Ogame Adds Classes

Ogame, a text based strategy game about space colonization, has added a new class system that changes up the gameplay quite a bit. This guide will give you a bit of an overview of the three classes and why you would choose to use them.

Collector

+25% mine production
+10% energy production
+25% speed for Transporters
+25% cargo bay for Transporters
+2 fleet slots
+2 offers

Collectors get access to the special “crawler” ship which increases all mine production .03% per ship.

Collector Overview

The collector role obviously heavily favors the traditional role of “turtle” found in Ogame. Turtles being players that play defensively, focusing on their mines as their primary method of advancement. Turtle is not only an apt analogy in that the defenses of a turtle can be likened to it’s hard shell. Strong turtles tend to have a slow and steady rate of advancement. Fleeters advance steadily but major fleet losses can set them back dramatically. A properly built turtle will generally suffer few attacks and is likely to be set back far less by one than a fleeter who loses their fleet.

The +25% mine production and +10% energy production are obviously very useful to this end.

Because Turtles tend to be fairly non-aggressive in playstyle they also traditionally have smaller fleets, if they even have an offensive fleet at all. This often leads to a buildup of excess deuterium. While fleeters who are constantly moving around massive fleets tend to always need more deuterium. This frequently means turtles sell off massive quantities of deuterium to supply fleeters in need of it. To this end +25% speed and cargo bay for transports, +2 fleet slots, and +2 offers can be very useful. These bonuses all function to help a turtle serve in the capacity of deuterium supplier to those in need of deuterium.

Crawlers

The crawler is an interesting addition to the toolkit of a turtle. They seem to function much like solar satellites in that they have no movement speed and therefore cannot be fleetsaved. This means turtles can increase their income by building them, but crawlers also present a target to fleeters looking to crash your planets for debris fields. They are fairly cheap and don’t require very much tech to begin building but their viability as an investment is largely dependent on the strength of your mines. Obviously .03% increase in production means something very different to someone with a level 15 and a level 30 mine given the crawler costs the same to build in either scenario. Roughly 3333 crawlers means an increase in production equal to total mine output without crawlers.

Suggested Collector Strategy

Turtling Basics

Collectors should obviously focus mine production at every stage of their empire. Some side fleeting and exploration aren’t necessarily bad ideas, but they should always be supplements to and not distractions from consistent growth of mines and defenses.

Enough defenses will need to be built to ensure the safety of solar satellites for optimal production. In addition it is very useful to have enough defenses to deter anyone who will be tempted by resource buildups during long offline periods such as while you are asleep. Shutting mines off a night will ultimately set you back further than the cost of build the defenses needed to protect your resources while you sleep. Very active turtles may find fleetsaving resources via methods such as sending a transport fleet loaded with your resources on a debris collection mission accompanied by a single recycler an effective way to keep the needed cost of defenses down in order to prioritize mines even further.

Bunker Planets

The establishment of a bunker planet is now more important than other with the addition of crawlers. A bunker planet is a planet that has thicker defenses than any of your other planets. Generally a planet with a lot of fields such as one established in planet slot 8 with a good luck roll on field slots. Because of a lack of diminishing returns on crawlers a bunker is a good place to establish the best mines in your empire and begin crawler production. A lot of the resources from crawler production will need to be fed back into defenses to keep the crawlers safe, but if crawlers are concentrated onto a single planet with huge defense investments it should be possible to snowball into a situation where nobody wants to touch that planet due to the massive losses they are likely to take.

Interplanetary Missiles

One disadvantage to being a turtle is a pure turtle has little power to retaliate against fleeters who are intent upon griefing them. Interplanetary Missiles can be one major way to event the odds. Due to ease of transportation it’s good to have most of your planets clustered into the same solar system or in a small group of nearby solar systems. This has the side effect of having most of your planets all be able to strike the same areas with IPMs. IPMs wreak massive destruction if they penetrate past your enemies shield of anti-ballistic missiles and having multiple planets firing on the same target makes it easy to fire missiles faster than your enemy can build ABMs even if they are online.

This tactic can also be very useful in assisting fleeter allies with their attacks on enemies, making alliances with powerful fleeters (who are likely to also want to trade with you for deuterium) very advantageous for both sides in a turtle/fleeter alliance.

General

+100% speed for combat ships
+100% speed for Recyclers
-25% deuterium consumption for Recyclers
A small chance to immediately destroy a Deathstar once in a battle using a light fighter.
+2 combat research levels

Generals get access to the “Reaper”, a combat ship that doubles as a recycler by recycling debris generated in the battle they participate in.

General Overview

The general class is designed around the traditional Ogame role of “fleeter”, or a player who gets most of their income from raiding other players colonies. Fleeters generally focus the majority of their income on building the biggest/strongest fleet they can to enable to them to make high profit hits with minimal losses.

A major advantage of a fleeter is that via fleetsaving and smart gameplay they can keep their primary money maker (their fleet) constantly safe from attempts to crash it. This means generals can have little to no defense and instead invest the resources they would use for defenses on a bigger, stronger fleet which unlike defenses directly results in more potential income.

The major disadvantage is that a single mistake leading to a crashed fleet can take them from a dominant player back to the stone ages.  Also their massive fleets consume a huge amount of deuterium.

Reapers

The most advantageous bonus of a general is +100% speed to combat ships and recyclers meaning they can raid up to twice as many targets as well as that their attacks have more chance of hitting their mark before they log in to notice.

Reapers feed heavily into this advantage as they recycle debris from the attacks they take part in. Usually a fleeter will have to follow up hits where they will either lose ships or destroy enemy ships with a 2nd fleet of recyclers to recoup their own losses and profit off the destruction of enemy assets.

Reapers being able to recycle immediately after a battle from within the main fleet means no follow up fleet of recyclers is likely to be needed, potentially doubling the number of attacks a fleeter can make, giving generals the potential to make 4 times as many hits as non-generals.

Suggested General Strategy

In general a general wants to rush small cargos and light fighters as early as possible to begin immediately start making profitable hits they can use to grow their fleet. Generals will create mines but frequently use fleetsaving as a method of protecting the resources those mines generate.

Good generals frequently check the game, raid consistently, and leverage their  high income to advance quickly.

Discoverer

-25% research time
+400% gain on successful expeditions
+10% larger planets on colonisation
Debris fields created on expeditions will be visible in the Galaxy view.
+2 expeditions
+20% phalanx range
75% loot from inactive players

Discoverers get access to the “Pathfinder” ship. A combat ship with a large cargo hold and the ability to recycle debris and find items while out on expeditions.

Discoverer Overview

Unlike the Collector and General, the Discoverer takes a feature (expeditions) that was never a viable primary income source historically and turns it into one. This makes the Discoverer perhaps the most interesting addition of this update.

The discoverer is a fleet based class but unlike the General it isn’t primarily reliant on hits against other players to secure a steady income. The combination of +400% income from expeditions and the ability to harvest debris fields from expeditions means that Discoverers can secure an admirable income by keeping all expedition slots constantly running.

75% loot from inactive players also makes it a good idea to supplement expedition income by using remaining fleet slots to farm inactives.

Finally the fact that debris can be recycled from expeditions and ships can now be sold means a discoverer can profit greatly from either using found ships as cannon fodder that eventually become debris, or selling ships they find particularly non-useful to their fleet.

Suggested Discoverer Strategy

Starting Out

One major weakness of the Discoverer class is it’s prone to slow starts in a new universe. While collectors can immediately begin capitalizing on their increased mine production and energy bonus, and generals can start making use of their +100% fleetspeed and +2 combat tech bonuses from the point they are able to make light fighters and small cargos, discoverers can’t really make use of any of their bonuses until they research astrophysics Even the research speed bonus just isn’t that useful early game, and inactives won’t exist if the universe is new.

Bearing this in mind it’s highly advisable to rush astrophysics as fast as possible. Either a strategy of focusing mines early, rushing early fleet and making some opportune hits, or a combining the two tactics could be used to reach this point.

Profiting From Expeditions

Once astrophysics has been achieved you’ll want to start constantly launching expeditions to the extent that every expedition slot you have is always in use.

Shorter expeditions tend to yield more profit over time than longer ones but longer ones have a higher chance of yielding resources. An optimal expedition pattern would be constantly launching 1 hour expeditions while able to actively monitor the game, and longer expeditions for things like prolonged periods of times at work/school or sleeping.

The ability to harvest debris fields means on average larger fleets should be more profitable as larger fleets encounter larger hostile fleets, which means larger debris fields. You also have can recover a significant portion of your losses when ships are lost in combat.

But bear in mind that there is always a very small chance of completely losing contact with a fleet. This makes it very important you divide your ships out into multiple equally sized fleets as that enables you to continue growing despite these occasional setbacks. If you have a single “primary” fleet and contact is lost the results would be catastrophic.

A Discoverer’s Empire

While it’s advisable for the mine based empires of collectors to be tightly clustered, a Discoverer has three major reasons to spread their planets out across the universe.

Firstly, their 75% loot from inactives (as opposed to the usual 50%) makes inactive farming a good secondary income. Many locations spread throughout the universe means they can have a nearby colony for hitting high profit inactives in a great number of locations.

Secondly, Discoverer’s will have massive fleets but they are less tailored for combat against other players than the fleet of a General. This makes exploration fleets a great target for generals looking to crash fleets for debris. A spread out empire allows the Discoverer to move fleets to locations that are quieter / less likely to be attacked.

Third, a Discoverer’s Phalanx range bonus makes them a great scout for their alliance. Being spread out they can Phalanx a greater spread of locations.

Picking the Right Planets

In general, a Discoverer should consider colonizing colder planets (high slots such as 10-15) over warmer ones.

Firstly, cold planets are a rich source of deuterium. They produce more deuterium than higher slot planets with the same level mines. This is important because Discoverer’s have large expedition fleets that will consume a lot of deuterium.

Secondly, expeditions take place in “slot 16” of a solar system, putting the colder planets closer to the intended destination of most of your fleets.

Thirdly, the two major downsides of a cold planet is less energy from solar plants and solar satellites, and smaller planet sizes than temperate planets in the mid slots. Using fusion generators can help compensate with energy woes and becomes very effective the higher level your fusion reactor and energy tech. Eventually this loss of deuterium to fuel the reactor is compensated for by increased deuterium production of cold planets. And the +10% planet size for discoverers means all of their planets are larger / will have less issues with space.