Introduction to Ogame

[M A F I A]

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"De inimico non loquaris sed cogites"
Universe 8 .org
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<center>Ogame on Wikipedia</center>

Story

According the OGame story, in the year 2250, man began to colonize other planets in the Universe after the invention of "impulse engines," engines that achieve the light speed. The increases in scientific technology helped man achieve a new era of pax. The peace ended, though, when a rare element, "Xentronium", was discovered, described as having "The power of 10,000 suns" by the OGame website. The desire for this element caused strife between the human organizations, and war ensued. The war ultimately ended when an "omega bomb," the future equivalent of a nuclear weapon, was used, wiping out much of what had been built. The game is supposed to take place after these events, trying to rebuild man's lost interstellar civilization.

Community

The German version of OGame is exceedingly popular, with thousands of people playing simultaneously. The English version is growing faster, but is much smaller, membership wise. For example the German board is one of the sixteen biggest boards in Germany.

Players can communicate with each other either through the in-game messaging system, the OGame message boards, or through the game's IRC server. In these venues, wars are planned, trades are made, as well as banter that is not related to the game. Wars must be announced on the Ogame forum to be considered valid; in valid wars, the rule limiting attacks on others is lifted. More importantly, wars give alliances an excuse to openly compete and talk trash, and hopefully gain supporters.

Gameplay

OGame's system is based on real-time; that is, the timing is based on actual time, not an internal time system. This system sets OGame apart from other RTS games. Since it is a free browser based game, the graphics are minimal and glitches are reported from time to time. Players also point to the subpar translations from German to English, seemingly put through an online translator. The tutorial for the game is an example of the poor translation. Despite this, thousands of players are active in the English version of the game.

Alliances

An alliance is a group of people who have banded together, like a guild or clan. Alliances are mostly used for solidarity purposes. They can do little tactically; only recently has the ACS combat system, a system allowing an alliance's members to station their fleets at another member's planet with an Alliance Depot, been added to English OGame in universe 5. Alliances often protect each other from attacks and promote free trade amongst members. An alliance page in OGame is divided into several parts:

   * Rank: Your rank or status within the alliance.
   * Members: the number of people in the alliance.
         o Note that Special privileges (viewing applications, member list, administration) are carried out from this page
   * External text appears to everybody who visits the alliance page, member or not. It is typically used for general announcements.
   * Internal text only appears to members of the alliance. Announcements of a more discretionary nature usually go here.
   * Alliance homepage, if any, is the link to that particular alliance's homepage.

Resources

There are three resources available in OGame: Metal, crystal, and deuterium. Raw metal is the most abundant resource, and is used in large amounts in everything from planetary structures to building ships to research. Crystal is also used for structures, but is used in excess in research. Deuterium is mainly used as fuel for the player's fleet. These resources are procured through two main methods; using a fleet to raid other players' planets and peacefully mining one's own planet(s). Due to the relatively slow nature of mining, the most common form of resource acquisition is through raiding. Later on in the game fleetcrashing becomes a major source of income, it is when you crash someones fleet and recycle the resulting debrisfield.

Buildings

Buildings are used for gathering resources (Mines), for energy (Solar and fusion plants), for storage, or for building your fleet (Ship yards). Buildings in OGame are different from buildings in many games in several ways. First, you do not place them, you "build" that structure type and then you upgrade it. Second, is that there are, for all intents and purposes, an infinite number of upgrades (level 1, level 2, etc.). The cost of resources double each level of upgrade, except for metal mines, crystal mines, deuterium synthesizers, solar plants, and fusion plants.

Each building takes up a "field" on a planet, and each new level takes up a new field. When the fields of the planet are full, no new buildings can be built.

Ships

OGame is mainly known for being a combat game, so a fleet is of the utmost importance. Players with larger fleets often fleet crash players with smaller fleets, with no repercussions. Building obscenely large fleets is often stated as the key to dominating the game; there are very few advantages to being peaceful and sticking to mining, although Death Star would beg to differ. There are six types of attacking ships that can be used in balance and counteract each other. There are Battle Ships, Destroyers, Cruisers, Bombers, Light and Heavy Fighters. In addition, there are Large and Small Cargoes for transporting resources, and then Recyclers for picking up the debris from a fleet crash. There are also Death Stars, wielding ultimate firepower and even capable of destroying moons. Auxiliary units include espionage probes used to obtain vital information on enemy forces, recyclers used to collect debris fields around the planets, colony ships that build colonies on unoccupied planet slots and solar satellites that generate the ever so necessary energy for planetary needs.

Defence

As opposed to building massive amounts of ships, there are few advantages to being purely defensive. If destroyed, there's no chance of recovering the lost resources with recyclers or an equivalent of fleet saving. One advantage is that there is a 70% chance that if destroyed in battle, the defensive structure can be rebuilt.

Spaceflight

Unlike many other games in Ogame's genre, Ogame does not give you direct control of your spacecraft. Instead, you tell your ship(s) where to fly (using the game's coordinate system) and what to do when they get there, and a timer will appear on your overview page showing you your fleet's ETA (both for arrival at destination and arrival back to the dispatching planet). There are seven types of missions that can be performed by ships in OGame (not all ships can perform all actions):

Transport

A transport mission is a mission in which a ship (usually a large or small cargo ship) is dispatched to a another planet with the express purpose of delivering resources to that planet. There are no restrictions on what type of ship may perform this action. Also, you may transport goods to any planet whose coordinates you know.

Attack

Attacking involves sending your fleet to attack another planet. There are two normal reasons for doing this: The first is raiding; if you win the resulting battle, you will capture as many resources as your ships can carry (but never more than one half of the planet's stores). The second reason is to destroy another person's fleet. It is important to note that, unless war has been declared, attacking someone more than three times in 24 hours is considered "bashing" and is a bannable offense. Nevertheless, a planet can be attacked up to nine times in a 24 hour period if "waves" are launched. A wave consists of three attacking fleets that arrive at the target within 30 minutes. Three waves within 24 hours count as three attacks. However, waves are seldom profitable.

Espionage

For espionage missions, the dispatched probes, once they reach the destination, scan the target planet and determine resources, defences, fleets, buildings, and researches on that planet (only resources are available at start, you must have either higher espionage tech or more than 1 probe to receive any more than that). The formula of espionage is simple, The difference of the espionage technology of you and your target squared(multiplied by negative 1 if you are technologically inferior) and added to the number of probes you send. If the number is lower than 2, you get only information of resources, if the number is 2, you get the information about their fleets, if the number is 3~4, you get the information about their defences, 5~6 gives you information about buildings and 7 or above finally tells you about the reseach levels. For example, if I have a tech level of 4 and I spy on a player with a tech level of 5, I need to send 6 probes in order to obtain the information about the defences. Only the Espionage Probe is capable of performing this action. The more probes you send, the more information you receive but the higher the chance that you can be caught.

Knowing the defences is important, but knowing the buildings status is far more important because you can then plan for the next probing time.

Colonization

Colonization is a one way trip. A colony ship is sent out to colonize an uninhabited planet. The colony ship is destroyed after the colonization, so if one decides that the planet is unfit after colonization and forfeits the colony, the colony ship does not come back.

If you send any resources with the colonyship they will be lost in the process, so you have to wait until after the colony is created and then send another fleet with resources to help it build up. If you have fleets acompanying your colony ship, they will return to the original start place.

The number of fields on a new planet is random but somewhat dependent on the position of the planet in the solarsystem, planet 4-6 beeing the largest.

Recycling

The recycling action is performed by the Recycler. The recycler is dispatched to a debris field (the material legacy of a particularly large battle) where it gathers up the recyclable debris and transports it to its dispatching planet. However, only recyclers can hold the debris, so sending other ships (such as Large Cargos) will be pointless, as they will be unable to pick up the debris.

Deployment

Deployment is the redeploying of ship(s) to another planet. All ships may perform this action, but it can only be performed on planets owned by the deploying player. Note that although the overview page will show that the ship(s) will be making a return trip, they will remain at the targeted planet.

Technology

Research advancement in OGame, as in many other games, is necessary to get more complex buildings and ships. In OGame, you level up your research by spending a fixed amount of resources for the particular technology. A certain level of research is required for various infrastructure and ships.

The research system is relatively simple, as there are only 14 types of technology, and not a tech tree like in the Civilization or Age of Empires series. In such simplicity, however, a small tech advantage can mean wonders in battle.

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