Strategies and golden rules

What players who grow fast and never lose their fleet do. These are general rules: speed, version and settings change from one universe to another, so check the figures in yours (the Commander reads them from the official API). Orbit will never tell you that a time is “safe”: observed activity is a clue, not a confirmed connection.

Class: Discoverer

• The Discoverer is the most profitable class for almost everyone: it is the expedition class, and growing in OGame today means growing with expeditions.
• The exception: from the top 50 upwards, with mines around level 40, it pays more to be a Collector (miner) or a General (fleeter).

Growing means doing expeditions

• Max out expeditions as soon as you can. They bring more resources and ships than anything else; mines take second place.
• The expedition fleet: lots of Large Cargos, 1 Pathfinder and 1 Destroyer. The cargos fill your universe’s expedition points ceiling; ask the Commander how many you need and it works it out.
• Max out your planets: every planet means more production and another base, and always large planets (more fields).
• Nobody lives off raiding planets: it does not pay. What you hunt is fleets, and what you protect is yours.

Moons

• Your fleet lives on the moon, not on the planet.
• Moon attempts: expeditions bring you probes; once you have enough probes, crash them to create debris over your planet and try for a moon. The chance rises with the debris up to a maximum (20% in most universes), and the debris depends on your universe’s debris factor.

Saving your fleet (fleetsave)

A fleetsave means putting your fleet in flight so it cannot be destroyed while you are away: a fleet in flight cannot be attacked.

• Deploy from moon to moon. If you cancel the deployment, the phalanx cannot see it: the fleet comes back without anyone being able to work out its return. (The phalanx, or Sensor Phalanx, is a moon building that sees fleets in flight from nearby planets.)
• Never leave your fleet sitting still when you are going to be away.
• Do not always save it on the same moon. Move it from moon to moon, if you can once in the morning and once in the evening, and do not repeat times or destinations: whoever is watching you is looking for exactly that, a routine.

Mobile colonies

• Colonise close to the target to attack with short flights.
• If a teammate can make you a moon there, even better. If not, watch that you are not hunted on the way back.
• Simulate the enemy’s flights: how long they would take to reach you and when your fleet returns (the Commander works it out with the flight simulator).
• How to use it to hunt a fleet, step by step:
  1. Look at the target’s activity histogram: at what hours they usually have less observed activity. For example, their observed activity stops around 23:00 and comes back around 7:00.
  2. Get there first (at 6:00, in the example) and put a colony with a moon right next to them.
  3. Keep a close eye on their activity. When their fleet lands, you are so close that your attack arrives within minutes (8, in the example), before they can save it again.
  4. When you are done, destroy the colony: it was only a springboard.

Crashing the attacker: the trap

Crashing an attacker means making their attack smash into your fleet: you bring your fleet to the planet just before they arrive.

• Check when the attack lands and play inactive: do not click the Overview of any planet or moon, because that lights up the activity the attacker sees.
• If you have to move something on the planet you will jump to, disguise it: spy on all the nearby systems, so it looks as if someone has just made espionage passes.
• Check the Jump Gate to bring the fleet in. The Jump Gate is a moon building that moves your fleet from one of your moons to another instantly.
• All of it seconds before impact, so the attacker can no longer cancel.

Delaying your attack with probes (so you don’t get crashed)

A defender who wants to crash you works out when your attack lands and brings their fleet in seconds before. If your attack lands later than they think, their fleet arrives too early and the trap fails: you see it and decide.

How to do it:

1. Launch your normal attack.
2. Turn it into an ACS (joint attack): several fleets that arrive together at the same target. You do it on your own; nobody else is needed.
3. Add to the ACS an Espionage Probe at low speed, timed to arrive a little after your attack.
4. The whole ACS arrives at once, so your attack is delayed to go with the probe.

Example: your attack lands in 1:00. You make the ACS and add a probe that takes 1:09. The attack no longer lands in 1:00: it lands in 1:09, with the probe. Whoever was ready to crash you at 0:59 has brought their fleet nine seconds before you arrive.

• The game only lets you join a fleet if the delay is small compared with the flight time the attack has left (usually up to 30%). If it will not let you, try a slightly higher speed.
• If it is your first time, practise it on inactive players: you need to get the seconds right before using it in an attack that matters.

Spying and hunting

• Be the first to reach players who stop. Scan the universe for players who have gone 1 day without gaining points: they have probably forgotten or quit the game. If you get there before anyone else, the loot is yours. Orbit gives you the scan link to share it with your alliance.
• Spy right before attacking, not hours before: an old report misleads.
• Send enough Espionage Probes to see fleet, defences and technologies (the bigger the espionage technology gap, the more probes). Without technologies, the simulator has to assume them.
• Hunting a fleet: with the phalanx you see when it returns; the way back takes as long as the way out. Simulate the battle before launching and arrive as it lands. The activity histogram tells you when there is usually less observed activity: it is the best candidate according to the data, not a guarantee.

How Orbit helps with this

• Expeditions: your universe’s points ceiling and how many ships of each type fill it.
• Flights: duration, departure and return, enemy fleets included.
• Combat: a simulator with the espionage reports you import.
• Activity: an hourly histogram of any player and inactive scans.
• Orbit does not play for you: it sends no fleets and does nothing inside the game.

The maths is in Calculators, scans and the histogram in Scans and intelligence, and requests that work with the Commander in What to ask the AI.