2002-03-05 - 11:36 p.m.

Planetarion: What Goes Around, Comes Around

A few day ago I related the merry story of how we tweaked our traitorous in-cluster "allies." Well, we had our fun now it's time to pay, and we are paying in spades. Our in-cluster enemies are hitting us, literally, around the clock. It is no fun.

Actually, the first time they actually stepped up and attacked us, we gave them a little surprise. The in-cluster traitors launched on us, so about six of us launched on their Galactic Commander. Foolishly he had sent all three of his fleets out, leaving a number of his ships stranded at home. We couldn't cover the attacks on us, but they couldn't cover this one either. Unfortunately the guy became aware of the attack in time and was able to retreat one of his fleets in time to save his ships. Some clever defense kept us from hurting him too badly, but hurt him we did. Take that, you backstabbing weasel!

Of course, this made them want to hit us more, and hit us they did. In fact they kept us so busy dodging bullets that we couldn't have organized a repeat of that little offensive if we tried. However, they are now a lot more careful in their attacks and are not leaving themselves vulnerable to that little trick again.

Now the point of these constant attacks are not to just take our resource-producing asteroids, no. The point of them is to destroy our fleets too - to utterly smash us and knock us out of the game. They actually succeeded in doing that to our biggest player: when his fleet was returning from somewhere else they had a huge attack fleet waiting for it at his home planet. He lost nearly every ship he had, and now seems to be inactive, out of the game.

But the rest of us fight on, barely hanging on. Well, most of us. Two other gal-mates went into "vacation mode," a situation where their planet is frozen: cannot be attacked, but it can't grow or defend either. I'm not terribly pleased with this turn of events, but I can certainly understand the temptation to run and hide.

For the last four rounds, my galaxy has been top 30. Now, we'll be lucky to stay in the top 1,000.

And once again, this is a learning experience. Not a nice learning experience, but it has things to teach nevertheless.

First, it has revealed to me that in a lot of ways, Planetarion is a power trip for me. I enjoyed being a big player in a big galaxy and being relatively safe from attack. I find being used as a dog chew-toy for the traitor galaxy a humiliating experience. And I'm not taking it well. At least from the point of view of Planetarion I've become an irascible, foulmouthed guttersnipe. For a while the name of our galaxy was changed hourly, featuring different insults aimed at the traitor galaxy. I sent them abusive emails, when I couldn't abuse them in person on IRC. I was having a virtual temper tantrum.

I find my current sense of powerless deeply galling. I have two choices: accept it, or just quit. Quitting sure is tempting, but it would mean turning my back on the people in my galaxy who are still fighting on since I am Galactic Commander. I really don't want to do that. I also don't want to yield in the face of the attacks from people I despise. I don't want to give them the satisfaction.

So instead of being a power-galaxy, we are tiny and struggling. One of my galaxy-mates made an interesting observation on our galaxy forum, in response to someone's whiny post. What we are enduring now is what Planetarion is like for most people! For Planetarion to work there have to be more victims than victors. We had four rounds on the top, now we are on the bottom. Deal with it!

I'd be more edified by this even-handed observation if this galaxy-mate wasn't mainly inactive, and was instead a dedicated player who was watching weeks of work go up in smoke. However, she does have a point.

I remember last round wondering what it would be like to be a smaller galaxy opposing a larger one, to be the mouse instead of the cat. I thought that I could do a better job of playing it than our opponents did.

Well, be careful what you wish for. I'm finding guerilla war to be not as entertaining as I thought it would be. For starters, it's not like we can fade into the forest when our opponents show up in force. Our galaxy is right there where everybody can see it, just like everyone else's. There is nowhere to hide.

So here I am, running like a rabbit, trying to console myself with clichés. What goes around, comes around! Payback is a bitch!