Planetarion

Round 36 signups open

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 21:59:26 +0000

Round 36 signups are now open!

This round sees several changes:

Galaxies

Private galaxies are made of up to 8 people that only contain buddy packed planets. Players create buddy packs as usual, and can have up to 8 players. Any buddy packs of 2-6 will be joined together, to make 8 planets.
Any galaxies that have less than 8 planets after shuffle can get the remaining planets at a late signup. Planets that leave the galaxy after shuffle will not be replaceable by late signups. Normal planets and upgraded planets can both be members of a private galaxy.

Random galaxies are galaxies of 12 or more people. None of the people are in buddy packs. Upgraded planets are spread equally over all galaxies, as are normal planets. Random galaxies get 1 late join planet tick 336.

New signups are placed in random galaxies. Self exiles or galaxy exiles from private galaxies and random galaxies both land in random galaxies.

Alliances

Alliance limits have changed. The top 65 members by score count towards the alliance score. Alliances can contain up to 100 members.

Alliance relations have now been added. Alliance relationships are shown on the "Universe" page. When both alliances accept "Allied" status, the alliances cannot attack each other but can defend each other without an ETA advantage.

Game statistics
Governments and race abilities are final. Ship stats are not yet final, but can be found in the manual, but should be confirmed final by Wednesday evening.

User Interface
The user interface has a slightly new layout. The Overview is now more streamlined, and much of the planet summary is available on the right hand side. Over the course of the 11 day signup period, we anticipate a greater selection of skins to become available.

Constructions
The construction setup has changed. The costs and construction units are now varied based on different types, with factories being the quickest to make, and amplifiers and distorters being the slowest to make.

Beta
An ongoing beta, for testing and final tweaking, is underway on our beta server. With the variety of changes this round, you may wish to try the beta. This will be restarted as and when necessary for testing.

Speedgame
We have an ongoing speedgame on a 2 day cycle, with 30 second ticks, for anyone interested in playing free Planetarion. A round occurs every 24 hours, with an extra-long havoc period! It starts every other evening. Accounts are rarely reset, so previous players may still have existing accounts. Investigate further on our speedgame server.

Creators Hour

A Creators Hour will occur at Wednesday at 20:00 GMT in #planetarion, accessible by Com Unit.

General Update

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 11:50:49 +0000

Round 36

Firstly, Round 36 signup dates have changed slightly. Apologies for this change; this is to ensure all code is fully tested before ticks start. They will now be as follows:

Round 36 signups start Monday, 8th March at 20:00 GMT
Round 36 ticks start Friday, 19th March at 20:00 GMT, and will continue for 7 weeks

To compensate for it, havoc will be extended until Sunday 7th March, 20:00 GMT, and additional havoc resources will be distributed at 20:00 GMT on Friday, 5th March.

The Round 36 round name competition has entered the voting phase. Please vote for your favourite name(s) on this thread.

The galaxy banner competition has been discontinued due to a lack of entries. Thanks to those three who did enter images!

Round 36 changes

Apologies for the delay in this information in particular. The following major changes will occur:

Alliance limits will be increased to 100, with the top 65 counting to the tag score.

There will now be private galaxies or random galaxies. Private galaxies will be approximately 8 planets in size; random galaxies will start about 50% bigger and increase as the round goes on.

Constructions will have a more varied look, with costs and construction units now specific to a construction. The number of constructions will increase.

Round 36 ship stats will be similar to those shown in the beta manual, and governments will change slightly.

Beta

Round 36 beta testing will open on Sunday on our beta server.

Speedgame

The speedgame will be constantly running with Round 33 code and Round 34 stats on our speedgame server. It runs on 2 day cycles, with details shown on the login page.

Creators Hour

We will hold a Creators Hour during signups. The precise time will be announced, along with a more complete list of changes, at signup.

Round 35 Rankings

Sat, 27 Feb 2010 16:03:57 +0000

Rankings/Stats from Round 35:
Top 100 Planets
Top 50 Galaxies
Top 30 Alliances
Top 100 Launchers
Top 100 Covert Ops
Combat stats
Resource stats

Round 35 and Round 36

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 20:48:33 +0000

Round 35

Round 35 ends at 20:00 GMT, with the End of Round Ceremony being held at 21:00 GMT in #planetarion on the NetGamers IRC network, accessible here. It 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, 27th February, and continue until at least Thursday, 4th March 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 36

Round 36 names can still be submitted via r36name@planetarion.com, until tomorrow evening, with the subject of "Round 36 Roundname". The winner will have their round name used all round and will get 2 credits. You can submit as many entries as you wish. A suggested theme is the 10 year anniversary.

We are still looking for original 500x375 graphics. The top 3 entries will receive 3, 2 and 1 credits respectively, after voting, if we have enough entries! So far we don't have enough entries to vote. Please submit entries to appocomaster@planetarion.com

More information about Round 36 and speedgames after havoc will be announced this weekend.

10th Anniversary.

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 22:09:38 +0000

To mark the 10th Anniversary of Planetarion, we are announcing a galaxy banner competition. This is to replace the default galaxy image. The winner will receive 3 credits, second place 2 credits, and third place 1 credit. The winner will also see his logo the default galaxy banner next round, and potentially for subsequent rounds.

The graphics must be original, and Planetarion-related. They must be 500 pixels wide by 375 high. Please email appocomaster@planetarion.com with your entries.

The competition is open until Friday, 26th February, so get designing!
We will then shortlist and allow the community to vote on the top banner.

We will also be having a round name competition for Round 36. The winner will have their name all over the game and will get 2 credits. Closing time for this is 26th February, too. Please email your suggestions to r36name@planetarion.com, with the subject of "Round 36 Roundname". You can submit as many entries as you wish.

The timeline for this round and next round is:

Round finishes Friday, 26th February
Havoc finishes Thursday, 4th March
Round 36 signups start Friday, 5th March
Round 36 ticks start Friday, 19th March

Between this round and the next round, we will be looking to run several speedgames, with a planned mixture of open speedgames and cup games. More details will follow nearer the time.

If you have any questions about this, please contact me at appocomaster@planetarion.com

Planetarion Round 34/35 Update

Tue, 29 Dec 2009 19:19:03 +0000

End of Round 34
Round 34 Havoc will finish on Wednesday, 30th at 20:00 GMT.

Speedgame
Just to remind you all that the speedgame is running constantly on http://speedgame.planetarion.com

Creators Hour
On Wednesday 30th December at 20:00 GMT, we will run a Creators Hour in #planetarion on the NetGamers chat network (irc.netgamers.org). You can access it by using http://chat.planetarion.com. This will allow you the oppertunity to ask the PA Team questions. You can ask the questions by sending them to CH_BOT.

Round 35

Below are the major changes for Round 35:
- New alliance attack page
- Added new alliance scan request system
- Notifications now paid only
- Buddy pack limit now 3
- Single target ship statistics
- Allianceless planets get a reduced tax rate on the universal exchange (now up to 10% rather than up to 25%).
- 1 Selfexile every 3 ticks
- 1 Late join for gals with 3 BP members, 2 for gals with 2 BP members (exiling 1 out of a gal with 3 BP members does NOT give 2 late joins)
- Upgrade bonuses increased, base rates doubled, smaller increase of the per tick gain

For this round we are also trialling the following changes:
- A planet in an alliance can only be defended by other members of the alliance or his galaxy
- Cluster ETA bonus for defence removed.

Alliance limits will stay the same, 70 maximum with 60 counting towards the alliance score.

Beta testing for many of these changes are available at http://beta.planetarion.com, with the subsequent changes added soon.

Signup for Round 35 will open at 18:00 GMT on 1st January, with ticks starting at 20:00 GMT on 8th January.

Round 34 Rankings

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 20:21:02 +0000

Rankings/Stats from Round 34:
Top 100 Planets
Top 50 Galaxies
Top 30 Alliances
Top 100 Launchers
Top 100 Covert Ops
Combat stats
Resource stats

Minor credit cost increase (VAT)

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 11:14:03 +0000

Dear Planetarion Players,

(Unfortunately) Renegade Games has grown to a size where this week I will need to register it for VAT. Up until this point I could avoid this and keep prices lower, but now unfortunately I will have to add on an extra 15%.

The reason that I mention this is that I will be registering for VAT on Thursday morning. I will ask to be registered for VAT from the 1st of January 2010, so that I only need to add on the tax from the next Round of Planetarion, however there is a slight chance that I cannot do this, and I will need to start charging VAT straight away.

For this reason I highly recommend that everyone purchase credits before Thursday, if they are concerned about paying the extra 15% tax.

I will do my best however to avoid this and only start charging tax from the next Round.

Thanks,
Peter Zaborszky

Round 34 Signups Delay

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 18:15:11 +0000

The round 34 signups has unfortunately been delayed by one day due to the DNS issues we've been experiencing.
Unless the issues persist signups will open on Saturday 24th October at 20:00 GMT

We apologise for the delay.

Round 34

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 21:33:22 +0000

Team Changes
After years of service as a MH, Ace has been promoted to the PAteam and will be serving as the Head of Multihunters.

While we�re glad to have a new PAteam member we�re saddened by someones departure. It seems that real life is putting an increasing claim on Remy and he's understandably decided to step down from his position as Head of MH, which he was sharing with Ace.

We wish them both the best of luck.

Round 34
As Round 33 has now ended, it is time to look forward to Round 34. The traditional round name poll will soon be appearing for Round 34, to allow our community to select a round name.

Signups will start on Friday 23rd October, with the round starting on the 30th October and ending on Friday 18th December. We apologise for another short time between the rounds, but this is to allow our round to finish before the Winter break. We will keep havoc and speedgames running through this period for those who are interested.

Round 34 will have no changes to the alliance and buddy pack sizes. These will remain as this round.

Round 34 Changes/Additions
Abuse "banning"
This is an admin addition making it possible for admins to block users from doing things like sending ingame messages (recall messages are still possible), changing fleet names and changing galaxy name and banner. This is mainly a preventive addition which will hopefully result in less need for closing players for repeated abusive offenses. A "ban" can be temporary or last for the remainder of the round.

Bcalc: Planet info
The bcalc has gotten a minor addition so that when a scan is added (non planet scan) the target planets roids, value and score will get loaded into the calc as well.

Email Notifications
The email notifications give players the option to get mails about specific events that's happened during ticking. What gets mailed is up to the user and is selected in the "set notifications" tab on the preferences page. "Construction�" will notify when a construction is completed and there's no new construction in queue. "Research�" is the same as for construction. "Incoming�" reports any hostile incoming that's showed up in that tick. "Recall�" reports any fleets that's recalled from the planet, both hostile and friendly. "�eta 1" reports any hostile fleets heading to the planet or any outgoing attack fleets that's eta 1.

Manual
The manual has been changed back into PERL, this is mainly to take better advantage of functions already used by the game and to limit the need to use static values for things and hopefully increase the accuracy of the information provided.

"Mobile view"
Some skins have gotten an additional display for the mobile view the out of game pages already have. So far this mainly only really applies to images being removed or replaced by CSS coloring/styling, but will hopefully be more in the future. Some pages have also had a minor display change for this type of view. This is just things like images being removed or replaced with text and "optional" text output that's been removed. We�re hoping to increase the amounts and size of the changes for future rounds.

Population Page Addition
To make it easier to tell the impact of the changes made to the populations settings, a live calcing of the output (and time) of mining, construction and research. Max alert also gets calced.

Protection Time Change
Protection time has been shortened to 1/3, so it's now only 24 ticks. To compensate for the "lost" time each planet is given resources, research points and construction points to allocate as they choose. This is the base values use, then for each race the racial bonuses are applied to try and reflect each races advantages/disadvantages:

Construction Units: 7,000
Research Points: 8,000
Metal: 2,000,000
Crystal: 2,000,000
Eonium: 2,000,000

So for each race this gives in research points and construction units:

Construction units:
Terran: 7,000 * (130 / 100) = 9,100
Cathaar: 7,000 * (90 / 100) = 6,300
Xandathrii : 7,000 * (110 / 100) = 7,700
Zikonian: 7,000 * (100 / 100) = 7,000
Eitraides: 7,000 * (115 / 100) = 8,050

Research Points:
Terran: 8,000 * (100 / 100) = 8,000
Cathaar: 8,000 * (120 / 100) = 9,600
Xandathrii: 8,000 * (90 / 100) = 7,200
Zikonian: 8,000 * (100 / 100) = 8,000
Eitraides: 8,000 * (100 / 100) = 8,000

The points are used in the same way the upgrade bonuses have been. These bonuses will not increase as the round progress, they will remain the same throughout the whole round.
With this change shuffle happens at tick 12, instead of the usual 36, which means that anyone wanting to be in a Buddy Pack now has to join/create one BEFORE tick 12.

Research Queuing
This is very much like the queuing for constructions so should be easy to understand. Research from the same branch or a different branch can be queued and will be continuing once the current research is completed.

Run/Hide Change
The option itself has been moved to the top of the missions page to make it easier to see. Also the text around the option as well as for the base fleet on the overview has been given color depending on the setting. For when the fleet is running the color is the same as that of a defense mission (default is green), and for when it stays home to fight it's the same as for an attack mission (default is red).

Scans: Alliance Defense Page
Along with the tracking (read below) the scan links on the alliance defense page has been given coloring to better tell their "age";
scans that are 0 ticks are green
scans that are from 1 to 5 ticks old are yellow
scans that are from 6 to 12 ticks old are orange
scans that are older than 12 ticks are red

Scans: Target Tracking
Previously scans have been "linked" to the target by coords, this has been changed so that they are tracked by users id instead. This should prevent the "wrong" scans from getting listed on things like the alliances access page.

Scans: XP
There was a bug in the scans XP system allowing free planets to gain max amount of XP every 2 ticks due to the scans expiring. This should now be fixed and the scans XP should be handled correctly for both free and paid accounts and regardless of scans expiring or not.

Round 33 Rankings

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 21:26:20 +0000

Rankings/Stats from Round 33:
Top 100 Planets
Top 50 Galaxies
Top 30 Alliances
Top 100 Launchers
Top 100 Covert Ops
Combat stats
Resource stats

End of Round 33

Sat, 03 Oct 2009 14:07:38 +0000

As ppl are probably aware, the round ends on Friday the 16th Oct, which means we got slightly less than 2 weeks left.
As usual vacation mode will be disabled for the final week, on Friday the 9th. With the ability to keep fleets safe home the need to enter vacation mode should be rather low. Should anyone still have a need for it they can mail cin@planetarion.com and explain why. Please remember to include your user id.

With no big surprise, round 34 is looking for a name, so please send your suggestions to r34names@planetarion.com with the subject/title "Roundname Suggestions".

Round 33 Signups Are Open

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 19:58:59 +0000

As voted by you, the name of this round is round is "Art of Diplomacy".

Signups can be found at its usual location: http://game.planetarion.com/signup.pl

Major changes for this round include:
- Signup simplified
- Base fleet can now be ordered not to take part in combat [though ships produced will still be put in that fleet].
- Can add personal notes to planets
- Quick mail option from the galaxy page
- Bcalcs are now able to be added to reported fleets
- More comprehensive ranking pics
- New stats

And as the previous announcement said, buddypacks will be at a total of 5 planets, and the alliance limits will be at max 70 with the top 60 counting towards score.

Round 32 & Round 33

Sat, 15 Aug 2009 17:43:36 +0000

Round 32

Round 32 ended on Friday, 14th August. The End of Round Ceremony (EoRC) was completed an hour later, with interviews with the following:

Top Planets:
#1 eksero 10:7:7, Ascendancy (receives 1 credit)
#2 Reese 10:7:1, Ascendancy (receives 1 credit)
#3 signs 10:7:3, Ascendancy (receives 1 credit)

Top Galaxy:
10:7 (receives 5 credits)

Top Alliance:
Apprime (receives 5 credits)

Top Alliance Tag [in #planetarion at EoRC]
p1ngu [Pengiuns] (receives 3 credits)

The EoRC log can be viewed in this portal announcement

Havoc is now underway, and will continue until Thursday at 20:00 GMT.

Round 33.

Signups for Round 33 will start on Friday, 21st of August at 20:00 GMT. Ticks will commence at 20:00 GMT on Friday, 28th August, and last for 7 weeks. They will end on Friday, 16th October.

The beta testing signups have already opened and users can signup here

Major changes for this round include:
-Signup simplified
-Base fleet can now be ordered not to take part in combat [though ships produced will still be put in that fleet].
-Can add personal notes to planets
-Quick mail option from the galaxy page
-Bcalcs are now able to be added to reported fleets
-More comprehensive ranking pics
-New stats

To confirm:
Buddy packs stay at 5 planets (you plus 4 others)
Alliance limits stay at 70 planets, with the top 60 still contributing to the alliance score.

We apologise for the haste in the next round; it's to make sure we have two rounds and end in time for Christmas Day.

We hope to see you soon for another round of Planetarion; in the mean while, please enjoy the last few days of Havoc. :)

R29-32 Rankings

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 23:42:25 +0000

Rankings/Stats from Round 32:
Top 100 Planets
Top 50 Galaxies
Top 30 Alliances
Top 100 Launchers
Top 100 Covert Ops
Combat stats
Resource stats

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

End of Round 32

Sun, 02 Aug 2009 16:10:53 +0000

There's now just under two weeks left of this round and as usual we're disabling vacation mode on Friday (7th Aug).
Anyone wanting to remain in or enter vacation mode after that should mail cin@planetarion.com with a short explanation why.

Also, suggestions for next rounds name can be mailed to r33names@planetarion.com with the subject/title "Roundname suggestions". Multiple names can be sent in one mail and anyone can send in as many suggestions as they want, just don't send the same ones over and over again ;)

Team Changes

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 18:59:22 +0000

We've made some changes to our teams; Fiery has stepped down as head of Multihunters and will now be focusing on running Support, as well as working on and maintaining the planned wiki along with Kargool.
Taking over as heads of MH will be Ace and Remy, who has already been acting in a deputy capacity for some time. This change means that there are now two that can handle appeals, instead of just one, and we have two people deciding the outcome. This should make dealing with appeals faster and provide an equal handling of cases.

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