More Planetwars Testing

With the Steam release fast approaching we have launched another test Planetwars to fix any lingering issues and ensure that it all works. For stability there are few new features however we have found the time to do some balance changes on the structures. The largest change is that victory points decay at 1/turn if at least two factions have VP, this is similar to the influence decay mechanic for planets.

It would be foolish to run Planetwars over the release as it is not the best place for brand new players and there are potential server load issues. We've been running these tests to let us run a full lore-and-all round shortly after the release. Exactly when will depend on circumstances.

Planetwars rigged! Battle between http://zero-k.info/Battles/Detail/496191 and http://zero-k.info/Battles/Detail/496192 wasn't even registered by the server.(And the server has no record of it and pretends it never happened, but planetwars attack cycle continued as normal.) It was a successful Federation attack on Colt.

Have you thought about including the Planetwars map in the client? It is not relly necessary but it would be quite convenient.

Is there even any reason to even get influence above 50.1%? It doesn't seem to make the planet more defensible and it doesn't improve the enemy IP decay rate.

Ok so here's what just happened: We attacked Zinc, won and captured the planet. Then I saw a button to defend Felix and clicked it. But in just that moment, the defend phase ended, so the button turned into attack Zinc. 2 seconds later the server realized that Zinc was ours. Then 3 seconds later before I could choose to attack another planet an ally joined.

The mechanic of not showing the complete list of planets which you can attack is really unintuitive. Why do I have to open a browser, select a planet and click attack planet just to attack the planet I want?

Some indication in the lobby that other planets are (or are not) available would probably suffice.

Is it intentional for wormhole rushing to be this OP? You can disable a wormhole in a battle, and then next phase the enemy can rush it and attack from that planet anyway.

Now that the round is over how about some feedback?

• I agree that it would be great to display more economy information on the faction pages and tooltips.
• Artefact activation seemed a bit expensive. Perhaps 750 or 800 activation cost would be a better value. This feedback is confounded by this round being 1v1 rather than FFA.
• Wormholes could cost a lot more to rush activate since they can be rushed instantly.
• The configurable max planet IP worked. How did the slightly higher number play? Would 120 be a good number?
• Is the current attack signup system suitable for a larger round or do we need to wait for the new design to be implemented? https://github.com/ZeroK-RTS/Zero-K-Infrastructure/issues/2132

The arifact costs seem fine to me. We could have turned them on and won, but we decided it would be more fun to conquer Throne instead.
Wormholes shouldn't be rushable instantly, since it makes destroying them in battles almost useless.
The higher max IP played well, it slowed down the game. It also made structures a lot less powerful. Dropships had to be used a lot more sparingly, I. Wormholes were noticably less effective. It made homeworls a lot harder to conquer though, which I think is a good thing. (with 123 IP you need 2 perfect battles with 50 dropships (35IP+50IP-25IP=60IP, not enough) to get a homeworld instead of 1)
You probably should have 100 IP for most planets, and more for some special planets.

The current attack signup system is really bad. It shows a shiny attack planet button on the top which nabs will inevitably press, attacking the wrong planet with the wrong people which screwes over the faction. There is also an issue that lots of people will see a defend button, lots will quickly click it and it will turn into a attack planet button which they didn't want to press and they will attack the wrong planet. Sounds unlikely, but it already happened to me.

The current system also makes nabs discouraged from playing.

I see the new system and it fixes most of the issues. I am kinda sceptical about the launch multiple invasions on 1 planet though. Do you really want to have 7 invasions at once on your homeworld? That makes defending it pointless. Without the ability to attack the same planet you can have bad players attacking some backwater planets and it will make them useful. Also, when defending if there are 7 invasions on your planet, you don't know where to put your good players-with one invasion per planet you can have an self-balancing system where pros get or defend the good planets and bad players get/defend the less important ones. This might actually lead to having balanced battles in PW.