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. 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 4 races to choose from, and each is equipped with 12 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 this time 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 36, planets are "shuffled" and placed into their true starting galaxy using a highly intelligent AI. If your planet is unpaid you are placed randomly otherwise you can form buddy packs with friends, which can contain up to 5 people.

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.

Race: Killing, Freezing or Stealing?

An all-round impacting choice is your race: Terran, Cathaar, Xandathrii or Zikonian. Terran is suggested as the starting race, as the ships have high armour and so are harder to kill. Read about the races in the Race Guides.

Planet: x,y,z

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 undisputed first choice for research 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. This is because you can "initate" as many asteroids as you wish, but you can only recieve resources from those you are able to, depending on your resource handling ability. 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).

Just a quick note about the number of ticks beside the Research and the Construction items below. Those numbers represent the 'base' amount of time it will take to complete this research, however your Race, your Engineering Setup and the number of Research Labs you have will significantly reduce this time - indeed you should be able to fit the Infrastructure Upgrade research before protection is over, and perhaps HCT 3 as well.

Starting Research

Improved Resource Handling - 16 Ticks to complete
Heavy Cargo Transfers II - 24
Fighter Class Hulls - 24
Jumpgate - 16
**End of Protection**
Infrastructure Upgrade - 16
Heavy Cargo Transfers III - 24
Warpgate - 32
Advanced Core Extraction - 24
Frigate Class Hulls
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 until Unit scans)

The things to research least if you are a free account are the scans and covert ops, as they're heavily limited and there's nothing worthwhile available until you upgrade.

Construction

The most beneficial construction to start with is the Research lab. This increases your research speed by up to 20% (when 1 in 5 or more of your constructions are research labs). To build ships you need a factory and the appropriate research.

Starting Constructions

Research Lab - 12 ticks
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 ).
Refinery - 12
Refinery - 12
Light Factory - 12
Research Lab - 12
**End of Protection**
Refinery - 12
Refinery - 12
Amplifier - 12
Refinery - 12
Research Lab - 12
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 100-150 initiated asteroids of a specific resource 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.

Galaxy: x,y

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. All planetats will be able to see incoming fleets, but only upgraded planets will be able to see outgoing fleets.

Galaxy Politics

Galactic Commander (blue)

Each planet can vote for a player they want to be the overall leader of the galaxy, called the Galactic Commander. When a player has the most votes, he or she is automatically appointed the role of GC. The galaxy screen shows the current galaxy staff setup.

Minister Of Development (yellow)

The MoD is responsible for the Galaxy Fund. He can donate funds to the smallest planets in the galaxy (the planets with below-average score). He can also regulate trade within the fund: at any time the MoD can choose to forbid or allow trade of one or more (or even all!) types of resources.

Minister of Communication (light blue)

The MoC is the spokesperson for a galaxy: he can send message to all other MoCs in a certain Cluster, or to all members within the Galaxy itself. Another task of the MoC is to keep the Galaxy Forums tidy.

Minister of War (red)

The Minister of war is responsible for arranging attacks and defences in a galaxy. He's generally the one, together with the Minister of Communication, that organises contact information on the forums and overview for defence. He may often also look for galaxies for his own galaxy to attack.

Note: Not all galaxies follow these ideas. Some planets play with friends and alliances as much or more than their own galaxy mates (especially for attacking). Therefore it's a good idea to also have an alliance.

The bottom line for defence and organisation is your galaxy, and generally "galaxy mates" know each other quite well by the end of the round. Communication is essential, which is why many galaxies use a form of communication such as IRC where they have their own private channel to discuss and organise galaxy issues. Mobile phones are often also used in emergencies, such as when the galaxy is being heavily attacked (although giving your mobile phone out is always optional).

It's generally up to the galaxy how much they play for fun and how active they are, as in any galaxy there's some people on 10 hours a day and some only 2-4 hours. As there's only a limited amount of people in a galaxy, some of the more serious players are determined to get active players, but even the smaller less active galaxies often have a certain amount of fun.

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.

Are Alliances Made Of Green Men And Cheese?

Alliances have several ranks within them.

The High Commanders are in charge of the alliance. There's no set limit for how many people are in this most powerful position, but generally there's between 3 and 5 who are in ultimate authority.

Officers sort out the alliance attacks and defences, and are often responsible (together with some of the HCs) for the technical responsibility of the alliance. Some are in charge of intelligence, internal and external affairs, and even "scanners" - those devoted to scanning for the alliance.

Normal members (aka. pe0ns) help with duties within the alliance, but mostly are required to be as active as possible and participate in alliance attacks and defences. Some alliances give points for attacking and defending, so they can keep track of how helpful alliance members are. Alliances generally are organised on IRC and often have their own forums and/or IRC servers to increase privacy and communication ability. Some alliances have a "minimum IRC activity time" together or instead of a points system - inactive players don't pull their weight in the long term and so often require a lot more defence than they give. At the beginning of the round, many alliances would prefer players with less experience but that are online 8 or more hours a day than experienced players that won't be on more than 2 hours a day.

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. A list of all the Round 14 alliances playing can be found on the Round14 alliances page. New players should look in the Alliance Recruitment Forum.

Combat

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

Ships, Classes and Targets

Ship from different classes can be categorized into their respective primary functionalities.

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 Proble 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 :).

Defending

When under attack several planets will receive defense from their alliance. However, those without an alliance have to rely on the planets within their galaxy (or a buddy within the cluster) to receive defence. In-galaxy defence is usually coordinated within the galaxy's IRC channel.

If you have just started out, you will likely be uncovered, meaning you do not have enough ships in defensive to stop the attacker from taking a share of your roids.

Sending random ships for defence is counter-productive as ships target a certain ship class. Unit scanning the attacker and producing a battle calculation based on an estimation of what the attacker sent should always be done before any defence is done.

Troubleshooting

Can't Login?

Check that computer time is set correctly
Clear cookies, cache and restart browser.
Gamepage does not load, while others do? Restart internet connection or your computer.

Exceptions

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

Loging in from different url's :

http://p45.planetarion.com/

http://round15.planetarion.com/

http://struggleforsupremacy.planetarion.com/

Further Help

Sovereign, a Planetarion Strategy Forum Moderator is able and very willing to help players who are new, uncertain on where to go or what to do next, or to provide advice and assistance on a whole range of topics in Planetarion. The #Strategy Channel on the Netgamers IRC Network (see Connecting To IRC) is ideal to drop by, or you can make a post on the Strategy Forum for a more in-depth answer. Sovereign also maintains other Planetarion Resources, some of which can be found in the Useful Links (Help Guides section) thread on the Strategy Forum.