Remember Planetarium?

[Slim]

Some of us have been working on modifying an open source version of the old Planetarium engine to make it a bit more balanced and prettier. We're launching it today, all welcome to join in! Details below:

 

 

Remember Planetarion?

 

For those that don't know, it's basically a web-based galactic conquest

game that's very simple to pick up. It's highly addictive and perfect for

time wasting at work!

 

Well, some bloke did an open source version of it and Brit has been busy

adapting it (to work and stuff) and skinning it up to look like the EED web

site. I went through and renamed the ships and so on to be a little more

amusing 'in genre' for us and tweaked out the mechanics to make things a

little more interesting than the original.

 

We're nearing the end with it and this week will see the last testing game

which means ticks (turns basically) of just 30 seconds between (rather than

an hour or so as normal, meaning games end up taking a month).

 

Please, sign up and check it out!

 

http://www.etronika.co.uk

 

You're going to need some help, we're still working on that side of things

but here's where you can find the basics and the ship statistics:

 

http://www.etronika.co.uk/help.php

 

And I'm including my guide to combat which will go up later on on the web

site for those a bit more interested in how it all works. You don't need to

worry about this too much, have a play around in the game and see what you

think.

 

Ticks wont start until 3pm. You get to go in and start of now but no time

will advance. After 3pm, you'll want to get in and manage stuff. You can

mark your planet in 'sleep' mode when you go home, take yourself out of it

in the morning and carry on (with the HUGE amount of resources you will

have).

 

Enjoy!

 

Oh, the game will 'end' some time next week probably and the highest scorer

wins. Then we'll restart (having to wipe log-ins) with normal tick time

(probably 20 min a tick).

 

In depth combat explanation follows:

 

----

Galactic 0wnerage combat explained

 

Combat in Galactic 0wnerage is not complicated but understanding the basics

of how a battle unfolds will enable you to understand the 'stats' for each

military unit and its value in your fleets. The object of an attacker is to

steal roids while the primary goal of a defender is to avoid that aim.

Therefore the purpose of each battle ultimately hinges on the Leecher, the

lumbering hauler that captures enemy roids, assembles a nuclear engine on

the surface and thrusts it back towards your home world.

 

To all intents and purposes, Leechers perform their activity after the rest

of a combat round is calculated. During this time, Leechers may be

incapacitated or stunned with EMP-equipped vessels or they may be

destroyed. From a strategic point of view, there is little point in keeping

a fleet in offensive combat for the next round if all the Leechers have

been destroyed in the first round. Unless the goal is to weaken the enemy

defences for a further assault, of course.

 

In the military stat page, you will see a number of columns, here is the

key to those columns:

 

(This page is http://www.etronika.co.uk/help_stat.php )

 

Name

Name of the vessel as it appears in your shipyard page.

 

Type

This is the basic class of vessel in terms of size. FI is fighters, CO is

corvettes, FR is frigates, DE is destroyers, CR is cruisers, BS is

battleships.

 

Spez

Type of vessel: NORMAL is standard combat vessel designed to destroy

the enemy, EMP is a vessel designed for incapacitating the enemy, CLOAK are

vessels that do not appear in unit scans and jumpgate warning messages, CAP is capturing

units (only the Leecher), PDS are planetary defense system units and APDS

is anti-planetary defence units aka interplanetary Trident III missiles.

 

T1

This is an important column because it means the type of vessel that the

corresponding unit will fire upon FIRST. Once all these are destroyed, the

unit will target the type of vessel indicated in the T2 column.

 

T2

What class of vessel the unit will fire on when no vessels match T1.

 

T3

Third vessel to fire upon. Note, if this is blank then it means that the

unit will not target any further class of ships. A good example is the

Stinger. If corvettes and frigates are stunned or there are no more in the

fleet, Stingers will have no more effect.

 

Init

Another important column because this indicates when the ship will fire.

The lowest number fires first.

 

Agil

This is the agility of the unit and therefore how hard it is to shoot with

a given weapon speed that is attacking it.

 

Wsp

The weapon speed of the armament on this vessel. If this is low then

chances of hitting a vessel with high agility are greatly reduced.

 

Guns

The number of weapons that a unit carries.

 

Pwr

The shot power of each gun. This only applies to standard armaments. EMP

shots have no power and simply incur a chance of disabling the enemy based

upon the resistance of the enemy ship fired upon.

 

Armor

Quantity of armour on the vessel, when armour is zero then vessel

destroyed.

 

Resist

Percentage chance to shrug off the effects of a ship incapacitating EMP

weapon blast.

 

Time line of a typical battle in Galactic 0wnerage

 

Interplanetary missiles will strike planetary defense system (PDS) units

before any standard PDS or vessels can strike down the warheads. The

exception is the Star Wars Programme which is specifically geared to fire

first and shoot down missiles. That is why Star Wars Programme units

initiative is zero.

 

Concerning standard combat, PDS units get first shot at the incoming

vessels. In that case, one particularly valuable PDS unit must surely be

the second level PDS unit, the Laser Platform, since this will first target

frigate-class vessels and this includes the Leecher, the unit we should be

primarily concerned with.

 

After all the PDS has fired, the next ships to fire is the mighty Mezzer,

an advanced cruiser class EMP-vessel only available if the player takes up

research in advanced EMP techniques rather than space warfare (which leads

to the mighty Ubernaught). The Mezzer will fire on cruisers, destroyers

and frigates with its large number of EMP cannons and represents a

significant threat to the larger ships of an incoming attack.

 

If the defender has enough Mezzers or there is not enough destroyers and

cruisers in the attacking force, it is likely that all of the inbound

Leechers will be stunned before any of the attackers got a shot off.

Therefore, if the player is attacking an EMP-specialist world, they would

be very well advised to send a fleet heavy on Pooners, small corvette-class

units that will target enemy cruisers. Assuming they aren't all stunned by

stingers and...

 

Next to fire is the EMP-specialist Rooter vessel which targets corvette

class ships and fighters. Rooters can effectively stun the corvettes and

fighters. The threat to corvettes is extreme because again, they represent

the only chance the attacker has to take out the fearsome Mezzer.

 

Next the general workhorse EMP unit, the Stinger, fires. This unit is so

cheap and numerable that corvettes and frigates should be afraid,

particularly as the stinger is available to all players regardless of the

research line they pursue.

 

Finally Pooners get to let rip, these are the cheap corvette-class ship

with large slow guns designed to take out to capital ships, namely cruisers

and destroyers. Although they are so versatile if there are no capital

ships left, such as the early game, they will happily target frigate-class

ships. Pooners shoot for 0wnerizers and Mezzers and any incoming force

should treat them as a staple diet of combat.

 

Now the Devastator is close enough to fire. It is the only ship in the game

with enough firepower to take down the largest capital ships,

battleship-class Nastehs and the all-powerful Ubernaught. No more

battleships available, it works its way down through cruisers and

destroyers.

 

At this stage in the battle, fighter jocks comes into play and the cheap

and cheerful hordes of Vipers fly into the enemy defences and let rip upon

Frigates and Corvettes. That means they get to fire at Beasters before the

Beasters bring their multiple fast anti-fighter weaponry to bear and start

chewing through invaders.

 

This fighter screen provided the perfect cover for those players who have

specialised in Space Warfare to bring up their ultimate set-pieces, the

Ubernaught. This vessel has 200 fast moving guns and if left unchecked,

will rapidly annihilate vast swathes of enemy fighters and corvettes.

Players should always be worried about Ubernaughts. They are very difficult

to kill, impossible to stun and if not countered early, losses to

Ubernaughts will rapidly deplete the cannon fodder units and that means

increased fire upon the expensive and important ships, particularly

Leechers. Beware the Ubernaught!

 

Things didn't get any better for fighters at this point because now it's

time for Beasters to open fire. This represents a change over the original

Planetarion, Beasters will now target fighters first so expect large

casualties of Vipers and Stingers in the early game due to Beasters.

Likewise you should always build Beasters in the early game to counter

rushes of Vipers and Stingers. A unit scan of a planet showing a fleet with

plenty of Beasters is likely to make someone think twice about zerging your

planet with thousands of cheap craft. Unless they want to hand you the

salvage.

 

Now it's the time for the lineback fighting capitalship cruiser-class

0wneriser to steam into battle. It has plenty of powerful guns and if it

gets this far, it's going to start inflicting heavy casualties upon

Beasters and Pooners and other frigate and corvette-class units such as the

higher-end PDS. If a player gets hold of an 0wneriser before the enemy, it

can effectively neutralise the anti-fighter capability of Beasters quickly

and rack up very heavy and expensive losses upon the enemy.

 

Cloaked vessels will fire now. These are normally weaker than their

traditional counterparts and they fire later in the combat round but they

represent a nasty surprise to the enemy since they are frequently not

expected to be a part of the battle. Players specialising in cloak

technology should study the statistics carefully and work out how best to

compliment their standard fleet to pull off the maximum deception

concerning the disposition of their forces.

 

Last of all, assuming they survived and weren't stunned, Leechers 'fire'.

Each has a good chance of capturing an enemy roid and returning it and

thereby depleting the enemy of the resources to restock their fleet and

increasing the resources of the aggressor.

 

One thing to remember though. Heavy incoming fleet losses means plenty of

salvage for a defender and if they're efficient at beating you off, the

losses to your forces and the salvage incurred in the battle will often

make the defender better off in the end. Attack only if you're confident of

stealing roids. Roids are all.

[ans]

Oh man, I was a PA addict for the first 3/4 rounds. Been looking for a new browser turn based game since Bootleggers went to poo. I'm all over this!

[Shill]

not got my password yet

[Slim]

Some folks have been missing the signup password. It's subjected:

 

"-=g0=- signup password"

 

Look out for it!

[Shill]

oops spammaster

[ans]

I'm signed up and ready to roid!

[Slim]

We're on quick ticks this first round by the way

[Shill]

ans are you cnutflaps ?

[ans]

No, and yeah, I just saw it was 30 sec ticks from 3pm.

 

I'm in a meeting at 3pm though. Arg.

[Shill]

and i wont be able to play after 4pm until i get home later. But the interface looks very good, nice and quick. Not sure what im entirely doing but I have had experience playing planetariun a few years back now.

[Slim]

s going to be 10 min ticks I think, 30s is just tooo quick.

 

Yeah, that's me. How about a manx alliance?

[ans]

10 mins sounds a lot better. 30 secs is great for a speed game over a few hours, hard to manage for days.

[Slim]

False start there, the ticks were broke, resetting now.

[ans]

Heh, I assume everyone else got 2000+ ticks in about 30 seconds then? )

[ans]

Wow, this is just like Planetarium was. Stop, start, rest, crash, etc

 

I'm just kidding, looks pretty smooth so far.