«…because they thought it would be a good idea to poke that "little noob miner". »
Note: I do understand this article on fit everybody's opinion and point of view. The goal of this thread is pure informative. Feel free to discuss your opinion in a civil way. Good luck to board moderators in moderating the comment section.
After my return from Quantum universe, I focused a bit on my Empire. It is still a long way to go, until it will be at least close to how I want it to be.
With mixed feelings after the interview – I’ve sent a couple of messages, to which I have received some positive responses. One of them was quite close to my location – also in Virgo – but after a few back and forths we’ve cancelled the interview as the Admiral was always on fire and very busy.
Time passed by, mines kept working but my inner fleeter was reaching out to me stronger and stronger every day. Having one single Empire at that time, I’ve decided to try my luck in a new one (not new as in newly launched), faster one and in a distant one.
As I reached the space docks, my inter-universal colony ship was waiting me with the crew ready for takeoff. We departed, and the flight was going well, most of the way at least. Some hyper-turbulence here and there, but nothing out of common. The real trouble began when we finished the jump. Due to the fact that the universe we were aiming from was quite different from the one we were used to, my crew screwed up some calculation of the coordinates. We hit an asteroid, and we hit it hard. Thank Legor, there were no casualties, but we lost a good amount of provisions and resources that we planned on using for the new establishment.
The engines also didn’t suffer any damage, so we were able to reach our planet without any trouble. On our way – however – I sent some messages to my ally – Kaldor – and asked him to send some help, if he could. Unfortunately, he said he’s unable to join me on this one, but promised to contact one of his peers, who happened to be really close to my new Home planet.
We didn’t have to wait for long. I would say that we didn’t even have to wait for short 😊 A fleet out of a couple of thousands fully loaded Small cargos reached us in no time.
As the main shuttle landed – I advanced to greet the generous admiral, without know who’s going to be there…
It was Tirnoch.
To my surprise we shared two mutual contacts in our communicators. One of them is Erebos (Erebos – if you read this – please know that we miss you, but we wish you all the best luck in RL. Don’t you ever come back!! )
Alex Stukov:
Ok... tell me how did oGame find you and when?
Tirnoch:
Uhm, it was 2004 or 2005 when some real-life friends told me about oGame and got me to register an account. They told me about the basics like building mines and stuff, but they had just started out, so their knowledge was limited. I began reading a lot on the boards and passed my friends in the rankings soon. Unfortunately, they didn't last very long, they quit but I stayed, so I'm here and you must bear with me
Alex Stukov:
And you were left all alone? Or by the time they had left you found some oFriends?)
Tirnoch:
By the time they left I didn't know anyone in game who I'd call a friend. Those I met long after they quit. I continued playing because OGame was fun to me.
Alex Stukov:
Why do you think oGame stuck to you so much?
Tirnoch:
Uh I really can't tell exactly. I have a fondness for space related stuff (I also love EVE Online for example), and I always loved the tactical moves you could do in OGame, stuff that only few people know about, and mind games. Finally, it was the people I've met that kept me playing.
Alex Stukov:
Where did you start? Was it uni 1 back then?
Tirnoch:
I started in OGame.de in uni29. That was where my RL friends were in.
Alex Stukov:
When and how did you meet the “team”? (Or how can I call the people you ended up making history)
Tirnoch:
One year before the merge of Uni 35, Quantum and Electra, in March 2015, I traded my Uni 35 account back which I had traded away for an account in OGame.de. My plan was to mine a bit in peace because I always liked Uni 35 (it was the only 5x speed uni when I first started there, I think in 2007). Then GF announced that they would standardize the bashing rule, meaning that there would be no special rules for speed unis anymore, meaning that from then on, only 6 attacks per planet were allowed (down from 20 attacks). RIO got extremely mad about that change and so they thought it would be a good idea to wreak their anger on the players of Uni 35, and they declared war on 10 of the most active alliances (limit of war declarations is/was 10). One of those alliances was the one I was part of at that point, MADR. Firestorm was also part of it, but at that point I didn't know him. Anyway, so nirO started to bash my tiny defenses with his rips to keep the war alive. So, in return, I started nuking him and farming his planets (remember I'm still a tiny miner at that point :P) and posted those hits on the War CR thread. BaTTaL aka PaLeSTiNe saw my struggle on the board and contacted me to set a trap up for nirO. So that's #1 of the team. The trap worked out and we ninja'd 7k rips of nirO: (https://board.en.ogame.gameforge.com/index.php?thread/764935-td-89-538-626-000-war-hit-ninja-rip-kill-acs-defend-niro-rio-vs-tirnoch-madr-tia/&pageNo=1). Fast forward, when the merge got announced, Kaldor contacted me asking if I wanted to join them in the upcoming merger. That's how I got to know MindWar, Kaldor and Firestorm. The merger hit, and I joined LOS together with BaTTaL. Everyone in the alliance was speculating as to who would join forces with whom, when someday Kaldor dragged me into a secret skype group, consisting of: Solidarity, MindWar, ViS, BaTTaL, Firestorm, Kaldor and then me. This was the group where the big hit was planned, and then, on April 11th, executed. And that's how I met those guys
Alex Stukov:
Okay, my question is - how did you get to be fleeter? You pointed out a couple of times that you were a small miner. When and how did you decided to go fleeting? Or wait. Have you been fleeting? =D
Tirnoch:
I've always been a fleeter (more like a noob fleeter in the beginning :P), with a lot of OGame breaks, and a lot of attempts to be a peaceful miner, only to get forced to start fleeting again by some arrogant people with fleet (and I don't say 'fleeters' on purpose), because they thought it would be a good idea to poke that "little noob miner", begging to be put in their places.
Alex Stukov:
When was your breakthrough? I mean when did you get to understand oGame’s mechanics? Who taught you to play?
Tirnoch:
I got to know a lot of skilled fleeters which I learned a lot from. And I always enjoyed reading stuff on the boards, back then the boards were active, and you could learn a lot there. But for a long time, I just played in older unis as underdog. I had a good understanding of the mechanics but didn't have the persistence to play long enough to get to the top. That changed when I started again in Uni 35 in 2015, because suddenly I had something to fight for, and it intensified even more when I joined LOS in Quantum, because I had met a damn good team that I could trust my (OGame) life on and that kept me playing.
The only thing I hadn't done so far was to play a universe from the beginning, so I was wondering how I would come off in that. So, few months after I retired from OGame.ORG some friends and me started on a server in OGame.DE with 6x Fleet speed. We basically stomped that uni, when I quit there few months ago my fleet was twice as big as the #2 military
Alex Stukov:
Which uni was that?
Tirnoch:
Virgo.de
Alex Stukov:
How and why did you come to the decision to leave quantum?
Tirnoch:
I achieved everything I had wanted. Before I quit I spent all resources that I was hiding before and got to Rank 1. There was nothing to do in Quantum anymore, War Machine and the rest of RIO were hiding in vmode, and all I was doing was raiding with Rips all day to get my 1bn+ profit per day. A week before we quit I made a brilliant hit on Ikaros together with Kaldor (https://board.en.ogame.gameforge.com/index.php?thread/786720-top-04-instant-revenge-epic-not-a-draw-tot-197-572-335-000-tirnoch-unity-kaldor/&pageNo=1). I felt like it was the right time to call it a day.
Alex Stukov:
What do you think is the key to success in oGame?
Tirnoch:
A good team and persistence. My good friend MindWar used to say: OGame is a marathon, not a sprint.
Alex Stukov:
Do you have a goal now you want to achieve?
Tirnoch:
In OGame? No. OGame needs some wind of change. Right now, I'm just helping a friend out in his universe.
Alex Stukov:
Whom do you consider your main team? I mean - the team you played in that you value they most?
Tirnoch:
Right now, it's mostly chewy aka. umakhelwane, scorer - a great player I've met in OGame.DE - and Kaldor popping in and out every now and then. Players that I used to play with and value, but that aren't playing actively anymore:
MindWar, he took the word "speed" in "speed universe" quite literally, his playstyle revolved around speed and speed only. He used to watch others for their gaps and crashed them between their refreshes, and he evolved this to perfection. He was a master of observation. Many players spam probe the universe and hit stuff they find by luck. Not MindWar. He probed very rarely and very selectively, but when he did there was almost always also a fleet behind. Very skilled player that I learned a lot from.
Then there is BaTTaL aka. PaLeSTiNe. BaTTaL had a huge capability of memorizing the behavior of others. He used to know when and where people would land, if they logged late, how they fleet saved and so on. I remember he was vmoded and used to message me saying "check X, he usually lands at this time at Y:Y:Y".
Firestorm, a guy that is so damn busy IRL that I unfortunately didn't have the chance to actively play with
Solidarity, a generally chill guy who unfortunately quit to RL not long after we met. I have utmost respect for him mostly because of his approach to the game. He didn't take things too seriously and took oGame as what it is: a game. A war game to be precise, so he acted accordingly without giving a damn about what people think. In that matter we're quite alike, except I do in fact love flame wars on the board
Then last, but not least, there is Iris and lynn, a great guy and a great gal who I consider as family.
Alex Stukov:
What’s your thing? For example mindwar’s thing was speed, BaTTaL’s was memory..?!
Tirnoch:
Mine is a mix of both I'd reckon. I like watching for landing fleets and immediately launching or watching for gaps and crashing people despite activity. For example, the hit on Ikaros where we crashed him while he was probing around. Or in OGame.DE we retimed someone's fleet from a relocation. Those hits are truly priceless.
Alex Stukov:
Whom, would you say, is THE BEST oGame player?
Tirnoch:
I don't think there is one player who is THE best OGame player. There are many players that shine in different aspects of the game. So, I rather have a list of very good players who I respect for different things. MindWar and Solidarity are part of that list, and some players from OGame.DE like welti from Electra or estrella from Vega are high up on that list.
Alex Stukov:
Did you ever encounter players, that were on the other side of the war, whom despite the conflict you still respect them? What’s the story behind?
Tirnoch:
Generally, I treat everyone in the game with respect. That respect ceases if the other side starts demonizing me/my team and accusing me/us of the very things I know they're doing themselves. I love a good enemy that I can still talk to normally in private. But most of the time that doesn't work as people seem to take the game too seriously. However, I do admit that I like flaming my enemies, but it's always only game related flame. War is a fundamental part of OGame and I see flaming as psychological warfare. I understand that people get offended by that.
Alex Stukov:
If my memory doesn’t betray me - there was a time when your account in quantum left vmode - built a huge amount of fleet - topped #1 and then got banned. Is it true - or I’m mistaken?
Tirnoch:
That wasn't my account. That was Kaldor's.
Alex Stukov:
Ok, what happened there and why?)
Tirnoch:
When we suicided our fleets, we thought about setting up one last coup. If you remember Kaldor had still a lot of fleet left after our suicide. That fleet was scrapped, and all resources from the other accounts were sent to Kaldor's as his account was the lowest ranked after all fleets were crashed/scrapped. Over the next year resources were sent to Kaldor account from higher ranked accounts. The plan was to build a huge fleet and crash War Machine as he didn't FS as we had expected. We watched him close and found his on/off times pretty clearly, despite him having constant activity. We knew he was switching time zones or schedules from time to time and figured out his offline times in each time zone he was in. But we also knew it would require a decent bunch of luck to pull this off since any RIO member noticing us would screw up the plan, but even if we failed, we would force RIO to vmode again (at least for some time, since none of us was planning to play that account actively). Then when we thought that the coast was clear I took over the Kaldor account and began building the fleet. It was an insanely huge fleet, so it took over 1.5h to queue all ships and use Detroids on it (yes it cost a lot of DM but we all chipped in, so it wasn't a big deal). By the time we were ready to launch a bunch of RIO accounts began unvmoding and it happened what we were afraid of. So, the coup failed, but it was still a lot of fun. In the end we knew that we had a slim chance and that we'd need a ton of luck to be successful, but we still decided to try it. It's hard to build a fleet that huge unnoticed
Alex Stukov:
What was the ban reason? Or was it semi crashed by WM and uncle Sam?
And it’s funny - Kaldor was the noob between you all =D
Tirnoch:
No, it wasn't crashed. We vmoded the account and the day after it was banned. I filed a ticket asking for the reason, which was "bug using" at first, so I asked what bug I was supposed to have used. No answer. Instead they apologized and said the ban reason was wrong, then suddenly changed the ban reason to "pushing", so I asked what exactly constituted the pushing and asked to provide logs of specific attacks or transports that were considered as pushing. Again, no answer. Instead I received an email from Gameforge stating that the contract between me and Gameforge has been terminated, so I was going to get reimbursed for the DM and the account was going to get deleted. To this day they have failed to explain what the reason for the ban/termination of contract was other than, and I quote: "the suspicious state of the account".
Alex Stukov:
Did GF reimburse the $?
Tirnoch:
Not all of it but a good bunch.
Alex Stukov:
Tell me about deep space hits. I don’t know a lot about them (I mean, the mechanics I do understand), how did you get this thing associated with yourself?
Tirnoch:
I'll explain the mechanics regardless, as there probably will be readers that aren't familiar with them: When you abandon a planet/moon it turns to a "destroyed planet" that is owned by an entity called "deep space". It's just a way of the game taking the planet from the player and assigning it to a non-player entity. The thing is that those planets have 0 techs and if you had resources and fleet on that planet they remain there until the destroyed planet is deleted by the game after 24-48 hours. Sometimes people forget they have fleet or resources on a planet/moon they want to get rid of, or they want to quit and just delete all their planets and moons. As a result, the resources and fleet on those destroyed planets are up for grabs for everyone in the universe. In Quantum I know of at least 4 cases where this happened. One of them was spotted by chewy/umakhelwane and flown on by Kaldor. Rocky also had mobiled on this one but Kaldor beat him to the hit. The second one was a guy that had himself gifted an account by unclesam but then turned on him and just deleted a moon with the fleet on it. At least that's what unclesam told me. The fleet on the moon was then crashed by the nirO account (which we were assuming had War Machine playing it). The third one was a failed colony fs, a guy had fleet saved his fleet on colony with a planet slot free, so a new colony was created and all resources in the fleet were left on that planet. The guy probably didn't notice that and just deleted the newly created colony which was then spotted by zkiller. All those deep space hits were small fish, nothing too big. But the fourth one was extraordinary and also the one that got me associated with those hits. It began when Kaldor spotted a destroyed planet and moon and was all excited about how somebody forgot their Deut on a mobile (https://i.imgur.com/muYMzxJ.png). A quick research showed that it was one of hatch's planets. A bit more research was made, and we quickly realized he had deleted all his planets and moons bar his home planet. He had a rather big fleet, so we began to search for his main which was quickly spotted. Kaldor sent a mobile to it while we farmed the rest of his moons which had a lot of resources on them. I think we made over 40bn profit from those hits in total. To this day some people think that those hits were an organized push. I can't prove the contrary (how do you prove that a hit is not a push?). It probably doesn't mean anything to most of them, but I can only say that it was a legit hit. hatch turned up after the hit on the board saying that hitting deep space in the community he's originally from (OGame.TR) is illegal, so he thought that was the case in OGame.ORG too and chose that way to quit. Well shit happens I guess, but if I see a fleet sitting I fly on it and ask questions afterwards. The GOs didn't ask us to hand off the resources, so all was well for us. But so, they didn't in the hit made by nirO. As to why 3 of those 4 deep space hits ended up being hit by Unity there is an actually pretty simple explanation: Because everyone else was vmoded, we had several fleeters that were active and out hunting almost round the clock. So, there's that.
Alex Stukov:
Did you scrap pushed yourself? If so - why did you do it?
Tirnoch:
That I am indeed guilty of. And I am not proud of that. But let me start with explaining what scrap push is and how it's handled: Scrap push is the act of scrapping your fleet at the scrap merchant, then utilizing/exploiting the resource merchant to push those resources to a higher ranked account. The more general name of this is "merchant push" because the scrap push basically just uses the merchant push method. The only difference is that you push the resources obtained by scrapping a fleet, but the same can be done with any resources. Now I won't go into too much detail how this is done (I already explained it countless times on different occasions on this board) but let me just say this: By definition (according to the rules), this method is blatant pushing and should be punished. But Gameforge in their infinite wisdom decided that punishing this as Push would be "limiting premium features" (there is an official post by WeTeHa stating exactly this on the OGame.DE boards). So, the game team's hands are tied in that matter. Now with that in mind let's look at the situation in Quantum when I decided to scrap my old account into my new one.
Solidarity had quit and given his account to Kaldor. Then Solidarity told us that his mate Limecat wasn't going to return, and so I was given his account. Taking over Limecat account was no easy decision for me since I had grown to like my own account. I came into Quantum with just 25k BCs and within 7 months I had built a Top 10 fleet that was 140m military points worth. Scrapping that fleet into my new account would also mean a loss of 25% military, since the scrap merchant only gives you 75% of the resources back. I would've loved to pass the account to a capable fleeter but at that point there was no one. If I knew chewy/umakhelwane as good as I know him now, I would've given my old account to him in a heartbeat. But the situation was messy and certain individuals were sitting in the blue castle while making tons of points without any hits that would justify such a growth, probably utilizing the same pushing method I described above or some alteration of it. So a choice had to be made. Either I would let my old account rot in vmode, making us more vulnerable to our enemies, or I would take a loss of 25% of my old fleet and scrap it into my new account. I chose the latter, mainly because of the team. It seemed to me to be the best solution. As I said it's not something that I am proud of, but knowing that it's not considered illegal, and knowing that our enemies were doing the same, I was left with no other choice. At least I can say that the fleet I scrapped into my new account was my own hard work, it was a fleet I had built on my own. That might be no justification but maybe it makes it more understandable.
Alex Stukov:
If someone would ask you “Who is Tirnoch?” how would you describe yourself?
Tirnoch:
I'm really bad at describing myself. My friends trust me with everything. My enemies fear and hate me. I'd say if you want to get to know me come have a chat with me, I don't bite
Alex Stukov:
What would you improve in the game?
Tirnoch:
Create an area in the game that would allow fair fleet skirmishes with stronger players. There are a lot of good ideas out there like a class and skill system, alliance territories, alliance perks and so on. Also remove inactives from the game
Alex Stukov:
Speaking of changes: which do you think was the best update of the gameplay GF did lately?
Tirnoch:
Definitely the Hyperspace Technology change. Hyper speed Recyclers consume way too much deut, this was a right step to make them more affordable.
Alex Stukov:
Which do you consider to be the worst?
Tirnoch:
That list is a bit longer.
If we're talking about recent changes I'd say it was making relocations possible from inner positions to outer positions. Because that was a spit in those players' faces that spent countless of hours to find big planets on slot 3 to relocate them to slot 15. Now having planets on slot 15 isn't an achievement anymore.
Another thing was including inactives in the merge. Farming inactives has always been overpowered, but this brought it to ridiculous levels. It reached a point where farming inactives nets you more profit than actively hunting with your fleet, especially in older universes. There is nothing to wonder about the mass emerging of bots if mindless activities (as in easy, without requiring any skills) like farming inactives is that profitable. This is game breaking in my opinion.
Alex Stukov:
How about insta-building and merching?
Tirnoch:
I didn't include those because those are already well-known and well-discussed. They changed OGame by a lot. Insta-building increased the pace of the game, now you can mobile into one's system and force pop his moon to return that defend he tried to trap you with. I like that pace personally. But it also increased the risk of fleet saving for every player, because popping your deploy moons is so much easier now. I still think a player shouldn't have to wake up couple of times in the night just to check his moons. But that's what OGame forces you to do once you reach a specific fleet size. There is no applicable solution to this offered by the game, except the frowned-upon vmode fleet saving.
The merchant on the other hand made the Deut prices skyrocket and it enabled a legal way of pushing (or let's say a way that is blatant pushing according to the rules but that Gameforge insists on being legal). But it also fills a gap in the game's economy. All resources in the game are generated by mines (and expeditions by a tiny percentage). The usual player's mines produce resources in a ratio of 4:1:1, but a miner for example has roughly 4 Metal : 2 Crystal built as buildings and researches across his account, so he needs to convert that 1 Deut he produces to at least 1 Crystal to be able to upgrade his mines and do research. But if all resources come from mines, and those mines produce 4:1:1, there is no way to cover his crystal needs. And this is where the merchant comes into play. It offers infinite amounts of crystal for very lucrative prices. In my opinion the merchant does more harm than good, because prices should be determined by supply and demand. But if Gameforge wants to ever remove the merchant, it needs to add another source of resources to the game to fill this gap.
Alex Stukov:
So, I’ve heard you are somehow bond to Antigame plugin, is that right? How did it start?
Tirnoch:
I’ll answer in a moment I'm in the middle of releasing a new version lol
I began working on Antigame when v6 of OGame was released. v6 caused a lot of stuff in Antigame not to work anymore and the original creator of AGO (AntiGameOrigin), Francolino, had vanished without a trace, so there was no one taking care about the addon. At that time Shole and a small team took over and began updating AGO to work with v6. Shortly after, I joined Shole and helped updating AGO. When I joined, Shole was alone, all others had left the team, so it was just Shole and me. All the features on the messages page like the spy table had ceased to function, so I worked on that and basically wrote all of it from scratch. Fast forward, when I quit Quantum I wanted to quit OGame for good, so I also left the AGO team. When I began playing again I noticed that Shole wasn't updating the addon anymore, so I began fixing bugs for myself, but people quickly started asking me to release my version for the public. And so, I did. I released it under the same name (AGO) to value Francolino's work, because he was still the one that had written 95% of the code. But after having some legal differences with Shole I had to re-release the addon under a different name, namely AntiGameReborn. Today my version is the only one that is kept up-to-date and still receives updates with new features. I think AGO isn't even officially tolerated anymore.
Alex Stukov:
How many people work on it now? People should know the heroes ...
Tirnoch:
The main work is done by me now. There is a guy called Horcon that adds features every now and then and makes pull requests that I merge with the main repository. I usually name contributors like him in the changelog. He's added some decent stuff to AGR, I really appreciate his help and do encourage other developers to contribute. Contributors get a special role on the AGR Discord server and get access to internal developer channels.
Alex Stukov:
How could people contact you if they want to contribute?
Tirnoch:
The best way is to get in touch with me is the Discord server. The link to it can be found on the official AGR homepage: https://rivenscryr.github.io/AntiGameReborn/en/
« Any donations to Antigamereborn are welcome. Even if it’s a free "Officer" – its updates and development should be supported by our community. - Alex Stukov»
Alex Stukov:
Do you see a possibility (in a parallel universe most probably) where oGame would be detached from GF and would be supported just by players? How do you think that would go?
Tirnoch:
Having a profit-oriented company working on a game has its pros and cons. Sure it was great when Legor, OGame's creator, was working on it as a hobby and the only premium feature was the commander. But people underestimate the work it needs to maintain and secure a game like OGame. Most players tend to look back at the "old design" time as "good old days" but let's call a spade a spade: Security-wise the game was a total mess. The redesign was a much-needed overhaul of the code that fixed a lot of game breaking bugs and exploits that I won't explain in detail. The retro server demonstrated that once more, hence why it had to be shut down. But most people don't think about backend changes or even notice them when talking about the redesign. Of course, Gameforge could and should have chosen a different way to go with premium features. Most importantly they should've chosen to talk with their player base rather than with themselves. But I think OGame is too big to have a voluntary team work for non-profit on it. The amount of work would be overwhelming.
Alex Stukov:
What would you like to say to our readers?
Tirnoch:
Flame on
Alex Stukov:
Whom would you like to read about it the next interview?
Tirnoch:
Solidarity - but reaching him will be a hard one.
As his crew finished unloading the resources they brought as a gift, Tirnoch told me they must return to his Empire. In this universe things are also happening very fast, and you are either vigil – either recycled.
But I had a feeling of confidence that this is just the beginning – I will see a lot of Tirnoch from now on, as I plan on building an Empire, here, myself.
They departed as quick as they arrived, but it wasn’t long until I got to see some of Tirnoch’s espionage probes (not on an espionage mission, no... moonshots) 😊
I do have Tirnoch 's consent on posting our discussion in this thread.