We're pleased to announce that signups for the speedgame will open at 9:00 GMT on Saturday, 9th June (tomorrow morning) at http://speedgame.planetarion.com/signup.pl.

The code and stats will be identical to Round 21, with alliances disabled.
Galaxies will be either private galaxies or random galaxies. Private galaxies will have up to 8 people in them while random galaxies will have up to 15 people.

The first round of the speedgames will be in the form of "Capture the Flag", with ticks starting on Saturday at 20:00 GMT for 24 hours. Ticks will be 1 minute in duration.

At tick 72, a "Capture the Flag" asteroid will be placed in each galaxy.The idea is to capture as many flags as possible and keep them in your galaxy, whilst protecting your own.

The calculation for points is 5*score_of_holding_planet/1000 for your asteroid in your galaxy, and 1*score_of_holding_planet for another galaxy's asteroid in your galaxy.

There are no points for keeping an asteroid and then losing it at the last minute.

If the majority of the active players wish to continue, we will extend (and possibly havoc - i.e. donate lots of resources) the speedgame.
After this, the CTF asteroids will be removed, and the game reset, with those planets in c200 being removed.

There will then be a brief downtime of 12-24
hours, during which players can create and join private galaxies or join bigger random galaxies.

The speedgame will then recommence (Monday or Tuesday evening) and continue at 2 minute ticks until the weekend. During this time, more information will be made about future speedgames, which will depend partially upon the feedback given by speedgame users.

The official channel for the speedgame is #speedgame, on irc.netgamers.org.

PA Team