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.

Colonize or Raid?

I thought that making a colony planet would be my next step. But the Impulse Drive research starts at 2.000-4.000-600 and goes up from there. It would take a few days for me to get that to level 3 for a Colony Ship. I want to do something now. Wah!

There are a couple of inactive planets in my system and I need to check them out.

Questions:
Do I need to send an espionage probe first?
Can someone tell when they've been probed?
Do players take a probe as a threat?
Will they retaliate?
If I raid an inactive planet will the player be able to tell who it was?
Again, will they retaliate?
I can view other planets in the Galaxy view, but what makes a good target?
Can I tell before the raid if the planet is worth raiding?
Does is matter how far away their planet is? Fuel costs?

I expect most players have been playing longer than me (6 days) and have things like fleets and defenses and could squash me like a bug if they wanted to.

I will update this post when I have found some answers.

Destined for daily fleet saving?

This blog entry is worrisome.

I don't want to become a slave to a game.

Colonize Now, Raid Later

Raiding can wait. This guide says to build a colony on another planet to increase resource production, so that's what I plan to do next. Anyway, raiding seems complicated, and I want to read more about probing a target and possible retailiation before I go and raid someone. Plus, raiding seems so mean. Do unto others... and all that.

Next up - Colony Ship. The Technology screen says I need Shipyard at level 4 and Impulse Drive at level 3 before I can build one. So to get those things I am going to need more crystal and deut. So I'm going to build those both up to level 10, along with Solar Sats for more power, then wait for the resources to accumulate to build a Colony Ship. It should take a day or two.

Acronym of the Day: CR stands for Combat Report. Here's an example. Wow, what big numbers you have! Reminds me of looking up at the nightime sky and feeling all small and insignificant in the grand scheme of things. (this game is HUGE)

But I am growing exponentially. Now at 69 Points. ;o)

Energy? What? Me Worry?

Energy is a pain in the ass. I never seem to have enough. Probably because it's more fun to build ships and research stuff rather than build power plants. Plus my Solar Plant is at level 11 right now and the next step is going to be expensive. But I gots to do it. With everything running at 100% I am running at a big energy deficit and getting only a 0.81 production factor.



By reducing the production of my metal mines to 40% I use less energy for metal, giving me more energy to use for the things I need right now, namely crystal and deut.



See how changing the metal production to 40% I am producing more of the good stuff? Anyway, the energy thing is making sense to me, for now.

Once I have enough crystal for another level on my Solar Plant I will put the production level of metal back at 100%. I hate to leave my mines working at less than capacity since they are essentially creating networth. So I will babysit this until I have enough crystal to make another level on my Solar Plant.

I get the feeling this game could take up a lot of time each day. I got another feeling that those are fateful words.

This newbie's getting new stuff

Well, that debris field I noticed yesterday isn't there any more. I suspect he was attacked and has now used Recycler ships to reclaim the metal and crystal from the debris field. There is a chance that a debris field would form a moon, which is a desirable thing, but that didn't happen here. I don't see any mention of a war with this player or his alliance on the Uni19 Diplomacy board so I suspect he was working on making a moon.

After my mines worked through the night I got some more options. In the shipyard I was able to build a small fighter. Maybe I should wait until I can build a samll cargo ship, but I couldn't resist and built the figher.

On my Defenses screen the options to build a Rocket Launcher appeared. It only costs 2.000 metal, and I read that when searching for targets to raid a newbie (like me) with a small fleet should avoid any planet that has any defenses, so maybe building the Rocket Launcher will keep me from getting raided before I know what's going on.

I researched Combustion Technolgy to level 2 and now I have the option to build a Small Cargo ship. Research and space ships use deuterium (deut) so I am going to bump up my Deuterium Mine a couple of levels as that's the resource (res) I am lowest on right now. My mine levels are at 10/9/7 for metal/crystal/deut and my score is 59. w00t!

The Technology screen shows what is required to build buildings, research, ships and defense. It also shows Lunar Buildings like a phlanx and a jump gate, but those are toys for the big boys. But someday.... a newbie can dream, can't he?

Paranoid Much?

If you bring up your Galaxy screen you can see who your nieghbors are. When I first checked this out I remember there being 12 of 15 planets populated in my system. What I don't recall noticing was a debris field around planet 8. I'm pretty sure this is new.

Did someone get attacked since yesterday resulting in a debris field? Maybe I am in danger of getting attacked! In space, no one can hear you pee your pants.

But it might be part of my new abilities. Once my Reseach Lab got to level 3 (I think) I got some options for research: Espionage, Computer, Armour and Energy. I researched Espionage technology and thought that would be about using probes for seeing what's on other planets. I'm not sure so checking the OGame Wiki which has some good info here, but I'm still not sure if this debris field happened recently or not.

Searching the boards leads to confusing discussion on espionage levels and counter espionage levels. I'll just wait to figure it out when I need to find out about a possible raid target. One thing I did learn... esp is short for espionage.

I am such a n00b!

Solar Satellite - future debris field?

A new option for Solar Satellites appeared on my Shipyards screen. I think this happened once I got the Shipyard, which I got when when I got Research to level 2, I think (I forget) but there it is, Yay! The Solar Satellites screen has lots of info about Rapidfire from various types of war ships. Data on Structural integrity and shield strength?!? WTF? I got a bad feeling about this!



I originally joked about the lack of offical documentation for OGame being a "charming" way to learn the game. But it's fun to see the details of new options like the Solar Satellite appear where before it had simply said "you need blah-de-blah before you have a shipyard, fool". So I will not post any more pics that reveal the goodies in store as you move forward.

So what's to blog about? I expect there will be plenty of drama as I learn to raid and get raided, join an alliance and who knows what. When I learn something new I will post it here. I'm still very much an OGame newbie but am getting a sense of where this is going. I suspect it is going to take a long time to get into top-100. Hey! What's so funny? ;o)

Once the shipyard was done making my Solar Satellite it showed up as an additional item on my Resources screen producing 35 units of energy. Yay! Plus it shows up on my previous pointless Fleet screen.

As dElo says, the SEARCH button is your friend. ;o) Today I learned it helps to refine a search to the help forum. duh! I am such a n00b!

Learning something new every day

I am going to follow the advice in this thread for my next move. Basically I need to build an espionage probe.

BTW, the OGame message boards are where its at for figuring out how to play. Like dElo advised me in my first post, use the SEARCH function to see if your question has already been answered. On a big message board like this you should avoiding starting a new thread, unless you've done your research and your question has never been asked before. Hehe, hi dElo! ;o)

Also, I found a guy who has an email newsletter with OGame tips and other buttery goodness at http://www.ogametips.com/

I have also received a couple of private messages via OGame offering help. This was probably in response to my first post on the help board. The messages showed up in my email box with a link to the OGame private messages. This is different than the Messages screen I get to from the OGame navigation menu. hmmm...

Okay, it looks like OGame Private Messages are available at
http://board.ogame.org/
when you click on the PM button.

I am such a n00b. :(

A few days into OGame... new goodies

Okay, I am over my personal crisis on the meaning of the red energy number. (whew!) I guess the idea is to keep building enough Solar Plants to keep the first Energy number positive (non-red). If your first Energy number (the one that means excess energy) goes red then your production levels are decreased from 100%. You can see this on the Resources screen. Which brings up another gripe intersting feature.



On the Resources screen you can see the production of your mines in a nice table. But why is there a field for Crystal and Deuterium production on the row for Metal? And a field for Metal and Deut on the row for Crystal. etc.? Is there a way that mines can be modified to produce a variety of resources? I dunno, but at this point I think the zeros are just there as placeholders in the table.

There is also a row for Basic Income. What's this about? I suspect it is for total newbies who don't build a Solar Plant first thing. Without some basic income things would come to a standstill after the initial resources are used. Anyway, that's what I'm thinking. I'm not sure what the dealio is with basic income. It seems like a small number and is prolly unimportant.

Another item of note on this screen... along the top of the table it shows a Production Factor is 0.97. Since I am not producing enough energy to run at full capacity (my first energy number is red) then I am running at a reduced capacity of 97%. Not too bad but it bugs me so I am going to build another Solar Plant next. Well, not actually another Solar Plant but another level to my existing Solar Plant.

The current 0.97 production level is reflected in the other numbers. My metal production is 253 of 259, crystal is 167 of 171, and deut is 207 of a possible 212.

There is also the ability to tweak the production numbers here. The picture above shows I have selected all mines to run at 100%, but the little drop down menu would let me select another percentage for a particular mine. If I needed to keep my crystal production at 100% for future plans I could drop metal or deut to a lower level, like 90% or 80% to ensure that crystal production stayed at 100%.

I expect these individual production levels might be important in the future, like if my world gets raided and stuff is stolen and I have to focus on mining a particular resource in order to rebuild. Damn, I hate those raiders already! I'm not sure about this yet, so I just try to keep the solar plants producing more than enough energy for everything so I am at (or near) 100% production.

My current mining operations are at 10/8/6 for metal/crys/deut. And my solar plant is at level=11. I've added a Robot Factory (for speeding up construction) and a Research Facility (for researching sciencey stuff). I'm not sure what these do yet but from reading the guides I guess that's what next on my OGame TODO list.

I hope there is more to this game than simply building the next thing on the list. Because I am spending time on this I feel an investment in the game and the points I have so far. It's gonna suck when I get raided, and I know it is going to happen, it seems to be part of the game. So I will build defenses when that option becomes available. Maybe I will be one of those players they call a "turtle", which is someone who builds slowly and has a lot of defenses.

SHIPYARD BAY_BEE!!



In fact, the option to build a Shipyard just became available on my buildings screen. So after building another level on my power plant I will build a Shipyard. Maybe I will do it before upgrading the Solar Plant because I tingle in anticipation with what the Shipyard has to offer. Oh Yeah!

Current Questions:
Do I have only one metal mine per planet and just keep increasing the level to increase production? Can I build a second metal mine?
Why does the resource screen show a Basic Income for metal and crys?
How much resources do you typically have before becoming a target for raids?
If the idea of the game is to get lots of points, and you get one point for every 1k of resources produced, then isn't it all about keeping mining production on the increase?

So I'm off to the boards to do some research on these items. So far so good. I now have 43 points. w00t!!

BTW, I don't mean to bag on the game and it's lack of documentation. There is a lot of good stuff on the boards, Guides and FAQs and whatnot that I am learning from. It just seems odd to me that there wasn't some kind of official guide for getting started. I am learning to enjoy the mystery of figuring out how the game works. Figuring out what is good info and what is not. Once I get bigger and get raided I am sure I will learn about fleet saving, defenses and alliances. Maybe being on an alliance with other players is what this game is all about. We'll see! ;o)

OGame Day One - Keeping it Positive

The very first thing you need to do to play OGame is to visit the site and register. In addition to picking a username and password you will need to pick a particular universe to play in. As I write this there are 21 universes to choose from and each is separate from the others. So if you know someone who is playing OGame and you want to play with them make sure you create your OGame account in the same universe. Otherwise any ol' universe will do, AFAIK.

UPDATE: Shizane and I have started a newbie alliance in Universe 19 called Draconis. Use the Alliance Screen to find Draconis and join us if you like, but you need to be in uni 19 to do it.

Choose a name for your home world. Might I suggest something clever yet non-offensive, creative and not cliche, a name you will be proud of and won't mind seeing on your overview screen every day for the next several years, something cool and not stoopid, something that is fun to say out loud, a name that will keep other players from attacking you because it's just so damn good they will want to be your friend and not your enemy. Alright already! Pick a name!

Once you register and login you will see the standard screen with a navigation menu on the left. As you click on a menu item you will see the appropriate info on the right. Explore the different menu items to get an idea of what's available.

Overview - a picture and some stats on your home world. Notice that if you click on your planet name you will get the option to Abandon the planet or to simply change it's name. As you settle more planets they will be listed here.

Buildings - Okay, this is where the action is for now. You have a few options for building new buildings. From what I've read you should start with a metal mine. But then someone else said you should start with a solar plant so you have energy to run the mines. Which brings up my whole gripe about the Energy thingie.

At the top of each screen you see the status of your resources: Metal, Crystal, Deuterium and Energy. The first three resources show how many units of each you have on hand. You start with 500 metal, 500 crys, and 0 deut. So you can build one of the least expensive building. You have to roll over the word "build" to see that it is a clickable link. The word "build" is in green if you have enough resources to create that type of building, it is in red if you can't.

Energy has 2 numbers. After building a few mines and solar plants my energy numbers are -11/149.



What do these numbers mean? Is it the energy required and the energy produced? Traviance posted a reply to my question on the help board. Here is the overview picture he made. (thanks traviance! the pic was most helpful) Regarding Energy it says,

"This is your energy bar for the planet. The first figure represents excess energy."

Okay, I am going to pick nits here. But the lack of official documentation for this game suxxors! Energy Bar? What bar? Okay, my first number is -11 so I guess I have negative excess energy. My first Energy number appears in red and in traviance's overview picture it appears in regular ol' white. Something is very wrong here. Am I producing negative energy? How long can this go on? Will my mines shut down for lack of energy? Are they even producing anything? Has my planet ground to a halt after my very first move? OMG! WTF is going on with this Energy thingie! I read in one of the guides that metal is most important so you should build metal mines first, but don't they require energy to run? They must! It says so right there if you click on the picture of the Metal Mines. I don't get this negative energy... SLAP!

Thanks, I needed that.

"The second figure represents the total output of your planet."

Reading ahead, I learn that there are 3 methods for producing energy, Solar Plants, Fusion Plants and Solar Satellites. For now we can only build Solar Plants so that is the thing to do. Fusion Plants and Satellites are more expensive and will probably appear on the list of buildings later.

So I recommend that your first move should be to build a Solar Plant. Then build a Metal Mine. Then add another level to the Metal Mine. Adding a level makes the mine produces more metal per hour. These are real time hours. So if your mine is producing 100 units per hour, come back in 5 hours and you will have 500 more units, mmmkay?

AFAIK, you can have only one Metal Mine on a planet. To increase production you increase it's "level". Also, keep adding levels to your Solar Plant to keep the first energy number positive.

UPDATE: The Energy number is explained pretty well here. I've learned a lot by browsing around the OGame Wiki. Try the Wiki's Random Page feature (just above the Search box).

I am a newbie and I am not afraid

Family, work, recreation, games... in the end, we're all just amusing ourselves before we die.

Hehe. Hello, my name is Gordo, and I'm a realist. A couple of days ago my friend Shizane introduced me to a new online game called OGame.

I am not a serious gamer but I like the idea of a free, online game you can play using only a web browser. This is not an arcade style game with 3D graphics and sound effects. It's more of a text game. You create a world, develop the land, build a star fleet and settle other planets and systems in your galaxy. You will encounter other players in the galaxy and they are quite likely to be after your resources. You can join one of the many alliances or play it solo.

I wanted to blog about OGame for a couple of reasons. One is that the documentation of OGame is done entirely by players through the OGame message boards. Yikes! I spent my first couple of hours with OGame looking for some kind of "ogame overview".

When I asked about it on the Help board I got a response within minutes. Nice! But it was mostly just links to more message threads that I had already seen. :( Including a snide remark that implied I was a lamer and hadn't even looked at the first reply to my question. "Harumph", I say. And a later reply suggested that I learn to use the SEARCH button. Double-Harumph!
Here's a link to my first post on the OGame Help Board

Well I just want zinzin and dElo to know that while I am new at OGame I am not new to message boards. I spent a couple of hours reading FAQs and Guides before posting a new thread to the Help board. Some people might find the search for OGame documentation a charming game-within-the-game. But I suspect others are frustrated and end up leaving. Well, this blog's for you.

Here's to you, OGame newbie, mi compadre, mi amigo.
Wear the newbie badge with pride. (but not too proud)
Where others give up and quit for lack of documentation.
I say, "I don't know what's going on, but I go on anyway".
I had zero points yesterday. I have 5 points today.
I heard that. Someone, somewhere...
Laughing at my pride in my miniscule score.
Some may think I don't know how to use the Search button.
Others may think I don't look at replies to my own thread.
But I do. And one day my fleet will be mighty.
Because I am newbie and I am not afraid.