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! :-)