OGame: Difference between revisions

OGame
File:NewOgameLoginScreen.jpg
Developer(s)	Gameforge AG
Engine	PHP
Platform(s)	Computer, Mobile
Release	2002
Genre(s)	Real Time Text-based MMO
Mode(s)	Multiplayer

OGame is a text-based, resource-management and space-war themed online browser game with over two million accounts. OGame was created in 2002 and is produced and maintained by Gameforge AG. As of February 2008, Ogame.org has a total of 37 universes, with more being added periodically. Ogame.org also hosts the "pr0game" universe listed on Ogame.org as Universe 35.

Gameplay

Each player starts with one randomly assigned planet, with the default name of "Homeworld" (which can be changed) building from that one planet, he/she later has the option to keep on developing that planet or to expand his/her colony to include up to 9 planets. All construction, research, and missions are performed and launched from a planet or moon.

Resources

File:OGame 5 Resources.jpg

There are five resources available in OGame: metal, crystal, deuterium, energy and dark matter.

Metal is the most abundant resource and can be obtained natively from metal mines. Metal is used in large amounts for construction of planetary structures, fleets, defenses, and technological research.

Crystal is the second most abundant resource and can be obtained natively from crystal mines. Crystal is used in smaller quantities for the construction of planetary structures, fleets, and defenses, but is used in large amounts in technological research.

Deuterium is the rarest resource and can be obtained natively from deuterium synthesizers. Deuterium is mainly used as fuel for a player's fleet to perform a mission, and for technological research. It is also used in small amounts for accessing the galaxy screen to obtain an overview of the OGame universe and in scanning enemy fleet movements.

Energy is required for all mines to operate. The efficiency of a mine depends on the amount of energy surplus on a planet. Energy can be obtained through solar plants, fusion reactors, and solar satellites. Energy is also required for the construction of Terraformers and for researching the graviton technology.

Metal, Crystal and Deuterium can be obtained through:

• Mining: Metal mines, crystal mines and deuterium synthesizers obtain metal, crystal and deuterium respectively from one's own planet. The larger the mine, the faster the rate of obtaining resources. Planetary resources never run out and can be continuously mined.
• Raiding other planets: A player can decide to send an attacking fleet to an enemy's planet. If the player's fleet destroys all of the enemy's fleet and defensive structures, up to 50% (depending on the cargo capacity of the attacking ships) of the enemy's stored resources can be retrieved.
• Harvesting debris fields: destroyed fleets form a debris field around the planet it was destroyed. Debris fields consist of metal and crystal.
• Fleet Crashing: Stronger players can "fleet crash" weaker opponents, which is the act of destroying another player's fleet for the purpose of collecting the debris that remain after the battle and recycling the resulting debris (only metal and crystal can be obtained this way) and 30% of all ship's metal and crystal can be obtained in such a manner.
• Trading: Players can negotiate a trade sequence where they swap different resources at an official rate.
• Expeditions: Players can send their fleets out and get random things in return. These are risky as there is a chance of losing your fleet.

Players are ranked according to their points, one point is awarded for every one thousand resource units spent, likewise one point is taken away for every one thousand resource units lost. Points can be gained from constructing buildings, ships, defenses, and from researching new technology, but points can be lost when a player's ships and defenses are destroyed by another player or when a colony is surrendered.

Dark matter is obtained mainly by buying it with real money. It can also be obtained in smaller amounts through expeditions, which are very risky due to the possible loss of fleets. Dark matter allows access for a player to become a commander and hire officers. All purchased effects last 3 months for 100,000 units of Dark Matter and 1 week for 10,000 units of Dark Matter.

Purchased effects

All purchased effects are paid for with Dark Matter.

Commander

File:OGame Commander.jpg

The Commander gives the player improved functionality and an improved user interface. Features include a building queue which gives the player the ability to order several buildings to be built without requiring the player to login and start a new build. The player also gets an “Empire View” that shows the player all details on every planet including ships, defenses, resources, and energy. Other benefits provided by OGame Commander are message filters, shortcuts, an improved galaxy view and commands, and a gaming experience free of advertisements.

Officers

On February 16, 2007, Officers were introduced to the game. It is worth noting that GameForge had previously promised its users it would never introduce pay-to-play options that provided direct benefits, and the change thus caused a large scale of conflict in the community.

The officer feature gives players a real advantage in the game, for a price, while those who cannot afford it go without. The 4 officers types are:

• Fleet Admiral: Increases maximum fleet slot by 2.
• Engineer: Reduces the losses of defensive structure during an attack by half and gives 10% more energy.
• Geologist: Increases metal mine, crystal mine and deuterium synthesizer production by 10%
• Technocrat: Increases the espionage level for espionage probes by 2 and decreases research time by 25%.

Merchants

As of version 0.78 (released November 15th 2007) people can hire a merchant to trade one resource type for another. This is similar to trading except that there are no other players involved. The only limitation you have is the amount of free space in your storage silos and the amount of dark matter you have. You cannot trade when your silos are full, or when standing on a moon. It is advisable to move away all the resources you want to keep, so that you can trade the maximum amount that your storage holds.

Buildings

Buildings are used for gathering resources (Mines), for generating energy (Solar Plant, Fusion Reactor), for storage (Metal Storage, Crystal Storage, Deuterium Tank and Missile Silo), for building fleets and defenses (Shipyard), for research (Research Lab) and for shortening the time buildings, ships and defenses take to construct (Robotic Factory and Nanite Factory). 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, Deuterium Synthesizers, and Solar Plants which increase by 1.5 per level, the Crystal Mine, which increases by 1.6 per level, and the Fusion Reactor, whose cost is increased by 1.8 per level.

When a planet is colonized, the number of available "fields" (free building spaces) is determined randomly, but planets near the center of a solar system have better chance to have more fields. Each building takes up one field on the planet and every upgrade of a building takes up one more field. When all the fields of the planet have been occupied, no new buildings can be constructed. A terraformer can be constructed to increase the number of fields on a planet, providing 5 fields for every upgrade of the terraformer (one for itself and four for other buildings).

Combat system

OGame combat takes place when fleets meet at planet orbits. The defender may also have defensive structures on the planet. The combat takes place instantly and consists of 1 to 6 rounds. Each ship fires once per round (may fire more than once with "rapid fire"). All ships have shielding, which is restored after each round. After the shielding is gone, the hull will be damaged. When severely damaged, ships have a chance of exploding each round. All targeting is random, so Plasma Turrets which can destroy Battleships in one shot may instead hit Light Fighters, resulting in overkill.

Rapid-Fire

Ships have an advantage against defenses, not only are they movable and re-deployable, they also use an attack method called Rapid fire. A particular ship possessing rapid fire against a specific defensive structure or another ship will be able to fire more rounds at the enemy every round. Here is an example of rapidfire: If ship A has Rapid fire of 5 against ship B, and ship A manages to hit and destroy ship B, ship A has an 80% chance that it will fire again. If, on the second shot, ship A hits and destroys another ship of the same type as ship B again, it has 80% chance of firing again, and so on...

The percentage chance of ship A firing again can be worked out by finding out what rapidfire it has against ship B (in this case 5), dividing 100 by it (100/5=20), and then taking the result away from 100 (100-20=80% chance).

Fodder

Fodder is a term used for protecting bigger, more expensive ships like Battleships with a lot of cheap ones such as Light Fighters. Because the targeting in combat is random, the enemy has lower chance to hit a bigger ship in the midst of 10 smaller craft. This results in powerful ships or defenses firing at ships they can easily kill with one shot, resulting in overkill and waste of weapon power.

Ships

OGame is mainly known for being a combat game, so a fleet is of the utmost importance. Players with large fleets can attack other players in the game to either capture their resources or to destroy their fleets and/or defense. The best fleets are those which use a variety of all available ships. Most ships are designed for combat, but ships may also be designed for cargo capacity or espionage capabilities. For example, ships with large cargo capacities such as the Large Cargo may be used for trading/transporting large amounts of resources.

Defense

Defenses are built to oppose an enemy fleet attacking one's planet. During an attack, all defensive units on the planet are functional and combine to attempt to destroy the attacker. If any defensive structure is destroyed at the end of a fleet attack, there is a 70% chance that the structure can repair itself. This 70% chance is computed on every single destroyed defensive structure after an attack by a hostile fleet, so even if all of the planet's defenses are wiped out, there is a 70% chance for each defensive structure to be repaired and returned to service.

However, if the defenses are destroyed by interplanetary missiles attacks, they will not be repaired. Anti-ballistic missiles are used to counter interplanetary missiles, each anti-ballistic missile destroys one incoming interplanetary missile.

The combat system is tilted more towards the attacker and as such, encourages the entire universe to attack anyone, for any amount of profit. It is commonly seen that large profits are made against high level players, resulting in a fair game. However, many players target heavily defended planets for the sole purpose of "cracking turtles" and do not care if they make little or no profit.

There is a saying in OGame that "Someone in a universe always has large enough fleet to crush any defensive turtle". This is usually true, but attacking a very large defense can result in such losses that any resources raided won't cover the costs. So, one of the main points of defense turtle is that they make themselves unprofitable. But there are players who crush turtler regardless of losses, just for fun or pleasure.

In essence, joining an older universe increases your chances of advancement, because the larger players are more likely to leave you alone due to lack of large profits. However the new universes have many more players which increases your chances of being attacked by a player only marginally higher than yourself.

Research

File:Ogame research lab.gif

A Research Lab

Players have the ability to research new and more advanced technologies with the help of a Research Lab. Each upgrade of a research lab allows new technologies to be researched. Each upgrade of a technology allows them to research more technologies or gain construction access to new ships, defenses, and buildings. Only one research can be performed simultaneously on all planets. The speed of a research depends on level of a research lab, the level of a technology and the level of the intergalactic research network.

Fleet Missions

Unlike many other real-time strategy games, Ogame does not give the player constant control of his or her spacecraft. Instead, the player tells the ship(s) where to fly (using the game's coordinate system) and what to do when they get there. The player's fleet cannot be attacked while in transit to or from a mission, but it is vulnerable whenever it is in orbit around a planet. Fleet movements cannot be monitored by other players unless one has built an advanced structure called a Sensor Phalanx which can only be constructed on a moon.

Expeditions

Once the player has researched Expedition technology, he or she can send the fleet to slot 16 of the galaxy view on an expedition mission. These missions may result in finding nothing, or may result in finding resources in an asteroid field, an alien who gives the player Dark Matter, some new ships that are taken home with the fleet, pirates who will attack the fleet, or a blackhole which destroys the fleet. Random navigational errors can increase or decrease the time of the return trip.

Moons

Moons occasionally form from a debris field left by a destroyed fleet. When any ship is destroyed, 30% of the metal and crystal used to construct the ship ends up in a debris field. If the debris field consists of over 100,000 resources there is a chance the debris field will clump together and form a moon. Structures unique to a moon are jump gates, sensor phalanxes and lunar bases. The standard structures - shipyards, robotic factories, metal storage, crystal storage, and deuterium tanks - can also be built on a moon. Since a Sensor Phalanx cannot spy on a moon, players often base their fleets on their moons whenever possible. Since version 0.78a, it is also possible to target moons with inter-planetary missiles. Moons can be destroyed by Deathstar fleets, but there is a chance of failure and destruction of the fleet.

Alliances

An alliance is a group of people who have banded together and is mostly used for solidarity purposes. However, some alliances also have goals that are beyond going up the ranks. Alliances are created for players to protect each other from attacks, join together to raid other planets, or to promote free trade amongst members. Players who join an alliance can share espionage reports on other planets and have access to their common alliance home page.

Members of an alliance can use the ACS (Alliance Combat System) to synchronize fleet movements and missions with members of the same alliance and temporarily deploy a fleet on an ally's planet. The ACS system has been added to the English OGame in universe 5 and all universes above, and including, universe 18. The ACS system has been also added to all universes in the Russian version, most universes in the German version and a few universes in the Dutch, Polish, Spanish, French and Portuguese versions of OGame, as well as universe 3 in the Czech server.

Ranking system

Since version 0.76b, the ranking system in OGame displays the top 7000 players with the most points, research points and fleets. OGame has a newbie protection system, where players with less than 5000 points can only attack and be attacked by players who have 20% to 500% of their point total.

A new player joining an old universe has very little chance of reaching a top ten position because of the amount of time the other players have invested. A player can still have a successful empire in an old universe but to be the best in a universe, it is recommended to join a new universe when it starts.

Rules

OGame is monitored by Game Operators, Super Game Operators and Game Administrators each of whom have the rights to ban any player suspected of misconduct and violation of the rules. The rules can be different for each ogame universe. Players who have been banned are put into the "pillory" of their universe. The pillory shows the reason of banning and the administrator who made the decision. It also shows the unbanning of a player when they have clarified the fault. The planets and colonies of players that have received lifelong bans are subject to the one month account deletion due to inactivity.

External links

• Official OGame website
• OGame review on Gameogre
• OGame review on GameFAQs