5 Ogame Tips

1) There is always a bigger fish, and he wants to eat you.
Ogame is the sort of game where there will always be players so massive that you can not hope to overcome them, and sooner or later one of them will attack you. You can't avoid it, but you can learn how to deal with it. Fleetsave your ships and resources whenever you will be away from the game for longer than an hour or so. Most players are not going to bother attacking a target that won't be profitable. And if you are attacked, don't try to talk them down or make threats. The worst thing you can do is cement yourself in the memory of a larger player who just deemed your planet a profitable target.

2) Facilities and Research can never be destroyed.
When you find yourself indecisive about how to spend your resources at a given time, always remember that any ship or defense you build is, in all likelihood, eventually going to be destroyed. Power plants, mines, and every other kind of facility, on the other hand, are untouchable by enemy fleets. Ten battleships might be exciting now, but when that bigger fish hits you eventually, and he will, you'll be better equipped to build those ten battleships later if you upgrade your metal mine instead.

3) Don't invest in the means to produce something you can't actually afford.
I see a lot of newbies devoting tons of resources to the necessary research for battleships and battlecruisers, and then it takes them a month to muster a fleet of ten of them that someone like me can immediately crush because their mines are so far behind. As a general rule, I do not start working towards unlocking any ship if the combined hourly output of my mines is less than a third of the production cost of the ship.

4) It is always profitable to establish a new colony.
Regardless of how much money you have to put into it, if it is allowed to survive long enough, a new colony will always turn a profit eventually. In the early stages of development the fastest way to increase your resource flow is to build a group of small colonies and build up their mines quickly.

5) Expeditions will save your life.
I would say that about 20% of my total resource income, and 30% of my fleets come from expedition finds. There are risks, but if you know how to build your fleet right, you're always going to find more than enough to make up for any losses.