Harambes Guide (bbcode in for pasting into boards)

Harambe’s Guide to Beating Goliath
(Winning when out-fleeted by a guild)
(Last edit 5/21/2023)

This is a war economy game we need to either reduce their Econ or increase ours, and hopefully both. There may be some static factors we can’t do much about like: they’re all upgraded; they’re all on 24/7; they had a head start; they’re not spread between two clusters, etc. Experience we can make up for.

This is step 1. Step 2 (Clean Galaxy) and step 3 (Clean Cluster) will be put up later.

Step 1. CLEAN HOUSE: Increase our Econ.

Base Choice: All astros should have at least 5 fertile, 3 iron (4 is much more preferable), 2 crystal+(except research, or sneaky jg). It is not expensive to relocate bases right now (make sure research is done or construction done before deleting base). Should have ten bases by appx 50 days or more. Please upgrade upgrading is cheaper than a frappucino, supports devs and is fun. It’s ok to sim for base 11 too. This is literally the foundation for your war economy, you’ll be down 30 credits per base per hour for the rest of game because you choice wrong bases. To be clear in order of priority all third or fourth pos:
- crystal moon or planet (3rd or 4th pos) Econ should eventually make up for being metal 3.
- Asteroid (3rd or 4th pos)
- metallic or crater. (3rd or 4th pos)
- Rockies got soft nerfed in v3, the penalty on pos 1, 2 and 5 seems higher in v3, fleet maintenance means Econ is KING, 30% of Econ will go to fleet maintenance, your total Econ will be less than prod cap by day 100.
- Oddly enough in the future if there is a merge or a sub guild option of larger cluster guild, they’re going to pick who to accept and who not to accept based upon your base choices, it’s black and white, can’t prod fleet fast with wrong bases. No cluster war blob crashes for you.

Research bases, sneaky jg Rocky pos 3-4 just rock for research, fert 6 makes the build so fast. I choose metal/craters 3-4 for the cash. Mainly people just use the earthly it’s fine. It is not worth it to take a crystal that is not pos 3 or 4, the urban structure cost will kill you quick. Asteroids are great for second research base (20 labs), and good for main if want to. If you’re taking a bad Astro to have a sneaky jg, fine, don’t do more than one per account, share the load and use region with one or two bad astros not 4 or more. Also realize they’re probably 4 or more enemy autoscouts zooming through one ever six hours, can’t have fleet sit there long.  

Base construction: right now (appx 50 days in) you should have: 10 bases, Spaceports 10 on all bases, shipyards 8 on all bases. If you don’t, do it now, screw the frappucino, buy the upgrade. All trades should be SD=in same galaxy, or MD=200-600 distance. Keep filled all the time. Should have a con commander all bases but main research level 8 use only credits to train. Saving credits=more fleet. Prioritize xp into research commander as you’ll be researching 24/7, construction is start and stop.

—> Goal by Sunday: 10 bases 14 MR / 8 RF / 8 SY / 4 NF / 4 EC / 10 SP. and 1 base with at least 20 research labs, another with ten, both researching. If you’re ahead start going 10-15 SP, and increase SY to make your spec.

Research: Have two bases researching,
Should have: AI 1, Computer 20, Energy 20 (Research Tree)
(to unlock Orbital Base and Antimatter Plants just as you start to need them).

—> Goal by Sunday:Unlock Disruptor and Android Factories, start building Dizzies. (Defense Tree).

FUN: With a quick-quiet start you can hit these goals in 28 days. (Hit them even with all bases getting popped.) No one’s getting kicked, I’m not entrusted with such power, but we will all be happy, actually contesting, as we need fleet to start ninjas, fleet-scraping, and small mobile kills.  Hoping for average Econ per player over 1200 by Sunday and get over half their average by Sunday next week.

Fleet, defense, fighting in a phone booth, trade scrapes, hiding fleet, occ smashing, boomeranging, fleet dispering, shotgunning, recall trapping and more will be in next post. We can’t do any of those things until we ‘clean house’. Notice I didn’t say prod fleet 100% either, let’s get our house in order then spam fleet all at once. Also need all of 10-19 autoscouted so we can ninja before Prings get built.

Maybe we can force the larger guild to consider our allegiances when cluster wars start. They may not be able to fight out of cluster cause we are smacking them at home, also making us a strong ally for an invading force.

Have questions ask, fun is fun, and large fleet is funner than a Frappuccino.

Please don’t choose the frappucinno.

Harambe’s Guide to Beating Goliath
(Playing when you’ve been out-fleeted)

Step 2: CLEANING GALAXY:Smash stuff in your galaxy. Search reports by fleet smash all enemy fleet under 5000, that should be all the OCCS and scouts, see fleet off-base smash it. Fleet-scrape if profitable, smash bases if profitable. Hitting for a loss doesn’t serve a purpose.

MOBILE FLEET: Mobile fleet is all fleet that is not for defense, available to smash peeps hence ‘mobile’. In this game your most precious,  most fun possession is your mobile fleet, but it is very squishy. Fleet off-base is easy to kill for crazy profit. In fact most players just search ‘empire-Reports-Galaxy-Fleet’ and see if largest fleet listed is profitable, if so hit send to destroy, second larger target, and down the list. Obviously the size of the mobile limits your targets, but also makes you a target, that dichotomy is the name of the game, keeping the largest mobile you can without losing it.

FLEET SPLITTING: When you move your fleet you can reduce your detection time by non-guided players by splitting your fleet, this link might might work. In bottom left corner of the ‘move fleet’ screen, there is text ‘split 1 +Options’. Click on ‘1’ and you can divide your fleet into separate fleets reducing your detection time.

WHY: If you lower detection you have a better chance of your target not seeing you on ‘scanners’ or ‘reports-galaxy-moving fleet’. Do it when sending fleet to hit a base. Use it when ‘hiding fleet’ by sending it around to bases, your fleet is only safe while in-the-air.

HIDING FLEET: Two good ways to hide fleet:
1. IN THE AIR: When going to bed ‘send your fleet in the air’ to land when you’re awake. Split your fleet into many fleets and look at the detection time, right now I try to keep it to 20 mins, if I can. On move screen click ‘+options’ and pick a speed so it lands when you want it to. Also use ‘+options’ to land in time to hit at :25 and scoop  derb at :30 with recs. Send to one of your bases. If enemy takes your base you’re about to land on you might get ‘recall trapped’. But you have choices. Similarly you can send your fleet to another galaxy and recall, but then you don’t have choices if recall trapped.
2. DIVIDING FLEET AMONG BASES: Send a tenth of your mobile to each base. It’ll make it harder for enemy to profit. Do this if you know you’ll be offline for 12 hours or more.

—————>PRIORITY POINT: Of all advice given, hiding fleet would be the second most important, 10 bases and astro selection being first most important. Every night before I sleep I send my fleet on an 8 hour journey to four or five bases, with lowest detection time possible. Wake up, if working that day send them in the air again, to land after work. Repeat, until I’ve found a target then try to get them to land within five minutes of each other on a Astro near target, 20 mins detection time (as low as you can make it). Don’t let them sit for longer than a couple hours or split to all bases so each base exact same amount of fleet. Use random bases, don’t do bases right near their jg, center regions.

GETTING ENEMY TECH/CHECKING TRADES: If you drop a scout or vette on a base you can press attack and copy the whole attack screen to paste into calc ’parse battle report’ click cancel and then click ‘pirate’ too see how much trades are. Then send scout home.

ANATOMY OF A PERFECT HIT: Trail recs 3-5 mins behind you, can leave 1 of your slowest units and slow the speed or wait 3 mins. Make all detection times as small as possible. You can boomerang off an Astro in nearby border region with no eyes to shorten detection time too (BOOMERANGING). Land at :25, send recs in air to be recalled so their not sniped. Move to target, drop ft if needed, and send other fleet to nearby Astro (I bookmark Astro nearby, LZ). Recall recs, send to Astro. So important to have enough recs to scoop in one hit. At low levels need crazy amount of recs proportionally. Everyone doesn’t prod enough recs. I try to get in habit to prod 1hr ft, always prod 1hr recs, then do your spec.

Part 3. CLEANING CLUSTER

FLEET CHOICE: When you’re fighting in a phone booth and can choose your weapon don’t pick a sniper rifle. Man o man those digital representations of a text game space ship is so freaking dope I want Death Stars, NOW! Don’t be that guy. Choose a dagger. In my humble opinion you have three choices:
1. Frigs: pound for pound the fastest pew pew that you can produce. Best profit ratio on base hits. Fastest fleet, period. Which means you can outrun people sitting on faster jgs, way more options for timing landings. You have to learn how to ft drop on a target till all enemy ft are dead, ALL enemy ft are dead (use calc) then send in frigs and your remaining ft. You should always have ft left over at end of calcs. NEVER use fr without ft. If you don’t have enough ft to kill all ft on target, find another target. DN, find another target. Prod: ft 1h, rc 1h, fr 4h

I considered listing vettes for a mobile but you can’t move ft and every hit will have ft that melt your vettes. Vettes are shield blocked by Dt. Literally veteran pro players will use frigs to smash a force in their home galaxy even when they have some other spec.

2. Cruisers: still fast, don’t need to ft drop though you should always run calc to see if ft drop would make better profit. Usually never hit without ft. Prod: ft 1h, rc 1h, cr 4h

3. HC: ugh, they are so slow. But if a base has 3000 ft, they are your friend. Always run calc to see if you should hit with ft or without. Then run calc to see if you should add vettes for better ratios. General rule if hitting a base with tons of ft maybe naked is best. If little ft and prings or dn, prob ft and vettes to absorb damage-meat shield. Prod: ft 1h, rc 1h, HC 8h

DO NOT: Mix fleets (no cr/ft/if/bs/HC-> calc will never show better profit), build anything larger (too slow, too much time/credits for little pew pew), never prod IF (cost is too high per pew pew), ONLY do HB/Bombers/IB for a specific job like killing HC when trade-scraping, or killing a DN after ft is dropped (ft are better for nearly everything else), hit for a loss ever (some exceptions: freeing a mate and no other profitable option, sniping recs), choose frappucino over upgrading.

DERB PIÑATAS: I’m serious at early to middle stage of game BS and DN are just very large balloons filled with derb that move slowly and pop easily. You need a stack for them to work and their just so slow and hard to hide because bs and dn minimum detection times are bigger. Idea behind a stack is that the damage is divided across many bs or dn absorbed by shields and you only lose one or two or none. Then you should have some bs or dn left after hitting so you can hit repair and attack again, and minimize your fleet losses. You can go DN or BS later when you’re not in a contested galaxy.

TRADE SCRAPING: long distance trades can be 4k each, drop a scout on base click ‘pirate’ and see how much. If you can drop ft to kill ft and HB or ib to kill HC or other fleet and make a profit, do it. Don’t have to pop base just enough to clear fleet. It forces them to leave more fleet defense and then have less fleet to pop bases.

NINJA ATTACKS: sending fleet far away to hit a base with weak defenses, literally making so much money you don’t need to return your fleet, sending just enough to pop the base and defense fleet (they pushed Econ super high with no defenses). [/url]List of good targets. Not really sending ninjas when your fighting in a phone booth. If you see a juicy target with only missile turrets, go for it, I’ve done it on other servers. But you’ll need 19+ fleet slots might take 36 hours and you can’t move fleet for that time or hit something else.

GETTING ATTACKED: Because you are checking scanners and ‘moving fleet’ report regularly you see an incoming fleet. Disband crystals, they are cheap and quick to replace, only do one every three minutes. Send all fleet that moves somewhere else. If you have LD trades cancel them. They might recall. If they forgot and have recs with fleet you could move fleet to Astro they’re landing on and bluff or pop them at landing, kill most of recs.

GETTING RESPECT: The larger guild is smashing your fleet and bases to get a profit to build their bases faster to get larger fleets, for the purpose of winning wars with large guilds, typically in other clusters. Before they leave they might want a cease fire. They’ll only ask if your actually trade scraping and smashing bases. Otherwise they’ll keep you at bay with their spawns. That cf is something they will likely cancel once they return and they’re bored. If you really smash them they might make you guys a Subguild to keep the peace at home while they go cluster-hopping and blob-crashing

Have fun, support devs, f Frappuccinos.