2001-09-05 - 11:55 p.m.

Planetarion: When Lovers Fall Out

What can I say? The Planetarion hits just keep on coming!

I mentioned a few days ago that there were problems in my new galaxy, mainly stemming from a lover's quarrel between two players, Phoenix and Ricardo.

Well, things have further degenerated. Ricardo and Phoenix are no sworn enemies, and trying to do anything they can to destroy each other.

At the last report, Phoenix clearly had the upper hand. Ricardo's planet had waves of punishing incoming, and he was forced to go into vacation mode.

However, just because his planet was inactive didn't mean that he was exactly helpless. He was talking to everyone he could find and showing them heavily edited transcripts of chats between Phoenix and himself. In a couple cases he even put words in her mouth, making it sound like she was disparaging the person in question.

That's dirty pool, but not as nasty as what he did today.

When things were good between them, Ricardo invited Phoenix into his galaxy, and gave her a planet that belonged to an inactive player. The ownership of a PA planet is tied to the user's email address. This planet was not registered to Phoenix's email address, but so long as she had the password, she could use it.

An aside here: by the rules of PA, all of this was illegal. You can't give your planet to someone else, and you can't share passwords. It happens pretty frequently, but if you get caught doing it, your planet will get deleted.

I'm not sure how it happened, but somehow Ricardo got control of Phoenix's planet. Either he had control of the email address assigned to the planet, or (more likely) Phoenix simply forgot to change the password after she and Ricardo started fighting.

Ricardo then changed the password to the planet himself, and launched its entire fleet at one on the biggest players in the game, along with a nasty note. Further trouble: this big player was the unquestioned leader of one of the game's biggest alliances.

Frantically, Phoenix managed to get word to the big player and told him that she had no control over her planet.

I doubt the big player cared. He is so much bigger than her, he could destroy her whole fleet without losing a single ship. So Phoenix fleet was utterly wiped out.

Ricardo then went on to phase two of his plan. He had his allies attack Phoenix's now-helpless planet, and as an extra nasty touch he sent messages to all of Phoenix's friends, including me, asking for defense. Phoenix then had to rush around, telling all her friend to ignore messages from her former planet.

I am impressed. Ricardo is a 100% son of a bitch. Usually, ruthlessness and creativity are admired in Planetarion players, but Ricardo is just too treacherous to be even vaguely considered as an ally. In fact, we have to consider him an enemy now, and I would consider it likely that he would team up with Kru and his friends.

This means that we have to add a whole new level of security to our new galaxy. All the plans and planet names we discussed on our galaxy bulletin board and in the channel with Rico present have to be scrapped. What a drag. Lily had a planet and ruler name she was especially fond of. Oh well.

Since this business has started, Phoenix's behavior has been erratic, to say the least. A couple nights ago she popped up in the galaxy IRC channel, and announced that she had just been on a hot date with an absolutely GORGEOUS guy, in fact we'd be drooling if we saw him. After this series of non-sequiturs Phoenix signed off. Everyone in the channel was left wondering: What the hell was THAT about?

All this crap is starting to make people (well, Lily) think that maybe we'd be better off without BOTH of them.

I'm sure that to an outside observer the behavior of Ricardo and Phoenix seems absurd and childish. Well, look at it this way: maybe it's better for them to send pretend spaceships at each other than to fling lawsuits around the globe and wind up on the People's Court or something. I can just imagine what Judge Mills Lane would say about this horseshit.

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