Firstly, I'd like to apoligise for the length of this announcement. However, a lot of it is important, so please try and read it all through!

Round 21
To reiterate what was announced in the EoRC, the winners are as follows:

Top 3 planets (each winning 1 credit) were:
#1 3:3:6, Greenhills of Angels
#2 15:8:6, Kileman of Ascendancy
#3 6:8:5, FeNiX of Angels

The top galaxy, winning 5 credits, was 1:9.

The top alliance, winning 5 credits, was WolfPack. They also won an additional credit for winning the alliance tag competition at the end of the End of Round Ceremony.

The players winning credits for holding special roids for the longest were:

9:1:7, Pizi of Hidden Agenda, with the Crystal Asteroid
3:6:7, qtips of TGV, with the Construction Asteroid
6:9:7, Hezrou of ND, with the Research Asteroid
9:2:3, oblivious of Ascendancy, with the Production Roid
9:6:6, sniper of SPQR, with the Metal Asteroid, and
1:4:5, Nazqil of WolfPack, who held the Eonium Asteroid for an impressive 1094 ticks.

A copy of the End of Round Ceremony log is available in the EoRC section of "News".

Round 22
The roundname competition for Round 22 is open, as has been announced in-game. Please, submit your entry or entries to roundname@planetarion.com by Wednesday 6th June 23:00 GMT. The entries will be shortlisted by PA staff and alliance representatives, and a poll will be placed on the forum for voting on before signups start.

Setup
Firstly, Round 22 is a FREE round. Credits will be 'switched off' and safely stored away.

Signups will open on Friday, 15th June at 20:00 GMT, and ticks will start on Friday, 22nd June at 20:00 GMT.

Buddy packs will take yourself and up to 4 others. Buddy packs are the only way of guaranteeing you play in the same galaxy as your friends. As it's a free round, everyone can play with some friends if they wish!

The alliance limits will stay as this round - 60, then after a week up to 70. All planets that take the alliance's limit past 60 must be below half the average top 10 score.

All "eXPerience" related issues - for stealing asteroids, defending, and in scans and covert ops - will remain the same.

Ship statistics will be an iteration of Round 21's stats, reducing the general number of changes in that department.

Auto exile to Cluster 200 of all planets that are set as "unwanted" by the galaxy ministers will be after 144 ticks (this drops to 72 ticks when the planet has less than 40 roids).

The shuffler will remove all planets more than 24 hours old that have not got at least 30 asteroids into Cluster 200. This happens at tick 36, as always.

Changes

There are several changes to the game. The most fundamental will be explained below:

-Construction, Production and Research are now more flexible. Each Construction, Research and Ship order takes a certain amount of "units" to complete. Your planet can produce a certain amount of these Research, Construction and Production units each tick. These are influenced ,as before, by your government settings, research labs and population settings, and now also by the number of factories you have.

-Population can also be adjusted, with no time delay between each adjustment.

-Galaxy fund donations to planets will be capped at 25 million in any 200 tick period. Donations back into the fund will not be deducted from the funds received.

-Alliance scanners can now select a galaxy and a scan type on the waves page, and choose which planets they wish to scan in that galaxy.

-Galaxy members can now choose whether or not their distorters affect their galaxy mates in the preferences screen.

-Galaxy Ministers can set a message to be automatically sent to new planets joining the galaxy and welcoming them.

There are other more minor tweaks and bug fixes which will be announced when signups are opened.

Round 22 will finish on Friday, August 10th at 20:00 GMT

Creators Hour

We are pleased to announce a Creators Hour on Wednesday, 13th June at 20:00 GMT for approximately an hour. This will be located in #planetarion on irc.netgamers.org. To submit a question beforehand or on the night, please /msg CH_Bot <your question>.

Beta Testing

Beta testing will, as such, be private. However, just after signups open, we will open the beta server up to allow users to see how the announced changes work in practice.

Speedgame

We look forward to having an ongoing speedgame session, with signups starting on the morning of Saturday, 9th June and continuing until approximately Wednesday, 20th June. This will include both private and semi-random galaxies, with "Capture the Flag" games also making an appearance. More information will be forthcoming later in the week.