In this FAQ you will find a description of how you can save your fleet.

1. When is my fleet visible in the phalanx?
Theoretically only planets can be phalanxed.
This means that the starting or destination planet can be scanned and your fleet will be seen there.
Moons and debris fields can't be scanned.
A stationing flight that was aborted is not visible, too.

2. How do I hide my fleet if I don't have a moon?
There is one possibility without the moon. You send a fleet with the order to station from planet A to planet B. Then, when you see your fleet being intercepted on Planet B, just pull it back. The returning fleet will then be displayed neither at the start nor at the destination planet.

3. How do I hide my fleet with moon?
Unless you're flying to a planet, your fleet can't be seen. That means:
Moon - Moon,
Moon - debris field,
Moon - Expedition,
Moon - Colonize
are not visible.

3.1. Safely saving from the moon via colonization
As a prerequisite, you must have already colonized all the planets you can, so you don't create a new planet when colonizing.
Now you can send your fleet with all resources together with a colony ship to an empty position in a system.
Once there, the colonists try to colonize the planet, but realize that they can't do it. Thus, all ships return to the departure/exit moon.
In the galaxy view you won't be able to tell if you tried to colonize.

3.2. Safely saving from the moon via debris field mining
You should change target coordinates often with this method and not save to your own debris fields or neighboring systems as often.
Furthermore, you should approach "invisible" debris fields from players in vacation mode or inactives who have no defenses on their planets/moons, at least where you want to go.
To protect yourself a little more, you can use the so-called shadow fleet technique.
That means, send a few recyclers in one or more fleets to the target debris field. Then you pack in the main fleet your own fleet, also on dismantling in between. And last but not least, send some recyclers after them.
If you are even more careful, you split your fleet on several moons and send them not only in one big fleet each to a debris field, but split them again into two or three smaller fleets, which you again, can send separately from small recycler fleets to this debris field.

Such a save fleet constellation could look like this:

• Fleet 1: 2 recyclers
• Fleet 2: 4 recyclers
• Fleet 3: 1. part of the main fleet
• Fleet 4: 3 recyclers
• Fleet 5: 2. part of the main fleet
• Fleet 6: 5 recyclers
• Fleet 7: 3. part of the main fleet
• Fleet 8: 2 recyclers
• Fleet 9: 2 recyclers


The reason why you should disguise your save fleet like this is:
Just because you fly into the invisible debris field of a player in vacation mode or an inactive, doesn't mean you can't shoot a new visible debris field there.
The player can come out of vacation mode at any time, and it might be possible to shoot a visible debris field with the help of holding fleets even with inactives (if the conditions are met).
If you know or guess on which debris field you saved, you can observe it and deduce from the debris sighting when the fleet including recyclers will be back again.
The method of intercepting players from the save is very complex and only feasible if you have observed the player for a long time and know his saving behavior.

4. Hold at Alliance Colleagues
As an alliance, you can all hold equal time with a colleague and gather a fleet so strong that no one can get through. However, holding fleets can't be withdrawn during the holding period until 0.8.12, so the timing has to be right, too.
This planet should be kept in mind with an own phalanx, in case someone attacks. If this is the case, you will either have to increase your fleets/defenses or withdraw all of them.

5. Are the techniques from 2.), 3.) and 4.) 100% safe?
No. A 100% safe saving method doesn't exist.
With 2.) an enemy can scan you throughout and then calculate when your fleet is no longer visible, when it is back on the starting planet. However, this involves a lot of effort and is usually not accurate to the second. So there is still a short time to send his fleet away again.
With 3.) your opponent can destroy your moon. Your fleet will then be changed to the planet, making it scannable (only from 0.8.12)
With 4.) several players can join together in a formation attack and try to destroy your fleet and defenses.

6. Long-term Saving
To keep a fleet flying as long as possible, there is a special slow ship, the Star Destroyer (Not in all Unis), the Death Star, the Colony Ship and the Recycler are quite slow ships.
With this ship, combined with 5% speed and the greatest possible distance from galaxies, flight times of over a day can be achieved. If only several hours or minutes are desired, you should only fly over more systems in your own galaxy.
The easiest way to long-term saving is on expedition. The expedition is not calculated until the time is up. So you can set e.g. 20 hours as expedition time and then withdraw your fleet after 19 hours and 59 minutes.
The higher your expedition technique is, the longer you can save this way.
So if you fly with 5% to a foreign galaxy for an expedition, you quickly have 30 hours easy + the hours of the expedition + 30 hours back. Here you maybe should set to 10% or 20%, otherwise you'll fly 80 hours.

7. What's the best technique?
In my opinion, moon - moon stationing is the best. But also moon - colonizing (although you already have the maximum number of planets) is a good technique.
As an alternative to point 2 (without the moon) I like to fly from the planet to the expedition (with 100%) and choose several hours there, if someone wants to intercept me, I just pull back and am back on my planet within a few minutes.
Overall, all of them are very successful. To avoid becoming too predictable, it's best to change your saving way occasionally.