Introduction:
This guide deals with fleeting/raiding on the standard server and as a result some experienced players may not agree with everything here. However these techniques and styles have kept me alive and made me one of the best fleeters around. I am not going into the basics of gameplay, or even ordinary fleetsaving as these should be skills you have acquired already before you can use these tactics. There is a list of jargon used in the forums (I will try and link it in here) and most of that is used here. The order of sections is vaguely logical, so if you know some of it just skip ahead. Please note that the defensive part of the guide is written from a fleeters view point, and comes from things which stop or slow me down. Good Luck to you. You will need it.
Contents:
Part One – Offensive Strategies
I – Ship Types and Building
II – Raiding
III – Tracking and Location
IV – Attacking
V- Target Discrimination
VI – Special Attack Types and Decoys
Part Two – Defensive Strategies
I – Emergencies
II – Resources Protection (The Shell)
III – Ninja
IV - Trapping
Part One - I: Ship Types and Building
[/color]This section looks at some key offensive ships that are used but many players have a preference. This is not mathematical in approach and comes from experience and gut instinct and therefore will be very informal. Excuse this and skip to II if you know everything you want to know about the ships.
Battlecruiser (BC):
This is the standard multipurpose ships on this server which is commonly used by raiders. The low deut cost combined with the rapid speed make it ideal for this purpose. It can break defensive walls with normal efficiency and can easily eliminate most defending ships. They are like many other ships very weak to RIPs. If they enemy fleet is even 1/10th composed of these you will have a rough time turning a profit from too far away. Keep in mind construction of these takes 15k deut a piece which is roughly 1/3rd of the cost of the ship itself. However these do come in useful for taking out small fleets in large numbers because of the rapid fire. Not many are needed, speed and low deut cost come together to make one of the best ships in the game.
Death Star (RIP):
Don’t underestimate the usefulness to have these. They may not be able to get in and out fast but they can eliminate those awful moons hiding an enemy’s fleet! They also excel at removing defences if you are careful. Remember these can take between 3-8 hours to land a strike unless you are in the same system, and even then it takes over 2 hours with high hyperspace engine tech. Keep some on hand, and they serve a few purposes.
Bomber (BB):
Not as fantastic as they sound. These will not help going up against fleet and sometimes not even defences. They are slow and hog deut. Most raiders don’t even use these. Personally I find them to be useful only as fodder ships when hitting a fleet on a turtled planet, but the deut cost to construct them coupled with the upkeep make it quite inefficient to keep around let alone operate!
Light Fighter (LF):
You can’t get much better fodder than this. Low deut cost and none used in the construction meaning a much greater return on a DF when destroyed. They are reasonably fast if you have a good combustion and will not slow a fleet down too much. They are only good on their own in massive numbers and can be very powerful against fleets containing LGs. When a fleet contains them and are used as fodder, they take the most damage first and let your other ships inflict more damage which reduces the damage to you. This can block your larger ships quite well and yield a much bigger profit.
Espionage Probes (EP):
Probes as combat ships? No they are the best multipurpose fodder ships around. Since most ships have rapid fire against them they will draw the majority of fire from enemies ships. The issue is they are almost guaranteed to be destroyed. It doesn’t take much to get rid of them so be sure of your hit because if they dodge and there are some defences or few ships you will lose the probes. Sometimes if you can’t quite get a zero loss against an enemy fleet or defences you can add 50 probes and then only lose them, sometimes saving up to a few million in damage to BC or LG. Probes are used as swarm ships to support attacking fleets containing massive numbers as well.
Lunar Guardian (LG):
These are my favourite ship and so I have left them until last. They are the only thing capable of taking on fleets with a proportion of RIPs. This, of course, refers not to ‘zero loss combat’ but to huge battles where the RIPs rapid fire can trigger and make an attack unprofitable easily. The downside is the deut cost. They take 4x the cost, and only have twice the attack of a BC, making them important but costly. Get close enough to use them as they don’t work over long range like a BC since they are slower and costly. However the ration of M/C to deut in their construction is quite good, much better than that of the BC. These are not raiding ships and are used mainly for large scale combat. Watch out though as PCs eat them for breakfast.
Part One – II: Raiding
There aren’t many good raiders on standard, but they are coming (Keep an eye out for Shining Winds). Raiding is useful as it is less risky and can bring in quite a lot of resources. The downside is it takes work and can be slow going as well as needed lots of fleet slots for ‘little raids’. There is not much to raiding apart from finding targets. Inactives:
Assuming that these inactives have defences you can easily get past, the only difficulty is finding ones that have not been raided already. One trick is to ‘scout ahead’ by probing 5-10 good farms in a galaxy and seeing if there is anything good there before moving in and looking for all of them. If planets have 300 – 500k resources then most of the good stuff will be gone. Is there activity around the planets you intend to farm? If it is consistent (ie all the time stamps are the same) then it was likely a probe and someone else is looking (at this point you could try for a lanx ninja if they are foolish enough to attack from a planet). If it is staggered (ie some 35 mins, some *) then it’s been cleaned already. A planet with * means it has most likely been hit and the rest mean planets that have been ignored due lack of resources. Look to the edges of the galaxies rather than the middle, sometimes raiders miss these because they are far away. Sometimes they will have lots of resources and be worth the trip.
Actives:
Do you know how large their fleet is? If not it may not be worth the risk. If you don’t know the size of their fleet you clearly don’t know there on/off times (assuming you don’t spy) and you would be foolish to try for anything small. Telling if a target is offline is in the next section. If your target is offline or has a much smaller fleet and you are unsure of their activity then you can launch. Do the same checks as though you were hitting a fleet (again section III and onwards) and stay on your toes. Do not hit too many actives at the same time as you will find it hard to keep track of all of them and safety probe correctly ( 10 – 15 hits ). Large stockpiles are usually covered by sufficient defences but if not be extra sure it is not a trap as it could be a stockpile left behind while a fleet is out staying hidden. When hitting stockpiles with large shells remember you can lose EC in the combat so use probe fodder if the pile is large enough to warrant it.
Part One – III: Tracking and Location
This deals with how to find and chase enemy fleets as well as figuring out online times. This is sometimes very difficult and you instinct will play quite a key role in it. In this we shall assume you are hunting the fleet of a moderately experienced player with the highly original name ‘X’. Finding Planets:
Before scanning every system in every galaxy ask around your alliance and any contacts you have outside it to see if anyone has a list of X’s planets. If X has enemies who would like them taken down then that is usually a first place to look. If this fails them check their home world and see if they are in more than one slot in that or nearby (2-3 away) systems. If you haven’t found all the planets then check the systems in all galaxies corresponding to the same as their home world. This will sometimes find their planets (usually not though). Failing this look at any planet names you see and creatively use the search function to locate the others if you can. There could be a theme or maybe all of X’s planets end with a ‘0X0’ or something. Moons can also be a tool since players often don’t realise the names they use are patterned. If all these techniques fail, then search the galaxies. Look for placement and search the galaxy their home world is in first. You should hope it doesn’t come to this as the white background when you click -> can make your eyes hurt.
Finding Fleets:
You now have a list of all the planets. Watch the rankings board for ‘fleet’ and observe the changes over the course of a day or two. See if you can find a sudden surge after the rank update. This can also help acquiring online times (more on that later). When their fleet is down (you will know because it will show up on the boards usually) then rapidly spy all their planets and moons (90% of good players have fleet on moons). This will usually show up their fleet as a spike in their points. For example X has 54k fleet points at 5:10, but now has 1.42 million at 6:10. A lot of the time you will find the fleet lands in the same place a lot when it first comes in. This is their fleetsaving moon most likely and you have got the first vital piece of information. A dead giveaway is when there are two planet/moons in a single system, or a heavy defence on one particular planet. Keep an eye on them, and keep note of the size of the enemy’s moons if you can, especially their fleetsaving moon/s.
Behaviour and Online Times:
Get in sync with your opponent and try and get a feel for when their fleet is down or they are offline. Every player has a pattern, and this is deliberate or accidental. There are a few giveaways saying someone is online:
- Increase in raiding/attackers points on the scoreboard
- * on any planet (check that it isn’t a spy mission by looking at nearby systems for similar * near planets)
- Messages (message your opponent with banter and see when they respond)
- Dud attacks (launch small, costless missions and probe a second before landing then recall without contact. Did they try and ninja you?)
- Resources (How long since resources were moved off planets, they have to be online to do that. Players move the full amount off)
- Sided activity (Are they systems on only one side of the players planet showing activity?)
- Patterned activity (Increasing times on planets the closer you get to the targets system)
The last two deal with only active raiders and will not usually work if a player is not one of these. Number 5 works especially well on miners who keep cargos at their planets. These don’t work if they player is aware of these and can avoid them. Most players don’t bother trying to hide so carefully. This has to be done in most cases, however it is possible to intercept fleets but I have included these in special attack types as they are tough to safely pull off and clean up.
After you know their online times and when their fleet lands, you will be able to recognise a break in this pattern straightaway and should already have set up ready to strike. For example X is clearly online from about 9-10 am for me, until about 12.30 pm. After that X is offline for a couple of hours and fleetsaves this time but it lands about 2.30. There is not usually movement until about 3.10 though when X starts actively raiding. At about 7.30 X stops for an hour then returns but doesn’t fleetsave until 10.30.
In X’s case there are two good times to strike, one at about 2:30 to 3:00 since X is clearly not at his computer (lunch maybe or perhaps not a perfect fleetsave time so X goes for the next best thing). The other chance is at about 7.30 – 8:30 when X is probably have dinner or something like that.