Round 16 ("The End of an Era", submitted by KingAlan) signups are now open at http://game.planetarion.com/signup.pl.
Ticks will start at 21:00 GMT on Friday 27th January, with a shuffle at tick 36 (8:00 GMT Sunday 29th January), and will continue until 21:00 GMT on the 24th March.

Buddy packs will be a maximum 5 as in the previous round, and galaxies will consist of up to 5 buddy packed people (1x5, 1x4, 1x3+1x2, 2x2).

Exceptions will be making a return - if there's more than one person playing from your IP address, even some of the time, PLEASE fill one in (more information available at http://game.planetarion.com/preferences.pl when logged in). You will be notified on signup if someone else has signed up on the same IP address as you.

Ship stats have now been finalised and some ship names have been changed. The final version can be found at http://www.planetarion.com/manual/stats/game. For more information about the name changes, see http://pirate.planetarion.com/showp...mp;postcount=67

The exile system has also been changed as follows:
We are disabling self exile and galaxy exile for buddy pack members - if successful, it may appear again in future rounds.
Planets now have to have been in the galaxy for 24 ticks (as opposed to 48 ticks) before they can be exiled,
Self exile costs are now (value/ 10)*(times_self_exiled+2)^2, and
Galaxy exile costs are STILL (value/10)*0.5*(number_of_galaxy_exiles_so_far_for_gal+2)
(as last round)

Other minor bug fixes / feature additions include modifying Overview so that the fleet format is the same as galaxy status, and allowing members to be sorted by alliance name, changing the formatting on the universe page to reflect the fact they contain different numbers of planets, and making sure the backup system actually deletes unnecessary backups this round so that people can't load the site (as happened a few times last round).

Due to Kal deciding to phase out his Planetarion involvement and leave in the near future for health, and Kloopy deciding to step down as of now as a paid coder after stress-related health problems, we've got a few other announcements to make:

No one is taking Kal's place as "Project Manager" as such, but Squishy, Marv and Cincinnatus are promoted to the PA Team as deputies of Multihunting, Support and Development respectively.

The new structure can be seen at http://www.planetarion.com/Job-Titles.png

With regards to PAN development, due to the above issues we won't be recoding every perl page into a php page as originally planned last year. However, we're going to continue with the Game Management System (similar to the old idea of the passport system) and at least some parts of the UIN (updating the user interface). Depending on time, we'll also try and add to the current ingame alliance tools (the FAS). We'll also do minor bug fixes and feature updates .

We will have a creators hour on Wednesday 1st of February at 20:00GMT if people want to put issues about this to us - please submit questions to CH_Bot as usual before then.

Edit:
Kloopy has stepped down from being a paid coder, but still manages the servers, does coding when he can, and will head a coding team in the near future - we hope.