PA Beta gentlemens ladder

All relevant info in quick points:
- 1v1 ladder aimed at playing fair fun games.
- We meet up in IRC for the most part
- #planetaryannihilation on the server irc.esper.net
- You can use this webchat, enter the channel name #planetaryannihilation
Webchat link: http://www.esper.net/publicirc.php
- Use the flash-app below to register and report games. Careful: The password used in it is NOT save at all, chose a unique one.
link to the flash-app: http://dramatic-delta.com/ranking.swf
or use http://dramatic-delta.com/gentlemens_ladder.html
- You are expected to provide screenshots as prove of won games.
- Read the Rules section below, it is marked with an orange heading.

The full post follows now ==================

Am I the only one who wants to play better opponents?
Playing PA is fun, but playing vs weaker people all the time gets boring, no matter how fun the game is

So in hopes of better games, I am introducing this ladder thread to make it easier to find games of a certain level without total newbies.
The concept:

You meet up to play 1v1. You report the result to the flash up below. A screen shot showing the list of players after the end of the game shall be your prove of that the match actually happened. Winner reports!

To make finding opponents easier I propose the usage of the IRC channel #planetaryannihilation on the server irc.esper.net (if you lack an irc client and you are lazy you can join it here by entering a nick and the channelname) and pm's here in the forums.

Rules as of 13.11.

OUTDATED, NEVER USE THIS AGAIN.
THIS IS ANCIENT HISTORY NOW

- You are not allowed to use attack move without radar/vision cover. This is because attack move appears to be shooting at targets it cannot see if you have no radar cover.

- You are not allowed to abuse patrol as a replacement of a move, because patrol suffers from the same bug as a move. However you are allowed to use patrol to patrol rather empty areas with planes or small armies.

- If a player starts nowhere near metalspots he may request a restart

- You are explicitly forbidden from attacking your own units so you cannot overshoot on purpose

- Both players must agree at the start of the match that they are going to do a ranked match. If players don't agree on a ranked match (or if no agreement is made at all), the game is considered unranked and must not be reported.

- No abuse of other obvious exploits like wall reclaiming, etc. pp.

End of the rules ==============

Helpful UI-mods.

Red mex makes it easier to spot mex.

Hotkeys for buildings and units. Very, very very helpful.

Stats Tracker

If you know any other good mods that make playing more efficient, please notify me of them.

The ladder app

thedbp made a flash application that takes care of all the reporting. You can now do it yourself. Simply register yourself with your screenname. Make sure to have a unique password for it, as the password isn't encrypted by us at all.
Thanks to him for this! It will hopefully make managing this way easier.
Then click the + Button to add matches. The winner reports, so the person reporting is always assumed to be the winner. You can report games with up to 4 players, but only 1v1 will have an effect on the rating. We trust you to not make wrong reports. However wrong reports can and will be deleted. This is a gentlemens ladder, so I assume there will be no wrong reports.
Have fun

Link to the flashapp directly: http://dramatic-delta.com/ranking.swf

==============================
The introduction of the new ladder is done together with a ladder reset, but here is the old ladder history.
(Hey this is the first PA ladder that was ever made, it sooo has historical value!)
==============================
http://pastebin.com/H9RwvsNJ

In-Game Name: mushroomars
IRC/Screenname: MushrooMars
Forum Profile: mushroomars

I also go by Tufted Titmouse and HornedLark, but not in PA.

Like a sir

IGN : Dacite
Forum Profile :Dacite
IRC : Dacite

Can we also add random wall spamming to the banned list? It fucks up pathing and target priority makes it impossible to destroy even one enemy unit with 200 tanks.

greenbag / Greenbag for all I'm generally in the EU servers
I would like to insist on an economy rule of somesorts

economy rules? Mex only on Metalspots is an economy rule, isnt it?

@Dacite:
You mean spreading out walls and combining them with units in between? I've never seen that. I guess it makes problems due to the attackers units only shooting at the walls?

That and some sort of rule to do with power like if you spend 10 seconds with zero power you wait 10 seconds then resume?

The other player places single blocks of wall around his base and slowly creeps them towards your base. When he/she moves his/her army out you have to manually click on each of his/her units to destroy them or your army decides the wall is a greater threat. It's the most frustrating thing I've come across so far.

Anyone up for a FFA?

I have no idea what the point of that rule would be. If you have negative power your economy suffers from it automatically. No need to do that yourself? Or am I not aware of some bug I should know?

I'm in.

But as a rule, you have to say that you want to play with gentlemen's rules for the ladder.

But something is telling me in the back of my head that stacking is about to go away..... http://forums.uberent.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=64&t=48372

I might be wrong because I've not tested it but you can use all fabbers to build everything not sure if it's delayed building or not. I'd need a stop watch to test it.....

There's a drop in build speed don't worry. They still use the energy/mass coming in but are not building to their full potential.

Ah no worries then then I'll rescind my votes for the economy rule

All games are supposed to be played with the rules stated in the OP. The intention of this thread is that you specifically meet up with others to play a game for the ladder, you are not supposed to just randomly take screens after you played public random quickmatches.
If you think the rules in the OP lack something feel free to suggest additions.
I'll add you to the list, if my assumptions about your irc/ingame name are wrong please correct me.

@greenbag: The buildrate goes indeed down and since a negative energy income means that your mass income also drops you end further hurting your economy. The current system PA is far harder than it is in SupCom actually since stalling energy in PA is really really really bad.

As I'm in the EU perhaps two ladders? one for the US and one for the EU?
Might make the ladder system harder to manage though....

I assume the connection between US and EU is enough to play 1v1 or 4 player FFA?

I have not noticed a difference at all so far. So yeah it doesnt matter I think. AU might be different.

So I'd say there is no reason to split it up.

Well as this is going to be a thing. I can't play tonight as I'm drinking. Does Saturday at some time in the day of GMT seem like a reasonable time? I can be available from 13pm GMT

I will probably be online a lot tomorrow.

So are we going to have ladder "managers" or do we just call out whenever we are available and willing to play a game? Because I'm usually online and ready to play from about 1700 UTC to 2300 UTC.