Although the development of Zandagort began more than three and a half years ago, it has still not ended (and probably never will). Based on players' experience and feedback a few interesting changes has been implemented lately.
Warfare
A major complaint was that war is not profitable enough. If you use all your resources to develop your economy you can double it in about 4-7 days. The more you spend on other things (like arms) the less you can grow. Of course if you not only spend on spaceships but also use them you can make up for the weaker economy.
In Zandagort wars are mostly about conquering other players' planets, demolishing the building on them, transfering the resources via teleport to home planets and finally leaving the newly conquered planets behind. The reason for this reverse slash-and-burn tactics is that planets on the front or in enemy territory are hard to keep: they get no defense bonus, they are far from reinforcements and they are close to the enemy. The positive side effect (for the game as a whole) is that the enemy has the chance to take back these planets, so you can wage wars without totally exterminating other players.
Here's an example of this (November 2011):
- The first panel is shortly before the red and orange alliances attack the blue. The red and orange plus signs are the fleets approaching enemy territory.
- The second panel is during the war when red and orange fleets are attacking and conquering blue planets.
- The third panel is after the war. No planet was kept by the red and orange alliances, white indicates the planets lost by the blue.
So the profit of war stems from the amount of resources you can get from occupying and looting planets. To increase this the maximum rate of looting was raised, the amortization of the loot was lowered and besides standard resources (in-game) money can be looted as well.
Rush
In Zandagort economy is pretty complex so it takes quite a time before you can produce spaceships and go to war. From now on you get a carrier at signup. This third generation spaceship enables you to conquer unguarded planets well before you build up your economy (although you still need to raise your population to 500k before conquest). Of course this rush has some disadvantages too: a non-rushing player will have most of its economy on his first (unoccupiable) planet, while you will have a larger share on your second (occupiable) planet. But without risk there is no reward.
Fleet tactics
Carrier is only partly for fighting, it is mainly an auxiliary ship. Its purpose is to speed up other spaceships. The details of this speeding have changed now. Not only is it more logical but it can be used for some special fleet tactics as well. Let's say the enemy has a fleet of 530 corvettes and 100 carriers. Since there are enough carriers all the corvettes are carried so the total speed of the fleet is 30 parsecs (pc). But you only need 12 fulgurs (speed: 50pc) to shoot down a carrier:
Now there are too many corvettes in the enemy fleet so not all can be carried, which means that the fleet has to slow down to match corvettes (18pc). By this speed you can send your main forces to finish the job. 275 destroyers (speed: 20pc) are enough to win the battle:
The result: with clever tactics you could defeat a numerically superior enemy fleet.
