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.

A Relaxing Browser Game For The Whole Family

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.

At the beginning you construct structures and initiate asteroids that orbit your planet to gain resources. 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 4 races to choose from each equipped with 12 unique ships.

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

Basic Gameplay

Each planet including yours is grouped into galaxies. Planetarion is a turn-based game playable with a web browser. Each turn is called a tick (a 1 hour period). In speed rounds ticks vary between 1-5 minutes.

Rounds are announced 2-3 weeks before tick start. Around this time signups are opened on the main server allowing everyone creation of their very own planet. In the beginning everyone is placed in protection mode and temporarily grouped into galaxies. At tick 36, planets are shuffled and placed into their true initial galaxy using a highly intelligent AI. If your planet is unpaid you are placed randomly otherwise you can form buddy packs with friends.

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.

However, it's advisable to have some ships built by tick 82, as that's when the first attacks will be able to reach your planet. In the beginning of the game it is nearly impossible to stop any attacks, so it is prefereble to build pods only and send them out to attack others.

Engineering

A good starting setup is Research (1st), Mining (2nd) and Construction (3rd). Make sure you set your Engineering Priorities before starting a Research or Construction.

Research

The almost undisputed first choice is Improved Resource Handling, so please click the initate button next to this research.

This technology branch allows you to mine more of the asteroids than you have collected around your planet. All of the more experienced players spend the first 60 or so ticks initiating asteroids in the Mining screen, but shortly after protection ends it is far more cost-effective to attack other players to gain roids (this also gets you XP - see combat for more information).

Starting Research

1. Improved Resource Handling - 16 Ticks to complete
2. Heavy Cargo Transfers II - 24
3. Fighter Class Hulls - 24
4. Jumpgate - 16
5. **End of Protection**
6. Infrastructure Upgrade - 16
7. Heavy Cargo Transfers III - 24
8. Warpgate - 32
9. Advanced Core Extraction - 24
10. Heavy Cargo Transfers IV - 48

Then, about this time you'll need to try and get as much Scan technology as you can whilst keeping up with your roids (at least untill Unit scans)

The things to research least (?), especially for a free account, are probably the Surface Analysis (waves that allow you to see information on other planets) and the Underground Network Charting (Covert_Ops: causing damage without attacking with ships). There are heavy research limitations on unpaid planets.

Construction

The most beneficial construction is the Research lab. This increases your research speed by up to 20% when 1/5 of your constructions are research labs. To build ships you need a light factory.

Starting Constructions

1. Research Lab - 12 ticks
2. Refinery - 12 (the number of which Refinery depends on your race. If you are Terran, focus on Metal Refineries as your ships cost alot of Metal. Cathaar = Crystal and Zikonian = Eonium. Eonium is no longer fuel, but is as important as Metal and Crystal - so keep it in mind ).
3. Refinery - 12
4. Refinery - 12
5. Light Factory - 12
6. Research Lab - 12
7. **End of Protection**
8. Refinery - 12
9. Refinery - 12
10. Amplifier - 12
11. Refinery - 12
12. Research Lab - 12
13. Medium Factory - 12

Mining

Mining is one of the important screens (together with research and construction) at the beginning of the round.

When you first sign up, you have 5000 of each resource. This is enough to buy 3 of each type of asteroid in the "Mining" screen. Paid accounts have 10000 of each resource, and so can afford 6 of each roid type.

To initiate asteroids, put the numbers in the corresponding boxes beside the three different resource types and click initiate.

Note: You want to be the biggest planet you can be. You initiate asteroids at the beginning of the game as that's the most cost effective way of gaining asteroids, and you need asteroids to give you more resources. However, after 150-200 initiated asteroids the most cost effective way to gain more is by building ships that can steal asteroids and attacking other planets (you also gain XP for doing this, which adds to your planets score). Therefore, while you use this page a lot in the first 5-10 days, afterwards you won't need it much unless exchanging resources with others.

Troubleshooting

Can't Login?

• Check that computer time is set correctly
• Clear cookies, cache

Exceptions

If you play from the same place as someone else in your family, it is strongly recommended you apply for an exception.

Galaxies

A galaxy allows its own planets to launch ships to defend each other with a low ETA. In the galaxy status you can see details on friendly and hostile fleet movement (only paid accounts see outgoing fleets).

More on galaxies here.

Alliances

Along with galaxies, your other main line of defence is alliances (supersized clans). Alliances are groups of players that agree to defend and perform coordinated attacks together.

More information is available here.

Combat

This is a space war game in which combat is an important part. The combat section is located here.