Posts by OnionKnight

After recently returning from a decade-plus hiatus, I've quickly noticed how the dynamic of the game has changed considerably. To make a long story short, I have noticed numerous players on my server who essentially 'hunt' while in v-mode. They've correlated certain activity patterns with a fleet-save returning and sitting. I would never have thought such a strategy would ever be a viable option, being in v-mode so often, but these folks seem to have a high level of success.

My suggestion is simply for galaxy view to be inaccessible, if one is in v-mode.

Since the main defender has received a permanent ban for some form of cheating, is this still treated as a legitimate top 10?

Quote from indyNinja

You must also consider that the mail that announces a new uni to all current users

I understand that part, which is why I said that it's hard to discern early on.

But as I also said, it still occurs and is more evident in older universes. The likelihood of accidental accounts being created in that manner would not apply.

Quote from zajeb

Im trying to figure out why are you asking this and i can't figure it out ... there are plenty of accounts that are older then 10 years. Back then eco was 1x so if they bought DM and went inactive without VM then you'll see them having some silly mines like 30-25-25 which would appear like a bot but it was a real account once. GF just has policy of not deleting any account that bought DM, probably because of legal restrictions they have to keep that policy. As for bots, i sometimes "feel" like some "players" are bots but then again i did meet a few new players that started playing ogame from mobile phone and used app, never even turned on browser so yeah, you can't really be sure

edit: oh right, as for the legal part. I am pretty sure if they "claim" in ToS that there are no bots in game then that would be illegal from them to do. But if there is nothing about this topic then it is basically a grey zone pretty sure .

This game isn't so popular that anyone would start playing the game just because they see 5000 instead of 1000 players anyway. I mean uni1 supposedly has over 4k players and in reality maybe 200-300 active players.

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I'm not talking about abandoned accounts. As I stated, these accounts are created, never have anything built, never change the generic name, and never log in a second time. They seem to be created at such a rate that they almost perfectly offset the inactivity deletions of 'real' accounts, and therefore, the population 'looks' stable.

Hey folks. If you've been around a while, you may or not be versed in universe population trends. Obviously, when a universe first starts, things are chaotic. Hundreds/thousands of accounts created each day, and that makes perfect sense.

What does not make sense is the fact that, especially in 'older' universes, such a high number of accounts are created that 1) will never have anything built on them and 2) will never be logged into a 2nd time. "New" players can easily be monitored with a 3rd-party website, as can the general activity of the entire universe (such as what % of accounts are actually still displaying activity/logging in).

In the early days/weeks/months, it's nearly impossible to discern real from fake, with the volume of accounts being created. However, once a universe gets 6-7+ months old, and less than 3% of the population logs in daily, what's occurring becomes more evident. Accounts being created, never changing the generic name, never building anything, and never logging in again.

It's all-too obvious what is going on. There obviously exists some correlation between a universe's population, and the likelihood of players on that server spending money on DM, but is it actually legal to manipulate the player count in such a way?

Not too shabby for your first post!

FR to the defender...

It's nice seeing that fleet in action, mate! Enjoy those profits...

FR defender

Dude, that's an impressive Reaper count! And you certainly put them to good use!

GLOTR defender

I enjoyed the story! Well done!

Fast rebuild, defender...

It must be rough, thinking that you're about to land this massive hit, only to see your fleet disappear from the 'fleet movement' screen on impact. The fleets represented a significant portion of both of those players' accounts, and neither of them have really played all that consistently since.

Excellent teamwork and tough break/glotr WB/Butch. Y'all may even be rebuilt, by now, lol.

I know that I'm verrrry late to the party, here, but just an incredible ninja. The drop in points several weeks ago now makes sense.

GLOTR attackers, if you so choose to.

Band: Rush

Song: Freewill

Hey folks. Has the idea of events and or competitions between universes ever been floated? Other RTS games utilize a similar model, although I have no idea what implementing that on here would actually entail...

Congrats on the hit, my friend!

Defender- glotr

Nice hit, caesar!

Fr defender

Is there somewhere that lists upcoming mergers?

Woah! Love the hit, enjoy your spoils!

FR defender

How does one end up with well over 2 million colony ships?!?!

Incredible hit, enjoy those spoils and glotr defender, if you choose to...

Quote from Y0m1

Feels like every hit now is just another spy and fly (even if it involves a lot of watching on the background), says a lot about the state of the game unfortunately.

I feel like we are desensitised to the numbers now, but that profit is still amazing, so well done.

FR defender.

Think about 15-18 years ago, .org had over 40 servers and only 2 of them were NOT 1x fleet speed (universes 35, and 40, IIRC). Now, everything seems to be at least 4x-8x. Also, to be fair, of the players who remain, few are the sort who are capable of pulling off anything other than a probe/smash. Many of the ones who are can't be bothered to stare at galaxy view for untold hours.

Amazing hit/profits, and FR to the defender

So, Ogame has this little thing called 'server lag.' When multiple fleets are slated to land at the exact same second, sometimes this lag will result in the fleets landing in a different order than what is stated in the 'fleet movement' screen. For decades, the ideal circumstance was to time your attacking fleet 1 second behind the returning fleet. Reliably being able to move one's whole fleet in under a second is not something most people can do, after all. Granted, this does leave a tiny window of opportunity for someone to 'jump in' ahead of you, but in doing so, this 3rd party would have to risk missing the returning fleet entirely, plus they'd be opening themselves up to other risks, such as being able to be seen on phalanx, etc..

On Universe Hercules, the #2 fleeter destroyed my moon a few months back, and timed his fleet to land on the same second as mine. I logged in with about 4 minutes left, and I had to heckle the guy a little bit, as I knew there would be a good chance that server lag would result in him missing the fleet. It did, and he missed it. The dude went absolutely wild, accusing me of cheating, saying he was going to contact support, and so on. The whole time, I'm just thinking to myself, 'this is fleeting 101, how do you NOT understand this, especially at your rank?'

So, unless something has, indeed, changed from a mechanical perspective, my observation is that server lag is basically works the same as it did back when I started in 05'. Therefore, unless I'm missing something, your team really didn't 'do' anything differently than Jericho, did they? I mean, if this sort of timing is 'the norm' for you guys, there's really no way that you haven't missed out numerous times in the past due to lag.

Regardless, very nice hit and GLOTR