Attacking for fun and profit

[Ike 1]

n.b.: I am posting the first part of this post now and I will update it with other sections. I will post a reply when new sections are added.

 

Why Attack?

 

If you crash someone else's fleet, 30% of the metal and crystal that went into building each lost ship form a debris field (DF) that floats around the planet/moon until someone recycles it. In addition, if you win the battle, approximately one half of the resources on their planet/moon can be taken by your attacking force. If you attack in multiple waves you can grab most of the resources on their planet/moon. Plus, you get to crush stuff.

 

What to Attack

 

Inactives:

After seven days of no login, a player's ID will show an (I) after it -- starting at 00:00 server time. This includes players in n00b (n) protection, and for n00bs, people who are normally (s) strong. The nice thing about (I) accounts, is they can't ninja you and they usually have low defenses as any defenses get systematically reduced by repeated attacks. If you can find an (I) with good mines and low defenses, you can farm them regularly until they disappear. Note: After 28 days with no login, the account name will be followed by (Ii). At this point, the planet will no long produce resources. However, you still have a couple of days to get any that are on the planet/moon.

 

Farms:

Farms are planets with small or no defenses and lots of resources, which the owner does not regularly defend or collect. This is a major source of income for a lot of players. Farms come and go, as many players don't play specifically for the joy of allowing others to take all of their resources. Often these are crashed accounts or n00bs with high mine levels who do not log in several times a day. Finding good farms is important as it can be much more profitable than fleet-crashing over the long haul, without the risk of losing your own fleet. It is a good idea to figure out who else in the area is farming these planets and when so that you can get there first.

 

Banned Players:

People who break the rules can get banned "b." Sometimes they get banned and put into (v) vacation mode, sometimes not. If they are banned without vacation mode, check the pillory by clicking on the "b" and determine how long they will be banned. The best thing about banned people is they can't fight back.

 

Planets with Resources:

Only planets produce resources, and there are lots of buildings and researches to be completed on planets, which require people to gather lots of resources on their planets. In addition, many people put all, or at least most, of their defenses around planets, so they feel that their resources are safe.

 

Planets with Fleets:

People without moons, and those with lots of defenses, and n00bs who don't know what a moon is for, will often keep their fleets on their planets. Sometimes they fleet/resource save, sometimes they don't . . . or don't do so safely. This also includes gravitron attempts. Gravitron requires 300,000 energy, and can only realistically be done on a planet. Depending on what slot that planet is in, it can take around 5000-12,000 solar satelites, each worth about 400 crystal when crashed.

 

Moons with Resources:

One excellent trick is hitting new moons, on which players have dumped lots of resources. If you have more resources than a planet has room for, it stops producing. Moons do not produce resources, so there is no adverse effect to having millions of resources on a moon. However, most people, especially those with relatively new moons without shipyards, have no defenses on moons. If people leave lots of res on their moons unguarded . . .

 

Moons with Fleets:

Most people, especially most higher-level players, keep their fleets on moons. This is so they can't be phalanxed. It is almost always better to attack and FS from a moon than from a planet. Therefore, you can generally find most high-ranked players' fleets on their moons. As noted above, many people do not defend their moons, despite the fact that their fleets hang out there.

 

How to Attack

 

For the most part there are three forms of attack. Attacking when people are offline, phalanx attacks, and defense bashing. These are listed in the order of their popularity. If someone is offline, then they cannot move their fleet and resources, ninja you, or tell someone else to hit your returning fleet. Phalanx attacks include any method for timing your fleet to arrive a few seconds after the defender's fleet. Defense bashing involves sending a fleet, against which the defender cannot defend, against an unmoving target -- defenses, resources, solar satelites, moons, etc.

 

Offline attacks:

 

The most common type of attack is an attack on someone who is offline. No one is online 24 X 7 . . . ya gotta sleep sometime. This is why you should fleetsave and resource save if you are going to be offline long enough for someone to probe and attack you.

 

In order to make a successful attack, you want to figure out if the person is offline, or when they are likely to be offline, what to send, and how to send it. If you expect that there will be significant fleet loses, you also need to plan out how to recover the debris.

 

Determining if someone is online - The only way to know that someone is offline is to wait until 03:00 server time. Every morning at 03:00 the oGame servers are reset and everyone is logged off. When you log back on, a "*" appears next to your main planet. If you are online between 03:00 and 03:5X, all you have to do is check a person's main planet. If there is no number (less than the time since the reset), then they are not online. If you watch their main planet every 55 minutes and do not see any activity, you can be sure that they are not online.

 

If you do not feel like waiting around, there are other ways to figure out if someone is online. You can watch the galaxy view of their planets and see if there is any activity. Most activity is caused by the planet owner doing something. However, attacks and probes will also cause activity. You can probe planets and moons and look for changes in resource levels or ships. You can attack a planet/moon and see if there is any response. If you have any of the defender's planets within phalanx range, you can phalanx them and see if any ships were sent recently. You can send a message. If you know their ID on the oGame forums, you can check to see if they are listed as online, or look at their last activity there. You can send a slow probe to one of their colonies and recall a couple of seconds before it lands. Then go to the galaxy view and see if there is any activity on that planet. Often, people will go to the planet in question when they see the probe coming and possibly hide ships/resources.

 

Often, it will be a combination of things that will tell you if someone is online or offline. In addition, after watching someone for days, weeks, or months, you will tend to get an idea about when they are online, or at least how often/regularly. Another option is to safety probe -- send a probe to arrive 5-8 seconds before your fleet. This limits the amount of time in which the defender can ninja, move resources/ships, etc. A more devious -- and generally more telling -- option is to send multiple waves of attacking ships. Then send safety probes 5 and 1 seconds before the first wave arrives. A couple of seconds before the first wave hits, recall it. Then check the probes. As a general rule, the defender will attempt to do any moves/ninjas between the last safety probe (that is no later than 5 seconds before the hit) and when the first fleet impacts. A more devious variation on this is discussed below under "reverse ninja."

 

What to send - There are several considerations in determining what ships to send on an attack. First, you need to send enough ships to take out any fleets and defenses. Second, you should send a fleet with sufficient cargo to take any resources at the target. Third, you should consider the speed of the ships and deuterium costs.

 

Use speedsim or Draco-sim to determine the best combination of ships to send. Look at the rapid-fire tables to determine which ships have rapid fire against which ships and defenses. Send cruisers against LF and RL, battleships against cruisers, bombers against defenses, destroyers against light ships/defenses, LF and battleships against a fleet/defense with only heavy stuff, etc.

 

As a general rule, you take one half of the resources on the target after a successful attack, if you have sufficient cargo space. However, the particulars are a little more complex, especially if there is an over-abundance of metal. The actual rule is:

 

"plunder algorithm"

 

1. Fill one third of the capacity with metal

2. Fill half of the remaining capacity with crystal

3. Fill the remainder with deuterium

4. If there is still capacity available fill half of it with metal

5. Fill the rest with crystal

Note: You can never take more than one half of any resource type.

 

So, if there is: Metal - 1,000,000, Crystal - 50,000, Deuterium - 10,000 (one half of total resources = 530,000) and you send 120 SC (capacity = 600,000), then you take (1) 200,000 metal, (2) 25,000 crystal, (3) 5000 deuterium, (4) 185,000 metal, (5) 0 crystal for a total of 385,000 metal, 25,000 crystal, and 5000 deuterium -- leaving 185,000 empty cargo space.

 

After determining what ships are necessary to take out any defenses/ships and carry off the plunder, you generally want to send the fastest fleet, with the lowest deuterium cost. It is often better to send 1000 BS with the expectation of taking 2-5 losses, than sending 500 BS, 100 bombers, and 150 Destroyers with the expectation of losing 1-2 BS because of the much faster speed of battleships. If you can do it with 500 cruisers with only a 0.5% chance of losing one, no need to send 1000 cruisers in order to get a 0.1% chance of losing one. Sometimes, the amount of deuterium available determines what fleet to send and/or how fast to send it. Given the choice between sending enough to make 2 MM profit now versus waiting two hours for sufficient deuterium to make 3 MM profit, you are probably better off attacking immediately to reduce the chance the defender will come online or someone else will hit the defender.

 

How to send an attack - When possible, send attacks from a moon. This makes it much more difficult to phalanx your return. If you are sending less than about one quarter of your fleet -- or you are sending from a planet -- you are probably best off sending your fleet as fast as you can. If you are sending a more significant portion of your fleet (from a moon), and you think that it is likely that someone may attempt to hit you on the return, then you may wish to send at 80 or 90%. If you do this, send your fleet and then send a probe to the target a couple minutes before you would have had to send the same fleet at 100% to arrive at the same time.

 

As noted earlier, if you think that the defender may try to ninja you, you could consider sending a wave of attacks, safety probing, and then recalling the first wave to make sure that the defender does not try to hit the first wave. This can also confuse someone who is trying to phalanx your return.

 

As a general rule, you always want to send your recyclers on this type of attack at 100% (from a moon if possible). In addition, you probably want to send your recyclers before you send your fleet as your recyclers are likely to be a lot slower. If there is no DF at the target, you may need to send a single attack probe to create one. If you know ahead of time that you will be attacking around a specific time, then you can plan to have your recyclers arrive within a second or two of your fleet.

 

When possible, you should figure out when your fleet/recyclers will return and time them to come back at a time when you will be online. If you are not online when your fleet(s) return, you increase the possibilty of someone hitting your fleet upon its return.

 

Probing - As a final note, if you fear that you may be ninjaed, sending probes can be the difference between success and failure. If you can phalanx either the target or the planet on which a ninja fleet is located, that can also be helpful. As a general rule, you want to probe somewhat randomly as many of the defender's planets/moons as you can find. This will prevent the defender from taking any action on any planet while your attack is enroute. However, try to avoid probing the defender's main planet, as activity there isone of the best indicators that the defendant is online. If you can probe the defender's ninja fleet, figure out the defender's tech levels and probe the ninja fleet a few seconds after the defender would need to send the fleet in order to arrive at the target before you.

 

Sending a safety probe approximately five seconds prior to the hit is almost always an excellent idea. Anything earlier and you give the defender too much time to manuever. Anything later and you will not be able to recall your fleet in time. There is usually about a 2-3 second delay before the espionage report comes in. One good move is to send a probe at low speed (several minutes before the attack arrives) to arrive 30 seconds before the hit. Oftentimes, the defender will think that that is your only safety probe and will plan to get the ninja fleet in place in that last 30 seconds. Then, send a probe at 100% to arrive 5-6 seconds before the hit. With luck, the defender will be busy looking at the JG/Fleet screen and will not see the probe. I used this successfully against Sphenodon.

 

Phalanx Hits: