Submission deadline is 11:59 PM PST on Saturday (the 20th).

After the submission deadline we will run a round robin tournament for every category, this is where each ship fights each other ship once. This phase will not be streamed. At the end of this phase each ship will be assigned a win/loss ratio that it had against all the other ships in the category and these numbers will be posted so people can see how their ships did.

Since this is our first tournament with non-alpha testers we are considering having two separate tournaments ran in succession to keep it fair. If we do that then each tournament will use the top 8 submissions from each category determined by the round robin phase. If we see non-alpha tester ships being competitive with alpha testers then we will do one tournament using the top 16 submissions from the round robin phase.

As an additional limit, although each player may submit as many ships as they want to the tournament, we will only choose the top 2 of each player's designs per category. That means in the finals, even if you submitted 4 designs and all 4 were in the top 16(or 8) of win/loss ratios, only the top 2 would go through. This is to ensure that each final will have some variety in ship designs, but still lets people submit lots of ships.

The official submission page for the contest: http://www.anisopteragames.com/contest/

If you do not submit your design to this page it will not be used!

Standard (anything goes):
Probe - Any design of 250P or less.
Interceptor - Any design of 1000P or less.
Cruiser - Any design of 3000P or less.
Dreadnought - Any design of 6000P or less.

Specialty (Restricted Parts):
Proton - 2000P or less, only weapon modules allowed are proton swords and proton beams.
Tanks - 2000P or less, no shield modules allowed, only weapon modules allowed are the three sizes of plasma cannons.

General Restrictions:
Only blocks available by default in the game can be used. No blocks that are only available in the sandbox!
No factories.

Here is how the fights will be conducted:
1) Fights are 1v1.
3) The ships are spawned in at a random range between 3000 and 4000 from each other.
4) If neither ship is destroyed within 90 seconds of being spawned, the ship that has caused more damage wins.
5) Each fight is replicated until one ship has won twice (best 2 out of 3).
6) It is a single elimination bracket in the finals.

Will the win/loss ratio in the pre-tournament fights be revealed before the real tournament so that we can have bets on the winner?

Also, the non-alpha testers who submitted ships might not enjoy the tournament as much if their ships get knocked out before it even starts, and they didn't even get to see it in action. Given that the alpha testers have a significant advantage in terms of experience, and that a maximum of eight ships will be in the final round, it is entirely possible that only alpha tester ships appear in the final round. This might pose a problem since the non alpha testers would have probably hoped to at least see their ship in action.

I propose a solution: Split the contest. Have alpha testers and non alpha testers compete in separate tournaments. Even though I would have loved to crush tons of ships, I know I have a distinct advantage in terms of experience, both from extensive testing and also from participating in two previous tournaments. It simply wouldn't be fair to make everyone compete in the same contest, especially if only a very select few ships are ever seen in the stream.

Just my thoughts. The issues I'm seeing aren't really too big, I'm fine if it goes along as planned, but I do think my suggestion would be beneficial.

Yes, the idea is to make the results known before it starts. We might even be able to seed it based on the results, I can check with Arthur about that.

That is a decent point about the non-alpha tester ships.

I think what we might do is wait and see how many ships are submitted/results of the round robin, and then make a decision on Sunday. It would be pretty easy to just run two tournaments in a row if we think it will help.

That is probably something we would only do for this tournament and the next one, after that we will try to keep it to this format, although we might go up to 16 ships if it doesn't make it last too long.

Yeah, after a couple tournaments I think most of the advantage alpha testers will have will be gone, especially since the game is constantly changing, and knowing the game well previously isn't as good as knowing it recently.

I'd love for it to be 16 total and 4 max of a single person's ships...

Looking at last tournament, we had 21 probes (12 of them mine, actually, hah) and that category took a bit over 25 minutes. We had exactly 32 interceptors (9 of them Horizon's) and that category lasted about 40 minutes. We had 15 cruisers (actually, looks like this category was pretty even) and that category lasted a mere 20 minutes. We had 15 dreadnoughts, and this category lasted 23 minutes. We had 6 proton ships (though one of them, being a probe I submitted for fun, doesn't really count), and this category lasted a mere 3 minutes. We had 8 faction 3 ships, and this category lasted 10 minutes. We had 4 fleet 4 ships (all 4 being submitted by either Camo or me) and this category lasted... 1 minute. We had 11 tanks (7 of them mine) and this category lasted 17 minutes.

Taking the time per ship of each category, we get: Probes 1.19 minutes per ship, Interceptors 1.25, Cruisers 1.33, Dreadnoughts 1.53, Proton 0.5, Fleet 3 1.25, Fleet 4 0.25, Tanks 1.545.

From these results, we can clearly see that larger ships take more time, obviously. Proton and Fleet 4 were very short fights, due to the weapons available. Despite having less P available than Cruisers, Tanks took the longest of any category (probably my fault for making tanks that couldn't kill each other and had to win by points). If we look only at the 4 main categories, ships should take an average of 1.325 minutes each. For an 8-ship round, that's 10.6 minutes, or 42.4 minutes for the 4 big categories together. For a 16-ship round, that's 1 hour 24.4 minutes, still over an hour short of last tournament's 2.5 hours. The proton category will probably be short enough to be discounted. For tanks, who take the longest to fight (but results may have been skewed by me, sorry) an 8-ship round will take 12.36, or 24.72 minutes for a 16-ship round.

Another idea! Record the round robin matches, even if you don't stream them, so those that want to can still see them.

Recording the round robin matches will likely take 7+ hours considering how many people are going to be submitting now.

They will take the same amount of time to play when recording and not recording, so might as well. The upload will take a while, but it can wait a couple days.