Round 8
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Round Details
This round abruptly ended in early December 2002, without warning, when the leased servers were reposessed due to Fifth Season not raising enough money to pay for them. Credit card fraud in this and previous rounds was widely blamed as much of the money raised through account subscriptions was paid as chargeback fines for fraudulant transactions. Lithuanian and Romanian players had born the brunt of the blame for this.
During the round both Spinner and fudge left their roles, although fudge maintained the round when there were server problems requiring direct intervention.
Fudge looked at the code, but determined that it would not be worthwhile to rewrite the necessary parts in order to complete the 2 weeks remaining in the round. Zeus made several emotional announcements on the portal and in #planetarion where he gave out as much information about what had happened as possible, however this was limited.
After an outcry from the community Zeus persuaded Fifth Season to sell the Planetarion name and code. During December there was little information about the bidding process although several Planetarion names such as Starbucks placed bids. The winner was eventually Jolt who paid an undisclosed sum.
Round Summary
It was declared pre-round that Round 8 was be the last ever round of Planetarion. Although both Xanadu and Legion had quit after Round 7 there were still a number of contending alliances who were keen on winning the round. One substantial change from the previous rounds was the re-introduction of random galaxies so that the entire universe was random for the first time since Round 1 itself. Round 8 also marked the addition of overburn attacking and defending.
Politically the fallout from Round 7 continued. Titans and LDK, previously a Lithuanian wing of Xanadu, who had moved closer at the end of the round continued together into Round 8. A number of alliances, including initially Fury, RaH and ViruS went into the round solo. Equally three alliances, FAnG, ToT and a new alliance, Adelante, blocked together. Despite a good start for this block Adelante, suffering from many of the problems which afflict newer alliances and under the weight of numerous mergers which brought other groups on board, collapsed after slightly less than a month into the round.
Titans and LDK had been growing rapidly in the meantime. On the other hand Fury, in an attempt to avoid heavy targeting, had tried to remain hidden in the early parts of the round and as such had lacked offensive firepower, leading to their growth stagnating. As Adelante collapsed much of their core went on to join Fury, who cleaned their ranks of spies and inactives in an attempt to move back into contention. They took Adelante's place in the block alongside FAnG and ToT and stepped up the war with Titans/LDK. Not all of Adelante had joined Fury though, one ex-Legion group, DTA, was extremely anti-Fury and as a result moved to the other side, allying Titans/LDK. Shortly thereafter ViruS also agree on a NAP with Titans/LDK.
Just prior to this event, as the war moved through the gears, intensive targeting of the top planets had begun. Titans/LDK launched this successful attack on girlee, a top Fury planet, shortly after the Adelante split. Many of the top Fury/FAnG/ToT planets were roided by the Titans/LDK block. Attempts such as this attack on LDK's servuz to strike back failed. Gradually losing the war FAnG developed a number of internal problems. With high-ranking members being closed and others deserting to then unaligned alliances such as Wolfpack and Elysium FAnG HC split, with Rumad and hinch taking control of the alliance. Personal disagreements between ToT and FAnG HC ensued and the block itself split.
However it was clear that the Titans/LDK/ViruS/DTA group would dominate the final month of the round unless a concerted attempt was made to take them down. A large group of alliances including the three previously blocked ones, NoS, and Wolfpack/Elysium (who had been hostile towards Fury in the early stages of the round), joined together to attack Titans/LDK. Despite weight of numbers now being firmly on their side the gap was not being closed. With two weeks to go in the round Titans/LDK looked firmly in the driving seat. Unfortunately Fifth Season pulled the plug on the round at this time but it would be hard to claim that anyone bar Titans/LDK, with half of the t50 and 40 t100 planets, were the victors of Round 8.
The History of Round 8 by Sonnenbomber
ToT decided to continue the cooperation with FAnG. Together with Adelante we planned to make a triade for R8. Fury claimed to go solo and Titans/LDK/Virus we had seen as main enemy for R8. They had both a lot good players in and a row of good partners what had made them to a great enemy.
Additionally I should remember that R8 was the first round since R3 which only allowed random gals and R8 was planned to become the last one in PA history.
ToT also opened an international wing in R8 which was leaded by bartgymnast. But it always was pretty small wing. We had a really nice roundstart and all worked fine till Adelante became intern problems. Through the great power of Titans/LDK/Virus, our triade and Fury decided to cooperate for destroying them. Already 3 weeks after roundstart, Adelante disbanded and their several wings joined other allys. The Adelante Core BG joined Fury and so the new Triade became FAnG/Fury/ToT. But as longer the war went, more and more FAnG planets become closed for cheating and this became to a big intern problem for FAnG, moral went down, battles were lost. Some final trys to beat LDK/Titans in big battles failed too. At the end FAnG splitted, Rumad and hinch took controll over FAnG and kicked to old HCs. At the end (and after a lot of argues) ToT and FAnG canceled all agreements, so only Fury and ToT were left and fighting virus/titans/ldk.
And to be honest, we failed. through a lot lost battles and the disband from 2 of our allieds, we werent able to fight back. At least we were able to protect our topplayers till the end. Even the round ended much earlier than expected. Planetarion was bankrupt and servers went down. So the round ended 3weeks before the originally planned date. It seemed that PA was finally over.... --[ToT]Sonnenbomber
Final Rankings
