General Class Fleet Composition

I understand that in some situations you are better off with fodder ships. My way of thinking is just that 95% of players also feel that way. Almost every fleet that I see, they have mass LF as fodder. That means that cruisers are better. But even without cruisers, you do fine against fodder. In fact cruisers can actually be worse even against fodder, if they have gauss canons, and harder hitting ships.

But it's for sure dependent on the situation. If you find that most of your hits are against more equal targets, then yeah, fodder helps. But in my experience, and also by running sims, the majority of hits I will ever do, LF just result in more losses.

When you outnumber someone 2, 3, 4 to 1, with 20% (or most usually higher) combat techs, then big ships with shields and armor, are going to have less losses. But even in more even battles - some of my most profitable attacks have been draws, where they barely hurt me, thus making it still super profitable for me.

BCs have such good shields and armor, they really can stand on their own in most cases.

And in the end, I still think speed is underrated. It allows for more tight phalanx windows, better probe hits, better ability to ninja, and all around affords you more opportunities to raid, because your fleet is back sooner. As they say - time is the greatest resource in Ogame.

Also, BCs save you tons of deut, which can't really be understated. And if your uni is anything like mine, everyone is neglecting deut mining, and are burning tons of it doing expos, making it hard for me to plunder nearly as much as I'd like.

Well, I don't typically do hits where my fleet doesn't outvalue theirs by at least 2:1. And in every simulation I have run, even based on scans of fleets worth 1b, at best the fodder come out even to 100% BCs (Not that 100% BCs are even ideal in this case, but just for the sake of comparison.).

Now, what you say about the metal is a good point. But BS have the same metal to crystal ratio, and you'll likely have less losses with them instead.

One thing I do need to do more playing around with, is cruisers, and how much of a difference they make in massive fights.

Sorry, I don't mean to sound like I am completely dismissing what everyone is saying. I just have always heard people say "run the sims and you will see that fodder is better," yet I run the sims and I see the exact opposite.

I fully realize many people posting here have significantly more fleeting experience than I do. I just haven't seen any evidence that fodder is worthwhile. I also don't see enough evidence that diversifying your fleet very much is really worthwhile, when the majority of your opponents are doing so themselves.

And again, speed is fantastic.

But that's the thing - You are literally using an example where you are attacking with a less valuable fleet than the opponent.

My point is that the vast majority of attacks, you have a stronger fleet and better tech than your opponent. I would never make the attack in your example, because my profits would be terrible after all the LF losses, even though I would "win."

I just ran that same sim, but replaced the 100 BS with 75 BC and equal combat tech except the BCs are General class and the one with the fodder is not. The General losses ZERO BCs, and the the one with the fodder loses half their fighters.

Every single sim I see of people saying fodder is worthwhile, are sims of battles that are extremely uncommon.

Even having the 20% general class bonus alone is enough to make a big difference. And from looking at scans of top 10's on my server, I can tell you that they are very much neglecting their combat techs, so you are likely to have even more than the 20% advantage even against top players (because they don't need much combat tech to exploit aliens/pirates.).

But even against a top player that might be bigger than you, when are you ever attacking the entirety of their fleet? Isn't it more likely you hit just part of their fleet, in which case you get to send the entirety of yours? Even in these types of battles, I just can't see you sending an equal or smaller sizes force. More than likely your force will be much stronger, otherwise your losses would make it too unprofitable, fodder or not

Like I said, I've run sims on multi billion cost fleets, and come to the same conclusion.

I'd love to see REAL examples of where fodder was the superior choice.

Currently I run sims on all kinds of combat reports I see on the forums, and the vast majority of them would have turned out better if the attacker had not used LF. In fact, the worst loss to profit margins I see are because of the attacker needlessly losing LF.

From what I can tell, even with the most expensive fleets, cruisers are the fodder ship, if any. Especially when everyone seems to think LF are so important.

I'm sorry, but I can't help but think that the belief in LF is an outdated way of thinking that has just been accepted by people as being correct. Especially now that there is general class, with 20% combat bonus.

Quote from Tiamat

when you are rank1 maybe you understand better

Perhaps. Until then I can only go by real data that I see from testing and analysis.

If there's one thing I've learned from playing online games for decades, is that it's shocking how often widely accepted "facts" are actually wrong. I'm not saying building LF is wrong, but I just have yet to see enough evidence. I get the feeling that people just accept these fleet ratios as gospel, when I am more inclined to question it all.

Even when I used to play Ogame, I was never #1, because on a uni that old good luck with that. But I sure had the #1 guy try to destroy my fleets constantly, even though he had obscenely high points in comparison to me. An extremely active fleeter at top levels, is going to likely be making most of their profits off of guys that are significantly smaller than them, in which case what is their fodder doing for them?

Quote from Senator Sigma

I will say this, when you are in the end stage of a universe trying to eliminate what fleets are left. Fodder has gave me an additional 100s of millions of profit. You'll get to a point against well balanced fleets, where all that matters are numbers. Having the most ships including light fighters, small cargos, everything you can have to eat up damage so your destroyers and battle cruisers can survive longer and cause more damage.

And I am almost willing to guarantee that in most of those battles, you'd have made even more profits had you brought cruisers and/or more capital ships instead of LF. Also, how many hits have you missed out on because the person came online? That is a loss of profit that is often due to a lack of fleet speed. (I understand that not all hits are probe hits. But no matter how big you are, you'll still be probing.).

Quote from Disturbance

Mobius1 you are wrong. I told you, the fodder beats the more valuable fleet. What fodder does is absorb and nullify damage - hence BS is worse fodder - they cost more and take more hits = less nullified damage.

For example, say a LF receive a hit for 1000 Damage and dies after only 500 damage, the rest is nullified - it goes nowhere. No other ship has that advantage because of how battle mechanics work.

Others have stated you have a very very limited experience and try to draw some conclusion out of that - Fodder is for fleet-vs-fleet and in some cases overcoming huge defenses when you don't want to waste time and res on bombers for a one-time hit. You are doing what others would consider very tiny farm raids, the difference is huge. If I had the time I would spy up a few real-life examples for you, but that will have to wait till Monday.

And regards to your very weird last statement - NO you DO NOT profit more from bringing bigger ships as you will in the end receive more damage and lose more res, often the more valuable crystal and deut.

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Yes, but think of it this way as well - A hit for 1000 damage against a LF kills it, but a 1000 damage hit against a BC does not. I lost a LF, whereas had my BC tanked the hit, I'd have lost nothing.

I understand that a plasma turret hitting a LF means that the damage was "wasted." Yet capital ships with tech advantage can tank those plasma his and survive. Again, a plasma hit to a LF - loss. A plasma hit to a BC that survives the battle = no loss. When you bring LF to a battle, you essentially GUARANTEE you will have a certain amount of loss, even against someone with a substantially weaker fleet.

Now against fleets that are more even, where the opponent has a balanced fleet -This is where cruisers are better than LF. Rapid Fire 6 ftw.

Some of the absolute best loss to profit ratio combat reports I have seen, were capital ship fleets with mass cruisers as fodder.

I'm pretty sure that sim proves my point, actually. The General had higher techs, and won with zero fodder, and had no losses.

Yes, and mass RIPs are actually the supreme example of where fodder is pointless. But as you say, they are quite slow, making their use far more limited.

I don't really understand how this example shows the value of LF?

I just ran that same sim, giving the attacker 20% combat tech advantage, and cut his BCs in half, and giving him the equivalent cruisers instead (439,655 cruisers, 150,000 BCs.). The defender had 21b losses, the attacker 11b. Now, I did the same thing for the attacker, giving him 150,000 BC, and the equivalent LF instead of cruisers (3,187,500 LF). The defender had only 16b losses, and the attacker losses jumped to 12b. So had he brought cruisers, he'd have significantly less losses than if he had brought LF.

So again, your example is simply another example to me of how LF fodder is inferior. Also, the attacker's total value was 25.5b versus a defending fleet of 23b value. Clearly that battle was a ninja, and thus the attacker had not planned to engage in a fight of that sort (and someone so skilless doesn't typically control a fleet of that size :D). This would not have been a profitable hit, so it never would have been made otherwise.

Now I took the liberty of giving the attacker 20% combat tech - but again, this is fleet composition for General class specifically, and as a General you are rarely making hits on someone without superior combat tech (certainly not in my case, at any rate!).