Tactic 01: Start-up tactics

Mort wrote:

Safira wrote:

These two need to be merged. I forgot to take tutorial into account, so Najics did it for me. Just needs to be put together.

Written by me:

This is a merged and rewritten version of three guides which can be found here:
Reaching the Top in Three weeks, New uni guide
An early game guide.
Gettin' started

It will suggest you a way how to progress fast after you join an universe and how to reach top ranks. It will also link you to other guides which will help you stay ranked high.

Every chapter is divided to two sections. One if for those who started a new uni and one for those who started an old uni.

Intro

Everyone would love to be in the top of the statistics in Ogame one day. If you know what you're doing then the fastest was would be joining a new universe right after it opens. Beware though, new unis are a cruel place. Many experienced players join and nearly everyone is very active in the first couple of weeks. It is very hard to stay unprofitable as players will launch at you just for your overnight production, even if you're ranked high. Many new players give up as they don't quite know what they're doing. Brand new unis can get demotivational, so it's not a perfect environment to learn to play the game.

If you wish a calmer place to start, join a bit older universe. You can still be a top 100 if you join a one year old uni. The advantages are that you don't get farmed as much as in old uni and you have an easier start due to all the inactives full of resources. You can also find someone to assist you and help you with resources. See the list here: Players help players: Project


Note: Originally written for normal speed universe. The guide is still useful for faster universes, but be careful as everything happens very rappidly there.

Note: The playing style used in this guide is a raiding style. This is the most effective way to progress but it requires you to be online more and to know more tricks.

Step 1 - My first Small Cargo

• NEW UNIVERSE
  

Question: I want to join a new uni! When will it open?
Answer: You will know when we know. It will be announced here: board.ogame.org/index.php?page=Board&boardID=2 a week before it opens.

So you registered in a brand new universe. You were given a planet with nothing on it. Wondering where to start?

Points are gained by spending resources therefore you need to spend as many as possible to get more points. It is important that you invest into things that will return you resources and bring you profit. That is mines and ships. As one cargo can bring you 5.000 units of resources per raid, this is a lot more than mines in early stages, so you should aim to get Small Cargos (SCs) as soon as possible.

The techs and buildings required to get your first SC cost a total of 3.200 units of metal, 2.160 units of crystal and 3.300 units of deut.

Here is a suggested order (suggested by DanCake):

Metal mines levels: 1, 2, 3, 4
Crystal mine level 1
Metal mine level 5
Crystal mine levels 2, 3
Metal mine level 6
Deut Syntetiser levels 1, 2, 3

and so on.

As you can see, you have to build metal mines up first. The reason for this is that you need more metal at start.

Note: Don't forget about solar plants! You should always have enough energy to power your mines. As soon as the energy levels become negative (and red), build a new level of solar plant.

Sometimes you will have to adjust it slightly depending on when you are not online as one kind of resource is going to build up more than another. After this, build up your deuterium and crystal mines, so you have mines at least at levels 6/6/5. Build metal and crystal mines while you wait for your deut to reach 3.300 units. Your mines should be no higher than 8/7/6 if you want to be amongst the first to have a SC. When deut starts approaching the 3.000 units, start working on the techs and buildings required to build a SC. You will also need 2.000 units of metal and 2.000 units of crystal to queue your first small cargo.

Question: Where can I see what I need to build a SC?
Answer: Go to the shipyard, then click on the small cargo. Open a techtree which will show you what you need.

Note: Going through the galaxy costs you 10 units of deuterium per system. The only free system is the system your planet is in.

• OLD UNIVERSE
  

The start is same as in old unis. It's also very important that you get your SCs fast. Older universes are a bit more easy going, which means that the building oder isn't that important as there's already players a lot more developed and you aren't competing with them yet. Also note that you're still in noob protection to most of the players meaning they can't attack you and you can't attack them. This will help you to bring up your empire a bit and gt ready for the universe outside of the noob protection.

Explanation of noob protection here: Formula Thread v3


Step 2 - Let's RAID!!!

• NEW UNIVERSE
  

Congrats! You now have your first ship! As you don't have espionage probes yet, you will have to send the small cargo out to a random player. There is no inactives the first 7 days after the universe opens, so you need to launch at active players. Be careful with that! You should always launch at the lowest ranked players you can find. Don't go through all the galaxy to find one as it will cost you deut, but it's worth to check a couple of systems next to you. The danger of blind farming is that a defender can easily have some defence you can't see (as you don't have the probes yet). Lower ranked players don't have defence yet, so you're looking for those.

Once you find a lower ranked player, you should check the activity. If there is activity, find a different target. This early players only have Homeworlds and no fleets, so activity in most cases means they're online.

Once you launch at someone who isn't on, keep an eye on the planet before your fleet hits. If activity appears, pull the attack back as the defender is probably online, used all resources and possibly built some defence as well, which can kill your cargo. The really patient attackers may also want to check research score, as research lab needs deut, which meakes shipyard and rocket launchers more likely. Check the fleet stats for every attack to be sure they have no fleet.

Now you just raid like mad! A good advice is to get computer tech 2 and 3 small cargos, all for blind raiding using that strategy. Farming everyone around will make you grow faster and it will also make others grow slower.

Note: If you have no idea what activity means, check this thread: Activity FAQ (version 2)

Question: What about defense?
Answer: Once you have a couple of SCs it is a good idea to build one or two rocket launchers (RLs) to prevent being farmed with SCs.

Advice: If you're an active farmer, you should invest your resources in deuterium synthetizers as metal and crystal can be easy to farm.

• OLD UNIVERSE
  

You should not blind raid in an old universe! Players in old universes nearly all have plenty of defence so you will only lose your cargos if launching at them. What you should so is find a friend or someone who is willing to help you a bit and make him probe the inactives around you. At this stage even inactives will have defece; a friend will be able to check if there's someone around you who has no defence. Note their coords and attack them withing bashing limits. There's a big chance other players won't bother farming inactives as they simply aren't profitable enough, but for you, they will bring you plenty of needed resources.

Bashing rule: New Game Rules - valid from 17.5.10

Fleetsaving: You can do it, but it's not really necessary. If you do fleetsave, big players will be able to see you under lanx. Other small player might ask them to lanx you in which case it's pretty same as not FSing at all. In old unis there won't be a lot of players to hunt you, so you shouldn't worry too much.

Note: There will already be inactive players when you start playing an old uni. They're the only ones you should attack at this stage.

Step 3 - Probes

• NEW UNIVERSE
  

Your next aim are probes so you can improve your raids. You should have them at about 60 points if not sooner.

Make sure you use them properly. You need to see defenders technologies in the report to be completeley safe to launch. If you only see resources it means that the player can have defence and fleet on the planet that you can't see due to too low espionage tech.

Note: If you can't see everything on the playet you're probing that doesn't necessarily mean that a player is strong. They might be using Technocrat which adds two levels to espionage technology.

To estimate the mine levels, check the amount of energy displayed; the higher the energy, the bigger the mines. Sending more probes will reveal more info, but note that you can also lose probes in a counter-espionage. Once you get enough info in a report, make sure you simulate how many ships you need to get through the possible defence/ships on the planet and to capture the max amount of resources. Remember you can only take max 50% of resources on the planet and you can only take anything if you win the battle. Battle resulting in a draw will not allow your ships to capture anything.

Combat simulators:
websim.speedsim.net/
drago-sim.com/index.php?lang=english

More info about how espionage technology works: Formula Thread v3 - Espionage

Detailed explanation of how resources are captured: Formula Thread v3 - Combat

Raiding advice: Once you have probes you will want more cargos to get the most of the targets. 15 SCs and a computer tech level 3 works good. Build LFs once you already have 15 SCs. To make the most of your slots you should rotate two waves of two raids, ie, time the the first two to return just before the other 2 hit, so that you can safety probe, but still use 4 raids at a time.

Question: What is a "safety probe"?
Answer: Explanantion of a slow and safety probe can be found here:

Note: Early in game it is a good idea to rely a lot on activity. Ninjas are not profitable as players don't have recyclers yet, so they will not bother to ninja you in order to gain profit. You should always check for activity before your attack hits.

• OLD UNIVERSE
  

Sadly, probes won't help you much in an old universe. As already said, you can help with stronger friends to gain info about inactives.

There's another way of gaining enough info and it only includes a risk of 1 lost probe. You can probe around and check for appropriate targets. Those with little resources are mainly the ones without defence. To be sure, launch 1 probe on attack mission to their planet. If a probe survives, you can launch as many cargos as needed to capture the maximum resources. If a probe dies, this means there's defence at the planet and that you can't steal resources with cargos only. Don't even bother probe-atacking inactives with huge resource counts. They are mainly turtles.

Step 4 - A real fleet

• NEW UNIVERSE
  

Now that you have probes and cargos, it's time to build some attacking ships. Players around you will also start getting ships and defence, so you need something to get through that to raid them.

You should start with about 5 light fighters (LFs) to hit players with 1 rocket launcher. As you get more resources from raiding and mines, you should soon have heavy fighters (HFs) and cruisers (CRs) as well.

Before starting with large cargos (LCs) and recyclers (recs), you should have mines around at least 10/10/10. You can build deut mine a bit higher if you're running low on it.

Note: If you can't find targets big enough to fill those 15 SCs, you should get an extra level of computer tech before combustion tech.

Once you succesfully attacked some players, remember their coords and espionage/attack them as soon as they are profitable again. (Just make sure you don't go over the bashing limit as this will result in a ban) As cruel as it sounds, but this is the most successful way to progress.

Question: OMG I got farmed! What am I doing wrong?
Answer: A very important part of reaching the top soon in a new uni is being online as much as possible. Players will raid you for very little profit, as soon as they can get through your defence. Being online more is sometimes the only thing that will help. Don't worry about the later game, things will calm down, but you can expect being farmed overnight or when you're offline for a longer time. Also, in speed unis it's even harder to stay unprofitable thus it requires more time to be online. Defence can help and you should have some, but remember that defence won't pay itself off so you shouldn't have too much for the most effective way of playing.

Note: If you don't have time to use your fleet, don't build it! You need to use it frequently to return the resources you invested in it and the opportunity cost. Anything less than that makes building a ship useless. Not having some ships this early will make you progress a lot slower, but you can still progress later on.

Question: So I have a fleet now, should I fleetsave?
Answer: Yes you should. As soon as other players start getting ships, you can get attacked. Before getting recyclers, you will only be attacked for resources sitting on your planet, so the most important would be to not leave too much resources sitting around. See here: Fleetsaving (version 2)

• OLD UNIVERSE
  

I would not recommend fleeting in old unis for the first couple of weeks. You will be very vulnerable to all stronger players who started early and due to the fact that you can't FS properly, you can lose your fleet easily. Build more cargos and farm inactives instead.


Step 5 - 7 days of the universe and Inactives

• NEW UNIVERSE
  

The most important thing that happens after the first 7 days is the appearance of inactive players. These are players which are grey in the galaxy and have an (i) next to their planet. These players didn't log in for seven days and are great to fleetsave to at this stage. They are also the safest farms you can have.

Inactives appear at midnight server time. If you can be online, probe and launch at them. The danger of them coming online is minimum. Check for new inactives every day. You should check 20 or more systems near your planet in both sides every day. Always probe and launch on everyone that is worth it. Keep the coords in notes so you can simply go straight to their coords rather than going through 40 systems all the time.

Note: Other players will farm inactives too, so it can happen that they're empty. You should still check the active players and launch at them - as already said, good way to progress is to stop your competitors from getting ahead of you and attacking them is the best way to achieve this. A lot of players should be in noob protection by now. Those who you can attack are normally very active so you should be careful not to get ninja'd. Watch the activity and start to slow and safety probe.

Advice: If you're a very active raider, you should upgrade your computer tech. It will allow you to farm even more.

Fleetsaving!

1. Inactives: Before you get a recycler, inactives will be the best way to fleetsave. You should use attack mission to an inactive player: Fleetsaving (version 2) This way you can save your fleet and gain some resources while you're gone. If all of the the inactive's defences around you are too strong and they have no ships on the planet, use espionage mission: Fleetsaving (version 2) This should only be used until you get a recycler.

1. Your first recycler: Now that you have a recycler, you should fleetsave with harvest mission to any DF: Fleetsaving (version 2) This is the best way to fleetsave until there's no moons around your planet (until you're not in a lanx range).

Recyclers can bring you plenty of profit if you're the first to get them. You will see a lot of debris fields (DFs) arounf your home planet. Those are the ruins of ships that got ninjad; as most players don't have a recycler yet to harvest that, you can clean them on your own and get some easy profit.

• OLD UNIVERSE
  

Invest in mines and farm inactives. It's still not a good time for fleet.

Step 6 - Your first new colony

• NEW UNIVERSE
  

About 7 days after the new uni opens you should be developed enough to start working on your colonies. Having more colonies early in game is the most important, so you should work on that as your main goal. More colonies mean once more mine production and a wider raiding area if placed properly. However, there are a few things you need to take into account when starting to colonize.

With all the farming you should be able to afford the colony ship easily, but it will still be rather expensive for you. This why one of the advices is to place your first colony in the same system and keep it as a temporary colony for the first couple of weeks. It will serve you to get some extra resources from it's mines. Only build mines and solar plant on that colony. Fields don't matter at all! Use the extra mine output to research more levels of astro tech and build more colonies. You should concentrate on building up your deut and crystal mines as you'll need a lot of those to build astro and new colony ships.

Note: Don't forget to continue with farming. It will speed up the entire procedure.

One way of placing your 2nd colony is trying your luck and placing it to the position where you wish your permanent colony. Getting to the stage where you have all permanent colonies is very important!

Question: Where should I place my colony?
Answer: That depends a bit on your style, but as this is the guide on the most affective way to pregress, I will only explain the most efficient colony placement. You can read more about the different gameplay styles here:

In a normal speed universe, you should mainly colonize in lower galaxies. One of the recommneded planet placements are:

Galaxy 1: Systems 100, 200 and 300
Galaxy 2: Systems 100, 200 and 300
Galaxy 3: System 250
Galaxy 4: System 250
etc.

Advantages of this kind of planet placement are that it allows you to have the widest raiding area. Lower galaxies are normally more occupied, so you should have more colonies there. Some colonies in the higher galaxies are a good thing as you can launch at players who hide their fleets there. Placing a colony in the middle of the galaxy will allow you to reach oth edges of a galaxy easily.

As there's less players in higher galaxies it is also a good spot to go for graviton.

Question: But all the good slots are already taken! What should I do?
Answer: Planet slots with "destroyed planet" get cleared after 48 hours at 1:10 am st. If you're online then to send a colony ship and lucky to arrive there first, you will get a good spot eventually. Just make notes of "destroyed planets" and keep sending ships there. In young unis galaxies are often very crowded, which makes you being the first with a colony ship is even more important.

Note: In speed unis, the planet placement is different! It takes less time to travel therefore it's a good idea to have one colony per galaxy.

• OLD UNIVERSE
  

It is also important that you get more colonies when starting in an old uni. This will allow you to get a wider raiding area - you'll be able to farm more inactives thus get more resources. It will also allow you to start FSing with deployment mission, which which will be your first safe FS.


Step 7 - Setting up your Empire

• NEW UNIVERSE
  

You should now have a couple of colonies and be decently ranked. What now? The optimal solution would be to build more fleet, get recyclers and farm like crazy. Invest in both - mines and fleet. Mines will supply you with a steady income during the time you won't be fleeting. Fleet will bring you a bigger hauls of resources.

Colonies:
You should be getting as many colonies as possible. This will give you a great advantage of a wide farming area. Note that players in lower galaxies will want to protect themselves building more defence and trying to be unproffitable. That's why you should move to a different one are after a while to get some fresh farms.

Make sure your colonies are big enough. Keep them above 200 fields. (See this guide for details: Colonising a new planet, old and new ) You should soon delete your small colonies and aim to have all permanent ones.

Mines:
Keep some cargos on all planets so you can transport the daily mine output to develop mines. Don't build up a "super planet" with very high mines and ignore your colonies. You should have all planet's mines developed the same way.

Solar sats:
As solar plants will start getting expensive, you should switch to solar sats. It's recommended not to have a solar plant above levels 20-25 as solar sats are a lot more efficient and cheap.

Defence:
Note that they are very vulnerable to local farmers, so you should have some plasma turrets in your defence to protect them. Build some fodder with defence as well, but don't invest in it too much. Many players ask how many solar sats can they have for a certain defence. The best answer is - see for yourself. If you're not getting farmed, it's enough. Once you get farmed, double the defence.

As soon as you get plasmas, you should have ABMs as well. Keep at least as many as your plasma count is.

Research:
Research is not that important. Build impulse level 5 to speed up your cargos and unlock new ships. You should concentrate on Astrophysics tech, Compute tech and Espionage tech. You can also try your luck with expeditions, but make sure you do them correctly. (Guide: FAQ about Expeditions and Merchants) Also, make sure you don't build researches that are useless.

Moonshots and FSing:
It's a good idea to have a friend play a moonshot account to give you free moonshots. Moonshots themselves are very expensive - especailly this early ingame, but a moon will be a great advantage as you can try your skill in blind lanxing.

Don't forget to FS! When you're not under lanx, use harvest or colonization mission. Once you're under lanx, you should always use deployment!

When a deployment FS becomes too expensive, and a lot of moons start appearing, you should consider buying moonshots (if not having a MS acc).

The more you fleet, the faster you will grow. Note that a lot of high ranks go to people who are online a lot. In a couple of months, the list of top 100 players change completely. Being online helps you be ranked high at start, but it will not help you stay there forefer. Please see this guide for advanced gameplay info:

• OLD UNIVERSE
  

Once you have a decent number of colonies, you can build a fleet. At the early stages you should stil concentrate on inactives only. After a while, you can start attacking those ranked lower than you. Once you get a moon, you can start having a proper fun.


Question: When should I join an alliance and which alliance should I join?
Answer: That depends on your preferences. Don't join an alliance with too many members - that's a mass ally - it is full of noobs and normally has a poor organisation. Also, alliances on the top are not necessarily the ones that will be there in a month. Rank does not mean that much at this stage. You're best off joining an alliance of players you know. Good communication and cooperation is crucial.

Written by Najics:


There are a few ways to start up a brand new account, and they mostly depend on how much time you have to spend in the first week or so, since game style (fleeter/raider/miner/turtle) can be easily switched afterwards. The firs thing to built is always a metal mine followed by a solar plant (or a solar plant followed by a metal mine, the difference ranges from a second's worth of production up to a few minutes, so it's basically neglibile). You'll then want to keep on upgrading the metal mine and solar plant until you reach lvl 4 metal mine and lvl 3 solar plant. Now this is where the old and new design differ. In the old design, it was generally better to wait for awhile for resources to pile up and build a lvl 5 metal mine and a lvl 4 solar plant before starting on the crystal, but with the redesign and it's tutorials, it's better to leave the metal at 4, and rush the crystal until lvl 2, then build the solar plant up to lvl 4 in order to get the tutorial bonus.You'll end up with lvl 4 metal mine, lvl 2 crystal mine and a lvl 4 solar plant
[insert a link of the tutorial with the rewards.. from your pm, with the fancy colours :)]
After this, it's time to choose your priorities.

Would you like to build a small cargo as fast as you can and start raiding (recommended if you have some more experience with the game and more time to spend on it), or would you like to lay low and mine for the first few days of the uni (recommended for new players, and people who have less time to spend on ogame)?


Fast small cargo (with tutorial merchant)

After you've built your mines up to 4/2/0/4 (metal/crystal/deut/solar plant), you need to keep working them up in order to get some more income for the small cargo prerequisites. You will not be building any deuterium synthetisers, and you will get all the deut you need (3300) from the merchant you can purchase with the free 2500 dark matter you get from one of the tutorials. [vnesi copy/paste od safira za tutorial 5]. The general idea is to build up your metal and crystal mines high enough so you can research the requirements and build the small cargo, and use excess metal to trade off with the merchant for the 3300 deut you'll need for the research lab, robotics plant, shipyard and the researches themself. Do not worry about fuel costs, because with the tutorial's reward system, once you get your first small cargo, you will get some deuterium as a reward. [vnesi copy/paste od pm za tutorial 4].
What to build and when to build it. First thing to remember is energy. Without enough energy your mines won't work at full capacity, so building a metal mine 10 when you have no energy to power it (are at 0 available energy, or in the negative values) is of no use, so build the solar plant first! Also, a lvl 5 mine working at 90% still generates more than a lvl 4 mine working at 100%. So if you have some power left over, build the next mine level, even if you dont have enough power for it to work at 100% efficiency. You will still get a better income than building the next level of solar plant first. In short words, when at 0 or negative power, build a solar plant first. When you have 1 or more power left over, build the mine first. This way, you will ensure maximum production for the whole time. Since at 4/2/0/4 you will have some power left over, start working on the mines first. The first mine to get upgraded is the metal mine. You need metal for all your buildings, plus the combustion drive research, and you also need to have enough metal to trade for deuterium (around 10k metal, can vary due to the merchant's varying rates). Upgrade the metal mine until you reach level 7, and then upgrade one level of crystal. Keep the metal and crystal at a 4 lvl difference after that (metal mine at lvl 8 - crystal mine at level 4). Don't forget to upgrade the solar plant accordingly. Once you've reached level 7 crystal mine (and lvl 11 metal mine), stop upgrading the crystal. Lvl 7 will work fine for the crystal you need for the fast small cargo, and you'll need the resources to upgrade the metal mine further. Lvl 13 or 14 of metal mine is generally high enough in order to start saving up for the merchant. When you have ~12k metal saved up, it's time to call a metal buying merchant. If you feel that you have too little crystal and excess metal, you can trade up some small amount of metal for crystal, but the main thing is, you need to sell enough metal in order to get 3300 deuterium. The merchant trades at rates around 3:2:1, so you'll need around 10 000 metal in order to get your 3300 deuterium. After this, you'll need to build a research lab (lvl 1), research energy technology (lvl 1), then combustion drive (lvl 2). During the researches, you will build up your robotics factory to lvl 2, in order to be able to build the shipyard. After that is done, build the shipyard up to lvl 2. With the shipyard and combustion drive both at level 2, you can build your first small cargo and start raiding.
Now it's time to figure out who to attack. First, check your solar system. You don't need any deuterium to do so, and you'll get to your targets faster. Look for someone with as little as possible points and no activity star to raid. That reduces the chance of your target having built a rocket launcher to destroy your cargo. If you can't find anyone like that in your system, check the neighbouring ones. DON'T go beyond 5 systems each way. Checking the 5 systems to your left and right will spend you 100 deuterium in galaxy view, and you'll be left with only 100 for fuel. You can't afford to spend more, since we didn't build any deuterium synthetizers. After finding your target, launch your attack and start building up the deuterium synths. The tutorial bonus deut will only last for so long. Upgrade your deut synths to a comfortable level (usually the same as the crystal mine) and maybe build a rocket launcher (which with the tutorial's reward will grant you another one for free)[copy paste od tutorial 2] to protect your overnight production. You can build a few more cargoes to upgrade your raiding income, but in that case, don't forget to upgrade your computer technology in order to gain more fleet slots. Your next goal should be getting espionage probes, so you can scout out your enemies planets for resources and defences. With the tutorial's 2nd task, light fighters at the start arent much use, since you'd need more of them to break through 2 rocket launchers, so i personally skip them and head straight for the heavy fighters. After you've established a small raiding fleet (sc+hf) and built some probes to scout out potential farms, you can choose your playing style. You can either build a massive fleet in order to break through heavily defended planets and crash fleets, focus more on your mines or defence, or do whatever suits you best.

Mining start

This time, you will focus more on your planet's production and defence instead of rushing to get a small cargo built and raiding. This is recommended for people who have less time for playing, are in a very active location (a lot of people raiding = less targets), or just can't be bothered as much on the begining. While the fast SC start can be more profitable, it can also turn into a disaster (getting your cargo crashed by someone who has managed to build RLs). The mining tactic is steady and a bit slower, but it is safer and requires less time spent.
This time, we won't forget about the deuterium synthesizers, but we won't build them very high, only to level 5 to get the tutorial bonus [vnesi tutorial 3]. Just as with the first start, we'll need to build up the metal and crystal mines first though. Upgrade the metal mine until level 6, than build 2 more levels of crystal mines. Don't forget about power, and upgrade the solar plant when necesarry. After that is the metal mines again. Your goal is to get your metal mine up to level 10, and crystal plant to level 7. After that, build up the deuterium synthesizer to level 5, which will finish the 3rd task from the tutorial and award you a small resources bonus. Once you're at 10/7/5 (metal/crystal/deut), it's time to make sure no one can steal your hard earned resources. Since you have no fleet yet, fleetsaving is not an option, and you'll need to build defences. At the start, most attacking fleets only have one small cargo, or one sc and one lf at best. Nothing 2 rocket launchers won't handle. So it's time to build up the facilities. In order to get a rocket launcher, you'll need a shipyard, and in order to build a shipyard, you'll need a lvl 2 robotics plant. So build up the robotics factory up to level 2, then build a shipyard to level 1, and build one rocket launcher. This will finish the second task of the tutorial and grant you another rocket launcher for free. [vnesi tutorial 2] 2 rocket launchers will be capable of defending your resources for the first 2-3 (maybe 4 days) of the universe, but afterwards, as people get stronger ships, you'll need to either build up your defences, or build some cargoes and start fleetsaving. If you intend to keep going with the defences for a bit longer, don't build any more rocket launchers. Instead, build up your technologies and get light lasers (maybe even heavy lasers if you intend to turtle for longer). They will be much more effective in defending against fighters (but still easily defeated by cruisers). Sooner or later, you'll have to build some cargoes to save up your resources in (fleetsaving), and your defences will only serve the purpose of protecting your overnight production (resources generated while you are offline) and solar satelites (if you have any).



After building up your economy for awhile (either by mines or small cargo raids), you can head in any direction you want to. You can either focus on your mines more, or build a fleet and start raiding and crashing other people, the choice is entirely up to you (vnesi link od player types]


Here is the start up in full, the fast sc hasn't been checked yet, but i'll get on it as soon as i can, if you can review the rest and get back to me, i can make the necesarry changes and fix it up a bit (replace all the [..] with the actual links)

Valent wrote:

The danger of blind farming is that a defender can easily have some defence you can't see (as you don't have the probes yet) or he can use half/ finish buttons to build some. Lower ranked players don't have defence yet, so you're looking for those.

Valent wrote:

The really patient attackers may also want to check research score, as research lab needs deut, which meakes shipyard and rocket launchers more likely. Check the fleet stats before every attack to be sure they have no fleet

The danger of blind farming is that a defender can easily have some defence you can't see (as you don't have the probes yet) or he can use half/ finish buttons to build some. Anyway, you don't need to build probes so fast, just easily check the fleet statistics if player that you want to attack haven't any defense yet.