Round 28
Dates and Times
- Round 28 Signups: Friday 8th August 2008
- Round 28 Start: Friday 15th August 2008
- Round 28 End: Friday 3rd October 2008
Round Announcement
By Cincinnatus.
Round 28 Signups open tomorrow (Friday 8th August) at 20:00 GMT, with signups located at http://game.planetarion.com/signup.pl
The Round 28 Beta opens tonight at 18:30 GMT, with ticks starting 08:00 GMT on Friday. Signups open at http://beta.planetarion.com/signup.pl
Round 28 Setup Round 28 will have identical buddy pack, late join and alliance limits to last round. These are 4, 2 and 75 respectively, with the top 60 members in an alliance contributing towards alliance score.
Semi-finalised stats will be available tomorrow night when signups open. Beta stats may or may not be similar to these!
The main game change for Round 28 involves a new setup for covert operations. This means that each planet now has agents and security guards that can be purchased to covert op other planets and to protect your own planets from covert ops respectively. More details on this will be in the manual and on Planetarion Discussions tomorrow evening.
Round Summary
Round 28 began with 3 alliances considered as the main contenders for the #1 spot, Conspiracy Theory, Newdawn and Ascendancy. With Denial disbanding after Round 27 a significant alliance was removed from the field of play. Their HC, and a number of the players, stuck together and created a new alliance called Carebears. Filling out the ranks were VisioN, having merged with NoX during the previous round, VGN, ROCK and a returning TGV. From an early stage the normal pattern of how a round plays out was disrupted. Ascendancy tagged up early and took the #1 spot comfortably, breaking the accepted convention of only tagging as needed that had developed over the last number of rounds. Close behind Ascendancy was CT, who with a large number of Etd planets had a EMP-driven boost early on, temporarily giving them the #1 position at points.
However the round was beginning to be dominated by Ascendancy. Pre-round they had recruited intensively, and had also brought back a number of retired players to fill their ranks with quality members. They also became more involved politically than had been their style previously, working with ROCK, TGV and Carebears at different times in order to target CT heavy galaxies and a gap between the two alliances began to grow. Ascendancy had concentrated themselves in a number of core galaxies and gone heavily for Xan planets, making them very strong defensively, aided by almost all planets choosing Feudal governments for decreased ship costs, something which meant that salvage was worth more to them. CT and VGN, and slightly later VSN, were hostile towards Ascendancy but the lack of co-ordination meant that certain Asc planets got almost no incoming and became very big from an early stage, with galaxies like 4.10 sucking in most of the incoming that was directed at Ascendancy due to being the Asc gal with fewest Xans.
From the end of the third week Ascendancy's lead began to grow faster and faster. They had also picked up some members from other alliances, such as eksero who had had come from Carebears when that alliance disbanded mid-round. With just under four weeks gone in the round Ascendancy looked in a position to dominate. ND finally joined the conflict in an attempt to bring them down, a move which they announced on Alliance Discussions. Despite this public move it took time for ND to actually begin to work with the other three involved alliances, giving Ascendancy more time to consolidate their position. Despite facing extremely heavy incoming at this time Ascendancy already had a sufficient advantage over the other alliances to make it difficult to actually take roids off them. They also rotated their mid-round recruits and late sign-ups into tag, minimising the extent to which they appeared to be losing roids and demotivating their opposition.
The block continued to keep up their attacks on Ascendancy for the next week but their effectiveness was minimal. There were a large number of crashes on Asc planets, providing value boosts for them through salvage, and despite a number of attempted fleetcatches they were unable to kill any significant Ascendancy fleets. Ascendancy began to increase the gap again and, realising that their chance of knocking Ascendancy off the top spot was now largely gone, the block landed some extremely marginal attacks, hoping to create some excitement for the rest of the round. Most notable of these was a large attack on classical of Ascendancy. At this point the round was effectively over and as the incoming on Ascendancy dried up they established a massive lead, dominating the top planet and galaxy ranks completely by the last tick. Almost every other large non-Ascendancy planet lost roids in the last two weeks and Asc finished with 25 of the top 30 planets.
Galaxy wise 1.7 and 9.8 were the main contenders early on, but when elviz of 9.8 crashed and lost his fleet, 1.7 were able to build a comfortable lead over the other galaxies. Their Ascendancy planets also rarely came under attack during the war and by the latter part of the round had become huge. Unsurprisingly the winning planet was one of these, voodoo of Ascendancy, whose main competitors were Nitz of TGV, until he was roided by Ascendancy, and Smasher and Satyr, both Ascendancy members. This round was notable as one of the rounds most dominated by a single alliance, along with 1up's Round 11 victory and eXilition's Round 18. Looking ahead into the next round it seemed likely that a new, or returning, alliance would have to step up to challenge Ascendancy.
