how to protect your fleet from attack

FLEETSAVING 101

Fleetsaving is the art of keeping your ships out of the way (and if possible, out of sight) of other players, to ensure their survival, and your fleet's growth. Fleetsaving becomes easier when you have at least one moon. Fleetsaving with large fleets becomes cheaper when you have Gravitron technology and have at least one Deathstar in your fleet. We will look at 3 fleetsaving options, 1) without a moon, 2) with a moon, 3) with a moon and a Deathstar

1. Fleetsaving Without A Moon

There are generally two ways people can see your fleet. One is by sending espionage probes to the planet (or moon) where they are sitting, and the other is by using a "sensor phalanx" from a nearby moon, and seeing your fleet while it is on the move. The sensor phalanx can only see fleets that are going from or arriving at a planet. Fleets going from a planet to a debris field (DF) can only be seen with a sensor phalanx at the planet. DFs and moons can not be phalanxed. All fleet movements from or to a planet can be phalanxed with one exception. All transport, attack, harvest, espionage and moon destroy fleets can be seen by a phalanx, whether they are moving away from or coming back to a planet. Deploy missions are one way, and can also be phalanxed. But, if you recall a Deploy it cannot be phalanxed. All other fleet recalls can be phalanxed at the planet they are returning to. When you cancel a Deploy you cannot see it yourself on your Overview screen.

So, the best way to protect a sizeable fleet if you do not have a moon is to Deploy the fleet from one of your colonies to another, and make sure it arrives after you expect to be online next. Then if someone has detected your fleet with their sensor phalanx, and has launched at you to hit seconds after you land, you can recall the Deploy, and only you will know the exact time it returns (the server time will show on the Fleet screen), but no one will be able to phalanx its return. Of course, it does mean you will have to be online again when it returns to move it on again.

2. Fleetsaving With A Moon

Moons can be hard to come by. Even if you engineer your own (by a "moon shot") you will lose resources and ranking points, sometimes over and over again until you get one. The other way you get one is if someone crashes your fleet without you expecting it. Ideally you want a big moon, as moons can be destroyed by Deathstars, and the bigger they are, the harder they are to destroy.

Because a sensor phalanx cannot see fleet movements at a moon or a DF, fleets that go from a moon to a DF and back do so in complete anonymity. No one can see the fleet's composition, its destination, or its return time. Similarly if a fleet is sent on a Deploy between two moons, it is invisible. To fleetsave effectively from your moon to a DF and back, choose a DF that is sufficiently far away so that when your fleet gets to the DF and back to the moon, you will be online before it arrives. The closer a DF is to you, the cheaper the deuterium (deut) costs, so a close moon at a slow speed (ie. 30%) is more efficient that sending further at a higher speed. Obviously you will need at least one Recycler in the fleet to send to a DF. Make sure you have enough ships in the fleet to take all your resources with you when fleetsaving to the DF.

3. Fleetsaving With A Moon And A Deathstar

Here's where it gets interesting. Deathstars (also known as RIPs) are very slow. They have their bonuses, they hold 1 million units of cargo, and have the same fuel consumption rate as the lowly espionage probe (plus a bit of firepower). Depending on the level of your Hyperspace Drive research, Deathstars can save you hundreds of thousands of units of deut every day. I would recommend that you never research your Hyperspace Drive above level 8. At level 8, your Deathstar will go to and from the DF immediately above your moon and back over 7.5 hours (you still need at least one recycler in the fleet to go to a DF). That is usually enough for many players for fleetsaving overnight, while at work or school etc. The bonus is, sending your fleet this way can cost only 1K of deut, even with 50,000 ships in the fleet. Sending the same fleet (with or without a Deathstar) to a nearby DF will cost thousands more in deut.

There is one thing you need to still worry about, the "disappeaing DF". If players know you are likely to fleetsave for 7.5 hours to and from the DF above your moon, they will watch for a visible DF to "disappear" around the halfway time of your fleetsave, and then time a fleet to hit you on the return. They will do this blind, but it has often been a very effective method for some players to capture fleets. One way to prevent this is to make sure there is no visible DF at the moon before you fleetsave. DFs are still able to be travelled to, even when they are "empty". It is only at 1.20am on a Monday morning (server time) that empty DFs are "reset" and can not longer be travelled to. However, they will not reset if a fleet was travelling to or from that DF at the reset time. So, if you have no visible DF, and no fleet or defence on the planet under the moon (and indeed on the moon itself), no one can make a visible DF after you fleetsave. This may sound complicated, but once you have a moon and a Deathstar, you should be at the level to understand this!