New Player Manual

Introduction

Little experience in Planetarion? You've come to the right place.

Browse around before the beginning of the round to gain an advantage about the inner workings of the game.

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In Planetarion you compete with thousands of other players over a 2 month period of non-stop gaming. Activity, skill, endurance and a solid alliance are the building blocks of a winner in this game. Use of IRC, while not required to play the game, is extremely important to communicate between other players and to succeed in the game.

At the beginning you construct structures and initiate asteroids. You will gain resources by mining these asteroids. With these resources you are able to construct 6 different classes of ship. Two classes are capable of stealing asteroids from enemy planets while another is capable of bombarding enemy planets ruthlessly destroying their structures. There are 5 races to choose from, and each is equipped with unique ships.

Planets are ranked by their score. The planet with the highest score wins the game.

Each planet (including your own!) is grouped into galaxies. Planetarion is a turn-based game with turns being called a tick. In standard rounds, there is one hour between ticks.

Rounds are generally announced 2-3 weeks before the ticks (turns) start. Around a week before a round starts, signups are opened allowing everyone to register their very own planet. When the game starts, everyone is placed in protection mode and temporarily grouped into large galaxies. At tick 12, planets are "shuffled" and placed into their true starting galaxy using a highly intelligent AI. You can form buddy packs with friends, which can contain up to 3 people, which will allow you to play in the same galaxy throughout the round.

The First 72 Hours: Under Protection

During the first 72 ticks of the game your planet is under protection. During this time, get used to the game, and as often as possible visit the mining page to initiate asteroids, the research page to start new researches and the construction page to start new constructions.

It is recommended to have some ships built by tick 82, as that is when the first attacks will be able to reach your planet. In the beginning of the game it is nearly impossible to stop attacks on your planet. As such, it is preferable to build mainly pods and send them out to attack others.

Alliance: 1st line of support

Beside galaxies, your main line of defence is alliances. Alliances are groups of players that agree to defend and perform coordinated attacks together.

Super excited to see more of this kind of stuff onilne.

How Do I Get An Alliance?

Most alliances require IRC activity. The established alliances require vouches (people already in the alliance knowing you and saying you're a good player), but many just interview and require a minimum activity time. New players should look in the Alliance Recruitment Forum in particular the Alliance Overview at the top.

Combat

This is a space war game in which combat is an important part.

Thohugt it wouldn't to give it a shot. I was right.

Inititative

Initiative defines the order that ships fire in battle. Generally, Cathaar EMP ships fire first, then Xandathrii ships, then Terran and Zikonian kill ships and Cathaar kill ships, and then the astropods, and then steal ships, and then structure killers.

Arm/Cost and Dam/Cost explained

In the ship statistics these are, in some ways, more important than the armour, damage and cost columns themselves. They summarize these columns by saying, per cost, how much armour or damage the ship does. This means you can quickly compare ships no matter their different costs. looking at Terran, you can see their "Arm/Cost" column is much bigger than the other races. Cathaar and Xandathrii have bigger "Dam/Cost" columns, but keep in mind that 6 of the Cathaar ships only stun their opponents (the ships that are listed as EMP).

Attacking

Look around for targets you can handle, unit scan, produce a battle calculation and attack. Remember to send enough pods to capture 25% of the targets roids, which have an armour of 50. Get a News scan at ETA 1 or a Jump Gate Probe scan between ETA1-4 to be aware of any defence the planet might have obtained. It is advisable to watch your targets resource spending during the attack not to be caught unaware of ships coming out of production. The How to Attack thread on the [Strategy] Forum outlines a procedure for attacking, however it does include some more advanced Terminology so it may be initially confusing, however it is still a good viable guide. Furthermore, a description of the various Fleet Strategy is also available - it outlines common names for the various tactics involved, provides an example, and identifies counter-strategy too. Again, it uses complex Terminology and so it is something to work towards :).