Round 14 will be a round not of major visible changes, but of consolidation and minor improvement in the current game, at least to you the players. Behind the scenes though there have been significant improvements in our admin tools, and specifically in the tools we have to fight against cheating. Rather that telling you what I’d like to see in the Round 14 code, I thought it would be better to tell you what is actually currently coded and ready for beta testing.

New features:
-Hard coded exception system – players will be able to apply for an exception from the preferences page rather than having to send an email request. The system will limit interaction to allowed levels.
-It is now possible to hide the coordinates in scans using a simple toggle

Bug fixes:
-Alliance nickname, planet name and ruler name are all now correctly unique
-New planets can now not start with more research than a free planet can get
-Various fixes for going from a main round into havoc
-Various fixes for going from a beta to a main round
-Various bug fixes in round 13 shuffler to prevent early round exile issues
-When someone leaves an alliance time in vacation or time closed will not count towards the 72 hour period that planets must be allianceless for
-When mailing defenders recall mails it now doesn’t mail the defenders who only have prelaunched ships sent – this is to prevent problems with multi-wave attacks
-Missions page now more clearly displays the ETA for various missions
-Ticker speedups and optimisations

Minor Improvements:
-Enhancements to multi-hunting tools
-Enhancements to abuse policing tools
-Enhancements to galaxy banner policing tools
-Enhancements to exile tracking
-Fleet scans are now 100% accurate
-Alliances are informed if they have new mail
-HCs are now informed more clearly if they have new applicants
-MoC can now mail the whole galaxy and all MoCs in the cluster
-After the shuffle people will be able to see the coordinates of those in their buddy pack on the preferences screen
-Research restrictions for free planets is now much easier to configure, including the ability to disable the limitations entirely
-Universe rankings screen will show only top 50 galaxies and top 30 alliances; this more accurately reflects the current game and saves some db space

We really hope that Round 14 will be a great round and our 3 coders will be working hard to make sure everything that can be done is done. Things that we hope to improve include combat, the infamous eta bug and the general look and feel of Planetarion.

And remember, there is still more to come including new ship stats .