Farming

From Astro Empires Wiki

"Farming" is a common but notorious tactic used in many MMO games, including Astro Empires. It involves attacking newer and/or weaker players/guilds in order to profit from an easy fight.

The tactic is most successful when a veteran player attacks a weakly defended base with a single capital ship with enough power to survive the attack at a minimal cost of repairs. This is often referred to as "titan/leviathan/Death Star tapping," depending of course on which type of capital ship is used. Because the cost of repairs is 50% of the cost of initial production, this tactic can be highly effective at earning the attacker a quick buck. The attacker then leaves a token defense force (perhaps a handful of fighters) to keep the astro occupied until the victim logs on. When the defender's economy recovers enough for the attacker to earn sufficient pillage, they will often return to the same "farms" until the defender grows strong enough to fight them off.

Farming can also be defined as holding a weaker players planets for the pillage and additional income and never releasing the base. Though in war this tactic can decide the winning guild, during times of peace this is another despised tactic. Many new players have been 'farmed' out of the game in this sense as well. At worst this tactic can be used on all of a players bases, leaving the player unable to level up enough to escape the farm. At this point the player being farmed is left with few choices, they can either join a guild better able to protect them, disband the bases and try to escape, or leave the game entirely.

While this tactic is very popular, many players criticize this tactic as unfair, cowardly, and harmful to the Astro Empires community. While most of these criticisms come from new players and smaller guilds, some veteran members have raised some serious and detailed criticisms on the forums.

A few guilds even dedicated themselves to defending the weaker, newer players/guilds of the game, although few have been successful. Some of the most notable were [TGTF] (The Guardian Task Force) on Alpha, [S-W] (Shadow Warriors) on Beta, the association of guilds known as CABAL, also on Beta, and [†GC†]The Galactic Crusaders. Of the four, only [†GC†] still remains, although several of CABAL's former members still fight for server balance.

However, farming is a part of the game, and it is what people do in a predator-eats-prey world like astroempires