Planetary Production Queue
The Planetary Production Queue (PPQ) is a new ship limit system introduced to Planets.nu in 2020. It was used in League games for 2020, and system-generated games using the "bleeding edge" settings. As of September 2020, Standard games at Nu still use the older Production Queue system by default. The 3 global ship limit systems at Nu are Classic, Production Queue (PQ) and Planetary Production Queue (PPQ). There is also the newer and different Planets Limit Ships (PLS) system, where each player has their own ship limit, determined by how many planets they own.
The PPQ was introduced to address some issues with the older PQ. It aims to reward players for having control of planets by giving them a higher chance to build ships if they control more planets. PPQ also features a new system, RBx, which allows players to pick which starbase will build their regular builds when a ship slot becomes free, instead of the random draw in the older PQ system. A player picks a starbase for regular builds by setting the friendly code of the starbase to RB1, RB2, RB3, etc. Another innovation of the PPQ system is to allow 10 ships to be built as soon as the number of ships goes below 500, instead of the old system of building only until the ship limit of 500 is reached again. This causes the ship count to temporarily go over 500. This attempts to reward most players with a ship build when the ship count goes below 500, such as when a ship is recycled or destroyed. This makes relying on regular builds a more viable strategy, making players less reliant on priority builds to get out a ship they want.
PPQ makes a big difference in how players build starbases and logistics. Under the older PQ system, Nu players would try to maximize their builds by building as many starbases as possible, and having each starbase build a top-tier ship. In the late game, players would have a starbase over nearly every planet and waiting to build a top-tier ship. This made sense, because ship builds were assigned randomly, and players would try to maximize the size of the ship they could build for every ship build assigned to them. This system of masses of maxed-out starbases is no longer necessary with PPQ, because you can instead decide which ships get build with RBx friendly codes. In practice, this means a player can get full value of their assigned ship slot most of the time, because they are usually assigned only one or a few ship builds per turn, which can be easily filled with a few maxed-out starbases.
The exact mechanics of how PPQ works is pretty complex, and still under development. But for players, the important thing to know is that owning more planets = higher probability of being assigned a regular build. In this way, controlling more planets is incentivized since players with more planets will be rewarded with more builds.
External Links
Official documentation of how PPQ works Planets Magazine article on PPQ
