What can I do about planted colonies?

Hi all,

I recently returned to the game and was enjoying it a lot, I’ve mostly been playing on G3 and been pretty successful (rank 15). However last night while I was on a night out/sleeping and when I checked today I saw my colony was conquered by a new player who’d appeared in our hive when we’re sleeping, is in an alliance alone, had the exact chassis/weapon combo to best fare against mine and my partners (duos server) unit chassis. Clearly, they’d been given/bought reds to do this in such a short space of time too.


I don’t want to throw accusations around but logic dictates in G3 there’s three alliances with a shot of winning, GLF, T and FUN. We have an alliance with FUN and my partner knows them from another server. Clearly someone wanted to take us out the equation.

Honestly I’ve just come back to the game and I can’t be arsed with it if all my efforts are destroyed by shitty tactics like this. I’m calm with being defeated through battle, with people making alliances, having subs but this is borderline cheating (is it legal or not please lmk). Makes me feel like quitting tbh, at the very least I’m going to be playing 1 tick in the future, it’s less enjoyable bc it’s less fast-paced but at least someone can’t pull this shit on me if I want to go on a night out at the student union.

Anyway, for future reference how would I deal with something like this? Is it worth messaging the admin when it’s clearly one of the top alliances behind this? I guess I should ally myself with Americans (I’m British myself) in the future so they can watch things while I sleep and vice versa.

9 Likes

Thats the problem with this, you can do anything about it.

Except be careful, build shield, etc etc. But these measures do not address the root of the problem with planting. Hence, you can’t do anything about it. You also cannot concretely prove it was a plant from another alliance, so its legal as far as legality is concerned.

As you can see, this issue is something a lot of people are speaking about/against. Pretty much no one likes it, except for those who use it or when they use it. It still happens however, because, you guessed it, you can’t do anything about it.

Now for some counter-measures that can reduce this pain in the ass:

  1. Build a shield (pretty easy)
  2. Keep a watch on colonies near you. Like looking at achievs, nuking etc (moderate)
  3. Have at least 1 person watch the map, and the rest be contactable (very hard on small alliance worlds)
    and some other, but I feel this post is already too long
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Thanks for the advice.

I saw in that thread that you tagged about force relocating every colony from your hive but even then they can attack your infrastructure network and take OPs, it’s unrealistic for me to have a full squad on every OP.

It’s kinda bumming me out bc you’re right that there’s no way you can effectively protect against it. Part of me feels like quitting if this is the way eras will end for me half the time.

You’re right about the shield though, that would have helped. I think some of the counter measures come with experience, next time I’ll build more nukes in the hive too to deal with things like this.

Think I’ll wait for a 1 ticker or at the quickest 2 ticker and go again. 3 tick is too quick for my play style anyway.

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Yes, unfortunately, it’s hard to deal with these kind of things. Especially on a small alliance world with such a fast tick speed. I’ve always been an advocate of huge preparations though (keeping network tight, keeping some units back for defenses, building a lot of anti spams and spread them across network, keeping vigilant of any colonies that aren’t AI in your territory, etc). However, for those not willing to check the game every 3 ticks, this becomes very hard. 1 day off is 72 ticks missed. Which is enough time for a colony to plant and collect up some decent resources before hitting you.

As Kuzuma stated, getting shield is one of the easiest things to do. 12 ticks will usually buy you enough time to go off and come back (on 3 ticker, that’s still 4 hours). Having a good ally who’s keeping eye on things while you’re gone is good too. However, in a 2 man alliance, the issue with this is, then you lose out on coordinating as much unless both of you are HIGHLY active. But in this game, activity is king.

But making a bunch of small squads (usually dmg units) and placing them on your gates/radars is always a good idea. Prevents enemy from being able to use armor inf to take your stuff, and at the VERY least, you’ll get a battle report so you know what’s coming for the rest of your stuff.

6 Likes