Round 10
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Round Details
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Now in its tenth season and fresh from a recode and redevelopment, Planetarion X Genesis is an online space-based game of strategy, politics and epic war. Planet against planet, Alliance against alliance, you can either survive or die. As a ruler of just one planet in the darkness of the universe, it is your task to construct your fleets, build up your planet and mine the much coveted asteroids that encircle your planet. Choose your race and rule your planet as the ultimate warmonger. Develop your technologies and harvest resources, whilst fighting off those who would steal your wealth. --preround portal hype
With the introduction of bug-ridden new Planetarion code and bubblegum-statistics PaX became a round long fight between several alliances that didn't see a victor until the very end.
Round 10 also marked the introduction of buddypacks to the game.
Bugs
One of the more amusing bugs in PaX was found by Gerbie. During the round, Gerbie had kept to his 3 first roids, and instead researched covert operations and waves, working as a scanner for his alliance, Vengeance.
The most popular covop was resource transfer, which basicly stole resources from target and gave them to the covopper. Now, Gerbie stole from the big and gave to the small (himself) and then donated all the resources to the galaxy fund (which he had control over, as the MoD). But as might be expected, the big didn't like this. As they could not hit him (as he was too small), they decided to hit his galaxy instead. Gerbie, the nice fellow he is, sent all his 3 ships, normally used for JGP scans, to defend a galaxymate. There, they actually shot down a few hostile fighters, giving Gerbie XP. However, the formula dictated that if you killed the ships of a bigger planet, then you would gain more XP than if you killed the ships of a smaller planet. Problem was, there was set no limit to this extra XP, and as the planet whose fighters got killed was 117 times bigger than Gerbie (in score) it resulted in a massive score-gain for Gerbie, effectivly putting him in 1st, where he remained for almost a day. Then the bug was fixed, and he was lowered somewhat, allthough still in the top 100.
But Gerbie didn't lose spirit of this. On several occasions during the round he regained #1 for a tick, by donating all the resources he had saved up in the galaxy fund to himself. The ultimate goal was to win the round, as a covopper. The problem was, this tactic offered little challange for Gerbie, and around mid-round he grew bored of the whole thing and stopped. No one knows what would have happened if he had kept on all round - perhaps he would have emerged the winner?
Another bug which caused a stir during the round was the ability to recall fleets whilst in transit. By leaving the planetarion window open, a player could click back multiple times until they reached the page before ever launching their fleet, doing this would cause the fleet to return home immediately. This bug was not discovered until Walken, a top 10 planet at the time, abused it while being fleetcaught. Instead of losing his fleet, he opted to abuse the bug and thus exposing it to the admins. The result of this was his planet being closed and the faulty code being fixed.
Some bugs that were reported by Caution: The bug of giving fleets orders after they had launched was also discovered and reported on IRC immediatly.
He also discovered it was possible to start production orders without the needed research/cons completed by using a command such as http://jpaweb01.planetarion.com/production.pl?ship_12=100, which was also reported. He also suspected that one would be able to use the same flaw to change the Message from the Commander and the Commanders, gal pic etc. He reported that also without checking if that bug actually existed.
A less important glitch that occasionally happened during the round was the ability to buy more ships than you could afford. This bug was seemingly caused by accidentally double clicking the buy button very quickly, resulting in a double order, and negative resources.
Round Summary
With the new shape of the game for Round 10 it was hoped that competition would be more open, and the round proved to be so in the end with the winners only determined in the last two weeks. Thanks to the dominant alliance of the previous round, LDK, calling it quits there was space on the political field for new players this round. Dragons announced that they would be playing the round as a full alliance, after five rounds as a battlegroup. After the co-operation between them and LDK the previous round a number of ex-LDK players went to Dragons for the forthcoming round. A number also went to FAnG, who stepped up into contention this round.
Another main contender was Eclipse who, along with Elysium and ToT, worked as part of the EET block during the round. On the other side FAnG and Dragons NAPed and worked closer together as the round progressed, with Vision joining in on their side from mid-round onwards. After a good early start by ToT FAnG built up a lead over the other alliances but this in turn was quickly closed back down by EET and the lead swapped hands between Dragons, FAnG, Elysium and Eclipse a number of times as the round progressed. During the round both ViruS and Seraphim disbanded, with groups from ViruS moving into Eclipse and Seraphim joining Dragons en masse.
Both sides of the war picked up more agreements as the round continued with FAnG NAPing ND, and on occasion co-operating with Wolfpack and VGN. NoS joined in with EET who were struggling to keep up with FAnG who had moved ahead in the rankings. At this point a large number of FAnG (particularly) and Dragons planets were closed by the multihunters for suspected cheating. Although the vast majority of these planets were subsequently reopened the uproar caused within FAnG by these closures led directly to the FAnG incident. As FAnG HCs washed their hands of the alliance over half of the members left the ingame alliance in order to move elsewhere. With only a week left to go in the round Elysium moved in and recruited a number of these top ex-FAnG planets, gaining them enough score to pass Eclipse in the ingame alliance ranks. A highly controversial tactic at the time it was primarily due to the unpopularity of Eclipse within this group and the desire of the ex-FAnG members to make an impact in the final days of the round.
While the EET block unquestionably finished in the stronger position, with the effective dissolution of FAnG and the #1 and #2 alliance spots, questions raged over the "true winner" of the round. Many in Eclipse accused Elysium of protecting enemy planets in the final days of the round in order to secure a cheap victory. Nevertheless both Elysium and Eclipse emerged victorious from a long and tough war. The winning planet of the round was bleen, who moved from FAnG to Elysium in that group, and the winning galaxy was an Elysium dominated one.
Final Rankings
Top Galaxy
18:4
- Kilroy - Eclipse
- Salminator - Vision
- Mitre - Elysium
- Sword - Elysium
- bleen - Elysium
- Ace - ToT
- Hoffi - Elysium
- desse - Vision
- Guran - Elysium
- Remy - ToT
