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 laterissued 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.
This round was memorable for the large number of fleetcatches that took place among the various top planets from the mid-point of the round onwards. Galaxy 8:8 had been doing unstoppable FR/DE teamup attacks on all the big planets, keeping the top planets very even. However, this eventually let to all the main planets in the galaxy being fleetcaught by NoX/Denial. Starting with Inforza, followed by Meatwax and ending with Golan 2 days before the end in an ugly battle that cost both sides a lot of score. Golan was at the time of the fleetcatch above 10 million score, which would end up being more than the winning planet had at the last tick and he was able to rebuild to finish 9th. Ascendancy were unable to defend these fleetcatches because of being mainly fr/de while the catchers were fi/co. This was however not the end of fleetcatching for the round. Sleepless found himself in a winning position 1 day before the round ended, but decided to land a needless attack for 150 roids and got half his fleet caught returning from it. He still finished a strong 5th despite this mistake. All these things put 4:4 in a prime position with 2 NoX planets (Cronix and Tronick) tied at the top. They were however, both fleet caught by CT/ASC as they returned from the fleetcatch on Sleepless. Cronix managed to get online and recall his fleet seconds before landing and avoided being fc'ed and subsequently went on to win the round despite being roided by multiple waves on the last day. Tronick took a good score hit and ended 44th, but 4:4 held on to win the galaxy rankings in addition to #1 planet. IsilX had his best planet rank to date, prompting many jokes about the player quality left in the game.
