Trade Wars 2002 has gathered quite a collection of addicts, casual players and occasional dabblers. I wrote this file for those who love the game and want to play it on a regular basis. I wrote it because there is an awful lot of bad advice out there, a lot of rumors and speculation, and the player who does not have a good knowledge of basic strategy and how the game works is going to be destroyed every time. Most areas have one or two people who know how to play, and those people routinely dominate every game. As one of those players, I hope that this file will increase the supply of quality Trade Warriors and allow for greater competitive balance. One introductory note: The Martins will release version 1.1 soon, and that release will change some of the information and strategy/tactics hints contained here. When they release 1.1 and I have had a chance to play on it for a month or so, I will update this file. Apparently, according to a post by Gary Martin on his WWIVNet Trade Wars 2002 Discussion sub, the evil side is all coded, and he is adding the last goodies for the Goods. According to Gary's hints, the new additions will be welcome to Good players. I hope so, because the way the game is now, competent evil players are nearly unbeatable. The file is divided into eleven sections: I. Getting Started II. Game Objectives III. The Choice: Good or Evil IV. Your Ship V. Survival VI. Corporate Life VII. Data Processing Wars VIII. The Insecurity of Planets IX. Making Money X. Strategy and Tactics XI. Conclusion If you only want to cruise around the universe every so often, then stay good, park in FedSpace every night, beware the Ferrengi and don't read any further. If you want to be a competitive player or even dominate your universe (the true goal of Trade Wars), then read on and I will tell you how. I. GETTING STARTED As soon as your new ship is launched in sector 1, hit `V' for the Game Configuration Screen. This screen has a wealth of vital information that you need to know in order to play the game correctly. You want to know the turns per day, the number of ships per FedSpace sector, the StarDock location, if displayed, the Photon Missile Wave Duration, whether the game is registered or not (don't bother playing if it is unregistered), the number of days running, and the information at the bottom of the screen (more on that in "Old Game"). After that, hit `I' to get your personal information. Hi, there, Civilian Space Scum! Then, hit `C' for computer and then `L' for Trader Rankings and `V' to rank the traders by experience point level. See what you're up against. Now that you have an idea of what the game is like, your next move is to get established, start exploring, and get into your new ship. There will be some differences in strategy based on whether you are joining a fresh, young game or an old, established game. Either way, don't worry, because once you know what you are doing, you can be in a competitive, if not dominant, position in less than a week. A. New Game In a new game, the only big threat to your safety is the Ferrengi. The assault traders roam the non-FedSpace universe looking for the weak to pick on, and Ferrengal is often plopped down in the middle of a significant space lane near FedSpace. Many a new player discovers the location of Ferrengal by losing his Merchant Cruiser to Ferrengi mines. If you happen to encounter a Ferrengi assault trader, surrender and let him take your cargo. It's good to travel with holds full of equipment as much as possible early on, because if you have equipment they will not take holds from you, otherwise they take 10% of your holds, and that stinks because your holds are your life this early. So in a new game, the first thing I do is explore FedSpace. I go from 1 to 2 to 3... all the way until I have all ten sectors explored. If I find a good Paired Port (see VIII. MAKING MONEY for an explanation of Paired Ports) team, I work it for about 5 or 6 loops, then cruise back to 1 and buy more holds, then come back, work it 5 or 6 more times, run back to 1 and get holds then come back. Once I have 30-40 holds, my strategy depends on whether the sysop displays the StarDock location or not. (I think all sysops should since it defies logic that a space ship captain would not know the location of the only place in the universe to buy a ship!) If he does display the location, then I stop going for holds once I have 30-40, and work my paired port until I have about 30-40 k credits. Then I go to StarDock and get my StarMaster (see IV. YOUR SHIP for a discussion of the different ship types and why I always choose the StarMaster at the start). If the sysop does NOT display the location of StarDock, then I have to find it. First thing I do is post a general announcement asking for its location, then I check the trader listing and see if anyone is in a ship other than a Merchant Cruiser or Scout Marauder and send them mail asking for the location. Once sending the mail, I go back to pounding my pair, and work until I have maximum holds in the Cruiser. By this time the pair is usually exhausted, so I see if maybe a couple of ports in fedspace are almost paired and trade between them until I have enough credits for 400 shields. If I cannot find a suitable couple of ports in fedspace, then I cautiously explore around FedSpace to see if there is a pair nearby, or if one of the non-paired FedSpace ports has a partner outside of FedSpace. Until I have max holds and shields on my cruiser, I hate to venture out of FedSpace, because a Scout is not a very good jumping off ship. Generally, on a board that does not display StarDock, I do not leave FedSpace until the second day. Once I have full shields on the cruiser, I can withstand mines, and should survive an encounter with Ferrengal, due to the peculiar way the Ferrengi offensive fighters are coded. Once my ship is ready, if I have not learned the location of StarDock from some kind soul in response to my efforts the day before, I venture out into the universe in search of StarDock. My theory of the best way to find StarDock is to go on long auto-warps. I start with sector 1000 as a destination, then 900, 800, 700 etc. etc., then back to 990, 890, 790 etc. etc. The theory is that StarDock is on the major space lanes, so auto-warping will eventually get you there. Once I have found StarDock I almost never use auto-warp because it is more efficient at eating turns and getting you blown up than anything else. So, once I know where StarDock is, I trade in the Cruiser on a StarMaster, buy a density scanner first, then buy as many holds as I can (saving 3-5,000 credits to buy product). Once I have my density scanner and my holds, then I start in on shields. I won't be attacking anything for a few days because it is vital for new players to conserve their resources so that later they can go on a wild rampage and still be able to defend themselves. The next goal is to explore the universe and find the ports. I single-step-scan everywhere, always looking for unexplored sectors with densities of 100 and more than one warp. If I find one I go there, otherwise I look for an unexplored sector with as many warps as possible, and go there. There is a good chance an adjacent sector will have a port. I trade as I go, and return at the end of the day to StarDock to spend my money. Until I have my bank account full I usually stash about 30% of the day's earnings and spend the rest. I get full shields, then I upgrade to a holo scanner, start accumulating cloaking devices, and buy ether probes. I usually do not buy fighters until I no longer want to park in FedSpace. By now you should have a well-supplied ship and a good start. If you density scan everywhere you go you should not run into any unpleasant surprises. If you get a density reading of 7500 or more this early in a new game, you have found Ferrengal. Mark it as an avoid. B. Old Game If I am joining an old game, my strategy is slightly different. I try to do the same as above, and am even more leery of leaving FedSpace than in a new game because the players have had time to put out mines and fighters, build quasar cannons, etc. etc. and the hazards are many. So I explore FedSpace and hope to find a couple good ports. Often in an old game, the FedSpace ports are whipped and I have little luck. What I do then is head towards StarDock, trading, until I have 2000 credits and cargo in my holds, and buy a density scanner for the cruiser. Now I can safely find ports to pound to get established like in the New Game above. If the Sysop does NOT display StarDock, I stick to FedSpace and environs the first day, and use the announcement and mail to try and find the location as above. If I do not have any mail the second day telling me where StarDock is, I DO NOT PLAY. In an old game, a new player is at enough of a disadvantage already that he is severely handicapped trying to find StarDock. Most sysops now display StarDock. In an established game, the Game Configuration Screen (the V Screen) offers a wealth of information on the current status of the game. Look for the net worth of the ports. A high number indicates that a lot of trading has taken place, and an evil player can make serious money robbing credits. How many traders and aliens are there, and what percentage of each are Good? The number of planets and the percentage with citadels also tells you how developed the game is, and the more citadels there are the more fun an evil player can have. Most important is the number of fighters and mines in use, because that tells you roughly how powerful the players are and how hazardous the universe is. Keep track of all this information as the game goes by, and especially the fighters in use. Compare what your corporation has to what is out there as an idea of how secure you are. Generally, my business partner and I have half or more of all the fighters in the universe, and the feds and Ferrengi account for most of the rest. The remainder of my game starting strategies depend on other choices, so I will leave those discussions for after the next couple sections. II. OBJECTIVES A player's objectives for his game will determine all the rest of his choices. As I said before, if you just want to fly around every so often, don't waste your time with the rest of this file. Trade Wars has a bias for the player who plays every day, and only those who want to play every day will be able to be top Trade Warriors. Others can succeed if they have different objectives, but if you do not play at least two-three times a week, there is not much you can do. Other possible objectives are to be the Roaming Marauder who warps around the galaxy, trading and robbing only as much as is necessary to obtain fighters for alien hunting and mothing players. Or, you might want to be a builder, a Good trader who devotes his energies to building and colonizing planets. Or, you might want to be a destroyer, one who builds nothing, keeps his assets on his ship in the form of fighters and shields, and roams the galaxy looking for ships to destroy (any, you don't care) or, the ultimate prize, planets to conquer then demolish. Or, like me, you might want to be Emperor of the Universe, the Dominant and Supreme Power of all Trade Wars! This file is directed most towards those who share my objective, which is to "win" as I see it. I will try to direct tips and hints to all of the above types of players. The ideal situation is to have a corporation with two or three of the types on it, so that each player has a job he enjoys that contributes to the overall team effort (see VI. CORPORATE LIFE). In this fashion, a corporation can become the dominant power, thus satisfying the goals of everyone on the team. The first choice dictated by the player's objectives is whether to be good or evil. III. THE CHOICE: GOOD OR EVIL? You cannot sit on the fence in Trade Wars. Every day you enter the game your alignment goes up by 1 point, so you cannot sit at zero. Each side of 0 has its advantages, but I, like many others, think that the advantages of evil FAR outweigh the advantages of good. The good trader must work extra hard, and if he desires to have planets he stands almost no chance of keeping a planet against competent evil players unless he is part of a large, coordinated corporation. The good trader who wants to stay alone and doesn't care about planets will fare better. A. Why Good? -- A Good Question Let me first catalogue the advantages of Good as they have been advanced by players on the two major national Trade Wars message bases (National Trade Wars Echo on FidoNet and National Trade Wars Discussion on WWIVNet, hosted by the authors of the game at Castle RavenLoft), then discuss each of them in depth and then go into other reasons for playing Good. First advantage that comes to mind is FedSpace protection. A Good player can rest in FedSpace between playing sessions, and he is immune from attack (see below!). Second advantage is the Imperial StarShip. This ship is the biggest money-maker and the most awesome military power available to traders. With its 30,000 fighter capacity, its 1.5-1 fighting odds, and its ability to use Photon Missiles, the StarShip is unrivalled as a planetary invader and the most impressive way of projecting force. Its 150 cargo holds and transwarp drive make it the best trading and colonizing ship available. Depending on the number of turns per day in your game, a StarShip can TransWarp colonize up to 1.5 million colonists per day. More about the StarShip later. Third advantage is... well, the ability to collect bounties. Anyone can post a bounty on a bad guy, but only Goods can collect. Unfortunately, the best bad guys are almost never blown up. Fourth advantage is... um... well... I can't think of any more. Until 1.1 is released with its hinted-at goodies for Goodies, there are not many advantages to playing Good. When you look in depth at the "advantages" they look like less than before. FedSpace protects you only until you have 1000 experience points, then your enemies may attack you in FedSpace. Also, you cannot have more than 50 fighters on your ship when you park there, or you will be towed out into the middle of space when the Extern maintenance program runs. Lots of traders get blown up that way. Also, only a certain number of ships (sysop configurable, check the Game Configuration Screen) can remain in any single FedSpace sector overnight, so you have to get to a sector without the maximum already there, or you will be towed. FedSpace, therefore, is of small overall value to any serious, regular player. The StarShip is a powerful advantage, but it is expensive to buy, more expensive to equip, has only a limited number of turns, and can lead to a false sense of security. StarShips seem to be destroyed at alarming rates in established games, which is not catastrophic if you're Good, because you can go buy another one, but it is expensive and disillusioning. Great care must be exercised with the TransWarp drive or other traders will laugh when they see "Space Scum's Imperial StarShip was destroyed by atomic fusion at 12:21:54 on 12/25/91" in the daily log. The StarShip, while a great ship and a tremendous asset, is not by itself a reason to stay Good. The bounties play a minor role in the game since most of the big bounties are never collected. They do, however, help the ambitious trader hoping for a Federation Commission and a StarShip. This trader can find an evil player, usually some yoyo with 5 xp and -7 alignment in an escape pod in some dead end, or some poor schnook with the wrong password for a corporation sitting in FedSpace with a -1 alignment because he doesn't know anything about the game, post a huge bounty on him (gaining 1 alignment point for each 1000 credits), get the alignment boost towards the 500 needed for a Commission, then go blow the dork up and collect the bounty he just posted. If you tote up the "advantages" of being Good, they do not amount to much. When weighed against the advantages of being Evil, it does not appear to make much sense to be Good. Many players, however, still decide to be Good for a variety of reasons. It could be for the challenge of trying to survive, prosper and even conquer as a Good player given Evil's greater ability to make money with ease. It could be because the player wants to play a character of honesty and integrity who stands as a bulwark against the evil hordes seeking to slaughter the innocent. Or it could be because the player is more interested in play balance and wants there to be Good players in the game. Each of these reasons is sound and respectable. I will attempt to outline what I hope is a winning strategy for Good players -- although I think that even that will fall against an Evil corporation applying my strategies for Evil. B. Why Evil? Just like with Good, I will begin by cataloguing the advantages of being Evil, then launch into a discussion of the choice and why I usually choose Evil (unless for one of the intangible reasons in the previous section I have decided to play Good for a change). First and most important, Evil can make far more money than Good with less work. A part of this advantage is that Evil players never run out of ports, which Good traders will. Evil can trade like Good when necessary, but he can also rob credits from ports that have traded a lot, or even steal products and sell them right back to the same port. This one advantage more than makes up for the advantages of Good, because the Evil player can buy enough fighters to overwhelm the StarShip, cloaking devices to render him impervious to attack, and he has no need of collecting bounties. A secondary advantage is somewhat related to the first: Evil players are not taxed. While a Good player who quits the game with 50,000 or more credits on his ship will be taxed 10% upon re-entry to the game, Evil players are never taxed. An Evil player can have as many credits as he desires on his ship without losing any of it to the stinking Feds. Those are all the advantages that come to mind, but they are big. A good Evil player can make 50-100% more money per day than a comparable Good player, but there are hazards to watch out for. One, when you get busted and lose cargo holds, that is a cost. Two, when busted you lose 10% of your experience and that can cut into your money-making ability as well as your status. Three, once busted in a port you cannot port there again until two weeks have passed, or someone else has been busted. There is a rumor flying around the national echo that a port that has busted someone before thereafter busts people more often, so as the game wears on it is possible that the Evil players will have a harder time finding good ports to rob or steal. There is no empirical support for the rumor however, other than the impressions of a few Evil players. I myself have my doubts. I almost always play Evil because of the earning power, and also the constant tension of "Will I get busted???" I have more fun robbing and stealing than I have trading. Also, I like to invade planets and be the chief power in any game I am in, so I need to take advantage of the extra money. I have macros that do the tedious work so I can concentrate on strategy and the fun stuff. IV. YOUR SHIP The second main choice that has to be made is what ship you will use for most of the game. Some players will switch ships frequently, jumping from task to task and choosing the ship that meets the task. While this method may work pretty well, one weakness of it is that you never get as much in the trade as you paid for the equipment on your ship, so the more you trade the more money you lose. Of the 15 different ship types in the game, there are 3 good general use ships, 3 good "role-players", and 9 more or less useless craft. I will start with the 3 general purpose, as these will form the backbone of a corporation, or be the most likely and effective ships for the solo player. A. StarMaster Version 1.00 had 5 new ship types, one of which was the StarMaster. The StarMaster radically changed the complexion of the game, and soon became the ship of choice, with good reason. The Corellian Battleship, previously a great favorite, has been relegated to the background by this elegant combination of speed, power and earnings capacity. No other ship has the StarMaster's combination of moves, combat ratio, fighter and shield capacity, and cargo capacity. While it can be tedious to pound paired ports with the number of turns a StarMaster gets, it is extremely profitable, and for the Evil trader, robbing and stealing are even more profitable. With 1.4-1 combat odds, 5000 fighters and 1000 shields, the StarMaster will conquer all but the StarShip, Battleship and Flagship, and will give even those behemoths pause. While not the best for planetary invasions, the StarMaster will effectively conquer most young planets. Once a planet has a quasar cannon, however, the StarMaster becomes less effective, and one of the larger ships might be in order. Still, for most planetary invasions the StarMaster is plenty. For early game, the StarMaster is the best choice, and for most traders, it is also the ultimate choice. Get in a StarMaster early and stay in it. I usually am in a StarMaster by the end of my first day in a game, and I keep it until I get my StarShip (if I get a StarShip). I take advantage of its large number of turns for exploration, and sniff out numerous pairs. Generally I will loop a pair five-ten times when I find it, then move on. In that way I get a good compromise between hard-core trading and straight exploration. I can't really think of any drawbacks to this ship, although for particular jobs there might be better options. The solo player, however, is probably best-served by a StarMaster, accepting its limitations as a trade-off for its astonishing versatility. For corporations, the StarMaster is a necessary part of your fleet, even if you are a Good corporation and have StarShips. The StarShip needs the TransWarp to be truly efficient, and a teammate in a StarMaster can sow lots of toll fighters around the universe to make the TransWarp most effective. The StarShip needs to husband its turns, so the StarMaster can be the one to check things out. A Scout can do so also, but the StarMaster can carry the firepower with it to take advantage of most situations, or at least pave the way for the StarShip. B. StarShip The Imperial StarShip is the only ship I rate as a worthy competitor for the StarMaster as a bread-and-butter ship. The solo player can do quite well in a StarShip, and the Good corporation must have at least one of these monsters. Many people make the mistake of getting the StarShip prematurely, and of being careless with it. It costs a million credits to fully outfit a StarShip, and half a million just to get started. The ship is 128,000 credits, the additional 110 holds are about 200-250,000 credits, the TWarp is 50,000 credits, the holo scanner 25,000, the planet scanner is 30,000 credits, the 2000 shields are about 300,000 credits, and the 30,000 fighters are about 6 million, although for 500,000 credits you can get about 2500 fighters on it and be in business. Once outfitted, though, the StarShip will make a bundle of money. Paired Ports go fast with 150 holds, and a good trader will make 100,000 credits every 25-30 turns. After a few days of serious trading, you will find a scarcity of good trading pairs. That's okay, because unlike any other ship, the StarShip can TransWarp trade profitably (see Flagship) by finding class 4 and 5 ports, posting fighters in them, then transwarping from 5 to 4 to 5 to 4 to 5 and trading organics for equipment along the way, buying enough fuel for the next jump at each stop. Everyone else is scrambling to try and squeeze a few credits out of worn out ports. A team with a StarShip would benefit from having a Scout or a StarMaster to roam around and post fighters all over the place so the StarShip pilot does not have to warp here and there, wasting valuable turns. If that technique is used, the StarShip's only drawback -- lack of turns -- is overcome. A caveat: BE CAREFUL WITH THE TRANSWARP!!!!!! More StarShips than you would think get blind warped into a port or planet, and are no more. It is a highly distressing occurrence. In combat, the StarShip is unparalleled. Ship-to-ship combat is generally in your favor, because only the Scout and the Battleship have higher combat odds than the StarShip's 1.5-1, and neither can carry as many fighters. The Scout would be more formidable if it could carry more than 250 fighters and 100 shields, a mere burp for the typical StarShip. So a StarShip can usually destroy any ship it's captain wants to fight. Planetary invasions are where the StarShip demonstrates its true power. Photon missiles and large numbers of fighters can overwhelm almost any planet. Make sure, however, to clear ALL mines and enemy fighters out of the sectors approaching the planet before you buy a photon, because a single battle point of damage will make your photon go off and leave you stranded with 0 turns. The Good player who wants to be a solo flyer should get a StarShip, buy cloakers every day, and keep his assets on his ship in the form of fighters. Doing that, he can survive and even be a force to be reckoned with. The Good team that wants to win should have everybody except the scouter in StarShips. The StarShip is the best available for trading, colonizing AND combat, so there is no need for anything other than one StarMaster or Scout Marauder. C. Corporate Flagship The Flagship used to be a far more impressive ship before the StarMaster came along. Yes, the Flag carries four times as many fighters and 500 more shields. Yes, it has 15 more cargo holds. Yes, it has a TransWarp drive. But the StarMaster has one-third more turns, higher combat odds, and very few traders ever have more than 5000 fighters on their ship anyway. The Good corporation has no need for the Flagship. Its chief virtue is its relative proximity to most of the capabilities of the StarShip. Goods get StarShips, Evils can have Flagships. But the Flagship cannot fire photon missiles, its 85 holds make TransWarp trading of minimal profitability and TransWarp colonizing a tedious matter, and its combat odds of 1.2-1 are not great. Every Evil corporation should have one Flagship. The TransWarp drive comes in handy, and it is usually the best colonizer available to Evils. The Mule and other cargo carriers have many holds, but they must travel through regular space, thus unless you build close to sector 1, you cannot haul as many colonists. Planets close to 1 are usually found swiftly and not very secure. The firepower is also nice for an Evil corporation, and with 85 holds it is good for paired port trading early on, and stealing later. When an Evil corporation goes on an invasion, the Flagship usually delivers the coup de grace. The solo Evil player can do well in a Flagship, but solo players usually cannot take advantage of the TransWarp as well as teams can, so the StarMaster is probably still the best option, although you might hit a point where you want to be able to carry more than 5000 fighters. The battleship carries 10,000 and has 1.6-1 odds, but less turns than the Flag, and no TWarp. D. Taurean Mule The Mule is another of the ships that the Martins added in the long-awaited Version 1. Of all the cargo carriers, it is the most efficient, but the Good corporation should have no need for it, since the StarShip has the exact same Holds/Turns ratio. In comparison with the CargoTrans and the Colonial Transport, the Mule comes out ahead. I have developed a factor for measuring money-making potential called the Holds-Turns Calculus. I take the number of turns per day, subtract it by 20 to reflect travel time to and from ports, then multiply that number by the number of holds. For an example, lets do the calculus for 100 turns/day, my favorite setting. The Mule gets 83 turns, so its calculus is 63 x 150 = 9450. The Colonial Transport gets 58 turns, so it comes out to 38 x 250 = 9500. The CargoTran gets 67 turns, for 47 x 125 = 4875. The Merchant Freighter is 130 x 60 = 7800. As a comparison, the StarMaster works out to be 113 x 70 = 7910. The Colonial Transport's calculus is slightly higher than the Mule's, but I believe that edge is offset by the additional investment the extra 100 holds represent, the extremely low number of turns, and the fact that often more than 20 turns will be spent in transit, so the more turns in transit, the more the Mule gains. The CargoTran does not even compete, and the Merchant Freighter's other disadvantages (including the tedium of trading 150 turns!) remove it from the game. The Mule can make good money and haul lots of colonists, but it cannot spend much of the money since it only holds about 300 fighters and does not carry mines. It really only helps the corporation that has a citadel for money transfers, or that wants it purely for colonizing. But in that role, it can be effective. Still, there are better choices (see above). E. Scout Marauder Excuse me, but let me first advise you of one of my stronger biases: I HATE the Scout Marauder. Nevertheless, it is a useful role-player for a corporation. The Scout's claims to fame are its turns and its utter expendability. Your Scout Marauder blew up. Who cares? Trade in your pod for a new scout and make a grand on the deal. The Scout is perfect for scouting, mothing, running hither and yon on errands like posting fighters, collecting tolls, running down the busiest ports list for credits to rob, and the like. For a corporation that has a couple of the more sensible ships, the Scout can fill a worthwhile role. For small corporations, the StarMaster might make more sense as a compromise, since it still has a lot of turns but can also make money and carry firepower at the same time. For the solo player, the only time to be in a Scout Marauder is when your first Merchant Cruiser hits mines and you can't buy a new ship yet. As soon as possible, you get out of the Scout and into a StarMaster. Some players like Scouts, and if they stay Good and keep their experience below 1000, they can park in FedSpace and have their fun as solo players. Such a player will never be a threat to a powerful player. Such a player, however, is a perfect corporate member who can do what he likes, have the power and wealth of a corporation behind him, and be part of a competitive if not dominant enterprise. F. Battleship Before the StarMaster came out of Markham Space Tech, the Battleship was my ship of choice. It has 80 holds for decent money-making, and it packs quite a whallop. Its 10,000 fighters and 1.6-1 combat odds make it a threat to nearly any ship in the universe, and for the player or corporation unable to get a StarShip it can be an effective planetary invader. The Battleship is no more than a bit player, but can be a positive factor in a corporation. Solo players can do fairly well in Battleships, but they will find that in the long run the StarMaster makes more sense because it makes more money and covers more ground. The combat odds on the Battleship are the best (excluding the Scout), but not dramatically better than the StarMaster. I cannot really think of any situations when I would want a Battleship. I would choose the StarShip or the StarMaster, or perhaps the Flagship if I were the CEO of an Evil corporation. But given the variety of tastes, I can see how some players and teams would want to have one. The ship is serviceable, and beats any of... G. The Rest. Don't bother buying any of these. For whatever one of these ships does, one of the 6 above does it better. Especially DO NOT BUY THE THOLIAN SENTINEL. It does not work. It only gives the 4-1 odds if the invader hits `L' for land before `A' for attack. Even if the invader does not know about the Sentinel, he is likely to say to himself, "Well, I have to destroy it before I can land anyway, so I might as well skip the L and go straight to A then L." That was how I discovered the problem with the Sentinel. I went to invade a planet guarded by one, attacked the ship first, psychologically prepared to lose 4000 fighters, then was pleasantly surprised when I only lost about 800 fighters. The Merchant Cruiser is okay -- until you trade in your first one on the StarMaster. The Havoc GunStar is cute, but anyone who has a need for and can use the TransWarp can buy a Flagship or StarShip. Some evil players on the Echo rave about the money they make in their Colonial Transports, but they are in high-turns games, and the numbers they throuw around are not much more than I would make in other ships given the same base turn rate. The others.... why waste words? V. SURVIVAL Now that you have defined your objectives, chosen the Good or the Evil Way, and selected your ship, you have to survive. Most Trade Wars players have no concept of survival, so they show up on the log time after time, on the wrong side of the flashing red DESTROYED. A. FedSpace When you first start the game, FedSpace is your key to survival. I detailed the ins and outs of FedSpace earlier, but I want to reiterate: when you are just starting out stay Good, keep your fighters below 50, and GET TO FEDSPACE EVERY NIGHT. There is no excuse for getting caught out in space. If you have to, come back with 10 turns to spare. You can always find some way to muck around FedSpace and use those turns. When you go Evil, or over 1000 experience, it is time to leave FedSpace and move on to the other survival methods below. When you just have to buy more fighters but still want to park in FedSpace, try to find a dead end sector in some deep, dark corner of the universe and stash your fighters there, on toll. Be advised, however, that it is probably just more cost-effective to buy a cloaking device. B. Cloaking Devices Unless you are parking in FedSpace, the cloaking device is your best bet for security. Some people can park in a planet citadel, but unless you have no reason to fear a sudden invasion by a more powerful entity, parking in your citadel is risky. The cloaking device is the most secure way to park for the night, and well worth the 25,000 credit per day investment. I cannot believe how many people do not cloak, and park here and there out in the universe. You would think they would learn after getting blown up for the 17th time in three months, but they don't. If you are using competent money-making techniques you can afford 25,000 credits a day for security. The only thing to worry about with the cloaking device is the slim possibility that someone guessed your location, and planted 99 mines and 3000 offensive fighters in the sector. The only way for that to happen, pretty much, is if you trade a port down to your last turn and cloak there. Someone coming along could see your ship on the docking log and guess that you are cloaked there, then plant his trap. Park one or two sectors away. C. Citadels I will talk about citadels in greater depth in a bit, but for now it is enough to mention that a level two or above citadel can be a secure place to park. Try to stay aware of the current balance of power and assess your risk of invasion before deciding to park in your citadel. I have destroyed many players after evicting them from their own citadels. When you can feel secure about your citadel, it is nice not to have to pay the 25,000 credits every day, and it is a good feeling to wake up in the morning on your home planet, tend to your colonists and military disposition, then grab what you need and blast off for a new day. For a corporation, it is convenient if most of the team members stay in the citadel because then you can trade credits, exchange ships if necessary, and better coordinate your activities. D. Density Scanners You are auto-warping along from nowhere to oblivion when 50 Space Mines detonate near your ship Fighter Attack! Quasar Blast! Your Escape Pod is functioning normally..... The density scanner is the best way to avoid such inconveniences. Rather than auto-warping where you go, single-step and density scan along the way. If you get a reading of more than 180, and the sector is not in FedSpace, you know that there is a potential hazard in that sector. If you have a holo scanner you can see exactly what is in that sector, but if you don't you can just go around it and mark it down. I density scan everywhere I go, unless I am on my way from here to there and I KNOW that the way is clear because I have been that way before. E. Other Common sense. Use your common sense. If you get stuck for some reason and have no cloakers, cannot get back to FedSpace or home to your planet, use common sense. If you have 8 turns left and it takes 9 to get back to FedSpace do NOT make the attempt. The sectors near FedSpace are high traffic areas where the likelihood of getting found is great. Find a dead end FAR from FedSpace, hide out there, and if possible try to get on at midnight and get yourself moved. If you are part of a team and you get stuck, try to get a hold of a teammate who has not played yet that day and have them tow you to safety. Or they might be able to transfer a bunch of fighters to your ship to make it harder to attack, and that might deter most from making the attempt. Still, there is no excuse for getting caught like that. Yes, it happens to everyone on occasion, but there is no excuse. VI. CORPORATE LIFE Corporations have many benefits and one or two hazards for Trade Warriors. A game with two or three powerful corporations in it can be thrilling and highly competitive, while a game with only one powerful corporation swiftly degenerates into boredom. For those who want to "win" at Trade Wars by being the most powerful with the most planets, forming a corporation and working together is essential. Corporations can be tricky to form and run, and if you are not careful about who you let into your corporation, you could wind up #SHIP DESTROYED# with all your assets gone. A great deal of trust and communication are required to make a corporation work. A. Teamwork Is the Key Some corporations are nothing more than a few individual traders with the same number in brackets after their names. The best corporations have a great deal of communication, sharing of resources and division of labor. The ideal corporation has at least three people who trust each other, where one can, say, scout and explore, another colonizes, and another makes money. When an opponent is found, the different players fill their respective roles in the assault plan. Then, after a while, the members can trade off assignments if they desire, since colonizing is not the most fascinating part of the game, and pounding ports can be tiring. As well as a rational division of labor, communication and sharing of data set a good corporation apart from a poor one. (See VII. Data Processing Wars below). If one member finds Ferrengal, or an enemy planet, he warns everyone else. If the scout finds a great pair or great port for robbing, he informs the money-maker. This communication makes everyone more effective at his job, and makes the team as a whole more powerful. The building and defending of planets is where the benefits of corporations are most noticeable. While one guy colonizes, another earns money and buys fighters and mines, and another is out there finding more ports, finding and harassing the enemy, and increasing the corporation's knowledge of the universe. A solo player has a hard time having to go from one task to another, and often he either has a well-defended planet that is undeveloped, or a lightly-defended planet that he has spent a great deal of time putting colonists on and building a citadel. Either one is vulnerable and easily taken. Imagine a three-man Good corporation with two StarShips and a StarMaster. One StarShip is out pounding pairs and TransWarp trading, making 250,000 credits and buying 1200 fighters each day. The other StarShip is bringing in a million colonists a day. The StarMaster is feeding the moneyman new ports every day, and maybe finding enemy homes and harassing them with the 2000 fighters he has from his own travels. Such a team could only be beaten by an Evil corporation that communicated and shared labor as well as the above Good team. Evil teams, however, don't need more than two players to be extremely effective, because each player can make so much money. With one member in a Flagship and the other in a StarMaster, the Evil team can cover a lot of territory, make a lot of money, and have plenty of firepower. If they had a third member, say with a Mule for colonizing and stealing, they would be virtually unstoppable. B. A Knife in the Back Trust is a wonderful thing, but it better not be misplaced. I have seen good people let someone into their corporation, then within a few days, they are all floating in escape pods while the person they let in has all their fighters, shields and planets. Kind of takes the fun out of the game. The best way to avoid the knife in the back is to only form a corp. with people you know personally. The other way is to play in an area for a while until you get to know the players by how they play. Then you can usually figure out who is good to be a teammate with. I have one business partner I incorporate with on all different boards. We cooperate well, we plan, and we know that we will not screw each other over. If you have to form a corporation with someone you are not sure you can trust, keep all your assets on your ship, and cloak every night. Only when you cloak do you deny corporate members access to your stuff, and protect your back. VII. DATA PROCESSING WARS Everyone who plays Trade Wars even moderately seriously takes notes. Those who are quite serious organize their notes and supplement them with a data program of some form. Many such programs exist, but the consensus seems to be that one, TWVIEW88.ZIP is the best. TWVIEW is the one I use and it usually tells me what I need to know. He who best uses the data at his disposal wins. It's all about making money and converting that money into power. The way to make the most money is to know where the money is and get there in the minimum amount of turns. A. TWVIEW TWVIEW is a database program written by Robert Weaver, also affectionately known as Oob the Rhox. This program provides a list of the "Paired Ports" with quantity information and a factor that measures the pair's relative profitability, a list of the busiest ports, lists of the ports and sectors nearest to a sector you specify, the path between any two sectors you have explored, and has a transwarp menu that is invaluable to the StarShip or FlagShip skipper. The paired port listing tells the good player the best places to go to make money. The busiest ports list will help the evil trader find the best ports for robbing credits, and the nearest ports list helps everyone to find the certain port that will fulfill the current need, with the least amount of travel. The transwarp menu will tell you the shortest way from here-to-there using your transwarp fighters and regular space travel. TWVIEW can be confusing to use at first, but once you have gotten the hang of it (write a macro to make your data file, and one to view it online.) it will multiply your effectiveness. Update your data files daily and use them offline to make a plan for the next day's game session. That technique will allow you to use every turn effectively and make the most money possible. The good players do not waste turns. Use it online when you need to find a port to buy equipment at, or need to find the quickest way to get to StarDock. The program also has other features, such as a listing of dead end sectors checked for back doors. Beware, however, that this check is fallible because the program can only check with the sectors you have explored. The better way to check for back doors in tunnels is to go into the Crai computer, mark the opening of the tunnel as an avoid, then use the course plotter to try and plot a course from sector 1 to the end of the tunnel. If the computer cannot find a course in, you know that you have a true dead end. The dead end listing can be an effective way of finding the opposition. Print out the list and start shooting ether probes into all the dead ends, starting with the deepest and working back towards one-sector dead ends. When you get "Probe Destroyed" go investigate with your holo scanner. B. Ether Probes By themselves ether probes seem like a waste of money, but when used in conjunction with TWVIEW, they provide a great competitive advantage. Once an ether probe has been through a sector, it is as if your ship has been there and the data goes into your computer. Then when you use the Computer Interrogation Mode to make a TWVIEW data file, the data gathered by the ether probes goes into the data file, and you have access to all port information. Filling out a TWVIEW data file is the most obvious and powerful use of ether probes, but they have other uses as well. One is finding aliens and/or traders to blow up for experience (if evil) or alignment (if Good and seeking a Federation Commission). One suggestion for using ether probes in this way is to shoot them to unexplored sectors and accomplish two purposes at once. Another objective for ether probes is to find your enemies' home bases. Take the TWVIEW data file and use the OFFLINE.EXE program or the DECOUNT.EXE program to get a listing of dead ends. Then you fire a probe to each dead end, starting with the longest, and the chances are excellent that you will find something. Remember, if the probe self-destructs, it means it reached its destination, but if it says "Probe Destroyed!" that means it encountered hostile fighters posted in a sector. This could mean a defensive force, or merely one toll fighter for somebody's transwarp drive. You won't know until you investigate with a holo scanner. C. Holographic Scanners Like the ether probes, the holo scanner display puts the scanned sectors into your explored sectors list if previously unexplored. Holo scanning can be an effective technique for building a data file, but each scan costs a turn, so do not use the holo scanner profligately. My technique is to single step and density scan, then when I come to a sector with a curious density reading, or with a number of unexplored sectors leading off it, or with a number of adjacent ports, I use the holo scanner. If your density scanner yields a reading in the hundreds (a number ending in 0,1,5 or 6 -- any other ending indicates a fed), by all means holo scan before entering the sector. You might be saved a nasty shock! Furthermore, a holo scanner does not alert anyone else to its use, so if that density of 4521 is your enemies' front defenses, you can scout their setup without letting them know that you know where they are and what they have. A density of 40 or 80 usually means one or two ships, and then you may want to holo scan to see if it is a target worth pursuing. Data is an integral part of the game. The player who is sophisticated in his gathering, processing and use of data will have a great competitive advantage over the players who make no effort to collect and employ data. TWVIEW, ether probes and holo scanners find ports for making money, and enemy forces for destroying. VIII. THE INSECURITY OF PLANETS Planets are a large part of the game, and one way of measuring power is by the number of well-developed planets a trader or corporation owns. Planets also provide income and military power, but they represent a huge investment and must be defended. Planets are difficult to defend until they reach the level 5 citadel, when they become extremely tough to overwhelm. You do not have to build or own planets in this game, but I think that the player who does not involve himself with real estate is not really playing the game. It is easy to cloak every night, keep all your assets on your ship in the form of fighters, and apply all your resources to destroying what others build, but then you are not really a part of the game. You miss out on the thrill of property ownership, and the nagging question: "Will someone invade my planet and take everything I own?" I generally cloak my ship, but get into the real estate market. Corporations almost have to have a planet if they are to operate as a unit. A citadel is the best way to transfer credits and fighters, and the production provides products for sale. Without a citadel, a corporation is almost limited to using the bank for transferring credits, or they must make themselves vulnerable to their enemies by remaining uncloaked. A. Location, Location, Location As in real life, the three most important factors for real estate are location, location and location. Do not build a planet in the middle of a space lane, in a sector with six warps, and expect it to last. Planets should be located in out of the way corners of the universe. The ideal location is an arrangement of sectors with one way in and two ways out, with a long tunnel leading to a y-ending. For example: \ | / --100-- | 250---125---320 | 234 | 400 | 500 / \ 600 700 This area has many sectors for defenses and production planets, and an enemy would have a long trip through mines and defensive fighters, maybe with a couple quasar cannons as well, before reaching your home planet in sector 700. It is even better if there are a number of ports present in the tunnel. Because it ends in a y, it shows up on the TWVIEW dead end list as two separate one-sector dead ends, rather than the 5-sector deep tunnel it really is, so your enemies are less likely to find it that way. If the start of the tunnel is relatively close to sector 1 it makes colonizing easier and faster, but the flip side is that it is more likely to be discovered earlier. Relative proximity to StarDock is also nice, but the space around StarDock is always heavily traveled and planets situated close to that magnet of traders don't stay undiscovered for long. At the same time, if you are at the remote end of the universe, colonizing will be long and slow, and it will take ten to twenty turns a day to get to trading areas. Find a happy medium. Usually you are okay if your home planet is between 10 and 15 sectors from 1. The above diagram will be used to illustrate the principles and strategies to follow in this section, so you may want to jot it down on a piece of paper and refer to the diagram as you read. The numbers will make more sense when you have them in spatial relation to each other. B. Sector Defenses and Sweating It Out. A planet cannot defend itself until it has a level two citadel with a Combat Control Computer. Until then, sector fighters and mines are the only forms of defense available, and they are not very efficient. Sector fighters fight at 1:1 odds, so an opponent with a StarMaster or StarShip has considerably better odds against your sector fighters. Figure it out: if you have 1000 fighters on defensive in a sector, a StarMaster can destroy those 1000 fighters at a cost of about 720, while a StarShip will lose about 670 fighters. Not good odds for the defender! Put those same 1000 fighters on a planet, and the StarMaster will lose about 2150, and the StarShip will lose about 2000 fighters. Mines do nice damage and are a pain in the butt for an invader, but they can be disrupted, and only about half of them go off at any one time. Offensive fighters are the worst. One, they hit shields and not fighters, so they leave the invasion force. Two, they don't destroy ships. Three, like mines, they are mothable. So what should you do? Before the computer, your best defense is not being detected. Maybe put 1000 defensive fighters in sector 125, hoping that other traders will pass by an empty sector 100 and not probe. The 1000 fighters act as a deterrence to most traders, and make a good front wall. Then I would put 200-500 fighters and 99 mines each in sectors 234, 400 and 500, and 1000 fighters in sector 700 with the fledgling planet. The powerful, determined invader, will penetrate these defenses, but they will pay a price, and if you start early enough in the game, very few, if any, traders will be powerful enough to get through your defenses. Make sure you have a couple thousand fighters before starting a planet, and don't waste time, because the earlier you start the more secure you will be. The evil players cannot really begin to make serious money until they have over 1000 experience points, so if you get a head start you have a good chance at having that computer by the time they can start taking advantage of their evil ways. The 3:1 planetary defense odds make up for the 2 or 3 to 1 earnings advantage of stealing over trading. So, let's use an example. After three or four days, I have found this tunnel, and I have 1500 fighters on my StarMaster. I put 1000 fighters in sector 125, and launch a genesis torpedo in 700. Sector 500 has a class 7 port so I can buy the commodities there that I will need for the citadel construction. After a day or two of colonizing and moving product, I start the citadel. Then, I get out there and make money. Over the next four days I put 200 fighters in 234, 200 in 400, 500 fighters in 500 and 500 fighters in 700. Then I put 25 mines each in sectors 234, 400 and 500 and 99 mines in 700. Then I spend another day or two getting colonists to a million and the produce to upgrade the citadel to level 2. Once the computer is started, I spend the next few days trading and buying fighters. As soon as the computer is done, I put those fighters on the planet surface and start working on the quasar cannon. Once the quasar cannon is going, I continue piling fighters on the planet surface, and might add a few mines to each sector. I usually don't add any more fighters to the sector defenses given the superior odds on the surface. Whatever you do, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE avoid doing two things: 1) Do NOT NOT NOT NOT buy the Tholian Sentinel. It does not work and an experienced player will take advantage of you for it. 2) Do NOT park your ship in the sector to defend the planet. You will merely lose your planet AND your ship. Keep your ship cloaked out in space until your citadel is EXTREMELY secure. C. Colonize, Colonize, Colonize Colonists mean production, and production means money and fighters. If you are a solo trader, it is tough, but if you are a member of a corporation, have one guy colonize while the other guy makes money, and you can do a good job. The faster you get the colonists on board the faster you upgrade your citadel and the faster that quasar cannon will have 10,000 fuel ore to blast any foolish invaders with. Once we have our main planet going, my business partner and I start working on production planets. What are they? They are planets with a million colonists on fuel, and that's it. We can use the fuel ore for transwarping, or quasar cannons, but the main purpose is the fighters. One million colonists on fuel produce 33 fighters per day; two million on organics and equipment produce 21. So the same 3 million colonists on three different planets produce 99 fighters a day, as opposed to 54 a day on one planet. So, first we will get a base going in 700, then we will start two production planets in 700. After that, we start a citadel planet in sector 234 that we will upgrade to a level 3 citadel. At that time, we pull all the colonists off organics and equipment and put them on production planets. After the "bug zapper" planet is fully colonized, we start filling the back sectors with production planets. Within a couple weeks, we are building 500-1000 fighters PER DAY without doing anything. Add that to what we buy with the cash we make stealing or trading (usually I trade and he colonizes), and we build up rapidly. The evil player really doesn't need to do more than build his one planet (if that). This whole section is really directed towards the Good players, who cannot make as much money in the ports and need to supplement it with the income from planets if they want to compete. For goodness sake, form a corporation and colonize! Make sure somebody goes around to all the production planets each day, every other day at the least, and collects all the fighters. They are up for grabs on the production planets. It is vital to get the 3 million colonists on your home planet as fast as possible. If at all possible, get into a StarShip and "TransWarp colonize." A StarShip can move up to 1.5 million colonists per day. Once the home planet is colonized, you have a lot of options. D. At Last! The Computer! On that day when you land on your planet and it says "Planet has Level 2 Citadel" you should REJOICE! Your period of maximum vulnerability is over, and now you can start building defenses for real. As soon as the computer is completed, I get a couple thousand fighters there in a hurry, then get at least a half a million credits in the treasury to start accumulating interest. At 4% per day, it will double every 18 days. Get your quasar started. It is nice to start it right away, but the quasar is not as important as the computer. Without a computer, you are defenseless. A quasar cannon can be mothed, or disarmed by a photon missile. Defensive fighters on the planet MUST be destroyed before an invader can land. Always leave military reaction to 0% -- planetary defensive fighters get 3:1 and offensive get 2:1. Even when you have a shield on the planet, the backbone of your defenses is the planetary fighters. So if you have to choose between getting the colonists and produce for the quasar or a couple thousand fighters, get the fighters. The quasar can wait. Again, a corporation is at a GREAT advantage. The first time you try to develop a planet, or a tunnel like our example's, by yourself, you will appreciate the benefits of teamwork. E. Don't Waste the Quasar A quasar cannon is a powerful weapon, but if misused it will not be an effective part of your defenses. And remember -- the photon missile disarms a quasar! If your opponent has Imperial StarShips, do not rely on your q-cannon; rely on your defensive fighters. There are two settings for the Quasar cannon: Sector reaction level and Atmospheric reaction level. Sector shots consume three units of fuel ore for each unit of damage inflicted, while Atmosphere blasts inflict 2 units of damage for each unit of fuel consumed. You can see which you prefer! The maximum sector shot is 3333 battle points, and the maximum atmoshpere shot is 10,000 battle points. My business partner and I will put our bug zapper q-cannon in 234 on 30% sector and 100% atmosphere. Suppose we had 10,000 fuel ore on the planet and an invader came in without photon missiles. He enters the sector and BOOM! 1000 battle points of damage. We have 7000 units of fuel left. Then he goes to land and BOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMM!!!!! 7000 battle points of damage. Anything smaller than a battleship, and he is space dust. We still have 3500 units of fuel left. That's right: 100% sector uses 100% fuel, but 100% atmosphere uses 50% fuel. Atmosphere shots always use half the fuel of the percentage set. For example, a 50% atmosphere shot uses 25% of the fuel. Later in the game when we probably have two planets in 700 with quasar cannons, we will set the Qcannon on Home Planet to 7% sector and 60% atmosphere. The other planet we probably set on 100% sector. What's the theory? Let me explain. First, make Home Planet the earlier planet, so that Home Planet is, say, planet number 3 and the other quasar planet is planet number 8. That means that when an invader enters the sector, the quasar on Home Planet fires first, and the other quasar only fires if the invader survives the first blast. That way, if the invader is a moth -- a lightly armed scout marauder sent in for the sole purpose of getting blown up and draining the quasar cannons -- the first shot should get him and the other quasar does not waste its fuel. If it is a serious invader, he will be stinging from the 3333 battle point shot. If he survives, he is severely weakened for his invasion. Since the other planet has no credits, colonists only on fuel, no transwarp drive, and several thousand fighters, it is not worth his while to take it. And if he does, the planet will not have any fuel, so you won't get blasted by your own quasar. He will also be in poor shape to invade your more heavily-armed Home Planet. Make sure that you have at least one sector of mines and defensive fighters in front of any quasar cannons. That way the small-fry moths can't drain the fuel ore. If you have a few production planets stocked with fuel ore in the sector with your front quasar cannon, you can move fuel from the production planets to the quasar planet to replace what a moth might happen to drain. When he comes back tomorrow and gets hit as hard as he did today, he will get discouraged! F. Level 4 and Beyond After the quasar cannon, a planet gets a Planetary TransWarp Drive, then the last level of the citadel is the Planetary Defense Shielding System. The most vulnerable time of a planet's life, after the computer is completed, is the time between completion of the TransWarp and the completion of the shield system. During that time, an invader can take your planet and TransWarp it right out of your tunnel to his headquarters. Do not start the TransWarp drive unless you know you will be able to start the shield right away, and have several thousand fighters. What are some good ways to use the planetary transwarp? Well, one thing you can do is use it as a massive cargo ship. Load up with organics and equipment from your other planets, if they have any, and transwarp to a class 3 port. Sell off the org and equ, and warp home. If there is more than the port can handle, maybe you want to buy fuel from the port and go to another port to finish it off, then take it back home. Another possibility is warping your Home Planet out of the tunnel to another hiding place if an invader finds you and you think he will be able to take you out. That, however, is not likely to work for long, because someone with those resources will be able to find you again, and take you, and you will have spent the fuel for the quasar. If he has photon capability, however, that fuel is no loss. For the most part, though, the TransWarp is not a huge advantage. The Planetary Defense Shielding System, on the other hand, is a wonderful system for a planet. For one thing, as soon as the system is completed, even before you add any shields, enemies will not be able to scan your planet. Also, each planetary shield (made up of ten regular ship shields) has 20:1 odds. That comes out to 2:1 per purchased shield. Notice that defensive fighters get better odds. When you get the shield system, you will have to pay close attention to the prices of fighters vs. shields at the class 0 ports. If fighters are more than 3:2 the price of shields, buy shields. If less, buy fighters. One thing I do with the shield system is use it as a reservoir of ship shields. When I park for the night I put my ship shields in the planet system because they get better odds there than on my ship. When I leave in the morning for work, I take what I need. That's about it for planets. IX. MAKING MONEY The name of the game is Trade Wars. As in the real world, it is all about making money. Money buys fighters. Your goal is to make as much money as you possibly can. There are three main ways to make money: trading, theft, and planets. A. The Honest Way The Good player has to make the bulk of his money by trading. His goal is to find paired ports and pound them all day. The pairs that he wants to find are: Equipment for Organics -- most profitable 1) Class 1 or Class 5 -- Class 2 or Class 4 Equipment for Fuel -- next most profitable 2) Class 1 or Class 6 -- Class 3 or Class 4 Organics for Fuel -- least profitable 3) Class 2 or Class 6 -- Class 3 or Class 5 As the game progresses, good pairs will get hard to find, especially if there is more than one corporation trading. So make the most of your money early, and do not blow up anything or anyone you do not NEED to blow up. Get as much money in your treasury when the computer is built as you can. It will get hard to find a living out there. When the pairs are pretty much exhausted, the Good player needs to turn to TransWarp trading. Get in your Imperial StarShip, and find all those Class 4 and Class 5 ports not paired with anything that you put fighters in and TWarp from one to the other, buying the fuel to get to the next port from this port, and trading equipment for organics as you go. For example: 100, 300 and 500 are all sectors with standalone Class 4 ports, each with one of your fighters. Sectors 200, 400 and 600 have solo Class 5 ports with fighters. At 100, buy 21 fuel to make the seven hops to 200, and fill up with organics. TWarp to 200, and sell the organics, then buy the 12 holds of fuel to get to sector 300, then fill up with equipment. Then hop to 300 and..... you get the picture. TransWarp trading is not quite as good as trading a good pair next to each other, but it is still quite profitable. One more thing about trading: Always haggle with the ports. Some players will tell you not to haggle, but they are wrong. Haggling has two benefits that are vital for you: you make more money because the port prices do not deteriorate as rapidly as they do if you whack the carriage return at every transaction, and the harder you haggle the less cash you leave in the equipment selling port for evil traders to rob. B. The Way to Riches Evil. Rob and Steal. Sad but true, you make a lot more money stealing than trading in this game. I guess it's like real life again.. Theft is broken down into two acts: Robbing credits and Stealing product. Once your alignment drops to -100, the port menu has a fourth option: (R)ob. Success at thievery is tied to experience. A good safe formula for robbing credits is rob 6 times your experience. If you want to push it however, you can rob ten credits for each experience point, but, hey let's not get too greedy. For stealing product, you can generally take 1 hold of equipment for every 20 experience points. In my experience, I have noticed that when I first turn to Evil ways I have no success stealing product. It is only after a day or so of robbing credits that I can get away with product. I don't know if there really is anything to it, but it seems that way, so I always spend two days draining credits. For robbing credits, TWVIEW has a wonderful tool: the Busiest Ports list. Look up that list and hit all the equipment selling ports on it; they are the ones with cash. Once you have robbed for a couple of days, and the net worth of the ports (the V screen) drops much below 1,000,000, robbing is not worth it. As soon as you have the experience to get away with stealing equipment, devote your turns and energy to running the Steal-Trade Loop. Robbing credits looks great in the beginning, but once those big hoards are gone, you spend so many turns going from port to port for a few thousand credits that you rarely make any more than you would trading. Ah, but stealing equipment, THAT is highly profitable work. With 1500 experience and a StarMaster, 3000 and a Mule or 5000 and a Colonial Transport, you can steal equipment, go to an equipment-buying port, sell the equipment, steal it back, sell it back, steal it back, sell it back.... etc etc until you get busted. At 10-30,000 credits every two turns, you can see how the credits pile up. When you get busted, you lose ten percent of your experience, and one hold for each experience point you would have gained had you succeeded in your theft. If you run the steal-trade loop for a living you will get busted frequently, so you will stay in a certain range of experience, but it is worth it for the money. When you get busted, avoid that port for two weeks. The port remembers you for two weeks, or until someone else gets busted. One player on the Fido echo, Joel Downer (one of the more intelligent and experienced Trade Warriors in the nation), claims that ports are more suspicious, and bust you faster, when someone has just been busted. For instance, you get busted on Monday. Your name stays on the port's (internal -- players don't know this) log for two weeks. If I come in Tuesday to steal, I am more likely to get busted than I would have been the Sunday before you got busted. Once I get busted, you can steal (or trade) again without automatically getting busted, but because my name is now on the log, you are more likely to get busted than you were three days ago. Now for the final plum of stealing equipment: there is a method by which you can earn five experience points selling back to the port almost every time. Each port has a best price for each transaction, and you earn experience points for getting close. If you get within 98% of the best price, you earn 1 experience point, you earn 2 experience for getting 99% of the best price, and you get 5 experience if you hit the best price exactly. The best price changes as you trade a port down, but if you are doing the steal-trade loop, every time you steal the product the quantity goes back to 100% and the best price stays about where it was. Now, some ports have more than one best price, and a few don't have any. The way to hit the best price follows: Buy a Psychic Probe at the Hardware Emporium. When you first sell the equipment to the port, take their first offer and see what the percentage is from the psychic probe. Divide the transaction price by the Probe result, and that is the best price. Example: You have a StarMaster and sell 70 holds of equipment. The port offers 9500 credits. You hit enter and sell, and the P Probe says %93.75 of best price. 9500/.9375=10133 (drop the decimal). So, 10133 is the best price. Next time you come in to sell, check the port's offer. If it is within 10 or 20 of 9500, the best price is the same. Offer 10133. You should get 5 experience points. Now, if this is a port with more than one best price, the port's offer might be more or less than the original first offer of 9500. The best price always goes up or down by a multiple of your holds. Say the second time you port they offer 9550. The offer is almost one set of holds above their offer the first time through, so the best price this time is 10203. If they offer 9630, the best price is 10273. If they offer 9450, the best price is 10063. If you are not sure which price it will be, say they offer 9535 and you can't decide whether to go with 10203 or 10133. Offer the higher number because if you overbid they raise the best price by 30% of your number of holds. Thus, if you offer 10203 and the best price was 10133, the best price is now 10133 + (.30 x 70) = 10133 + 21 = 10154. That's the basic procedure. If it sounds complicated, well, at first it is. Walk through it and try it out. A caveat: this works most of the time. If you just cannot get the 5, go to another port. Remember, figure the price on the first offer of the first time through, compare all future offers to that first one, and raise or lower the best price accordingly. Bid high, and if you have overbid, hit the step up. Try it out. Using the 5-point method (discovered by Eugene Hung, another stalwart of the Fido echo), you can minimize the effects of getting busted. For a while, until your experience hits about 6000 (in a StarMaster), you will gain experience despite getting busted. Once you hit about 6-8000, you will start losing experience steadily, until you get down to 4-5000, then you will stay close. C. Oh Yeah, Planets The last main way of making money is from your planets. One form of money we have already talked about: the fighters produced. The products can also bring money, but until you have your citadel developed to its fullest you should let the produce build up for that. Once you have the citadel fully developed (if you plan on having one on that particular planet), then you can start selling the produce. If you have a port in the same sector, you can sell to that port, or you can build one. I recommend not selling fuel because you want it for quasar cannons, although once you hit 10,000, you may as well sell the daily produce. It doesn't seem to be worth investing too much money in upgrading ports, or in spending a lot of effort on the produce from planets. If you have your production planets just making fuel, you may have some fuel buying ports and sell some, but again, I prefer to keep it for quasar cannons. Use the fighters and be glad. The best way to make money on your planet is to feed the citadel treasury of Home Planet. Get a million credits in early, and leave it. Gradually feed the treasury, maybe make a policy of half the earnings in the treasury and the other half into fighters for defense. Let that 4% interest work for you. Good players, by making use of the citadel interest and the production planets, can supplement their trading income to the point of being competitive with evil players. Evil players, by using the same techniques, can crush everyone. My business partner and I use these techniques to devastating effect. Hopefully, some of you will be using them against us in the near future. ;) D. Other Means Deserving mention, although not recommended as a major part of your money-making endeavors, are a couple other methods of making money. One is the bounty from killing Ferrengi. Yes, the feds pay bounties for Ferrengi fighters and ships destroyed, but rarely will the bounty cover the cost of the fighters. Then there are the bounties for Evil players. They can be nice, but don't stake your game on them. The competent Evil players who rack up the big bounties (I've had them over 2 million credits on me) almost NEVER get blown up by other traders. They cloak every night. If you hit a bad guy, go to StarDock, and count yourself lucky. Then there is the moth's profit: the escape pod is worth 1000 creds more than the scout marauder he trades it in on. This is probably the least recommended way of making a profit. X. STRATEGY AND TACTICS What more is there? This section will mention a few things about conserving and intelligently using your forces. The first tip is never to attack another ship unless you need to for some reason. Blowing up aliens, traders and Ferrengi costs fighters, fighters cost money, and you cannot afford to waste money or fighters. Who is your enemy? Save your force for your enemy. Always try for the best odds. It's better if you can make your enemy try to come for you, and use his fighters against your planetary defenses. Once he has weakened himself, then strike. Another good tactic is to watch the V screen. Let's say you find a planet, and you know there is no citadel on it. Remember where it is, and watch the V screen. When another citadel appears on the screen (the %age will go up), start counting days. Four days later the second level will probably be started and four days after that, they get the computer. On day 7, invade. You get the advantage of the poor odds their sector fighters have, and the next day you will have a computer for your fighters. ;) Sneaky, eh? Whenever possible, use photon missiles for invading planets, and NEVER try to land on a hostile planet without a planet scanner. For photons, choose the StarShip because the Missile Frigate is an extremely limited ship. If you're Evil.... ;) When dealing with mines, you can disrupt them, or go through them. Often I will drive through 99 mines, making half of them explode, then disrupt the rest. Sometimes it pays, because you can only carry 10 disruptors at a time. Be careful of leaving mines behind you when penetrating your enemies' defenses. You may not have enough fighters left on the way out to absorb the damage. More than one invader has bulled his way through four sectors of 99 mines, a couple thousand fighters, taken a quasar shot in our home sector, then had his ship destroyed on the 50 mines he left behind in one sector, and his pod destroyed by the mines left in the next sector. When dealing with Ferrengi, usually the wisest course is to surrender. If you have full holds of equipment or organics they just take the product and leave. Give it to them. If you don't have equipment or organics, they will take 10% of your holds, so if the fighter ratio is on your side you may want to fight. One more piece of advice: when in the Hardware Emporium looking at the goodies, if you can't figure out any good use for one of the products there, think about it some more. Everything there has some good use. I always thought the Psychic Probe was a waste of money. Now I use it all the time. Same with ether probes. XI. CONCLUSION Trade Wars is an awesome game; fast, exciting, and of greater than expected subtlety. It is not an arcade game; it is a strategy game. You win with your mind, and by being willing to do some work. Conserve your forces and you will do better. The guys who blow up everything in sight in the beginning never last long. The guys who quietly rise in the experience charts early without showing on the daily log are doing it by making money. Those are the players who romp in the end. You may want to investigate macros for trading, stealing and the other "work" aspects of the game. Experiment with your comm program's macro language. If you have one with a script language and can figure it out, you may want to write some scripts for trading, etc. The BEST solution for macros is to download COMMO51.ZIP from a local BBS, and use that for your comm program. {COMMO} has a macro programming language that is simple, flexible and powerful. If you already use {COMMO} or if you take my advice and switch to it, you may want to use my macros. The shareware version is pretty good, but the registered version is better. I have macros that haggle at paired ports, haggle for a single transaction, automatically run the 5 point steal-trade loop, rob all the credits from a port, transwarp trade, transwarp colonize, shift materials or colonists from one planet to another, invade planets with photon missiles (especially useful on boards that set the missile wave duration for 15 seconds or less!), etc etc. Check out the shareware version, and if you want the real thing, it is $10. Well, happy trading, good luck, and I hope this file helps. May you prove worthy competition!! -- Frederick R. Polli The Galactic Scourge of Lane County, Oregon