#3
by Pulsar
Everything Runcho says is right. I’m going to say more about fleetsave, however, because I think Torgard’s guide is too outdated to give the best possible idea of what a fleetsave that is good and almost guaranteed to keep your ships safe is, and a lot of people in the comments are offering more opinions on personal tactics than really solid strategic advice that is universal, though there is certainly good information there.
In short, to fleetsave is to send all your fleet and resources away for a period of time, generally the period of time you will be away from the game to keep it safe. However, doing this alone is nowhere near enough to keep you safe. Here are several important points:
1. All fleetsaves absolutely MUST involve a moon. This is to avoid your fleet being caught on a sensor phalanx. Phalanx is a way other players can observe fleet movements, but it only reveals fleet movements that DO NOT involve a moon (planet to planet attacks, defends, or transports or recycle missions from planet to DF). So as long as at least one moon is involved, your fleet is hidden.
2. Even if you don’t have a moon yourself, you can still fleetsave. You can ACS defend an alliance mate. You can also find inactives with moons. If the inactive moon has an ACS depot, you can ACS defend it. If it does not have a depot but has no defense, you can attack it. Be sure all ACS defend fleetsaves are set to zero hours of hold time.
3. Even if you do the above, someone can still destroy your moon or the one you are fleetsaving to (“MD” or “moon pop”). If they do this, they can find you on sensor phalanx and time a hit to arrive the same second or just a second or two after your fleet returns, destroying you.
4. In order to avoid (3) you can do several things: First, you can make sure no one knows where you are fleetsaving from or to by moving your fleet when spotted. You can fleetsave in unpredictable locations, involve more than one moon, and use unpredictable moons. Second, you can fleetsave from or to VERY large moons. Larger moons are harder to destroy and require more RIPs. Zorg has a moon destruction calculator under the Zorg Tools tab. For this method, you must ensure the largest player on the server does not have enough RIPs to pop the moon you are using to guarantee safety. You also absolutely must ensure that you are online when your fleet returns. This is true in all cases but especially if you are being hunted and players know where you are fleetsaving from.
Extra note: Reloaded is different from the other servers, in that fleetpoints always show. The advantage for the defender here is that no one can tell whether your fleet is down unless they actively probe you. On the other servers, fleets only show when they are on the ground, making it theoretically possible to conceal the size of your fleet, but also making it possible for hunters to passively watch and identify downed fleets. The update on this happens every hour, and the time of update is different on every server. Many players will time their fleetsaves to return after the update, though on Reloaded this point is of course irrelevant.