An Interesting Day

Buenos dias amigos! I am on vacation in Mexico but there is an internet connection in our room and I am able to get online to play OGame, and it's a good thing too. I learned a couple of things yesterday.

1. You can't go into vaction mode if you're building something.

I tried to select vacation mode and the system said I couldn't do it since I was building something. I'm not sure if this applies to the shipyard too but I was 4 days into researching Weapons and I didn't want to lose the time already spent. I could have canceled the research but I figured I would be able to get online while away. So I didn't turn on vacation mode.

I hadn't been attacked in a while and so I wasn't expecting anything bad to happen.

2. If a fleet is attacking check it before saving resources.

I made a big mistake. I saw a fleet was coming for my planet and sent my resources to another planet. I was in a hurry and didn't check the number of ships in the fleet that was attacking. Newbie mistake. It was only a single recylcer. I sent a message to the attacker and asked "wassup?". He replied that, "oops, made a mistake". It didn't seem too unusual at this point.

That was my first big mistake, because maybe 30 minutes later when I checked again there was a new and different attack on the way. And it was scheduled to hit just a few SECONDS before my fleet of 105 battleships was scheduled to return to the same planet. That was my second big mistake - I didn't check to see where my fleet was heading. I am not used to fleetsaving and didn't think to check where my fleet was. Things couldn't have been worse. I am such a newb!

The first attack was not a mistake it was a decoy. He was doing a phalanx hit on me! My stomach did a little flippy-floppy and I got nervous, and then mad at myself for my newbie mistake.

There was a 4 second difference in the time my fleet was scheduled to return and when his fleet would arrive. I thought I might have enough time to quickly select all ships and send them out again.

Then it occured to me. Dammit! I sent my deut out when I saw the decoy attack. There wasn't enough time to recall the cargoes with the deut. Dammit dammit DAMMIT! I am so stoopid!

But there is good news.

3. Weird things can happen.

It was only about 15 minutes before his fleet was going to hit and I was composing a message to the attacker, quoting the Star Trek movie Wrath of Kahn, "to the last I grapple with thee, for hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee..." or something like that. I was googling for the movie script to get the quote exactly right when I returned to my OGame screen and the frame (menu) on the left had a problem. It said something like, "ERROR: turn off IP Check and relogin, users of AOL and other systems may have problems when IP check is turned on". Okay, that makes sense. I am in another country and the OGame system sees that I am using a different IP address so it complained. I went to the Settings screen, checked the Disable IP Check box, and logged in again.

I had a message from the attacker that he expected it to be a Hall of Fame (HOF) hit and he was proud it was going to be against Terror. Dammit. But there was no Battle Report (BR). The time of the attack had passed and no BR. Weird. The attacker messaged me again and said he thought I was cheating and he hoped I would get banned! I messaged him back to explain that I did disable the IP Check and that may have caused the problem but I was definitely not a cheater.

At this point I don't know if the IP Check thing had anything to do with the attack failing. The attacker told me he sent a probe after the attack and that failed too. He now suspected it was a server glitch. Apparently there are some known problems with OGame and things like this can and do happen from time to time. I need to check the OGame forum to see what the "known bug" is, but it would seem that a server glitch helped me dodge a bullet. Cool.

But the attacker has allies. He must have called his buddies and in short order there was another fleet on its way to attack me. I was producing some duet and was going to have enough to send about 40 BS to my closest planet. At least I could save some of them.

4. The low-deut fleetsave

I sent recyclers to at least get the debris that was about to happen. I was checking to see how many battleships I could save with the paltry 4.100 deut I had on hand when I noticed on the fleet screen that sending ships to the same (originating) planet would use very little deut. But would that work? I tried it. The system said "the starting and ending coordinates are the same" or some such. But I knew I was onto something, what if I sent my fleet on a transport mission to a nearby planet, one in the same system? It doesn't have to be owned by me! Yes! That worked. I sent my fleet on a transport mission at 10% speed to a nearby planet. I figured this out about 2 minutes before the attack arrived. The second attack hit and I lost some defense, but my 105 battleships had escaped. He posted the hit to the war thread on the OGame Forum. (oops, hD link here but it got brokenified) I felt like I had discovered an OGame trick, but I'm sure it's something advanced players already know about. I call it the low-deut save. I guess the lesson here is to always carry enough deut with your fleet so you don't have to worry about it getting raided.

But what about his phlanx? Could he send another phalanx attack against my returning fleet? It was time for a little research.

5. A phalanx cannot see a recalled deployment mission.

I wanted to learn about what he could see with his phalanx, so I went to the OGame Wiki.
I don't have a phalanx but I guess when you use it to scan a planet you can see all missions to/from a planet. But the article on fleetsaving says that a phalanx cannot see a recalled deployment mission.

But I hadn't sent my fleet on a deployment mission, I had sent it on a transport mission. Would he be able to see it if I recalled it? He was probing me every few minutes. He was looking for my fleet to return so he could phalanx me again to see where it was going and when it was sheduled to return.

I recalled the local transport mission. I had selected zero cargo to transport so there was probably no harm in letting the mission continue, but I wanted to get going. I had already spent more time on OGame than at the beach! When the fleet returned I sent it on a long deployment mission to a remote colony at 10% speed. It has over 70 hours to return.

I had been exchanging messages with the attacker this whole time. When he accused me of cheating I wanted to straighten him out.

Through probing he saw that my fleet had returned. I sent it out on a deployment mission, no problem. But he was waiting to phalanx me again, so he knows the destination of my fleet. He told me he has friends in that neighborhood too and that he will eventually get me. I told him, "Game On!" I will learn more about what a phalanx can and can't do, but he's probably right. He can figure out which planets I occupy and keep looking for my fleet. He's shown that he can time an attack to arrive seconds before my fleet returns. We need to learn how to defend against this and to do it to others.

This guy is probing me all the time now. I have a couple of days to recall my fleet. He should not be able to see a recalled deployment mission. So when it returns I will send it on another deployment mission. I think I have become a project for this guy. We will see. I'm going to sit at the pool bar and have margarita! :-)

One more thing before I go...

6. Don't tell other players your time zone.

I made another rookie mistake. When I was messaging the attacker and explaining my change of IP address I told him I am from Minnesota USA. This is useful information for any opponent. They can use it to figure out when you are sleeping and send their attack accordingly. I check OGame from work and home all times of day and night, so I don't know how big of a mistake it is, but learn from my mistake. Don't tell other OGame players where you are from.

Whew! I just wanted to share an interesting day of OGame with you guys. Please let me know what you think by leaving a comment. When I get home I will work on building a website for our alliance. The first thing I want to set up is a private message board so we can share information about OGame. I am hoping that will make us better players and add some fun to the process. I am learning about web development and will use the site as a place to try new things. Eventually we could have a chat feature, a file server, maybe even a teamspeak server for audio communications.

So if anyone is interested in learning about web development with me just let me know and we can work together on developing our alliance web page.

As you can see I occasionally get the urge to write articles. I was thinking about developing a guide to OGame. I originally started this blog because I thought the documentation for OGame was weak. The OGame Wiki is okay but not great. I think there are lots of people who try OGame and then quit. Look at how many small inactive planets there are. That's nice for raiding in the beginning but it speaks to the poor documentation, if you ask me.

We will see where all this goes. Right now a margarita has my name on it! :-)

A New Beginning

COMMUNIQUE TO THE IMPERIAL LEADER FROM COLONY PLANETS

I finally got a communique from my colonists and I was overwhelmed. Over 100 messages received, and who knows how many lost transmissions, almost all of them concerning raiding parties. The colonies have been plundered and are becoming farms for some greedy alien bastidges out there. Fortunately once the craphole aliens take the resources they mostly leave the civilians alone. But there are many casualties and the people are begging for me to want to do something to them (the aliens).

We are a peace loving people who only want to live the simple life of tending the moisture 'vaporators, eating cheesburgers, watching tv and getting high, but something must be done. So I am now diverting a majority of each planets' resources to the production of defense. This will cut down on the production of some kind bud, but my people must be protected, and one day, avenged.

The first order of business is to build enough defenses on each of my three planets so that it will cost an attacker more to attack than he can gain in res. That ought to keep those fighters off my back. At least the ones who are simply greedy.

The Book of the Ancients has stories of demons and whatnot that live only for destruction. I don't want to believe that such a thing can exist in God's beautiful universe, but there are those who say in order to know heaven there must be a hell. So we best be prepared for that day too.

My plan for my people includes colonizing a few more planets and only keeping the ones with 250 or more fields. I have long term plans and don't want to mess with medium sized planets. Building a colony ship is peanuts nowadays. I can't reveal too much about my homeworld and colonies, but let's just say we've grown. (now more than 7! points, woo-hoo!)

In addition to building defense my people will build video domes, hydroponic gardens, and interplanetary ballistic missiles. One of our many sayings is "Peace Through Strength". It is a phrase I have resurrected from our homeworld's mythology. It was a saying from the old ones, the ones who built us.

We are making a list. A list of those who attack our planets without provocation. A list of planets that will be attacked when the time comes. We are a peaceful people and just want to be left alone. But if any of those homos touches any of our things, well, I won't be held responsible for what happens.

It's a tough universe but we will survive
You attack us daily but we're still alive
Soon we will have interplanetary things that fly
And you're gonna wish you just passed us by
For, we will remember you...

I Got Probed!

Space Monitoring? So this is what it feels like to get probed.



The message says I have (or had) a 20% chance of counter-espionage. I wonder what that means.

As I build mines and research to new levels everything is getting much more expensive to build. I am working on getting Shield Technology so I can build a Small Shield for defense. Like the Club(tm), it gives bad guys enough of a deterrent to move on to an easier target.

I have sent out another Colony Ship. This time I found a slot in one of the coveted planet positions. I hope I get more than 200 fields.

I sent some supplies to my first colony. When you send a cargo ship to one of your colonies you get the option to "transport" rather than "attack". Which reminds me of a joke. (John Wayne accent = ON) "I'm gonna kill me a bear, and kiss me a woman. Hope I don't get 'em mixed up this time."

Raiding Roxxors

I've been doing lots of raiding. It's hard to resist when raiding produces as much as my mines. I built a couple more small cargo ships and am getting hauls like this:

One of your fleets (Small Cargo:8 Light Fighter:1 Heavy Fighter:1 ) returns from X:XXX:XX to Planetname [X:XXX:XX] . The fleet is delivering 15695 Metal, 10130 Crystal and 195 Deuterium.

Here's my method for raiding...

Step 1. Search systems for players with an (i) or an (I).
This means they are inactive players. It would seem that many players quit OGame soon after they started and leave their homeworld abandoned. These planets continue producing resources until the account has been inactive for 40 days, at which point the account is automatically deleted, the planet slot becomes available again, and those resources are lost and gone forever. So you might as well get the goodies before they disappear, eh?

Step 2. Send an espionage probe and analyze the results.
If you get the full report then you can see how much they have on hand for resources, the number of mines, solar plants, and defenses. Sometimes I do not get info on defenses because they have equal or more Espionage Tech than me. I only attack inactive planets with no defenses. For now.

Step 3. Make a list of potential targets.
I jot down the target planet postion and the amount of resources they have on hand. I get about ten of these then send out ships on the top 2 or 3 targets.

Step 4. Send the fleet.
I have enough cargo ships and Computer Tech to send out 3 simultaneous missions. I send those out. It takes 3-4 hours for them to return. That reminds me, I need to bump up my fusion drive technology.

So when I'm not probing and sending out raids I am spending the precious booty on upgrading my homeworld and my colony. I now have 612 points. Go Newbie!

Check, check, status schmeck

It took me a while to build a Colony ship because it requires Impulse Drive level 3 and that takes a lot more crystal than I had. So I've been leveling up my mines and research to what's nect on the ToDo list, and using the Technology Screen and the wiki to see what is required.

Here's where I'm at today...

HOMEWORLD
Buildings: Metal Mine 11, Crystal Mine 14, Deuterium Synth 9, Solar Plant 15, Fusion Plant none, Robotics Plant 5, Shipyard 4, Research Lab 5, other buildings none.

Research: Espionage 4, Computer 2, Weapons 2, Armour 2, Energy 3, Combustion Drive 3, Impluse Drive 3, Laser 3. (others none)

Fleet: Small Cargo Ship 4, Light Fighter 1, Heavy Fighter 1, Espionage Probe 3, Solar Satellite 5.

Defense: Rocket Launcher 2, Light Laser 1.

COLONY PLANET (1)
Buildings: Metal Mine 5, Crystal Mine 3, Deut Synth 2, Solar Plant 6, others none.
Research: none
Fleet: none
Defense: none

I now have 324 points and am buiding new stuff every day. Raiding inactive planets is bringing in extra resources and gives me something to do while waiting for the next thing to get built. Having a colony gives me new stuff to do too, but I'm not sure what I should focus on with the colony? Send resources home? Deploy ships from home to the colony for defense? Crystal has become more important than metal lately for the stuff I want to build so I have more Crystal Mines than Metal Mines, for now.

Blogging about this is kinda fun but takes time. I may go back and update some old posts with stuff I've figured out since then, answer my old questions, etc. If you are reading this please leave a comment. Shizane and I are starting a newbie alliance, so that is the next step. Play universe 19 and apply to Alliance DRACONIS if you want to join us.

That's all for now. Newbie out.

Getting a colony started

I'm not sure if a colony should specialize in producing a particular resource, or whether it should be a general purpose planet like my homeworld. Anyway, my new colony has 152 fields, which is not as big as I had hoped, but it will do. I read that advanced players don't accept a new colony that has less than 200 fields. They just destroy it and try again. (the number of fields is determined randomly with each attempt) But I am newbie and don't want to waste a Colony Ship like that. So this is my new home away from homeworld.

The new colony world shows up on the Overview screen. Very Pretty. BTW, here's an attaboy to the OGame designers and the graphics they have created for things like new planets. Nice work guys and gals. :-)

You can select your new colony from the overview screen or from the drop down menu at the top of every screen.


Starting over with a new colony brings to mind how far I've come since beginning the game. Not understanding the Energy numbers, hehe, I can laugh about it now.

So, on this new planet I start from the beginning, build a Solar Plant, then a Metal Mine, then another level to the Metal Mine, then another level to the Solar Plant, then a Crystal mine, and I am done until the mines produce more resources to continue building.

All of my research from the homeworld doesn't apply here. But there is a thing called the Intergallactic Research Network (IRN) that lets you share research amongst your colonies, but you have to build the Research Lab on each colony up to level 10 before you can create an IRN. *That* will be a while.

I pretty much need to build a shipyard too in order to build defenses on this planet. But for now, I will focus on producing resources and perhaps sending a little something back home each month.

I got me a colony

I had to research Impulse Drive technology up to level 3 in order to build a Colony Ship. I wanted to build a colony close to my friend Shizane, but his homeworld is about 150 systems away from mine. I don't know if it's a good idea to build a colony that far away but I'll give it a try.

I was looking for an open spot in the middle of a system. The wiki says that planets with the most fields are found in the middle positions. I also noticed that in many of the systems I viewed people tend to stay away from positions 1-3 and 13-15.

Here's the wiki entry for "Colony". link

So when I found a system with an open slot at position 8 I used the Fleet screen to send my Colony Ship to those coordinates with the mission to "colonize". It took a few hours for it to get there, but finally...


This newbie is spreading his space seed throughout uni19 w00t!

Farm Report

Raiding abandoned planets is fun and profitable. A little searching in my galactic neighborhood and I found a very juicy target. He started with about 40k metal and 20k crystal. I now have 4 small cargo ships which can carry 5k units each. I am farming him for about 10k metal and 10k crystal every day.



He's been inactive for 28 days so I assume he isn't playing. I'd feel bad hitting someone every day like this *if* they were playing. But this guys isn't, so why let his resources go to waste? I read that an OGame account gets deleted after being inactive fror 40 days. They must get a lot of people who try the game and quit.

Raiding on the Brain

Yay! My first raid was successful. Here's my first Combat Report.



That was so much fun I found another planet that was inactive for 28+ days, probed it, no defense.. check. And so I raided him.

One of your fleets (Small Cargo:1 Light Fighter:1 ) returns from X:XXX:XX to YourPlanetNameHere [X:XXX:XX] . The fleet is delivering 2525 Metal, 2525 Crystal and 0 Deuterium.

I figure these abandoned planets must have been created by players who tried the game and then quit, leaving a planet with a couple of mines and maybe a Solar Plant still chugging away. I wonder if the OGame system deletes abandoned planets after a while?

So I probed another inactive planet a few systems over and get a slightly different report from my probe...

Resources on Planet-blah-de-blah [X:XXX:XX] at 07-14 07:42:27
Metal: 48989 Crystal: 10706
Deuterium: 4455 Energy: 2001
Chance of counter-espionage:0%

I notice he has lots of resources. my precious But I also notice that this probe report doesn't list his defense, buildings, etc. I am guessing that's because he has better espionage tech than me.

He is also producing 2001 Energy compared to my current Energy production of 1.133. So it looks like he is a little bigger than me. And if he has any defenses on his planet then my feeble fleet (2 small cargos and a lone light fighter) will probably be reduced to space rubble.

So my plan for now is to wait, get that level 3 Impulse Drive technology so I can build a Colony ship and expand my empire. But while I'm waiting I can raid the abandoned planets I've found. I built a second small cargo ship and can get 5000 Metal and 5000 Crystal from each raid. This is useful for now but will be small potatoes soon. BTW, when the attack is successful the ship automatically loads up with up to half of their resources, whatever you have enough room for, but you don't get to choose how much of each resource to take.

Gonna go read the boards until my fleet returns.

Knowledge is power. FOR REAL!

My First Raid

Some guides say raiding is a good way to get resources quickly. I've been hesitant to do it since the procedure isn't documented very well, from what I can tell. I'm worried that I might raid someone bigger than me and they will retaliate and pulverise me.

My mines have been producing for a couple of days so I built some more buildings and did some more research. Here's what I have:

Buildings
Metal level 10, Crystal level 12, Deut level 9, Solar level 14, Robotics Factory level 4, Shipyard level 3, and Research Lab level 3. (none in other categories)

Research
Espionage Tech level 3, Energy Technology level 3, Combustion Drive level 3, Laser Tech level 1. "Lasers?", I hear you asking. What can I say, it was cheap and I was bored. (none in other categories)

Fleet
One Small Cargo Ship, 1 Small Fighter, 1 Espionage Probe, 1 Solar Satellite.

Okay, I've been procrastinating on my first raid. I think I need to psych myself up. Here goes... "Raiding is part of the game you pansy pacifist! Don't be a pussy!"

Damn, what's with the name calling? My internal monologue can be a jerk sometimes.

"Quit stalling and DO IT!!!"

Okay, okay, sheesh!

Step 1. - Look for a planet that is inactive. Use the Galaxy screen to view other systems and look for an (i) next to the player name. A small (i) means they've been inactive for 7 days and a capital (I) means they've been inactive for 28 days. Okay I have found a target - planet 5 in this system.

Step 2. - Espionage. Oops! Now I've done it. While in the Galaxy screen I clicked on the Espionage button next to the target planet. That's all it took to send my Espionage Probe to that planet.



The target is in a nearby system I got a report from my probe on the Message screen. It looked like this.



Cool! It shows he has some Metal and Crystal and apparently has no defenses. Perfecto. I should be able to send my small cargo ship, which has a cargo capacity of 5000 units, and get some of his goodies.

I was thinking that Espionage Probes were single use vehicles, like a missile, but my probe came back home after its mission. Sweet.

I have a few questions, like
Why is this planet undefended?
Is it a deserted planet created by a player who started the game and then quit?
I've only been playing for about 10 days and am ranked about 6000 out of 8500 in this universe. So maybe there are a lot of deserted planets out there like this.
-OR- maybe his Espionage Tech is so much better than mine that I don't have a clue.

Hang on Wedge, I'm going in full throttle! That ought to keep those fighters off my back!

Step 3. Send the fleet. In my case that will be one light fighter and one small cargo ship. The fighter is prolly unnecessary but wtf, my cargo ship needs a wingman, if only for the style points. Here goes...



Fill in the number "1" for the ships I want to send, then click on the 'continue' button. That brings up the Choose Target screen.



I made up the coordinates shown in the above picture to protect the innocent. I don't know if this is necessary but it's part of the OGame forum rules to not post a players coordinates. I am trying to protect the identity of my home world too so someone doesn't get the idea to "hit the newbie and see him post about it". That would be totally uncool. Forget I mentioned it. (puts on sunglasses) Hey, take a look at this shiny memory neuralyzer... FLASH!

After clicking on the 'continue' button I get the following screen.



I am confused. Should I choose to Transport or Attack? I want to transport stuff from the target planet back to mine, but I think the transport option is for when I want to transport resources to a colony or something. So I am going to choose Attack. There are also Cargo Options. Do I need to send deuterium along with my ship for fuel? I am guessing no, and the cargo options are for peaceful transport to/from colonies, so I am sending my ship empty of cargo, and assume it will pick up the resources once it gets there. We will see.

I checked the OGame Wiki for info on Attacking. link
The Wiki entry for Combat is interesting too. link

Step 4. - Wait
I think I have done this correctly. After I clicked on the 'continue' button I get my main Fleet screen again.



It now shows I have an active mission. The Wiki article on Combat explains how there are rounds of attack even if the planet has no defenses, and if the attacker wins he can pillage up to half of each available resource. Sounds good to me.



My Overview screen now shows a couple of new events. The first one for when my fleet arrives at its destination, the second one for its return to my home world. The timer is ticking down the seconds. Looks like I will have to wait 1 hour and 8 minutes to see what happens. Until then, this newbies fingers are crossed. In the meantime I will upgrade my Research lab to level 4 which should make Weapons Technology available.

Pick up the gun, newbie.