Ninja evasion guide
Calculating the outcome of a battle and attacking is easy, but how do you know that you´re not walking into a trap, that a much larger fleet isn´t waiting for you on arrival? Well there are some techniques to avoid it and that is what this guide will try to teach you.
Probe & smash
The first thing you need to learn is how to tell if the player you are attacking is online or not, since this is essential to the risk of a ninja. Please check the activity guide for the current rules of activity. Since you can´t click the overview button at all without leaving an activity star (*), a player can´t possibly know that you´re attacking him if none of his planets or moons has showed activity after you launched your attack.
Even if you´re sure that the player isn´t online right after you send your fleet, you need to check for activity throughout the attack. Note that it´s very important that you probe all the other planets and moons owned by that player to check if there´s a fleet anywhere big enough to get you with a jump gate ninja (assuming that it´s a fairly developed uni with players owning at least 2 moons).
So if none of the player’s planets/moons shows activity, what are the dangers you are facing?
If you´re attacking a moon there´s almost 0% chance of a ninja if you´re doing a regular p&s since there´s no way that anyone can know when your fleet will arrive. The only thing that can happen now is that a fleet accidently lands on the moon before your arrival, in which case a regular delay and probe should suffice (see Slowdown by ACS).
If you´re attacking a players planet and someone has radar-cover on that planet they will see exactly when your fleet is going to arrive and are able to send a fleet to ninja you if they´re in the same ally as the target or on his friends list. To avoid this you simply need to delay your attack and send a probe to arrive after the time your fleet would´ve arrived if you hadn´t delayed it. Since you can´t delay an ACS defense mission there´s no way for the defender to adjust the time of arrival even if he sees that you´ve delayed. If you yourself have radar-cover on this planet you will also of course see if someone have sent a fleet to intercept you and the slowdown won´t be necessary.
What if there´ve been activity on one or more of the players planets/moons?
This is where it gets a bit trickier. Now you need to try to assess whether the activity was caused by the players actions or if it´s fleet activity that triggered the (*).
If you´ve saved the spy reports for all the player´s planets/moons (which you generally should), one way to tell is to compare the number of ships on the planet/moon where (*) was triggered. So what you do is that you probe again after the (*) is gone and it shows at least (15). The reason for waiting for the (*) to disappear is that you need to always keep track of the latest activity and prevent the player from being able to take actions in the dark.
If the number of ships is off in any way it can give you information on whether it is likely that the player is online. If there are ships missing and there´s no debris field to match the missing ships, the player is definitely online since the ships has to have been moved. And if the ships are missing with a matching debris field outside the planet, the player is almost certainly not online since he´s just been attacked.
If there are more ships than in the first report, it´s likely that the ships have just returned from a mission (or were deployed). This tells you that the player probably isn´t online, that it was just ships landing that caused the activity, but there´s no way to know for sure.
In some cases there will be more resources (more resources than mines on planet would be able to produce during the time between probes) on the second report. So the player has either shipped res to himself or he has just traded with someone. In either case the activity is probably not due to him taking actions.
Be aware though that advanced players can deliberately send transports and deployment missions to mask their activity, knowing that intermediate players will interpret this as him not being online. That is why it´s important to understand that even if it looks like the players is offline, he might not be. Knowing the player and his playing style is essential to being able to judge what the activity means.
If there is activity and nothing has changed between the two spy reports it´s very hard to know if the player is online or if someone just probed him for instance. One way of telling is to check the other planets in that system and the neighboring systems. If the timeline on several of those planets match the timeline of activity on the player you´re trying to figure out, most likely someone has just probed his planet/moon and he´s not online. As most methods of assessing activity this is not foolproof though. The player might´ve just asked a friend of his to probe nearby planets to make it look like someone was probing him or he simply didn´t take actions after he saw someone probe him.
If however there are no other neighboring planets with the same activity and nothing changed between reports it is very likely that the player is online, especially if he has his main fleet on that location.
So if you suspect that the player you´re attacking might be online what do you do?
Attacking a moon
Well it all depends on what risks you are taking following through with the attack. If the player has his main fleet on another moon and will be able to jump gate ninja you (assuming he has built the jump gate on both moons), you really need to keep checking the activity on that moon, because delaying your fleet will do nothing to avoid a jump gate ninja. The reason for this is simple. To delay your fleet you need to do this with about one minute left of the attack at the latest. This leaves plenty of time for the defender to see that you have delayed and will simply jump the fleet right before the new impact time. However, both pushing the overview button and entering the jump gate will trigger the (*), so this cannot be done unnoticed.
However you also still may want to delay because the one you´re attacking might not be the one that´s trying to ninja you. So the best way to do this if you decide to follow through is to delay and probe so that you will have time to both check the spy report for ACS defending fleets and check the moon for activity where the main fleet is. After checking the spy report you keep checking the moon until you´re absolutely certain that the battle has occurred because very little time is needed to jump the fleet. If you happen to see a (*) appear on the moon you are very likely about to be crushed, so the best thing here is to recall your fleet immediately. You could take the risk of losing the entire attacking fleet, but normally it would be very foolish to take that risk.
Even if you don´t find a fleet big enough to ninja your attack on one of the other moons, you can still be in danger of a jump gate ninja if you´re not absolutely certain that the player you´re attacking can´t possibly possess a fleet that big. His main fleet might just land on one of the moons after you´ve probed, that´s why it´s important to keep track of activity during the entire attack and try to find out what caused it.
If activity is triggered within the last 15 min of the attack, there´s no way for you to know whether or not the player is online and is trying to ninja you (if you don´t happen to be sure that he doesn´t have a fleet big enough to ninja) because even if you probe and find nothing suspicious he could´ve just lifted the fleet while you were probing. So in this case you´re generally better off just recalling your fleet.
Attacking a planet
If you´re attacking a planet you can be a bit more relaxed about it because it´s generally very easy to avoid ninja on a planet, because if the defender himself wants to ninja he has to trigger activity a lot earlier than he would when defending a moon.
Unless there is activity within the last 15 min on the planet you´re attacking, you should be ok just delaying and probing the planet to avoid ninja. There´s still a risk of ninja even if you delay, but it´s very small. What the defender needs to do (whether it´s the player himself or one of his friends) is to guess how much you will delay and try to get his fleet in between your probe and your fleet. That is why your probe should arrive as close as possible (so that you have time to check the report and recall if needed) to the fleet to minimize the risk.
What is also very important to keep in mind is that you should never have a standard time of delay, for instance 30 sec, because skilled players will pick up on this very fast and send defending fleets accordingly.
So my attack went as planned/I recalled my fleet, I´m safe now right?
Attacking from a moon
Well no, not exactly. Even if you recall your fleet, skilled players might still be able to get you even if you´re attacking from a moon. For information on how this is done please check the “Blind Phalanx” guide.
What a player needs to catch you after you´ve recalled your fleet is the following: He needs to be able to send a fleet that travels faster than yours will on the way home, he needs to know your engine level, time of departure and time of recall.
So to prevent this from happening you need to either be certain that no one that has a big enough fleet is located close enough to you or you try to conceal the information he needs to do it.
Since you can´t conceal your engine level or time of recall, you only have one option left: Try to conceal the time of your fleets departure. There are several ways of doing this. You can for example delay your fleet 10-30 sec (or more) just after sending it, making it less likely that your opponent is online and is able to see this early delay, and even if he sees it he´s not very likely to pick up on exactly how much you delayed.
This works when recalling because the time it takes for your fleet to return home is the exact time the fleet has traveled thus far. When your opponent calculates that you must´ve sent the attack on 90% for instance, when he sees the attack, he will calculate your departure time backwards using the impact time (For more info on how this is done, please check the “Blind Phalanx” guide). But since you have delayed in midflight the calculations will be wrong unless he takes the delay into account. Without seeing the delay, his fleet will arrive earlier than yours when trying to lanx you. This will do absolutely nothing to avoid a ninja, but it will make it a lot harder to blind phalanx you after a recall.
Another way of concealing departure time is to first send one ship on 80% or slower speed and then join in the main attacking fleet on a higher speed. The attack will be a bit slower but your opponent needs to be online and see exactly when you join in the main fleet to be able to get you on your way back.
A third way is to split up your fleet in several parts so that when you recall they won´t return at the same time. This won´t save your entire fleet if your opponent chooses to attack one of the parts, but it certainly will cut your losses.
In some cases (especially when attacking planets) your attack can go as planned but someone else has picked up your attack on radar and is now trying to blind lanx you on your way back. You need exactly the same information to do this as you would when blind lanxing someone that has recalled, just replacing the time of recall with the time of impact. This is also a lot easier to do than to catch a recalled fleet.
Delaying your fleet to avoid this will sadly do nothing but change the impact time, so all one needs to do to get you is to check the last 30 sec of the attack to see if the impact time has changed. This is because regardless of how much you delay the speed you´re returning with is always going to be the same, as opposed to when recalling. If you sent your fleet on 100%, that is the speed of your return.
However the other method that was mentioned will work in this case also. If you send the first ship on 70% for instance and join in the rest of the fleet by ACS attack, you can do so at a speed of 80-100% (assuming you didn´t send a very fast ship to start the attack with). Even if you join in on 100% the attack will not go faster than the initial ship, but on the return however the fleet that joined in on a higher speed will travel faster home than the ship that started the attack. This means that your opponent needs to guess what speed your fleet joined in on to catch you. It´s still possible that you will get caught, but the risk is much, much lower. This can also be combined with splitting up your fleet so that when you do get caught you´ll lose for instance 1/5 of the fleet instead of the entire fleet.
Attacking from a planet
When attacking from a planet you face all the same fears as you would when attacking from a moon, in addition to (regular) phalanx. For information about how the sensor phalanx works please see the "Moon guide" in the guides section
Blind Phalanx
Doing a blind phalanx hit is risky business. Due to its nature you generally can´t delay your attack to check for ninja because it will make you miss your target if the player is online. You can send a probe no closer than 5 sec of impact (due to game rules) and hope to find a defending fleet, but normally the defending fleets will arrive closer to impact than that so it probably won´t help you.
So how do you know there aren´t defending fleets just waiting to grind you down on the moon when you arrive?
This is where experience really comes into play, because there is absolutely no way of knowing for sure. First of all you really need to know what type of player you are attacking. Is he capable of setting a trap, making you do a blind lanx to walk into the trap? If you think he has the knowledge to do it, you need to give it some more thought.
If you´re making a moon-df hit, it´s generally not a trap since these things normally take a lot of work and time to do. It´s not unheard of, but still very rare. If you´ve showed a lot of interest (by probing) during the time he normally fleetsaves for a few days, the risk of a ninja will of course increase. But even if no ninja has been planned a lot of players will be online sometimes several hours before their fleet land. This gives them time to contact a friend to help them. Knowing when you´re at risk of this is very hard, you need to check the activity of both your target and any nearby friends of his to try to figure out if you´re in danger of a ninja. Again, knowing your players and their behaviour could save your fleet.
If you´re trying to catch someone returning from an attack the risk of ninja is a lot higher. Both because the player you´re attacking is probably online and might have time to get one of his friends to help out (if anyone´s close enough) and because this type of attack is actually very simple and doesn´t take a lot of work so it´s more likely that a ninja will get set up in this scenario. However there are usually some warning signs to watch out for when trying to figure out if it´s a trap or not.
What you also need to take into consideration here is how big the opponents entire fleet is, assuming he´s not doing a full-fleet attack. If the target has 4 or 5 times as much fleet left as you´re trying to lanx, it might not be worth attacking since you would have to send a fleet big enough to crash his entire fleet. If however you don´t know how much fleet this player has in total, you should proceed very cautiously, because your target might very well be able to ninja you even if that was never the plan to begin with. Check his total points and if necessary start calculating how much of that represents his fleet. This is actually very easy, you just need to probe every moon and planet that the player owns and subtract what every building, research and defense structure is worth from the total points. What you are left with is the total value of his fleet.
If this player is normally very cautious when attacking, doing everything he can to avoid blind lanx and know that you are capable of doing it, and suddenly he´s attacking a friend of yours without taking any precautions he might be setting you up. Another telltale thing players will do is that they will attack your friend with way more ships than needed and with very little to gain. If this happens it´s all the more likely that you´d be walking into a trap trying to blind lanx him.
Knowing your surroundings and the targets´ friends is also very important when blind lanxing, since his friends´ activity can give you a lot of information. For instance if a friend of his normally has the majority of his fleet lying on a moon at the time of day you´re thinking about doing a blind lanx and it just happens to be missing when you´re about to send your fleet, you could be in trouble. It doesn´t have to mean anything, he could just be fleetsaved or he´s doing a full-fleet attack, but in combination with other things it might indicate that they´re trying to set you up.
A final word of advice
Hopefully by now you have gotten the basics down on how to avoid ninja, but no one can prepare you for every situation that occurs in ogame. After you have learned to use all the basic tips & tricks, ogame start to be about mind games and you begin creating misinformation for other players to pick up on and they will do the same to you. You just need to use your head, think logically and trust your gut-feeling. If a little voice in the back of your head tells you that you need to recall because you smell a rat, you should usually trust that voice.
Calculating the outcome of a battle and attacking is easy, but how do you know that you´re not walking into a trap, that a much larger fleet isn´t waiting for you on arrival? Well there are some techniques to avoid it and that is what this guide will try to teach you.
Probe & smash
The first thing you need to learn is how to tell if the player you are attacking is online or not, since this is essential to the risk of a ninja. Please check the activity guide for the current rules of activity. Since you can´t click the overview button at all without leaving an activity star (*), a player can´t possibly know that you´re attacking him if none of his planets or moons has showed activity after you launched your attack.
Even if you´re sure that the player isn´t online right after you send your fleet, you need to check for activity throughout the attack. Note that it´s very important that you probe all the other planets and moons owned by that player to check if there´s a fleet anywhere big enough to get you with a jump gate ninja (assuming that it´s a fairly developed uni with players owning at least 2 moons).
So if none of the player’s planets/moons shows activity, what are the dangers you are facing?
If you´re attacking a moon there´s almost 0% chance of a ninja if you´re doing a regular p&s since there´s no way that anyone can know when your fleet will arrive. The only thing that can happen now is that a fleet accidently lands on the moon before your arrival, in which case a regular delay and probe should suffice (see Slowdown by ACS).
If you´re attacking a players planet and someone has radar-cover on that planet they will see exactly when your fleet is going to arrive and are able to send a fleet to ninja you if they´re in the same ally as the target or on his friends list. To avoid this you simply need to delay your attack and send a probe to arrive after the time your fleet would´ve arrived if you hadn´t delayed it. Since you can´t delay an ACS defense mission there´s no way for the defender to adjust the time of arrival even if he sees that you´ve delayed. If you yourself have radar-cover on this planet you will also of course see if someone have sent a fleet to intercept you and the slowdown won´t be necessary.
What if there´ve been activity on one or more of the players planets/moons?
This is where it gets a bit trickier. Now you need to try to assess whether the activity was caused by the players actions or if it´s fleet activity that triggered the (*).
If you´ve saved the spy reports for all the player´s planets/moons (which you generally should), one way to tell is to compare the number of ships on the planet/moon where (*) was triggered. So what you do is that you probe again after the (*) is gone and it shows at least (15). The reason for waiting for the (*) to disappear is that you need to always keep track of the latest activity and prevent the player from being able to take actions in the dark.
If the number of ships is off in any way it can give you information on whether it is likely that the player is online. If there are ships missing and there´s no debris field to match the missing ships, the player is definitely online since the ships has to have been moved. And if the ships are missing with a matching debris field outside the planet, the player is almost certainly not online since he´s just been attacked.
If there are more ships than in the first report, it´s likely that the ships have just returned from a mission (or were deployed). This tells you that the player probably isn´t online, that it was just ships landing that caused the activity, but there´s no way to know for sure.
In some cases there will be more resources (more resources than mines on planet would be able to produce during the time between probes) on the second report. So the player has either shipped res to himself or he has just traded with someone. In either case the activity is probably not due to him taking actions.
Be aware though that advanced players can deliberately send transports and deployment missions to mask their activity, knowing that intermediate players will interpret this as him not being online. That is why it´s important to understand that even if it looks like the players is offline, he might not be. Knowing the player and his playing style is essential to being able to judge what the activity means.
If there is activity and nothing has changed between the two spy reports it´s very hard to know if the player is online or if someone just probed him for instance. One way of telling is to check the other planets in that system and the neighboring systems. If the timeline on several of those planets match the timeline of activity on the player you´re trying to figure out, most likely someone has just probed his planet/moon and he´s not online. As most methods of assessing activity this is not foolproof though. The player might´ve just asked a friend of his to probe nearby planets to make it look like someone was probing him or he simply didn´t take actions after he saw someone probe him.
If however there are no other neighboring planets with the same activity and nothing changed between reports it is very likely that the player is online, especially if he has his main fleet on that location.
So if you suspect that the player you´re attacking might be online what do you do?
Attacking a moon
Well it all depends on what risks you are taking following through with the attack. If the player has his main fleet on another moon and will be able to jump gate ninja you (assuming he has built the jump gate on both moons), you really need to keep checking the activity on that moon, because delaying your fleet will do nothing to avoid a jump gate ninja. The reason for this is simple. To delay your fleet you need to do this with about one minute left of the attack at the latest. This leaves plenty of time for the defender to see that you have delayed and will simply jump the fleet right before the new impact time. However, both pushing the overview button and entering the jump gate will trigger the (*), so this cannot be done unnoticed.
However you also still may want to delay because the one you´re attacking might not be the one that´s trying to ninja you. So the best way to do this if you decide to follow through is to delay and probe so that you will have time to both check the spy report for ACS defending fleets and check the moon for activity where the main fleet is. After checking the spy report you keep checking the moon until you´re absolutely certain that the battle has occurred because very little time is needed to jump the fleet. If you happen to see a (*) appear on the moon you are very likely about to be crushed, so the best thing here is to recall your fleet immediately. You could take the risk of losing the entire attacking fleet, but normally it would be very foolish to take that risk.
Even if you don´t find a fleet big enough to ninja your attack on one of the other moons, you can still be in danger of a jump gate ninja if you´re not absolutely certain that the player you´re attacking can´t possibly possess a fleet that big. His main fleet might just land on one of the moons after you´ve probed, that´s why it´s important to keep track of activity during the entire attack and try to find out what caused it.
If activity is triggered within the last 15 min of the attack, there´s no way for you to know whether or not the player is online and is trying to ninja you (if you don´t happen to be sure that he doesn´t have a fleet big enough to ninja) because even if you probe and find nothing suspicious he could´ve just lifted the fleet while you were probing. So in this case you´re generally better off just recalling your fleet.
Attacking a planet
If you´re attacking a planet you can be a bit more relaxed about it because it´s generally very easy to avoid ninja on a planet, because if the defender himself wants to ninja he has to trigger activity a lot earlier than he would when defending a moon.
Unless there is activity within the last 15 min on the planet you´re attacking, you should be ok just delaying and probing the planet to avoid ninja. There´s still a risk of ninja even if you delay, but it´s very small. What the defender needs to do (whether it´s the player himself or one of his friends) is to guess how much you will delay and try to get his fleet in between your probe and your fleet. That is why your probe should arrive as close as possible (so that you have time to check the report and recall if needed) to the fleet to minimize the risk.
What is also very important to keep in mind is that you should never have a standard time of delay, for instance 30 sec, because skilled players will pick up on this very fast and send defending fleets accordingly.
So my attack went as planned/I recalled my fleet, I´m safe now right?
Attacking from a moon
Well no, not exactly. Even if you recall your fleet, skilled players might still be able to get you even if you´re attacking from a moon. For information on how this is done please check the “Blind Phalanx” guide.
What a player needs to catch you after you´ve recalled your fleet is the following: He needs to be able to send a fleet that travels faster than yours will on the way home, he needs to know your engine level, time of departure and time of recall.
So to prevent this from happening you need to either be certain that no one that has a big enough fleet is located close enough to you or you try to conceal the information he needs to do it.
Since you can´t conceal your engine level or time of recall, you only have one option left: Try to conceal the time of your fleets departure. There are several ways of doing this. You can for example delay your fleet 10-30 sec (or more) just after sending it, making it less likely that your opponent is online and is able to see this early delay, and even if he sees it he´s not very likely to pick up on exactly how much you delayed.
This works when recalling because the time it takes for your fleet to return home is the exact time the fleet has traveled thus far. When your opponent calculates that you must´ve sent the attack on 90% for instance, when he sees the attack, he will calculate your departure time backwards using the impact time (For more info on how this is done, please check the “Blind Phalanx” guide). But since you have delayed in midflight the calculations will be wrong unless he takes the delay into account. Without seeing the delay, his fleet will arrive earlier than yours when trying to lanx you. This will do absolutely nothing to avoid a ninja, but it will make it a lot harder to blind phalanx you after a recall.
Another way of concealing departure time is to first send one ship on 80% or slower speed and then join in the main attacking fleet on a higher speed. The attack will be a bit slower but your opponent needs to be online and see exactly when you join in the main fleet to be able to get you on your way back.
A third way is to split up your fleet in several parts so that when you recall they won´t return at the same time. This won´t save your entire fleet if your opponent chooses to attack one of the parts, but it certainly will cut your losses.
In some cases (especially when attacking planets) your attack can go as planned but someone else has picked up your attack on radar and is now trying to blind lanx you on your way back. You need exactly the same information to do this as you would when blind lanxing someone that has recalled, just replacing the time of recall with the time of impact. This is also a lot easier to do than to catch a recalled fleet.
Delaying your fleet to avoid this will sadly do nothing but change the impact time, so all one needs to do to get you is to check the last 30 sec of the attack to see if the impact time has changed. This is because regardless of how much you delay the speed you´re returning with is always going to be the same, as opposed to when recalling. If you sent your fleet on 100%, that is the speed of your return.
However the other method that was mentioned will work in this case also. If you send the first ship on 70% for instance and join in the rest of the fleet by ACS attack, you can do so at a speed of 80-100% (assuming you didn´t send a very fast ship to start the attack with). Even if you join in on 100% the attack will not go faster than the initial ship, but on the return however the fleet that joined in on a higher speed will travel faster home than the ship that started the attack. This means that your opponent needs to guess what speed your fleet joined in on to catch you. It´s still possible that you will get caught, but the risk is much, much lower. This can also be combined with splitting up your fleet so that when you do get caught you´ll lose for instance 1/5 of the fleet instead of the entire fleet.
Attacking from a planet
When attacking from a planet you face all the same fears as you would when attacking from a moon, in addition to (regular) phalanx. For information about how the sensor phalanx works please see the "Moon guide" in the guides section
Blind Phalanx
Doing a blind phalanx hit is risky business. Due to its nature you generally can´t delay your attack to check for ninja because it will make you miss your target if the player is online. You can send a probe no closer than 5 sec of impact (due to game rules) and hope to find a defending fleet, but normally the defending fleets will arrive closer to impact than that so it probably won´t help you.
So how do you know there aren´t defending fleets just waiting to grind you down on the moon when you arrive?
This is where experience really comes into play, because there is absolutely no way of knowing for sure. First of all you really need to know what type of player you are attacking. Is he capable of setting a trap, making you do a blind lanx to walk into the trap? If you think he has the knowledge to do it, you need to give it some more thought.
If you´re making a moon-df hit, it´s generally not a trap since these things normally take a lot of work and time to do. It´s not unheard of, but still very rare. If you´ve showed a lot of interest (by probing) during the time he normally fleetsaves for a few days, the risk of a ninja will of course increase. But even if no ninja has been planned a lot of players will be online sometimes several hours before their fleet land. This gives them time to contact a friend to help them. Knowing when you´re at risk of this is very hard, you need to check the activity of both your target and any nearby friends of his to try to figure out if you´re in danger of a ninja. Again, knowing your players and their behaviour could save your fleet.
If you´re trying to catch someone returning from an attack the risk of ninja is a lot higher. Both because the player you´re attacking is probably online and might have time to get one of his friends to help out (if anyone´s close enough) and because this type of attack is actually very simple and doesn´t take a lot of work so it´s more likely that a ninja will get set up in this scenario. However there are usually some warning signs to watch out for when trying to figure out if it´s a trap or not.
What you also need to take into consideration here is how big the opponents entire fleet is, assuming he´s not doing a full-fleet attack. If the target has 4 or 5 times as much fleet left as you´re trying to lanx, it might not be worth attacking since you would have to send a fleet big enough to crash his entire fleet. If however you don´t know how much fleet this player has in total, you should proceed very cautiously, because your target might very well be able to ninja you even if that was never the plan to begin with. Check his total points and if necessary start calculating how much of that represents his fleet. This is actually very easy, you just need to probe every moon and planet that the player owns and subtract what every building, research and defense structure is worth from the total points. What you are left with is the total value of his fleet.
If this player is normally very cautious when attacking, doing everything he can to avoid blind lanx and know that you are capable of doing it, and suddenly he´s attacking a friend of yours without taking any precautions he might be setting you up. Another telltale thing players will do is that they will attack your friend with way more ships than needed and with very little to gain. If this happens it´s all the more likely that you´d be walking into a trap trying to blind lanx him.
Knowing your surroundings and the targets´ friends is also very important when blind lanxing, since his friends´ activity can give you a lot of information. For instance if a friend of his normally has the majority of his fleet lying on a moon at the time of day you´re thinking about doing a blind lanx and it just happens to be missing when you´re about to send your fleet, you could be in trouble. It doesn´t have to mean anything, he could just be fleetsaved or he´s doing a full-fleet attack, but in combination with other things it might indicate that they´re trying to set you up.
A final word of advice
Hopefully by now you have gotten the basics down on how to avoid ninja, but no one can prepare you for every situation that occurs in ogame. After you have learned to use all the basic tips & tricks, ogame start to be about mind games and you begin creating misinformation for other players to pick up on and they will do the same to you. You just need to use your head, think logically and trust your gut-feeling. If a little voice in the back of your head tells you that you need to recall because you smell a rat, you should usually trust that voice.
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