Fleet saving means sending your ships out on a mission so they are not sitting on a planet when someone attacks it. Resource saving is the same trick with your ore, crystal and hydrogen loaded into the holds. Most players do both in one move, every time they log off.
It works because nothing in flight can be touched. An attack only hits what is parked at the target when it lands, so a fleet in transit cannot be shot at and its cargo cannot be plundered. Other players cannot even see it. Only attack and espionage fleets show up on the defender's screen, and the Oracle finds planets, not fleets in flight. An espionage report on your planet lists what is standing there and nothing else.
If you leave your fleet at home overnight, sooner or later someone will find it and take it.
The Fleet Save button
SFC2 has a mission built for this. Open Fleets and pick Fleet Save. Unlike a plain harvest, it lists every ship on the planet instead of just recyclers, and it takes cargo, so you can clear a planet in one dispatch.
Things worth knowing about it:
- It is a harvest mission underneath, so the fleet must include at least one recycler: a Dionysus Class or a Zagreus Class. Without one the dispatch is refused with "A Recycler Ship is required for harvest".
- You can aim it at any slot in the game. It does not have to hold a debris field, a planet, or anything at all, and it does not have to be yours.
- There is no combat at the far end. The fleet arrives, scoops up any debris that happens to be sitting there, turns around and flies home with everything it left with.
- The whole round trip costs one fleet slot. You get one slot, plus one more per level of A.I. Tech.
- Hydrogen is charged once, at launch. The trip home is free.
- In the fleet list it is labelled "Harvest", not "Fleet Save". That is normal.
Point it at a real debris field and the trip pays for itself, because the recyclers collect the field on the way through.
How long the fleet is away
The Duration in the summary panel is the one-way flight. You are covered for twice that, because the fleet still has to come home. If you want eight hours of cover, send it on a four hour trip.
Two things stretch the clock: how far you send it, and the Speed dropdown. Speed runs from 100% down to 5% in steps of 5%. Slowing down makes the trip longer and cheaper at the same time, which is exactly what you want here. Fleet speed is set by the slowest ship in it, so the recycler holding everyone back is a feature, not a problem.
Round trip cover for a fleet led by a Dionysus Class Recycler at Jet Drive 10:
| Destination | 100% | 50% | 25% | 10% | 5% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The slot you are already in | 6m | 13m | 26m | 1h 5m | 2h 10m |
| Another slot in your own system | 1h 32m | 3h 4m | 6h 9m | 15h 22m | 30h 44m |
| The next system over | 2h 34m | 5h 8m | 10h 16m | 25h 42m | 51h 24m |
| Ten systems away | 2h 56m | 5h 52m | 11h 45m | 29h 22m | 58h 44m |
| The next galaxy | 6h 52m | 13h 45m | 27h 30m | 68h 44m | 137h 29m |
Jet Drive adds 10% of a ship's base speed per level, so your own times move as you research. Higher drive tech means a faster fleet, which means you have to send it further or slower for the same cover. The Duration box always has the real number, so read it before you commit.
Note the second row. A trip that never leaves your own system already covers a full night at 10% speed, and it burns almost no hydrogen doing it. You do not need to fly across the galaxy.
What a fleet save does not cover
Getting the ships out is the easy part. The resources are where people lose money.
- Your cargo capacity is the limit. Whatever will not fit in the holds stays on the planet and is still plunderable. Check the Cargo and Capacity lines in the summary. If cargo is larger than capacity the dispatch is blocked and the page tells you to add ships.
- Hydrogen for fuel comes out of the same hold. Usable capacity is capacity minus fuel, so a long slow trip quietly shrinks how much you can carry.
- Solar satellites cannot go. The Helios Class and Genesis satellites have no engines at all, so they never appear in the ship list and they die with the planet. Genesis satellites regenerate afterwards at the same 70% as defenses. Helios satellites do not, so they are a real loss.
- Defenses stay too. Nothing you can do about that, and it is not the disaster it sounds like: destroyed defenses leave no debris for the attacker to collect, and 70% of them rebuild for free after the battle.
- Missiles are not a fleet-save problem. Interplanetary Ballistic Missiles only hit defenses, never ships.
Here is what an attacker's spy report looks like against a planet in the middle of a fleet save. The mobile fleet has vanished, but the satellites are still listed and the resources that would not fit are still on the table:
If you cannot carry everything, spend the rest before you go, or park it behind a Resource Den, which hides a fixed amount per planet from plunder.
The long-term fix is hold space. Per unit of build cost these are the cheapest ways to buy it:
| Ship | Cargo | Cost (ore / crystal / hydrogen) | Cost per 1,000 cargo |
|---|---|---|---|
| Carmanor Class Cargo | 125,000 | 18,000 / 18,000 / 0 | 288 |
| Hercules Class Cargo | 25,000 | 6,000 / 6,000 / 0 | 480 |
| Atlas Class Cargo | 5,000 | 2,000 / 2,000 / 0 | 800 |
| Dionysus Class Recycler | 20,000 | 10,000 / 6,000 / 2,000 | 900 |
| Zagreus Class Recycler | 5,000 | 5,000 / 3,000 / 1,000 | 1,800 |
The Carmanor is the clear winner and it is slow, which suits a fleet save on both counts. You still need one recycler in the fleet, but you do not need a wall of them just for the hold space.
Bringing it back early
An outgoing fleet save has a red Cancel button on the Fleets page. Recall it and the fleet turns around on the spot, and the flight home takes as long as it has already been flying. Recall two hours into a six hour leg and it is back in two hours, not four.
The second row in that shot is a preview of the return leg, counting down the full round trip. Once the fleet actually turns around at the far end there is no Cancel any more, so the only window to pull a save back early is the outbound half.
Other ways to get a fleet out of reach
Fleet Save covers almost every case, but the other missions have their uses.
- Deploy moves ships and cargo to another planet or moon you own and leaves them there. There is no return leg, so the cover ends when it lands. Use it when the move is meant to be permanent, not to kill time.
- Transport drops the cargo at one of your own planets and flies the ships home empty. The resources are exposed at the far end as soon as they land, and unlike SFC1 you cannot transport to another player, so this is a poor fleet save. It is a delivery mission.
- Attacking an inactive player saves the ships and pays out, but attacks carry no cargo at all, so your resources stay home. It also burns one of your six attacks per target per 24 hours, and the target can be reinforced by a group defend while you are on the way. Spy first.
- Group Defend parks your ships over an ally or buddy planet for one to twenty-four hours and then flies them home. It carries no cargo and costs hydrogen for every hour it hovers, but it is a long, tidy save if you have somewhere to send it.
The Zeus Class and the Hephaestus Class Attack Platform are the two slowest things in the game, at speed 100 and 90. Adding one to a fleet drags the whole thing down to a crawl, which turns a short hop into a long save. The Zeus also carries a million units on its own. The Hephaestus carries a billion, but it burns 450,000 hydrogen per unit, so check the fuel line before you send it anywhere.
Dodging an attack you can see coming
If you are online when an attack is inbound, you do not need a long save. You just need the ships to be somewhere else at the moment it lands.
The quickest version is to send a mission to the slot you are already in. That is distance 5, which is a three minute hop at full speed for most fleets. A Deploy aimed at your own planet works and is one-way, so the ships come straight back down. A Fleet Save to your own slot works too and keeps them away for twice as long.
Load the resources as well while you are at it. Attacks cannot take cargo, so anything in your holds is out of reach either way.
If the attacker times it badly and his ships die on your defenses, the wreckage becomes a debris field in your slot, and your recyclers can pick it up on their way back in. Defenses leave no debris, so what is out there is entirely his losses.
Saving resources without moving them
Resources that have been spent cannot be plundered. Dumping a stockpile into ships, defenses, a building or a research job is a perfectly good way to protect it, and it is often better than a fleet save because you get something for the money. Buildings and research can be cancelled afterwards if you change your mind.
When you do not need to do this
Some players are not attackable at all, and for them fleet saving is wasted effort:
- Newbie protection covers everyone under 750 RSP. Nobody can touch you until you grow past it.
- PVE Mode is bought with credits and blocks player combat in both directions for as long as it runs. NPC encounters stay attackable.
- Diplomacy Mode protects you from attacks while it is active, at the cost of not being able to launch any of your own.
- Vacation Mode makes you immune to attacks, espionage and missiles, but locks you out of the game while it lasts. If you stay idle too long the protection lapses and the planets open up again.
Going inactive is the opposite of protection. An inactive player loses newbie protection, loses diplomacy protection, and turns into a target everyone else uses for their own fleet saves.
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