Beginners Guide

OGame is a fun, text-based game on a science fiction theme. The concept is simple, but there are many complexities in the game, so I thought I would consolidate some materials from the OGame forums as well as the online help to form a rough beginner’s guide.

Mines and Production of Resources
There are three key resources in OGame: Metal, Crystal and Deuterium. Combinations of all 3 resources are usually required to build or research anything, but typically Metal is used for construction of buildings / ships, and Crystal is used in construction and research. Deuterium is mainly used in Research and as fuel for spaceships.

All 3 resources are mined and raided in OGame. Mines are built from the Buildings tab in OGame. All mines take energy to run, so before mines can be built or upgraded, there must be sufficient energy for the mines to run. If energy levels are low, production will drop. Energy can be produced by building solar plants, solar satellites and fusion reactors (although fusion reactors consume deuterium).

In the beginning, new players should focus on building up solar plants and metal mines to at least level 5/6, before building crystal mines and then finally deuterium synthesizers. Check the Resources page after each construction, and click on the ‘Calculate’ button to see the latest hourly production of your mines and the output of your solar plants. After each upgrade, make sure that you click the 'calculate' button to refresh the data, or the server will continue with the old production data.

Solar plants energy outputs are determined purely by plant level. However, once you reach a certain level, you will find it more economical to supplement your energy needs with solar satellites. To build them, you will need a shipyard.

In general, mine and energy production depend on the level of your mines and solar plants. However, there is also an additional factor to take into consideration for deuterium and solar satellites, which are affected by planetary conditions, primarily temperature. In a system, there can be up to 15 planets. To find out which slot you are in, look at the Overview page & it will have your coordinates. Slot 1 is nearest to the sun, and it will have the highest temperature. Conversely, slot 15 is furthest from the sun, and it will have the lowest temperature. High temperatures mean that you will get more energy per solar satellite (up to 50) but as the ocean temperatures are higher as well, you will produce less deuterium. Planets in slots 12-15 typically produce up to 40% more deuterium than their equivalent level synthesizers in slot 1-3.

Robotic Factories and Shipyards
Robotic factories aid in faster construction of your buildings, while shipyards are necessary to build ships (duh!) and defenses for your homeworld. The higher the level of your robotics factory, the faster upgrades to your buildings will be. Similarly with the shipyard, you will be able to build more types of ships and defenses (depending on whether you have completed the required research) and build them faster. Note that robotic factories level will not impact the time needed to build ships and defenses, that is purely determined by shipyard level.

Research
Research is critical in OGame to be competetive in the game. Many ships and some buildings will require some pre-requisite technologies to be researched first, before they can be built. This technology tree can be seen if you click on the Technology tab, and it shows you everything that is required if you wish to be able to build a certain unit.

Once you build a research lab, you can see the various types of technologies available to research. The in-game explanation is sufficient, so I won’t elaborate here. Research costs will double for every level, so it can get expensive.

Right now, there is no benefit for building multiple research labs on multiple planets at the early stage of the game as research can only be started on one planet at a time. Only when the Intergalactic Research Network comes into play is there a need for multiple research labs, but that is late into the game.

Building Orders
That more or less covers the critical buildings that you will need in the early game. Obviously when building, Metal mines and solar plants take priority, but everybody has their own style of development.

Here's a sample build order that you may find useful when starting out.

Example: M# = Metal level #, C# = crystal level, S# = Solar Plant level #, R# = Research, D# = Deuterium level.

S1 M1 S2 M2 S3 M3 C1 D1 S4 M4 S5 M5 C2 R1 S6 M6 C3 S7 M7 C4 D2
S8 M8 C5 R2 Sh1 S9 M9 C6 S10 M10 C7

Espionage and Raiding in the early game
After building up your mines to an fairly productive level, it’s good to be able to supplement your mining production by doing some raiding around your immediate neighbourhood. To do this fairly successfully, you should build up a small fleet of espionage probes, light fighters and small cargoes, so get the technology requirements to do that.

Firstly, click the Galaxy tab to switch to the galaxy view, this shows your home system. As discussed earlier, every system can hold up to 15 planets at a time. If you do some scanning around your home system, you should see some planets with an (i) or (I). These are inactive players that have not logged into OGame for some period of time, and are prime candidates to be raided.

To know what resources are available on a planet, you need to send some espionage probes. These can be sent via the fleet screen or via the Galaxy screen (when you click on a planet). Information you will get from Espionage are Resources/Energy, Fleets, Defences, Buildings and Technologies. Depending on the difference in espionage technology levels between you and the person you scan, the more information you can get with the same number of probes. Typically, espionage a potential target with a small amount of probes (3 or less), then increase it to 6-7 probes if the chance of counter-espionage is low and the resources available make it a likely target. The more probes you send, the more information you will get, but the higher the chance that your probes will be discovered (and destroyed!).

Once you have a likely target, send out your light fighters and small cargoes for raiding. To counteract defenses, one light fighter and one small cargo can usually take out one rocket launcher. Only 50% of the resources available on a planet can be obtained in a single raid, so typically raids are sent in waves. 1st wave takes 50% of the resources, 2nd wave takes 50% of what is left (or 25% of original resources) and so on. There is no way to pick and choose which resource to take, all resources are taken equally. Also, raiding can only destroy fleets, defences and steal resources. No buildings or technologies can be lost through raiding.

Once you can build large cargoes, you may want to use them for raiding instead, as they can carry much more and are faster than small cargoes (until small cargoes switch over to impulse drive). As you get deeper into the game, raiding strategies change, and there are whole articles about this topic alone, but this should keep you in the early game.

The number of raiding fleets that you can send out at any one time are limited by Computer Technology, so it’s good to have a reasonable level of computer tech before attempting much raiding. Develop this technology to suit your own style of play.

Colonizing New Planets
Another useful source of income is of course to set up colonies and build up mines on them. To have colonies, you need to research the required technologies to build up a colony ship.

Next, you need to pick a likely candidate for your colony. Again, to do this, go to the Galaxy Screen. You will notice two fields here, one for Galaxy, and one for system. Galaxy goes from 1-9, and system goes from 1-499. Empty slots in any system, means that the planet is not inhabited and can be colonized.

Colony ships can be sent via the fleet screen to an unoccupied slot to colonize a planet. DO NOT try to send extra resources with the ship, either carried on the ship itself or as accompanying cargo ships. The extra resources on the ship will be lost, and the cargoes will simply return with their cargo.

There are a couple of things to bear in mind when looking for new colonies. Firstly, be aware that planet sizes vary considerably from slot 1-15, unless it’s your homeworld. Planet sizes can be seen in the Overview Screen, just under the planet. You can see that under the Diameter information, there is information in the form of (x/x fields). The first number is the fields that you are currently using, the second number is the maximum number of fields on the planet. Fields are equivalent to empty land on your planet. Each building level takes up one field e.g a level 5 metal mine will take up 5 fields. Defences do not take up fields so you can build as many defences as you want, as long as you have a shipyard. Obviously, the more fields you have available, the more you can develop your planet.

The smallest planets are typically around slot 1-3 and slot 12-15, with varying numbers in between. Here’s some general information about AVERAGE planet sizes.

pos1: average: 64, 60% between 48 and 80 fields

pos2: average: 68, 60% between 53 and 83 fields

pos3: average: 73, 60% between 54 and 82 fields

pos4: average: 173, 60% between 108 and 238 fields

pos5: average: 167, 60% between 95 and 239 fields

pos6: average: 155, 60% between 82 and 228 fields

pos7: average: 144, 60% between 116 and 173 fields

pos8: average: 150, 60% between 123 and 177 fields

pos9: average: 159, 60% between 129 and 188 fields

pos10: average: 101, 60% between 79 and 122 fields

pos11: average: 98, 60% between 81 and 116 fields

pos12: average: 105, 60% between 85 and 129 fields

pos13: average: 110, 60% between 60 and 160 fields

pos14: average: 84, 60% between 42 and 126 fields

pos15: average: 101, 60% between 54 and 149 fields


The one exception to the rule above is your original homeworld. No matter which slot you are in, your homeworld will always have 163 fields. However, the other environmental factors for deuterium and energy will apply.


In general as slots 4, 5 and 6 tend to give colonies with high numbers of fields, these slots are highly popular and highly prized. However, there is still an element of chance that planets in these slots will be small.


There is no way to determine before you send your colony ship out, what the size of your planet will be. Only when the ship lands, will the game generate the planet size for you to see. Some people abandon their colonies if the size is less than 163 (homeworld size) as that means that the colony cannot be developed very far before it runs out of space. If you wish to do so, on the Overview Screen, click on the planet name e.g. “Colony”. You’ll be taken to a page where you can either rename the colony or abandon it.

If you abandon a colony, the slot in the Galaxy view will be occupied by the words “Destroyed Planet” and will not be able to be colonized for 2-3 days. However, after that time, that slot can be recolonized by sending another colony ship. The number of fields generated will again be random and may be very different from the earlier attempt.

Colony locations are obviously up to the individual player to decide, however there are some things every player should consider:
Colonies far apart have long traveling times and ships traveling between them will consume more deuterium. However, traveling from one galaxy to another typically has a fixed time so in some cases, travel between 2 separate galaxies may actually be faster than traveling from one end of the same galaxy to another.
Colonies that are too near each other, while cutting down on traveling time and simplifying logistical fleet operations, can be vulnerable to multiple attacks as rival players can easily find out all your bases of operations.
Players can have up to 8 colonies, though it’s usually best to keep one slot free for use in the later game, if you need to.

Recyclers and Debris Fields
Another way to obtain additional Metal and Crystal in OGame is to go to the sites of space battles and collect the debris fields left over from the battle. The only ships in the game that can do these are Recyclers.

To locate debris fields, switch over to the Galaxy View again. You will see a column called Deb. If a particular planet has a debris field orbiting it, you will see a small graphic in this column. To check the size of the field, hover your cursor over the field and you will see the amount of resources left in the field. Once you have a likely candidate, just note down the coordinates.

To send out your recyclers to the field, go to the Fleet screen, select recyclers and punch in the coordinates as usual. However, instead of selecting “Planet” in the target field, select “DF’, which stands for Debris Field. The recycler will then go to the debris field orbiting the planet and harvest the debris there. (Note: If you have Commander, you can send out your recyclers from the Galaxy View).

Harvesting missions are invisible (except in certain situations) so, the player around whose planet the debris is orbiting will typically not be able to know whose recyclers are harvesting the debris. Debris fields found in this manner can be a useful supplemental source of income but the chances of harvesting can be somewhat low as recyclers are very slow, so chances are that somebody closer may get there first. So, you will have to decide whether your fleet slots are best used for harvesting, or for raiding.

However, as debris fields are formed by destroying ships and fleets, many players target to destroy other player’s fleets and collect the residual debris to obtain a profit. In OGame language, this is called ‘fleetcrashing’. Most players time their recyclers to arrive just after a battle to obtain the debris.

Points Calculation and Newbie Protection
Just a last note about points. In Ogame, there are four types of points:

Normal points:
The amount of points you've got is very simple to calculate: You get 1 point for 1.000 resources used. You can have a million resources on your planet but it will not add to your point score until you use them to build or research things. One example: an colony ship costs 10'000 metal, 20'000 crystal and 10'000 deuterium. That's altogether an amount of 40'000 resources, with the result that every colony ship you own gives you 40'000/1'000 = 40 points in the stats. If you lose a colony ship (because of a combat or you've colonised a planet with it) you will lose that amount of points. This means that ships and defensive structures aren't a permanent investment for points - you can lose them at any time when you lose your ships or defenses because other players destroyed them while raiding you.

Other investments like buildings are "semi-permanent" investments - other players can't destroy them and cause a reduction of your points - you can lose them only when you erase your planet or downgrade your buildings. The last investment are research and technologies: Once a tech is researched and you have gained points from it, nobody can take them away from you.

Fleet points:
Your fleet points are calculated in a simpler way than your normal score: One point for each ship you own - a death star counts as much as a light fighter or a solar satellite. The fleet points of a player gives you an indication of the quantity of his or her ships - not of the type.

Research points:
Similar to the fleet points, you get one point per researched technology or upgrade of it - how much it cost to research or upgrade that technology isn't essential.

Alliance points:
These points are calculated like the normal points, but this time all points of all alliance members are added together and then divided by 1000. I.e. when you have used 1'000'000 resources to build something, that gives 1000 points for you and 1 point for your alliance.

Normal points are important to take note of in the early game, because of something called ‘Newbie Protection’. This was introduced in order to give new players a chance, to learn the game without being abused but will not entirely protect you from all attacks.

The rules are as follows:
Under 5000 points you can't attack players who have more than 500% or less then 20% of your own points. Contrawise, these players also can't attack you.
Over 5000 points, you can attack all players who have more points than you and you can also be attacked by them, but players who have less than 20% of your own points still can't be attacked or attack you.
Over 25000 points you can attack or be attacked by all players who have more than 5k points.

Therefore, by the time you reach 5000 points, the honeymoon is over and you can be raided by stronger players. By that time, you need to be at least relatively aware how to deter attacks on your worlds and colonies.