I'm a little confused by the explanation of 'ghost fleeting' too.

 

Open up a fleet. Now, control-click multiple ships in the window, then move them to a new system. You'll notice that the new fleet icon this creates does not have the blue hyperspace glow. This means you can drag that icon around and change the destination while the ships are still in hyperspace.

 

As an example for a use of this, consider the examples given of when an opponent finds your inbound fleet through espionage and moves forces to counter it. Well, under normal circumstances you have two options: take your licks and fight them (if you think you can win and/or they have gravity wells) or retreat (if they lack gravity wells). With "ghost fleeting" you have a third option: avoid it altogether and send your fleet somewhere else; either to another enemy system they're not expecting your fleet at (since it's after all already inbound) or even send it off to one of your own systems to preserve it.

 

It's an exploit because, as the rules of the game go, "orders cannot be given to ships in hyperspace" as the droids are so fond of saying. So if your opponent sees a fleet in hyperspace going somewhere, he is logically going to assume it will indeed show up on the day it's supposed to. But instead, you used a bug to circumvent this rule and leave him waiting on ships that will never appear. While somebody who knows about and has experience with this trick can probably plan around it, anyone who doesn't know about it (I didn't until I saw it here) is going to be in for a rude awakening when it's used against them.

I was aware of HQ Colonization from my single player games but was not aware of ghost fleeting and the espionage bugs.

 

To me these last two bugs are clearly exploits, but I always considered the HQ colonization to be a "feature" for the Alliance.

 

So the online community would generally consider HQ Colonization to be an exploit also?

LOL I won't accept mission aborting as a cheat, (exploit maybe but cheat never )

 

I also don't believe there is any online player that never used this exploit. None would wait for the result of the espionage missions when a huge fleet got into a sector that they owned, assaulted and scrabed everything on the planet than moved on to another target. You will never know if your opponent aborted missions to see incoming fleets anyway.

 

About HQ colonizing it can be very annoying to explore that rebels colonized rest of the rim untill you hardly build up two rim sectors. But it can be decided before the game start. I had some games that I or my opponent let HQ colonizing free. So I don't think it is cheating.

 

I don't think suncrushing is cheating also. Suncrushing can be decided before the game start since both sides can use it. I find it annoying. I really piss off when I see a sector's whole systems sun crushed either by opponent or by myself. I am not sure if I am too sensitive

 

And about ghost fleeting, It is a no-no. You can never defend a sector if you don't see the incoming fleet days before it arrives. And you can have a ghost fleet on your orbit in just 2 days before it arrives. It is a cheat for sure. And it is kinda hard to notice it.

 

Defence depends on noticing incoming enemy fleets days before their arrive. Thats way online players ussually move onto a closer neutral (ussually to a uncolonized rim planet) planet and than attack to the closest target of enemy.