Round 30

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Dates and Times

  • Round 30 Signups: Friday 16th January 2009
  • Round 30 Start: Friday 23rd January 2009
  • Round 30 End: Saturday 4th April 2009

Round Summary

After Round 29 and the domination of the endgame of a second round in a row by Ascendancy there emerged a widespread consensus throughout the game that something would have to be done in order to ensure that Ascendancy did not manage a repeat performance. Ascendancy themselves saw a lot of their members leave, with a number departing with Wishmaster to Omen and others being removed from the alliance, which initially aimed at playing the round with a somewhat smaller memberbase. Denial disbanded after the previous round, with their members spreading out throughout the universe. CT, coming off the back of a fairly strong finish to the previous round, recruited up to the new tag limit of 100. The other powerful alliances at the top were ND and VGN, with this round also being notable for the return of hirr, who returned along with a number of other players due to the fact that r30 was announced as the last round of PA.

Initially pre-round talks saw the two biggest alliances, CT and Omen, work together to hit Ascendancy, who had concentrated in core galaxies. Omen, who at this stage were working with a small BG, Factory, as well as a part of Dragons who had returned and were scattered across a number of alliances, along with CT outnumbered Ascendancy heavily at this point and the Ascendancy galaxies as a result were unable to get going, with their growth stagnating while the others pulled away. Receiving more incoming from Omen than from CT Asc struck back primarily against Omen, planet-targeting them across the universe. Both alliances went looking for more help, Asc having NAPed ROCK and Omen Redemption one week into the round, with Omen also talking to VGN, who already contained a number of the Dragons BG who were attacking with them. Ascendancy continued recruiting throughout this time as well, particularly from players who landed in their core galaxies, expanding from ~50 members as the round began to over 70 after the first week, and also organised an avoidance agreement with xVx, which became a full fledged NAP as the round progressed.

With the Ascendancy galaxies increasingly bad targets, CT progressively moved on to hit other galaxies, with Omen allying VGN after their earlier discussions. With Omen now looking the strongest alliance CT and Ascendancy agreed on a NAP and began to target Omen together, with ASS also somewhat involved in the first couple of nights. The war between Ascendancy and Omen continued to dominate the round however, with Ascendancy clawing back some of the gap that had sprung up between them in the first two weeks. With extremely disciplined defence, with many top planets sending 2-3 def fleets per night, controlled via the various core galaxy DCs, and with almost all of their planets, particularly Zikonians, going for feudal governments Ascendancy were extremely difficult to roid down fully. One particularly effective tactic was the use of prelaunched pillagers, and other fr/de class ships, against fi/co attack fleets. A number of the less experienced players in both Omen and VGN crashed onto Ascendancy planets, boosting their values, and enabling the Ziks to develop fleets based around large numbers of stolen ships.

As the war continued on both Ascendancy and Omen were able to do heavy damage to the other side and although Ascendancy were closing the gap on Omen, having by now recruited up to a similar size, CT were stretching their lead out ahead, while ND, who had been relatively uninvolved in the early stages of the round politically, were also very roid-fat. Entering the fourth week of the round both alliances were on similar roid counts, at around 50k, some 15k behind CT and the same size as the rather smaller ND. With a cessation in hostilities being viewed as in both sides' best interests Omen and Asc agreed to avoid each other and turned on the rest of the universe, which had gotten fat as they concentrated on each other. Both alliances were able to gain huge numbers of roids each night as this ceasefire continued but it was obvious to both that the main battle was still to be resolved. After a week of random raiding hostilities recommenced with CT and Ascendancy hitting Omen, while Omen, along with a few smaller alliances, hit back against Asc. Omen had, during this lull, contacted Kaifux, who returned to help HC Omen and they were able to gather together a few alliances to join in for the first night. Initial heavy losses for both sides dried up after the first night and for the next two days most of the losses were Omen's. It now looked like the main war of the round had been resolved in Ascendancy's favour.

However the rest of the universe was, given the results of the previous two rounds, extremely wary of Ascendancy. CT, sensing their opportunity, dropped their NAP with Ascendancy. Helped by the negative view of Ascendancy they were able to assemble a block consisting of the rest of the top 5 alliances, CT, Omen, ND and VGN all working together to hit Ascendancy. After huge losses for Ascendancy on the first few nights of this co-op JBG sent this ultimatum to ND and Omen HC which was made public on Alliance Discussions. ND, already somewhat reluctant to take part in this effort, decided to pull back from the all out assault on Ascendancy. Ascendancy had also been approached by hirr, who were working together with ROCK, who offered a NAP which Ascendancy accepted. With ND now out of the equation, and many of the easier roids to take already lost, Ascendancy were able to stabilise themselves. Omen were suffering from low morale after being defeated by Asc and both they and VGN had lost a number of fleets in crashes on Asc planets. Ascendancy and ND began to work together at this time, hoping to maximise both of their chances to get the #1 ranking. CT suffered the brunt of the incomings, with Ascendancy switching the majority of their firepower across to their planets, who were by and large fatter than the Omen planets by now.

The team of ND and Ascendancy proved extremely effective with the various Omen/CT mixed galaxies taking heavy losses over the next few weeks. CT had dropped their NAP, agreed at the same time as the original mass targeting of Asc, with ND and some of the tougher targets in CT and Omen were taken out. This, rather memorably, included a massive fake on agar3s of Omen which killed off a large chunk of value and further damaged Omen's morale. ND overtook CT to move into the #1 spot around this time and Ascendancy, surging past first Omen and then CT, moved into second place. As the round moved towards its conclusion a final war between ND and Ascendancy began to seem inevitable. With just under 2 weeks left in the round ND ended their NAP with Ascendancy, giving them the 48 hours notice until hostilities began. The block regathered but with Ascendancy by now in a far superior position to their earlier one they were a far harder nut to crack. One Asc galaxy in particular, 6.1, had grown massively over the previous weeks, and were virtually impossible to hit effectively. Nonetheless Omen and VGN joined with ND to target Asc, although CT, feeling that their chance to win had been destroyed by ND, stayed mostly on the sideline.

Ascendancy suffered losses to begin with, primarily due to the size of their opposition again. Significantly though ND, while ahead in the score rankings, had less fleet value to bring to the table than Ascendancy, due to their smaller member-base. This led to them being unable to fight Asc effectively 1 on 1 and they lost vast swathes of roids to Ascendancy attacks. More importantly, after a long and brutal round many of their members were tired and crashed their fleets in both attack and defence against Asc. Ascendancy, bringing out all their hidden production when the war began, concentrated exclusively on ND and in the space of only a few days overturned a 15 million score deficit and took the lead.

By now it was obvious that if Ascendancy were to be prevented from winning their third round in a row a huge effort would be required from the rest of PA. With just over a week to go most of the rest of the active playerbase gathered together to try and take down Ascendancy. Huge teamups were organised and launched, recalled and relaunched on Ascendancy planets, almost entirely those not in the core galaxies, over the next two days. Led primarily by DLR, who had remained neutral, albeit rather hostile towards CT in return for the incoming they sent towards them, throughout the round, these teamups were able to roid a number of Ascendancy planets. However a high number of these fleets also crashed on Ascendancy's defence, boosting them through salvage and further dropping ND's score, if the fleets were theirs. As the last weekend of the round went on the incoming on Ascendancy dried up as, after an exhausting round, the playerbase accepted that Asc would claim the top spot in round 30.

The final week of the round consisted of Ascendancy, working with CT, targeting the remaining hostile top-ranked galaxies, dropping many of them down the rankings. They were unable to take out the top galaxy in time though, meaning that their top fortress gal, 6.1, only finished in second place, behind 12.5. The top planet this round was elviz of Ascendancy, who won his fourth round. This, unfortunately, was blighted by massive salvage donations in the last few days, with first hirr suiciding on the #2 planet, eksero, boosting him to #1 and then a number of other planets suiciding on elviz on the final day, pushing him back into the top spot. Nonetheless this round had certainly been one of the more interesting and active ones in recent PA history, and it would be hard to argue that Ascendancy did not deserve their third round victory in a row.

Final Rankings

See also

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