Ogging 101

3.3 Ogging: This is the art of killing a carrier, or potential carrier, by a suicide run. The basic idea is to cloak before you get on his tactical, run up to him until youre about half an inch away, then tractor-phaser-torp-torp-torp until he dies. Ogging is a simple tactic and any dummy can do it. On the other hand, ogging well is an art, involving exactly when to uncloak, how fast to go, etc. Two good oggers working together should be able to kill the target every time. (Obviously this does not apply if the target is an SB.) When ogging with someone else, it is important that you do not both come from the same direction. If you do, your target can turn and shoot at both of you at once. When I do it, I watch what direction my teammate is coming in and decide which direction the target must run in to reach his teammates, and attack him from that direction.

Ogging a starbase: Enemy starbases can be very inconvenient. Killing one requires a coordinated effort. Typically wave after wave of ships gang up on the starbase and do suicide runs into it, firing everything they have and then hopefully exploding right over it. However, its harder than it sounds. Keys to a good ogg are:

 ·all oggers uncloak at once. If you do not, the base can pick you off easily one at a time. Thus, if you know youre going to have a head start on the other oggers using a heavy ship (BB/AS) is a good idea. Conversely, dont take one if it will make your team wait for you.

 ·oggers come from different directions, for much the same reason that ogging a normal ship from the same direction is inefficient.

 ·the ogg does not take place with a lot of the bases teammates defending. One defender ~ two oggers, so minimize the defenders. Its not enough to call an ogg when the base is alone, you also have to watch the galactic to make sure that the enemy is not heading towards the base, otherwise by the time your ogg gets there he could have several defenders.

 ·dont maxwarp directly at the base once you are on his tactical! It is trivial for a good base to tell you are heading in a straight line and pick you off with torps or phasers! If you head in at about warp 7 (in a CA) you will be able to dodge torps much more easily. It can also be a good idea to fly at a point an inch or so to the side of the base until you get close to him, to throw him off more.

 ·having an uncloaked CA/BB/AS lobbing torps (plinking) at the base while the others are ogging can help a lot against a relatively undefended base. With more defenders, it becomes much less effective. CRITICAL to this is that you should NOT plink from the side of the base that the oggers are coming in from. If you do, he can pressor off you to move away from the oggers (and towards his team) much faster! Get behind the base, and force him into your oggers! If, when you do this, the base tractors you, you have two options. You can reverse direction, tractor him, fire, and try to do as much damage as you can, finishing by exploding on him. Or, you can slam on the maxwarp while firing torps at him. The latter is more effective before an ogg, because the base will be forced to use more wtemp phasering you and likely wtemp completely during the ogg. The former option is only recommended if you are low on fuel or if youre youre really close to the base when he starts firing.

 ·if the base has ships docked on it and does not pressor them off, fire at them. Each docked ship that you blow up does an additional 100 points of damage to the base as well as preventing them from firing at the other oggers.