Round 26
Dates and Times
Round 26 signups opened at 20:00 GMT on Friday, 21st March 2008.
Round 26 started at 20:00 GMT on Friday, 28th March 2008.
Round 26 ended at 20:00 GMT on Friday, 16th May 2008.
Round Announcement
Round 26
We would like to announce the following changes for Round 26:
Buddy Packs will be reduced from 5 to 4 players. Galaxies will consist of 1 buddy pack of 4 or 3, or two packs of 2.
However, 2 new signups can be invited to join the galaxy at tick 336, instead of 1 as in Round 25.
Alliance limits will be increased to 75 and the support planet rule will be in effect.
The major change this round regards the in-game alliance defence system. It is now possible to report an incoming on overview or gal status by clicking a link beside the incoming to report it. It will then automatically get added to the in-game alliance page. The in-game alliance defence page has been improved to automatically detect the latest scans of the hostile planets (similar to the alliance attack page), and to also auto-detect the (pre)launched fleets at the same ETA as the incoming hostile fleet. It's possible to change the status to one of a variety, and there's a notes section.
We are going to have a Creators Hour in #planetarion on Netgamers on Wednesday, 12th March at 20:00 GMT, where we can answer questions about the coming round.
We'd like to remind you all that we have an ongoing speedgame at http://speedgame.planetarion.com for the rest of this week, and for all of next week, in some form.
Signups for Round 26 will open on Friday, 21st March at 20:00 GMT with the round starting Friday, 28th March at 20:00 GMT
Round Summary
Prior to Round 26 the primary topic on most people's minds was the possibility of NewDawn becoming the first alliance in PA history to win 3 rounds in a row. After Round 25 Urwins disbanded. A large part of their core went on to create a new alliance called Denial, together with a number of ex-ROCK players, ROCK having disbanded after Round 25 as well. Another new alliance NoX also entered the round, drawing players from all over the PA community. Two notable alliances returned to the field of play, Jenova, for the first time since Round 23, and ToF, who had skipped R25. Other serious contenders for this round included Ascendancy, who played under the tag name STOOMTHEREVIVAL, xVx and Conspiracy Theory.
NewDawn held the #1 position from an early stage, remaining on top for the first week of the round. However initial appearances were deceptive. Neither Denial nor Jenova tagged fully until into the second week of the round and, although Jenova only rose into 3rd spot, Denial overtook ND and claimed the lead. From the very beginning Denial had considered ND as their primary opposition for the round and acted accordingly. Due to various relations between the HCs of Denial and NoX they entered the round closely aligned. Denial and NoX, or DenoX as they came to be later known as, hit ND-heavy galaxies straight away. A little under two weeks into the round Ascendancy, with a memberbased largely unenthusiastic over the prospect of an ND 3-in-a-row, approached Denial with a view to planet-targeting ND. The following night Denial accepted and the two p-targeted ND, resulting in ND losing over 10% of their roids.
By now it was obvious to ND that their main competitor for the top spot this round was Denial, who had thus far proved themselves a rather capable outfit. ND p-targeted Denial back the following night and the round continued to shift towards a Denial versus ND war. Ascendancy rejoined Denial in targeting ND again a couple of days later but on the whole stayed mostly uninvolved. Instead Jenova, seeing Denial begin to stretch their lead, joined up with ND to attack Denial two days after the initial p-targeting by Denial. Responding to this Denial convinced NoX, who had thus far only targeted ND heavy galaxies, to join the conflict full-scale. Over the next week DenoX were able to do significant damage to Jenova and an already weakened ND, despite Ascendancy joining their side for one night in an attempt to even things out. They established roid leads for each of them over both competing alliances and over the next week built on these massively.
A period of 10 days saw Denial increase their roid count by nearly 50%, with NoX also posting large gains in the same time. ND and Jenova battled away fairly ineffectually during this time but were able to avoid being killed off. Eventually they were able to recruit ToF to their cause, and together the trio were able to take ~10% of Denial's roids away. ND, Jenova and ToF were unable to maintain this momentum though and after the following night's raids were comparatively unsuccessful this co-operation effectively ceased. Interestingly though this increase in incoming for Denial led to Ascendancy overtaking them in terms of roids.
At this point in the round a controversy broke out in the PA community when it emerged that certain alliances had access to the arbiters of various other alliances, possibly via illegal accesses by IRC admins. Ascendancy were widely blamed for this, although not being the only responsible to benefit as NoX were also involved. In fact Ascendancy only had access to arbiters belonging to CT and ND, whereas NoX had access to a number of others. This was due to the fact that the member responsible for obtaining these passwords, expl8t, was kicked from Asc shortly after passing on the first passwords, due to the fact he was dissatisfied over not receiving more credit for his actions. This response was later issued by NetGamers admins.
In turn this led to every major alliance uniting to hit Ascendancy for one night. Orchestrated initially by various CT HC, almost every alliance came on board. These alliances took part for various reasons, for example NoX taking the opportunity to hit a heavy Ascendancy galaxy and xVx targeting Ascendancy in the mistaken belief that they had been accessing their arbiter. Although Ascendancy experienced heavy roid losses, in the region of 20%, from these attacks only one of their ten biggest planets was roided and a number of their Zikonian planets managed to steal enemy fleets which crashed on them. While Ascendancy had been dealt a heavy blow by this attack the alliance was far from crippled, as the next few weeks would go on to show.
The next few days saw Ascendancy recover rapidly and with NoX and Denial only posting small roid gains they quickly caught back up in terms of total roid-count. Meanwhile a relatively minor incident occurred which was to go on to have a huge impact on the course of the round. elviz, of NoX, was accused of farming. Due to his notoriety throughout the community this incident led to escalating tensions between NoX and Denial. Concerned by this, and fearing Denial dropping the NAP and hitting their top planets, NoX began to talk to other alliances, including Asc and CT, about working together to target Denial. However NoX were also keen on retaining the Denial NAP, given that it had so far served them well. Putting off attacking Denial later and later when talking to other alliances it seemed unlikely that NoX would actually follow through.
This was further confirmed by their actions a couple of days after first approaching Asc/CT when NoX fleetcaught members from both alliances on the same day. This, obviously, made them massively unpopular with both Ascendancy and CT. When HC from each alliance began to talk to the other it became clear that there was mutual agreement that NoX should be targeted back that night as "revenge" for the fleetcatches. Bringing in ND, who had also received large numbers of NoX incs throughout the round, who in turn brought along their allies ToF, the four alliances hit NoX that night, taking ~15% of their roids off them. The co-operation only lasted for one night but it set the stage for later in the round.
Ascendancy continued their rapid gains and overtook Denial in roids, NoX still lagging well behind due to the targeting of them. By now Denial and Ascendancy had agreed to avoid targeting each other heavily but this agreement favoured Ascendancy, with their core galaxies, far more than it did Denial. After one night where Ascendancy sent a large number of fleets at one large Denial planet in their galaxy raid Denial decided to go after them before they could close in any more on the #1 spot. The following night Denial, and a now friendly again NoX, went after Ascendancy heavily. With a couple of Ascendancy gals also receiving incs from other alliances that night Ascendancy lost over 10% of their roids. However this also marked the beginning of a problem which dogged Denial during the last week of the round. A massive fi/co attack on Hude resulted in Denial crashing into Asc's defence and losing over 5 million value in the resulting battle.
Following on from this Ascendancy went out looking for other alliances to work with. ND, CT and ToF all expressed interest again and that night the four of them hit Denial, with NoX being targeted the next night due to the preferences of the other three involved alliances. Both alliances lost over 10% of their roids on these nights with Ascendancy recovering most of their losses in this time. In the meantime DenoX were sending massive waves on the top 3/4 Asc planets. With Ascendancy prioritising defence versus the Denial waves and the XP gains minimal due to the larger planets on each wave landing Ascendancy closed the gap rapidly in this time. After the two nights of working together Ascendancy hit Denial solo, with less success than when the other three were involved but still taking roids off Denial. The same night NoX decided to attack Sleepless, CT's top planet and one of the main contenders, hoping to boost one of their own top planets into #1. Seizing this opportunity to reunite the earlier group Ascendancy approached CT and offered to hit NoX with them that night in exchange for help versus Denial the next day. Bringing in ND and ToF again the four hit NoX, along with a number of VGN planets to keep ToF satisfied.
Despite having a successful night roiding NoX the overall benefits were limited by one of Ascendancy's biggest planets being fleetcaught while returning from landing on NoX. Ascendancy found themselves largely unable to defend versus these fleetcatches due to their race and fleet composition. Having gone mostly for fr/de fleets they couldn't gather up enough ships to deal with the combined NoX/Denial fi/co fleetcatches. That night CT backed out of the co-operation, citing internal difficulties, leaving Ascendancy, ND and ToF to target Denial. By now the round was balanced on a knife-edge with only a couple of million score in between Ascendancy and Denial, although this was discounting hidden production. Amazingly yet another Ascendancy planet was fleetcaught that morning. Asc's top planet, Golan, was fced after recalling in the middle of the tick while eta 1, allowing NoX and Denial enough time to gather fleets to catch his returning fr/de. This actually meant that all 3 of Ascendancy's big planets in 8.8, which was one of Asc's top gals throughout the round, had been fced, Meatwax and Inforza being the other two from earlier.
Unfortunately for Denial this attack had some unforeseen ramifications. The two Denial planets in 8.8 were by now very unhappy over their gal-mates being killed off. Both of them defended Golan ingal versus their own alliance and, after refusing to pull, got kicked from their tag by the HC. The ensuing battle was brutal for both sides and, after salvage and considering the loss of 2 high score planets from tag, left Denial worse off than Ascendancy. From here the gap grew rapidly as Ascendancy released their hidden prods and raced away from Denial. On the penultimate night of the round Ascendancy and ND hit Denial once more, resulting in further roid losses for them and now leaving Ascendancy clear favourites for #1.
In other events the last week's series of fleetcatches was far from over. That afternoon the #1 planet Sleepless decided to land an unnecessary attack to cap 150 roids and was fleetcaught, primarily by NoX, returning from this. With CT unable to cover, and Sleepless losing half his fleet, it it looked certain that one of NoX's top planets, Cronix or Tronick, both from 4.4, would win the round. Hoping to stop this, and by now with the round victory fairly secure, Ascendancy, CT and many other planets from various alliances launched simultaneous fleetcatches on the duo. Tronick was caught and lost enough value to drop him down to 44th in the end of round rankings. However Cronix was able to recall just before landing and dodged the attempted catch on his fleet. Despite being roided by multiple waves on the final day of the round he was able to hold onto the top spot and finished as #1 planet for the round.
In spite of the closeness of the alliance rankings with only a few days to go Ascendancy eventually emerged as victors by more than 20 million. The winning galaxy this round was long-time leaders 4.4, who had held onto the top spot since the third week of the round, with Cronix as #1 planet. Significantly this round marked Ascendancy's first round victory since Round 16, and proved to be hugely influential in the shaping of the ensuing rounds.
