Happy April 1st

[Shuffle is planned to go ahead as announced. Have a fun round.]

It is with great regret that I have to make this announcement. We have been in private discussion with Jolt management all evening. Unfortunately the level of signups to Round 13 has not been in line with Jolt's predicted demand. The repercussions of this are that our server funding had been cut back.

You may or may not be aware that we currently have 2 servers. We have been told that both of these servers are being reposssed for other Jolt services and we are being given a redundant ex-CounterStrike server. Unfortunately the specifications of this server are nowhere near the level we need to run a round of Planetarion as you have come to expect.

We have looked at many solutions to the problem. Some of them involve limiting the features in the game, such as removing defence missions or removing engineering and covert ops. We believe strongly, however, that all the features in the game this round have evolved well and we after much work we have finally produced a remarkably enjoyable product.

It is therefore our collective decision that we will be reducing tick speed from 1 hour, as you are all used to, down to one tick every 2 hours. We do realise this will have a huge effect on gameplay, however we urge you all to stick with us through this financially rough time.

To explain how this is going to be achieved, our servers will be removed as we shuffle at tick 36 this morning at 8am GMT (9am UK, 10am CEST). At this time our new server will be put in place. We will be using the same server IP and addresses so there should be no issues with the swap over. We have backup and resore processes ready so please don't worry about your planet information. When we start ticks again at 9am GMT, the ticker will be running once every 2 hours.

Our sincere apologies to all those affected by this evenings decisions. We hope you understand the predicament we're in and can give us some time and space as we try to deal with any issues that arise. If you have any queries please don't hesitate to contact us through one of the normal means.

As an aside: We are interested in any help the community can give, either by funding Planetarion's server costs or by providing us with hosting services. If you wish to get in contact with us please email me at [email protected]

Kloopy, on behalf of PATeam.


Happy April Fools