One of the most sweeping innovations here at Planets.nu has been the introduction of the Campaign setting. Select games have the option available to permit the partial customization of each player's chosen race, allowing for an extensive variety of options. Each player is permitted an equal number of Advantage Points for customization, which makes Campaign games the most balanced venue practicable.
Each player must choose their active advantages and hulls before the game begins. In order to select the advantages and hulls to be used in a game, find your chosen race's rank under your "Officers" tab in the main account page on the Planets site. This will bring up your Officer's Homeworld for that race, as well as a list of resources available to research advantages. Ship Designs and Advantages can be researched individually under the appropriate tabs, and each, including several default advantages, can be activated or deactivated before you join a particular game to customize your active advantages.
Every Starship Hull and Advantage enabled consumes Advantage Points (sometimes 0 points) when enabled. Every Campaign game has a limit on the number of Advantage Points that a player can have enabled (the default is 500, but it can be changed in Custom games). If too many hulls or advantages are enabled, the player will have too many Advantage Points and will not be able to join the game.
Once the active advantages for a game slot have been set, and a complete Host has run (doesn't include partial Host runs during Accelerated Start), they're locked in on that slot for the duration of the game. If the original player acquires more advantages, or another player with more, less or different advantages replaces the original player, the active advantages remain unchanged from the original settings. Any changes made to the starships or advantages after the first Host run will have no effect on that game. It is, however, possible to change the Advantages prior to the first complete Host run by resigning from the game, updating your active starships and/or advantages and rejoining the game.
For more information, please refer to the specific page for each advantage or ship ability. The complete list of advantages can be found here.