2001-04-11 - 1:43 p.m.

Planetarion: Chaos Time

Before I talk about Planetarion again (Which I'm sure you're all FASCINATED by!) I just want to mention another thing that happened yesterday, something that put me in a rather bad mood.

Early in the day I got a phone call from the folks at Hotel Happy, the adult home where my senile father is staying. When I get calls from there it's always bad or annoying news, and this call was no exception.

Now I'm trying to think of a way to describe the problem without getting too gross.

Basically my father can't hold his water, and he's ruined the upholstery on the furniture down in the lobby. The maintenance staff has tried cleaning it to the best of their ability, but mere fabric can only take so much. Their going to have to replace the furniture, and they want Dad to pay for it. He's got a little cash cushion in his bank account, and this is going to just about exhaust it. He's not really in any trouble financially, it's just that things will be tight for the next few months.

It would be nice if Dad could avoid peeing all over the furniture, but apparently he can't. They put adult diapers on him and he keeps taking them off. Looks like Dad, marching backwards through the Ages of Man, has reached the Terrible Twos.

Ugh.

I really have no idea how to improve this situation.

So let's go off to space fantasy land for a while, okay?

As I mentioned last time the latest round of Planetarion has ended, but there are still a few days before all the scores are reset to zero. This was supposed to be a "Chaos Time" where everyone settled old scores or simply launched "fun attacks."

This really wasn't happening because the alliances were still being strict about enforcing their rules about attacking members, etc.

Let me give you an example...

There is a fellow in my galaxy who I'll call Kiwi, because he's from New Zealand. He joined our galaxy late, but he's been a manic attacker, launching every day almost without fail. As a result he's the biggest player in our galaxy and #22 player in the whole game. I'm the second biggest player in the galaxy, trailing far behind him, ranked about #50 overall.

Some months ago Kiwi joined an alliance called NoS which was allied with Legion, one of the two big major powers in Planetarion. Others in my galaxy, including me, belonged to the other large alliance, Fury. Since Fury and Legion were allies, this wasn't a problem. However, since Legion and Fury are now at war with each other, Kiwi has been caught defending against Fury a couple of times. This sort of behavior is very frustrating to Fury attackers since they are forbidden from attacking players in Fury galaxies.

The most recent time Kiwi had the bad luck to run across a Fury player named JawBreaker. Although he's in my alliance, I don't like him one bit. While I admit to being obsessed with Planetarion, JawBreaker takes it far, far too seriously. I've seen this guy almost get insane with anger on a couple of occasions.

So now this rabid, hateful guy was screaming for Kiwi's blood. I was trying to negotiate a settlement, but he was having none of it. The head of Fury authorized a retaliation on Kiwi.

My negotiation skills were feeble. As one of the biggest galaxies in Fury I should have pulled rank on JawBreaker, but I was too lily-livered. This whole business upset Kiwi quite a bit and as a result he is not going to be in our galaxy next round.

Of course Jawbreaker never attacked him: he's only a mid-sized player and could never hope to attack a top 30 player without major help. But Kiwi, on the sly, later organized an attack that reduced JawBreaker's planet to rubble.

I like Kiwi, but it would be almost impossible to be in a galaxy with him next round after something like that. I just wish I had stood up for my galaxy better.

So Chaos Time was not living up to its imagined potential. So the Planetarion Creators decided to spice things up by giving every player in the game a huge resource donation. For a big player like myself, it was the equivalent of what I would earn in about two days. However for smaller players, it was more than they might earn all game. What would these players do with this sudden windfall?

To give you a real-life equivalent, imagine if every person in the U.S. were given $100,000, tax free. Ignore the inflationary chaos this would cause. Many parents would say: "I'd spend it on my child." But wait! Junior has $100,000 of his own! Would everyone buy a Lexus? Take a vacation in Hawaii? Buy a new house? It boggles the mind.

Well, in the case of most of the small players of Planetarion, what they'd do is buy a huge fleet of mainly worthless ships and just hurl them blindly at the first big player they can think of. This idiotic scenario has been repeated thousands of times over the last few days.

Throughout this long round our galaxy has not had any serious attacks, due to a lucky combination of being a Fury galaxy and having friends in most of the major alliances. Suddenly in the last few days we have had almost constant attacks. Most of them are pretty trivial, but a few of them have been a little worrisome.

]One galaxy member was attacked 1 million enemy ships, but they met 3 million defenders. Most of the attackers pulled before the attack, and the ones that didn’t were wiped out with practically no losses on our side. It's like trying to fend off attacks by herds of mice.

Because we are a big galaxy, we've been able to meet the challenge. Smaller galaxies haven't been so fortunate. Several mid-size Fury players have been practically wiped out by these attacks.

However in the last 48 hours the number of these attacks has lessened. It looks like all those little players have shot their arrows. Thank goodness.

Oh, wait. The Planetarion Creators just announced that tomorrow they are going to make ANOTHER mass donation, this one TWICE the size of the last one.

Oy.

Fasten your seat belts, it's going to be a bumpy ride.