2001-07-26 - 11:58 p.m.

Planetarion: Burned Out on the Beta

Okay, I think I've stumbled into a bear trap here.

A few days ago I started playing the Planetarion beta-test version, just as an idle amusement. I didn't know what I was getting myself in for!

If "real" Planetarion is addictive, the beta is pure heroin. It's making a mess out of my life.

The thing that makes the huge difference is the fast ticks. After the creators got the server sorted, they speeded up the ticks again to two minutes a tick.

Two minutes a tick! That means you get an entire day's worth of ticks in just forty-eight minutes!

Well there's many good tings about these fast ticks. It makes the game a lot more fast-paced and exciting. It also makes it very fast to get through all your "builds." At the beginning of the game you have to spend money and time researching and building the factories that make your ships and scans. Usually this takes close to two months, but now it can be finished in less than two days. That means less time waiting for builds to finish and more time actually playing.

Of course there are bad things about the accelerated ticks, too. It is essentially impossible to organize defense against a major attack. Even if you are awake and online, the attackers are at your door before you can really contact anyone else. The only way to get defense is just hope that people are checking the galaxy news frequently and that they'll defend you if they see you are attacked.

And of course the fast ticks mean that if you leave your planet unattended for a few minutes, say to make a sandwich or put in a load of laundry, you can come back and find your planet getting raped.

But worst of all, the fast ticks make it impossible to STOP PLAYING! In real Planetarion you can launch an attack knowing that you can come back in seven hours and your ships will be ETA 1 hour for your target. Now your average attack lands in 16 minutes. It is also far too tempting to stay awake for "a few more ticks," while you are waiting to build something.

Playing the beta has turned me into a sleep-deprived zombie. Today I was just dragging myself through the day, hoping to go home and get some sleep.

When I got home I checked my beta planet one more time. My adventures of the previous day had taught me that anyone that was big enough for me to attack was too well guarded for me to actually get anything. However, when I started scanning I noticed something odd - there seemed to be all these good targets all of a sudden.

Eventually I figured out what was going on - to liven up the dragging beta the creators had given everyone more resource-producing asteroids. Their hope was to make the discouraged players start attacking again. However, what happened instead was that all the big players (like me) who were still awake saw all these sleepy planets with new resources to plunder. So they stopped fighting each other and started attacking all the planets that nobody was watching. This wasn't battle - this was burglary.

All the same, it was growing my planet at a fearsome rate. Soon I crept into the top 40 players. Then, along with my galaxy-mates, I attacked the #1 player in the game and actually came home with some loot. That's something I've never been able to do in "real" Planetarion, and it was sort of a thrill.

So all in all it's pretty fun to play the beta. I just wish the damned thing had an "off" switch so I could get some sleep!