This page provide links to documents related to controlling the Build Queue at Planets.nu.
This section of the Planets.nu documentation is dedicated to providing players with suggestions and advice on how to play better. Unlike the other sections, there is a large amount of subjective material here. These are opinions as to how to play and ideas about advanced play. If an idea works for you, feel free to use it. If it doesn't work for you, don't use it.
Much of this information is external to Planets.nu. Most of the external information was written for the VGA Planets game from which Planets.nu was derived, and may not accurately reflect how to do a specific task at Planets.nu. The editors of the Planets Magazine work to keep their information current, but even there some outdated guides may exist, so use caution.
If an article is external to Planets.nu, the URL will be the link. If it's local, the title will be the link.
In Planets.nu, a large fleet is critical to winning the game. The most commonly used method to accumulate a large fleet is by controlling the Build Queue.
The most basic method of queue control is called Queue Jamming. In order to do this, a player (often a Lizard, due to the Lizard mining advantage and HISSSSS! mission, but it works for anyone) will build multiple early starbases and use them to spam-build relatively useless small (read: inexpensive) ships like the Small Deep Space Freighter. This has the advantage of rushing the moment of the Ship Limit while simultaneously generating a bank of mobile PBPs in starship form. The down side, of course, is that you'll end up owning a large number of seemingly useless vessels. Don't despair, though; this external article has some ideas for what to do with them.
It is possible to manage your PBPs such that you can build starships whenever you need to. This is called Merlin Build Control (MBC), and is discussed in the external article Confessions of a Queue Controller.
It is also possible to use this tactic to take over the Build Queue such that other players don't get a chance to build any ships. This is more difficult than the previous control example, and normally lasts only a limited number of turns (until your PBPs are no longer the highest). This is an excellent way for the player with the strongest fleet to make the final push for a win.
At this time, the only known way to control the Build Queue in the PQ system is to use the Priority Queue to build enough starships to stop the Regular Queue (see Queue Jamming above). This should happen automatically in every game. Even then, it is still possible for players to build starships with their accumulated Priority Points, but it's important to note that, if any one player has sufficient point and ship abundance, the PQ system has no method for recovery from a dominated position.
If a game's soft ship limit is too close to the hard ship limit (999 by default - Admins can increase this on request), the queue can be controlled by a player.