Priority Build Points

Overview

The Ship Limit

VGA Planets caps the number of ships in a game at 500.

Priority Build Points

Priority Points are a system that by default kicks in once 450 ships have been built in a game, and allows the player to prioritize which starbases, and which players, build ships once they are destroyed in-game at the total ship limit. PBPs are intended to motivate players to go out and destroy enemy ships, in order to be permitted to build your own.

Earning Priority Build Points

• destroying a ship gets you 1 point per 100kt of ship hull (rounded up) destroyed.
• 1 PBP if you set off a Glory Device.
• 1 PBP per 100kt of hull destroyed by Glory Devices
• 1 PBP for recycling a ship

A ship destroyed by a planet does not earn any PBPs.

Spending priority build points

• Every ship built or cloned will cost you 1 PBP per 50KT of hull (rounded up).

The Build Queue

Priority build points only come into play if one player has more than 20 PBP. If a player does, then their starbases will be allowed to build in order of the priority specified by their friendly code (PB1, PB2, PB3 ...) until their points drop below 20, at which point the normal build queue starts. If no PBn is specified, the lowest starbase ID will build.

If no players are over 20 PBPs, then starbases will build in order of planet ID.

When building with priority build points it is important to understand the differences between the regular build queue and the priority queue. Ship building occurs at 2 points during host. Those points are before combat and after combat. If a ship slot becomes available before combat, either through recycling, colonization, ion storms, or any other means, then the first build phase occurs. Any player with more than 20 PBP's will build their ships first in the priority queue. After that, the normal queue will cycle through building ships until 500 ships are reached once again. Once combat has occurred, PBP's are awarded to the players and then the starbases build once again leaving off where they were at after the first build phase.

This building activity can be tracked through your messages. But you must know where the regular ship queue is at and what starbases you have selected as part of the priority queue using the PBx friendly codes.

Strategies

• Some people dedicate starbases early-game to manufacture PBPs and/or fill the ship list by churning out cheap ships and recycling them.
• If you have more than 20 PBPs you may be able to both clone and do a normal build at the same starbase at the same time.
• It is possible to "farm" PBPs by building Merlins at starbases far from the front lines, assigning them to a captured enemy ship with 'gs2', and then capturing them. A Merlin, destroyed this way, yields 10 PBPs, which allows you to build a 500KT hull.