World Cup Setup

Signups for the World Cup Skills Event open on Wednesday, 14th June at 12:00 GMT. Ticks start at 12:00 GMT on June 17th, and last for a period of 24 hours of 1 minute ticks. You can signup at http://worldcup.planetarion.com/signup.pl.
The prize for the winner is "Need for speed most wanted" for the XBox 360.

For the world cup individual event, the following fairly obvious changes will be made:
-1 man galaxies
-all forms of exile removed
-gal fund removed
-alliances removed, and alliance/galaxy rankings removed
-eta bonus defending cluster removed
-defence removed (fake defence left to run fleet)

However, as it's an individual setup, 4 races will be very difficult to balance in terms of stats. To this
-4 races => 2 races
-XP removed
-Fleet scan changed to Mil scan
-Cloaked ships don't show up on gal status / unit scans, or incoming overview
-buddy packs + shuffle removed
-Eonium now fuel
-covert ops removed
-defender salvage now 40%
-48 tick protection
-tech tree changed:
*HCTs removed
*ETA tech now takes 12/24/48/72 ticks.
*Infrastructure now takes 12/24/36/48 ticks
*6 ship techs: 8/16/24/48/60/72 - 1 for each class
*6 core researches: 12/24/32/72/72/72. these give +2500 of metal, +2500 of crystal, +2500 of eonium, +10k metal, +10k crystal, +10k eonium
*Surface Analysis now requires the presense of a wave amplifier,
*Unit Analysis now requires Plasma Weapons (Frigate Technology),
*Decryption Algorithms now requires the presense of a wave distorter,
*Jumpgate Probing now requires the presense of Warp Technology (ETA -2).

Provisional stats are available at http://worldcup.planetarion.com/stats.pl

In anticipation of the popularity of these 'old school' changes for the skills event, they will also be used for the world cup qualifying and final rounds.