Ogame.

[Iroscato]

So, does anyone here play the text-based space game Ogame? I'm in the Electra universe if anyone wants to sign up. The game's quite good, if a bit slow.

[HMS Sophia]

I'm in Gemini. Currently building cruiser squadrons, though I can build battleships now...

[Dave]

It swept my fraternity once. It goes well enough until you get just big enough that people who have been in-universe FOREVER deem you worthy to attack, and then they come along to take all your stuff.

[Narkis]

It swept my fraternity once. It goes well enough until you get just big enough that people who have been in-universe FOREVER deem you worthy to attack, and then they come along to take all your stuff.

This. I played with some friends a couple years ago. We expanded at a nice pace, farmed our inactive neighbours, even joined a fun medium-sized alliance whose name and description had something to do with beer. And it went well enough until we got big enough that some guys from the #1 alliance decided it was worth it to pay the fuel and smash our (relative to our size) impressive defenses and take our stuff.

Occasionally, some new guy in our little circle will discover this game or one of the dozens of clones, is baffled when no one will play with him, and then joins us in loathing the game after a couple weeks.

[Iroscato]

Some horror stories here. I've been playing the best part of a year and so far nothing that has made me want to loath the fabric of the game itself.

[HMS Sophia]

Some horror stories here. I've been playing the best part of a year and so far nothing that has made me want to loath the fabric of the game itself.

Lets hear them?
I've only been on for a short time, but it's kinda fun. Nothin bad happened yet, but I'm in a rather capable alliance, so I'm happy...

[Iroscato]

Some horror stories here. I've been playing the best part of a year and so far nothing that has made me want to loath the fabric of the game itself.

Lets hear them?
I've only been on for a short time, but it's kinda fun. Nothin bad happened yet, but I'm in a rather capable alliance, so I'm happy...

Nah I meant some horror stories on the thread, like poor old Narkis getting clusterfucked

[HMS Sophia]

I see
Well, I haven't even been attacked by anyone yet. I guess I'm small fry right now I've only got 30 odd cruisers or something.

[someone_else]

I played for 2-3 months. The game is dumb as hell. I find much more satisfying age of empires 3.

I hated most the fact you had to do fleetsaves all the time (sending the fleet to a moon with a timing so you would be there again when it comes home. At the times the sensors couldn't detect your fleet doing so, maybe now it's changed.) or a guy with an insane number of craft comes at you and nukes everything.

The game is fun only if you are among the first of your universe. Otherwise you are accumulating frustration.

[Iroscato]

I played for 2-3 months. The game is dumb as hell. I find much more satisfying age of empires 3.

I hated most the fact you had to do fleetsaves all the time (sending the fleet to a moon with a timing so you would be there again when it comes home. At the times the sensors couldn't detect your fleet doing so, maybe now it's changed.) or a guy with an insane number of craft comes at you and nukes everything.

The game is fun only if you are among the first of your universe. Otherwise you are accumulating frustration.

Well fleeting is just one approach to playing the game, I prefer to build my mines and infrastructure rather than go off building a fuck ton of ships. I build defenses as well, fleetbuilding is usually the last thing I do.

[Losonti Tokash]

I go back in periodically, but I have the benefit of being a member of GOON on Capella. I've never really had trouble with attacks unless I did something stupid like forget to fleetsave.

[Purple]

Reading this thread and talking to some people who play it am I right to conclude that this is in essence Travian in space?

[Imperial528]

I believe Ogame is more simmilar to Astro Empires, rather than Travian. They're of simmilar browsergame types, but Travian is much smaller in scale and really only focuses on soldiers and small-scale economics, whereas Ogame and simmilar games include much larger focus on large coordinated movements of different fleets, research specialization, defense specializations, etc.

[Purple]

But in essence it is still a game of join early or you are dead in the long run, pillage to grow or you are dead in the long run, grow for the sake of growth or you are dead in the long run, stay active as much as you can and hire people to stay active for you the rest of the time or you are dead in the long run, no mercy hard core hard to play but addictive?

[Imperial528]

You don't exactly have to join early, since I believe Ogame's servers never end. But the rest stands. I don't know Ogame's policy on duals or sitters, but I know that AE doesn't allow either. And it's entirely possible to be a mediocre player in these kind of games, but that just means that you won't be running any show.

[someone_else]

Well fleeting is just one approach to playing the game, I prefer to build my mines and infrastructure rather than go off building a fuck ton of ships.

When you have multiple planets and each one makes mostly a kind of resource (since they are optimized to produce a resource and suck in the others unlike your home planet), you need a fuckton of transports to move stuff around. And those carry significant amounts of resources around to less-defended colonies that need that fuckton of resources to upgrade their main plant. = good target.

Also, if you have too much stuff in your base (you need to get the calculators and see how profitable would be attacking you), you have to do fleetsave with loaded transports just to save the resources you have in stock. And that time will come after the first few months.

Basically you either do fleetsave or you are a farm for whoever has been playing since that game server was up, has a ludicrous amount of ships, and has 2-3 moons in strategic locations (to look at the most number of potential farms).

but a game where I could code a program to pwn everyone else (i.e. the player does only need to be always connected and do some number crunching, not really skilled to win) is not something I like to play. Aoe3 and even a fucking random shooter is better than that.

But in essence it is still a game of join early or you are dead in the long run, pillage to grow or you are dead in the long run, grow for the sake of growth or you are dead in the long run, stay active as much as you can and hire people to stay active for you the rest of the time or you are dead in the long run, no mercy hard core hard to play but addictive?

Any MMORPG where players can fight other players to get money is like that. They are designed to be like that, since they want your time, your (real) money and eventually your soul.

[someone_else]

yeah, a general good advice is to set up colonies in wildly unsettled areas of the server (the farthest systems you can find), that way a friend (Redcap I think) managed to build everything in safety for years (real-life years).