members will continue to count towards score.

Salvage for defending ships will be 20% of the cost of attacking ships lost in combat, and 30% of the cost of defending ships lost in combat.

We also have an "End of Round" survey running. Links to 3 of the copies are as follows:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?...LGp7UUiUA_3d_3d
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?...Mht_2bH1w_3d_3d
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?...mYlkgX48g_3d_3d

It'd be much appreciated if players of Round 31 could fill them in.

We'd also like to wish all players the best for the rest of havoc, and hope they join us again on Friday for Round 32 signups.

Regards,
Appocomaster

Round Rankings

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 23:19:37 +0000

Posted this on the forum as well, but thought i'd make a sort of collection post for the last 3 rounds here.

Rankings/Stats from Round 31:
Top 100 Planets
Top 50 Galaxies
Top 30 Alliances
Top 100 Launchers
Top 100 Covert Ops
Combat stats
Resource stats

Rankings/stats from Round 30:
Top 100 Planets
Top 50 Galaxies
Top 30 Alliances
Top 100 Launchers
Top 100 Covert Ops
Combat stats
Resource stats

Rankings/stats from Round 29:
Top 100 Planets
Top 50 Galaxies
Top 30 Alliances
Top 100 Launchers
Top 100 Covert Ops
Top 100 Scanners
Combat stats
Resource stats

R31/32 Announcement

Mon, 08 Jun 2009 20:17:45 +0000

As has been previously announced, this round (Round 31) ends on Friday, 12th June at 20:00 GMT.

The End of Round Ceremony will be held at 21:00 GMT in #planetarion on the NetGamers IRC network, and will feature representatives from the top 3 planets, top galaxy and top alliance. Subsequently there will be an "allcomp", where every alliance tries to tag as many players in #planetarion as possible, with the winning alliance getting 3 credits.
Havoc will start at 9:00 GMT on Saturday, 13th June, and continue until Thursday, 18th June at 20:00 GMT.

After the EoRC has been completed, havoc will be setup as follows:
-All researches completed
-500 million resources total (split over metal/crystal/eonium according to race)
-3000 asteroids total (split over metal/crystal/eonium according to race)
-30 of each factory, 30 wave amplifiers, 50 security centres and 30 of each refinery ADDED to each planet
-Fleets recalled
-XP will be kept
-Asteroid mining limits increased to 8 million
-Maximum construction limit set at 500 constructions
-Ticks set at every 15 minutes

Round 32

Signups for Round 32 will open at approximately 18:00 GMT on Friday, 19th June, and will last for a week. Ticks will start at 20:00 GMT on Friday, 26th June and continue for 7 weeks.

Official name submissions are now accepted for Round 32. These will be short listed by Planetarion staff and representatives, and the most popular 10 will be voted on before Round 32 signups begin.
To submit your idea to name Planetarion Round 32, please send your suggestions to round32@planetarion.com with the subject "Roundname suggestions".

Round 32 will currently feature the following changes:
-Alliance limits will be changed to a maximum of 80, with 60 counting towards the limit. Merge limit will be upped to 60, but it will not be possible to merge past tick 672
-A variable cap rate (so the smaller the person you hit, the less asteroids you can capture from them)
-A more fully integrated IRC system
-Ships in production will now count towards score
-Alliance accesses are now customisable, and some alliance pages have been tweaked or rearranged to be more user friendly
-Usernames have been restored on signup and login
-News page format has changed slightly for incoming fleets

Buddy packs will contain 5 players total, as before.

Creators Hour
There will be a Creators Hour on Sunday, 14th June at 19:00 GMT to take questions about Planetarion and the coming round.

It happened again

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 23:40:54 +0000

It seems we've managed to get another downtime, and it only took about 8-9 day from the last one.
At the moment i don't know the exact reason for this but things seems to be back in order.

The game has been rolled back to the backup from 20:30 GMT. This would be about 15 min after the connection to the server was lost.
This backup was chosen in the hopes of limiting impacts as much as possible as in effect no rollback has really happened.
The game is open and will remain that way, so anyone needing to recall fleets etc can safely do so.
The game will start ticking again on 2nd June at 21:00 GMT.

We apologize for this having happened yet again this round, we can only hope that it's the last time and that we can finish the round without further interruptions.

End of Round 31

Fri, 29 May 2009 23:18:03 +0000

With just 2 weeks left, this round is quickly approaching its end.
So as usual we'll be removing vacation mode next Friday, the 5th June.
Anyone wanting to enter or remain in vacation after that should mail cin@planetarion.com with why they wish to do so.

We're also starting to accept suggestions for next rounds name, so please send your suggestions to round32@planetarion.com with the subject/title "Roundname suggestions".

On a final note, despite P disappearing from Netgamers, we've decided to not stop the game at this time. If the situation continues we'll have to reconsider this and the impacts it's causing on the game.

Downtime

Sun, 24 May 2009 14:42:34 +0000

Hi players!

Unfortunately, we suffered some downtime due to infrastructure issues (announced here).

The main game is up and open and will be ticking at 22:00 GMT. No fleets have been recalled. The speedgame has been reset and will be ticking again at 18:00 GMT.

Apologies again for the issues caused. The round will not be extended due to do this downtime.

Appocomaster

Round 31 Signups Open

Mon, 13 Apr 2009 20:19:22 +0000

We're pleased to announce that Round 31 signups are now open. You can signup at http://round31.planetarion.com/signup.pl

The following are a summary of the changes:

Round 31
- changed alliance limit to 90
- covert op training now instant
- inactive planets are now exiled more quickly
- galaxy disband has been removed
- signup now done via e-mail address, not separate username
- downtime procedure has been changed
- bots will be reintroduced tick 200
- New Skin
- Salvage changed to 15% for attackers and 20% for defenders (from 30/40 respectively)

For more information, please visit http://round31.planetarion.com/manual.php?page=36

Ticks will start at 20:00 GMT on Friday, 24th April and continue for 7 weeks.

Delayed Signups

Thu, 09 Apr 2009 22:50:56 +0000

We have unfortunately had to alter signups, and they will open at 20:00 GMT on Monday 13th April. We just consider this date lucky! Beta testing will open at approximately the same time.
Ticks will start on Friday, 24th of April at 20:00 GMT.

To partially compensate for this, havoc is now going to be extended until Friday, 17th of April (as a minimum). Extra resources will be donated tomorrow at approximately 18:00 GMT.

We apologise for this delay.

Yet another downtime

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 19:25:02 +0000

I wish this was a "joke" considering the date, but unfortunately it isn't.
It happened again, we're not really sure what was the exact cause atm, but in the interest of trying to be consistent we're follow the path of the previous downtimes.
Fortunately the time of day makes the impact on fleet recalls rather small, in many cases it might actually be an advantage.

This is what'll be done:
- Rolling back to Tick 1533 (17:30 GMT)
- Recalling all fleets
- Reopening the game at 17:00 GMT on Thursday, 2nd April
- Next tick at 18:00 GMT on Thursday, 2nd April

We'll also extend the round by 1 day due to the downtime being so close to the end.
Meaning all round end, havoc, eorc etc will all be moved by 1 day.

We apologise for this having happened yet again

End of R30, havoc and R31

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 21:21:51 +0000

Round 30
The last tick will be at 20:00 GMT on Friday, 3rd of April, with the the End of Round Ceremony (EoRC) will be held an hour later at 21:00 GMT in #planetarion on the NetGamers network (irc.netgamers.org). We will also be holding an "Allcomp" at 22:00 GMT, which is a competition to see which alliance has the most members of the channel tagged with their alliance name. The winning alliance will receive 3 credits.

Havoc
After the EoRC has been completed, havoc will be setup as follows:
-All researches completed
-500 million resources total (split over metal/crystal/eonium according to race)
-3000 asteroids total (split over metal/crystal/eonium according to race)
-30 of each factory, 30 wave amplifiers, 50 security centres and 30 of each refinery ADDED to each planet
-Fleets recalled
-XP will be kept
-Asteroid mining limits increased to 8 million
-Maximum construction limit set at 500 constructions
-Ticks set at every 15 minutes
Havoc will commence at 09:00 GMT on Saturday, 4th of April and continue until 18:00 GMT on Thursday, 9th April.
Signups for Round 31 will open at the latest on Friday, 10th of April at 20:00 GMT, with ticks starting at 20:00 GMT around Friday, 17th April for 7 weeks. Vote on this thread to help to decide which day we start the round.

Round 31
We will hold another Creators Hour at 20:00 GMT on Wednesday, 8th April in #planetarion on the NetGamers chat network to discuss Round 31.

You can still submit your suggestion for Round 31's name to r31names@planetarion.com with the subject/title "Roundname suggestions". The entries will be shortlisted, and a public poll put up to choose the winner. The winning entry will receive 1 credit.

The current confirmed setup for Round 31:

-Alliance limits will be reduced 90, with 60 members counting towards alliance score as in Round 30.
-Buddy packs will be 5 members, as before
-Maximum alliance size during the merging will be increased from 40 to 50. Merging will still only take place between ticks 0 and 672.
-Credits not associated with the e-mail of anyone who signed up this round or next round (Round 31) will be removed. An e-mail will be sent out at the end of this round to all e-mail addresses that have credits registered with us to remind them that they may wish to claim them before they are removed.
-Reviewed downtime procedure will be announced for general discussion on Wednesday 25th March
-Disband will be disabled.
-Autoexile will be changed to auto exile unwanted planets who have less than 100 asteroids, rather than the current 40 asteroids
-Shuffle will be changed to mark as inactive all those who were created before tick 12 that have less than 50 asteroids (currently 30 asteroids)
-Advanced quests will be re-introduced
-Bots will be re-introduced to 1:1 at tick 200, defended as fiercely as always from abusing bigger planets by the 1:1 guardians
-Stats will change. Stats will be announced during havoc/ signup
-XP formulae will stay the same.
-Multihunters will announce a clarified set of rule interpretations and a guideline to punishments

Please note that all times are Greenwich Mean Time(GMT), and not British Summer Time (BST) or any other European summer time. For reference, once the UK moves to summer time, GMT is BST-1.

Creators Hour Tomorrow

Sat, 14 Mar 2009 16:13:02 +0000

We'd like to announce a Creators Hour at 20:00 GMT on Sunday, 15th March (tomorrow) in #planetarion on irc.netgamers.org. Pete will be present to discuss some of the planned improvements to the game over the coming rounds.

As a reminder, vacation mode will be disabled on Friday the 27th March and anyone wanting to either remain or enter vacation after that should mail cin@planetarion.com with why they wish to do so.

Suggestions for next rounds name should be sent to r31names@planetarion.com with the subject/title "Roundname suggestions".

Todays downtime and end of round

Fri, 13 Mar 2009 18:09:21 +0000

As I'm sure everyone is aware of by now, we had another downtime.
The exact cause is still not clear, and for quite it seemed like we were gonna be able to avoid a rollback, but unfortunately we couldn't.
The game has been rolled back to the 13:30 GMT backup, which is a bit over 30 min before the issues started. All fleets have been recalled as well.
The game will reopen at 13:00 GMT tomorrow, 14th March, and tick will happen at 14:00 GMT.

There are about 3 weeks left of this round so it's a suitable time to remind everyone about the usual disabling vacation mode and round names for next round.

Vacation mode will be disabled on Friday the 27th March and anyone wanting to either remain or enter vacation after that should mail cin@planetarion.com with why they wish to do so.

Suggestions for next rounds name should be sent to r31names@planetarion.com with the subject/title "Roundname suggestions".

Server Migration

Mon, 23 Feb 2009 11:01:23 +0000

As you are already likely to be aware, following the purchase of Planetarion by Fubra, we are required to migrate our services from Jolt's servers to Fubra's. Unfortunately, this cannot wait until the current round has finished, and I'm scheduling the migration to happen on Wednesday 25th February.

Unfortunately, the migration will require the game to be inaccessible for a period of time, to ensure data consistency. This will result in a planned window of 1 hour during which the game will neither be accessible nor ticking.

20:00 GMT - This tick (and all previous to it) will occur as normal.
20:30 GMT - The game will be closed, and I will migrate the game.
21:00 GMT - The game will not tick.
21:30 GMT - All having gone according to plan, the game will reopen, running on Fubra servers.
22:00 GMT - The game will tick and continue as if nothing happened.

The game, at both sides of the migration, will be accessible by the same URL: http://game.planetarion.com. However, some DNS servers may be slow to notice the update, so if you have problems accessing the game following the migration, try the URL http://fubra1.planetarion.com (you might want to write this down now just in case!).

I'm sorry for this interruption to your round, but there is no way around the migration; however the migration should herald a new era of reliable servers!

Lunar_Lamp

The future of Planetarion

Fri, 06 Feb 2009 12:39:18 +0000

We got some good news, we've been saved!
The following is an announcement from our new owner :)
_______________________________________________________

Hi,

My name is Peter Zaborszky, and I am pleased to announce that Fubra Limited and I have bought Planetarion. We have formed a new company, Renegade Games Limited as a startup, and Planetarion is our first project.

I would like to announce that we will NOT be stopping the game. Round 30 will NOT be the last one.

After reading the forums, and seeing experience of the last two takeovers, I understand that the remaining community of Planetarion is very frustrated with the way things are right now, especially after the database corruption of today. I understand that to Jolt and OMAC Planetarion was not a priority.

The game will soon be moved to Fubra's own datacentre, where it will be hosted on servers that won't run into problems like today. You can check out the Fubra offices at www.fubra.com.

I am completely dedicated to making this game work again, and for the next 3-6 months all of my working life will be dedicated to Planetarion.

As a gesture to the community, and a sign that we want to improve things, after the takeover is completed, we will begin development on two things, firstly, integrating Planetarion with Facebook, and secondly, getting the portal that Cin has been working on online, including a fixed account for everyone.
A personal idea of mine is to add some sort of chat in-game, so that new players have easier access.
I will also be looking to increase the size of the community.

I look forward to hearing from all existing players, I will try to answer the messages I get :-) I am expecting a lot of them.

Thanks for reading!
Pete

Todays downtime

Sun, 01 Feb 2009 19:15:44 +0000

At around 12:30 today in tick 209, new quests went live. Unfortunately, there were one or two issues with them, and they were found to be extremely unbalanced. Whilst efforts were made to fix this in real time, including delaying tick 210, it has been decided to roll back to tick 207 (10:30), and recall all fleets.

The game will reopen at 10:00 GMT on Monday, 2nd February, and ticks will restart at 11:00 GMT.

Apologies for all problems caused, but this is the most fair route in the circumstances.

The bcalc and the intel system

Fri, 23 Jan 2009 13:49:18 +0000

I thought i'd provide some information about the bcalc and the alliance intel system added this round. Both should be easy enough to understand, but it might clear up make some things slightly easier to use.

Bcalc
Mostly the bcalc works as the various other calcs out there do, so it should be easy enough to use, that said it has some additions and features the others might not have so I'll try to give a short explanation.

The calc supports multiple fleets on either side, defending and attacking. Each can have up to 10 separate fleets, and with more than 1 fleet on either side it'll give a fleet specific report similar to what you would get with the in game combat. Hopefully this will make it easier to see what each fleet would gain and/or loose. For XP calcing, as well as salvage gain the planets value/scores have to be supplied, and obviously the roids for the planet being attacked, something I'm sure you all already understand. However there's an option to set a race for each defending fleet. This is only used to calc the salvage gain so that the salvage calcing will be more accurate. There's a slightly "floating" element involved in calcing salvage, the average top 20 score in the formula, so the salvage in the calc might vary slightly from what the actual combat will show as the average score is different.

If the calc is accessed while logged in, it provides 4 save options (listed to the left of the save button). The different options should be rather obvious, but in case they aren't and in the interest of avoiding confusion:
- Public means that anyone can access it, providing they know the calcs ID.
- Private means that the calc can only be accessed by the person that saved it.
- Galaxy means only players in the galaxy can access the calc
- Alliance is the same as for galaxy, except it applies to the same alliance.

The parser (the textarea between the add def and add att buttons) is rather basic atm. It'll parse ships etc in the format of how they are in scans, so you can either paste the data from planet, development and unit/adv.unit or by pasting the bbcode tag with scan id. Copy/paste of the ships from the overview listing and prod orders work as well. Adding a - in front of a ship amount will subtract that value. Also if the calc has more than one fleet you get the option to choose which fleet to add the parsed data to.

I'll try to work on the calc during the round, to see if I can add things to make it easier to you. Starting with things like a "My calcs" page listing all calcs saved by "you". Also I'll see about adding links for easy adding of ships from your own fleets and "preloading" data from your own planet. As well as loading "public" data from planets by coords, like value/score and roids.
The calc is also "skinable" so I'll try to update the other skins with the required data so the calc is displayed with the same skin as the account uses in game.

Alliance Intel System
System isn't all that complex, but it should at least cover the most basic needs and since it tracks through user ids and not coords, it'll won't need "updating" if a planet exiles.

Intel officers are the only ones that can add intel. Intel officers are set with a "flag" like the alliance scanner, which can be added to a member with any access level. You add and remove intel officers on the Alliance > Intel > Intel officers page. Intel itself can only be added after tick 36, and it can be added both on the galaxy page and on the alliance intel page index. Intel officers obviously see added intel and gain access to the Intel page itself; access to the Intel for other members is managed by a setting just below the arbiter settings on the alliance page. Anyone with an access level higher than that gets to see the intel on the galaxy page (a column gets added to the right of the scans) and also gain access to the Intel page.

Along with all the alliances in the game there are 21 temp groups listed, those groups are for groups of planets you don't quite know what alliance is so you can keep track of them. A planet can only be listed with one alliance. Also, under the relations page you can set what kind of relation your alliance has to each of the other alliances (and temp groups). This will cause planets belong to those alliances/groups to be "highlighted" based upon your relations. Hopefully this will make it easier to see hostiles and friendlies in a galaxy. This might also get added to the top 100 planets.

The Intel page has a lookup form. You can either look up intel by entering coords or by an alliance/group. If the Z coord is left out, it'll display the whole galaxy.

Last section on the Intel page (atm at least) is the export, which is just a simple XML output of all the current intel in case alliances with their own tools wanna parse the into their tools.

I'll try to add a history page as well, to list changes in the intel for a planet. Listing who add/updated in, what and when.

UPDATED:
I've added so that alliances that delete are removed from the relations listing and any planets "tagged" with that alliance will be shown as [<Deleted>]. Relations can also be manually deleted.

Round 30 Signups

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 21:24:37 +0000

Firstly, we'd like to apologise for the delay in the signups. The current status of Round 30 is as follows:
- Stats and Governments will be confirmed on Monday
- Quests will be enabled tomorrow (Saturday) evening
- Ticks will start at 20:00 GMT on Friday, 23rd of January, and will finish at 20:00 GMT on Friday, 3rd April
- Buddy packs at 5 (as previously announced)
- Alliance limits at 100, with the counted limit at 60
Some changes we'd like to announce:
- We have a new battle calculator integrated with the game.
- An in-game intel system has been added for alliances
- The quest system has been recoded and, in addition to quests similar to the previous quests, another 3 categories of quests have been added.

Signup Here.

We also have some sad news. Unfortunately, over Christmas OMAC decided that this would be the last round of Planetarion for the moment to focus their resources elsewhere. We've sought clarification on the situation, and it can be summarised as follows:
- OMAC wish to retain the name and intellectual property of Planetarion, but are unwilling to host the game.
- They're allowing us, the PA Team, to keep the code if we wish to continue hosting it elsewhere under another name.
- OMAC are unwilling to refund all credits, but are willing to look at sensible suggestions for a compromise for credits purchased since June.
- An offer was made and negotiated but fell through due to the substantial amount requested for the Planetarion name.
We are sorry that this has occurred, and are willing to work with the community to a certain extent to look for possible solutions. This has been behind the extended round length and the delays.

We will have a Creators Hour in #Planetarion in irc.netgamers.org at 20:00 GMT on Wednesday, 21st January to take your questions.

We hope you will enjoy this round, Round 30 - Addiction, of Planetarion.

Round 30 Update

Sun, 11 Jan 2009 12:45:10 +0000

Scan/News ID Change
Just a small update regarding a change that can affect alliance tools.
The scan id, scan group id, and stored news IDs have all changed to a 15 char long alphanumerical string.
As an example, new urls looks like this:
show_news.pl?id=4s7hs81rladx2au
showscan.pl?scan_id=3vfbj73gleoihab

and the scan bbcode tag:
[scan]3vfbj73gleoihab[/scan]

IDs doesn't contain any special symbols, just a-z and 0-9, and are currently not case sensitive. There's been no other change to the scans, layout/contents is the same, it's just the IDs that's changed from numerical to alphanumerical.
Round doesn't start for another 12 days so there should be enough time to update the affected tools.

Roundname
This morning the roundname poll closed and the winning name was "Addiction".
Congrats to the winner and thanks to all of you that voted.

Signups Delayed
Due to some unforeseen issues with preparations for the upcoming round, we've decided to delay signups by a few days. They were meant to start the Monday 12th, but to try and get things ready and tested, they'll be moved to the Friday 16th.
This still gives us a week long signup period, which is what we used to have, which should still be enough for everyone to get their planet in time for the start.
Roundstart remains unchanged and ticks will start on Friday 23rd January at 20:00 GMT
We apologise for the change, hopefully it shouldn't affect things too much.