Howto: Pop a moon and catch a player using harvest/colo fs

Howto: Pop a moon and catch a player using harvest/colo fs
And how to avoid it happening to you.

Recent events have prompted me to write this up. It’s not much and I never did it, but it is something to think about.


This is how it is done, afaik:

1. spot fleet sitting & player is online
2. Is it a nice size. Sim it, do you get good profit?
3. Would it be worth MDing? (Losing a couple RIPs)
4. ok, all good? Start watching timers on all planets.
5. Is the last timer on the planet/moon (minutes showing) where the fleet last was? And is there no good deploy moon nearby?
6. You can now pop the moon, you will most likely find a colo/harvest fs, I'd say 95% chance of it.



Now this part I have done
So what do we do to make sure this does not happen to us?
1. Use deploy fs whenever possible, ofc.
2. Use ONLY deploy fs if you know a player has spotted your fleet on your moon (check espionage actions) and you are going to fs from there, never mind the cost of deut.
3. Deploy or jump (and deploy deut) your fleet to a different moon then you got spotted on.
4. Click through all your moons before you go offline, making all the timers show almost exactly the same time. Do this once in a while even when you don't go offline. This is one of the more important points as we don't want our moons popped, even if we did a good deploy fs, do we?

I also tended to click on an arbitrary other planet if I was online and just waiting for something, like a fs to come home or an attack to go through. This is to try and throw off people about where you may have your battle and res fleets. Speaking of which, it is a very good idea to split your res stock piles and your battle fleet fs into 2 separate deploys. Usually fsing on deploy a couple hundred to thousand large cargo x-gal with a RIP wont set you back on deut too much.

I know all this is a bit late for those who have lost their fleets already, but for the others and for the rebuild, it may be some good info anyway. It also helps these points to actually be taken seriously, maybe

Thanks for reading and keep your fleets safe, only then can you kick some ass and pop some moons yourselves


PS: Also, as you can see, I can't seem to really quit, though I have been told to stop posting. So please throw me out of this board and skype and that acc I got from sherpaluv, which I can't pass on yet, because of some dumb rule. Also tell someone to ban me from the official forums, thank you.

Good info. Especially worth getting into the habit of resetting the timers on your moons.

I'd add that to make a moon less likely to be popped is to make it more expensive to do so. 70 Plasmas is usually enough but as your fleets grow it's worth building more. They will take an hour to build (each) so don't wait for the skull & crossbones to appear by your moon before you start!

I've only had one guy attempt to pop one of my moons and he lost 3 lots of two RIP's trying thanks to the plasmas that were there to meet his first two goes and the 2 RIP's I warped in to reinforce the remaining plasmas by the time his third pair hit.

Well good guide and all I really have to say is this:

1: Don't make enemies that you will regret having made (don't worry about this too much it's all a game right). By this I mean don't go nicely cussing out the top ranked dude telling him he will never get your fleet. Because he will.

2: Keep your moons well defended so moon destruction missions are harder to do against you profitably. The bigger your fleet, the more you should think about putting defenses on your moons.

3: Don't make your fleet too good looking for others. As in, don't build it up more than you should. It's nice to have a huge fleet but it's not nice to lose it and not be able to build it up efficiently again.

All these steps help but spiral into the inevitable, your fleet will be gone if someone wants it bad enough. What I mean is, if (number 3) your fleet is HUGE for your size and somebody wants it badly, (number 1) they are high ranked and have plenty of rips, and (number 2) you're easily takeable... They will throw those rips at ALL of your moons, destroy ALL of them, and you will be left with either a fleet on a dumb return about to be smashed, or a fleet on a deploy/recall. In which case they will phalanx your planets and wait until they see the only fleetsave possible for you, a deploy. As soon as they see it they will send an attack, you will recall, they will have your recall time. Your fleet will be gone.

Only counters to this would be:

Vmoding before anything bad could happen...

Having massive ACS assistance against the moon destruction missions and/or attack on your fleet.

Getting moonshots and more moons before fleetsaving again.

Or splitting fleet up as much as possible and being a general pain in the ass about your deployment recall times.

Now don't be afraid because I told you this. It will most likely never happen to you, specially if you keep my above steps in mind. And don't believe me? Well go ask linkanred ingame he will tell you. This happened to him and he quit because of it.

Oh plus it will take a lot of teamwork on their side, and persistance with phalanxing. It would be hard to do.

Trent your a little wrong

"They will throw those rips at ALL of your moons, destroy ALL of them, and you will be left with either a fleet on a dumb return about to be smashed, or a fleet on a deploy/recall. In which case they will phalanx your planets and wait until they see the only fleetsave possible for you, a deploy. As soon as they see it they will send an attack, you will recall, they will have your recall time. Your fleet will be gone."

in version 3.0, you cannot see a returning deployment, even if it failed to land on the moon, in the next update, you will be able to see a non recalled deployment, but if you recall deploy after getting both your moons popped, you will still be ok, and invisible on lanx

Complexity have you heard of a blind lanx?

Have you heard of spamming your friends planet with missions, to make a blind lanx almost imposdible to time right?

Yep, that's under the be a pain in the ass with your recall times section. Like I said it will never happen to you and you shouldn't worry. Basically I'm giving you a near impossible example to try to scare you guys into taking care of your fleets.

Well point is I guess...

FLEETSAVE ON DEPLOYMENT

Oh and pop yourselves some moons.