 IAGOWM1.ZIP

 This is part 2 of IAGO'S WAR MANUAL for TradeWars 2002 v1.03 & v1.03d

 CONTENTS:

  (IAGO2)
     BUGS
     MORE BUGS
     PLANET CLONING BUG
     USING BUGS
     MAPPING
     ATTACKS
     FERRENGAL
     COLONISTS

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                               --[ BUGS ]--
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-- by Joel Downer:

This is Joel Downer's Top 14 Bugs list, covering the major bugs with the
exception of the planet cloning bug. Planet cloning will not work in
version 1.03d, and makes playing 1.03 a pretty useless endeavor. Sysops
can upgrade to 1.03d without reseting the game, and that is highly
recommended.

Well, giving a list of *ALL* the bugs in 1.03(d) would be impractical:
there are over a hundred of them. What I can do, though, is list the
thirteen or fourteen that make the biggest difference to the game.

1. THE STEAL-SELL CYCLE: Stealing equipment from ports is a very good
   way to make money in this version. You can sell equipment to a port,
   steal it back, and repeat the cycle without leaving the sector for
   very substantial profits.

2. THE HOLDS BUG: If you tell the game that you want to steal 365 units
   of equipment or 660 units of organics (never mind how many holds you
   have), and you don't have high enough experience to get away with
   stealing that much, you will get busted and *gain 32 holds* rather
   than losing any. To learn the value of this bug, try buying a
   Colonial Transport with base holds, "holds-bug" until you're up to
   282 holds, and sell it back at the StarDock.

3. THE (CLASSIC) MEGAHOLDS BUG: Using the holds bug, it's possible to
   load your ship up to its normal maximum plus 32. Unfortunately, if you
   try to use those 32 extra holds, you will lose them the first time you
   dock at a port. The megaholds bug is a solution. Load your ship with
   colonists, and steal *one unit* of fuel ore or organics from a port.
   Drop off the colonists on Terra. As long as you don't get busted,
   surrender to the Ferrengi, jettison cargo, or try to trade or pick up
   the commodity you used to "lock in" the extra holds, you can keep
   them and use them for trading or stealing.

4. THE (SUPER) MEGAHOLDS BUG: So, max + 32 isn't good enough for you,
   eh? <grin>  Another bug allows you to load your ship with any number
   of holds, if you have the patience. First, use the "classic"
   megaholds bug to get up to max + 32. Now, fill your holds with
   colonists. Your next job is to lose most of your holds. One way to
   do this is to surrender repeatedly to the Ferrengi, but the most
   turn-efficient way is to get busted repeatedly: trying to steal 364
   holds of equipment can take away 32 holds a pop. You must not throw
   away *all* your holds, but the more you lose, the faster the process
   goes. Once you're very close to zero, go to a port where you haven't
   been busted and steal one unit of a commodity you don't want to trade
   (probably organics or fuel ore). You've just created some "imaginary
   holds"; you can now go back to Sol, buy some *real* holds, load those
   holds up with colonists, and start getting busted again...

5. THE CORPORATE MEGAHOLDS BUG: This bug allows you to lock in
   "artificial holds" like the ones created by the megaholds bug, but it
   can create *any number* of holds (up to 32,767), it takes only a
   *few* turns, it doesn't cost nearly as much experience as the
   super megaholds bug, *and* it can create tons of free equipment on
   your planet. To use it, you need a teammate and a citadel
   that's safe to park in. Your planet must have some equipment on
   it, though not nearly as much as it will have when you're done. <g>

   First of all, make sure that your teammate is in the citadel and that
   her ship is *unlocked*; her holds should also be empty. Unlock your
   own ship (they are locked by default) by (R)emaining in the Citadel,
   and saying (Y)es when it asks about trading ships. Once you've unlocked
   your ship, you can immediately go back into the game.

   Now you need to use the (A)ll command out on the planet's surface to
   take all the equipment you can carry. Go into the (C)itadel,
   (E)xchange Ships, say (Y)es to confirm, (L)eave the Citadel, and
   (D)isplay the planet. Go back into the (C)itadel, (E)xchange, say
   (Y)es, (L)eave, take (A)ll, and (D)isplay the planet once more.
   Strangely enough, you'll now have twice as many goods loaded onto
   your ship as you have cargo holds.

   If you wanted, you could now leave the planet and "lock in" the extra
   holds the same way you did with the Megaholds and Super Megaholds
   bugs -- but let's get greedy. Start repeating the last key sequence
   -- "CEYLAD" -- to load your ship with more and more equipment.
   Something strange will happen every time you change into your
   teammate's ship and take (A)ll: his ship will be loaded with a
   *negative* quanity of equipment, and equipment will magically be
   *created* on the planet.

   I usually continue this process until my ship has about 25,000
   equipment on it, and my teammate's has 25,000 empty holds. I can now
   "lock in" my holds with organics, pick up some fuel ore, and
   TransWarp around the galaxy selling excess equipment. I could use my
   teammate's ship for moving colonists or trading anything *except*
   equipment.

6. THE SHIELD BUG: A Level V citadel with 1639 or more planetary
   shields is impossible to invade. Attempts to destroy those shields
   are futile. That's all, folks. <g>

7. FIGHTER/SHIELD OVERLOAD BUG: Ships have built-in limits for fighters
   and shields -- the Scout Marauder is only supposed to carry 250
   fighters and 100 shields. If you use negative numbers when
   transferring fighters and shields through the corporate transfer
   menus, however, those limits don't apply. If you have a teammate
   *take* you a negative number *from* you instead of giving you a positive
   number, he/she can load your ship with up to 32,767 shields and 32,767
   fighters. (For a faster way to overload with shields, try using
   negative numbers in your citadel. <g>)  However you do it, be warned:
   if you dock at a port with extra fighters and shields, you will lose them!

8. SO MUCH FOR STARDOCK!: A Scout Marauder, overloaded with 32,767
   fighters and at least 20,000 shields using the methods outlined
   above, has very good odds of destroying StarDock or any of the Class
   0 ports. Just load the ship up and attack: *DON'T* break off your
   attack until you're out of fighters, and you have about 2-in-3 odds
   of success.

9. THE MORONIC FERRENGI: The game makes neutralizing the Ferrengi very,
   very easy. All you need to do to insulate yourself against their
   attacks, for example, is carry one fighter and many shields. When a
   Ferrengi attacks you, he will only do 0-2 damage points at a time.
   Even worse: to knock the Ferrengi completely out of the game, all
   you have to do is destroy the fighters in their home sector and
   deploy 3,000 of your own fighters in the sector. From that point on,
   they won't regenerate, even if they still own Ferrengal: all that'll
   be left are the Ferrengi already wandering around the galaxy. In the
   first few weeks of the game, this tactic costs less than a million
   credits.

10. THE INFALLIBLE CLOAK: Buy cloaks. They're a great bargain. In
   1.03d, it's impossible to attack a cloaked ship, and regardless of
   what the docs say, cloaks *do not* fail. Compared to the cost of
   being blown up, 25,000 credits a day is trivial.

11. SHIELDS AND P-MISSILES: The docs are also wrong about the effect of
   shields on the p-wave. P-missiles *do* work against shielded planets.
   They also work against shielded ships and ships parked in FedSpace.

12. THE USELESS SENTINEL: Don't buy the Tholian Sentinel. Period. The
   Sentinel is supposed to have 4:1 odds when defending a planet against
   an invader. This feature doesn't work. If an invader attacks the
   *ship* first -- rather than trying to land and *then* attacking the
   ship -- the Sentinel only gets 1:1 combat odds.

13. MANY FERRENGI AND ALIENS: When a sysop rerolls the game with
   BIGBANG, several files (including CONVO.DAT, WALLDAT.DAT, and, most
   important, FERRENGI.DAT and ALIENS.DAT) are not properly initialized.
   Some new games will be swarming with powerful aliens and Ferrengi.
   Sysops should remember to delete these four files when restarting
   games.

14. THE "6666" BUG: Always set your military reaction level to 0% if
   you have more than 12,000-13,000 fighters on your planet. If an
   invader attacks without a p-missile, the invader has more than 26,000
   fighters on his ship, and your MRL is greater than zero, *all* of your
   fighters will attack him and will be destroyed -- even if you have
   many more fighters than you should need to kill the invader.

Again, this list is *anything* but complete: it's just an attempt to
outline the strategically most important bugs. Hope it's useful.

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                            --[ MORE BUGS ]--
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-- by Joel Downer:

Many people have asked me about a complete list of TW bugs. I've never
prepared something like this, and I doubt I ever will. What I usually
post in response to that question is a list of the fourteen most
tactically important bugs in the game -- bugs like the shield bug, the
megaholds bugs, the holds bug, steal-sell, the fighter overload bug,
etc.

Gerard Droege and I also prepared a list of more minor bugs last year,
in response to a request from Gary Martin. We tried to skip the most
obvious problems (already listed for Gary by Kris Lewis), and come up
with some of the more obscure errors. At that time, in a few hours of
brainstorming, we came up with 52 bugs (again, not including the most
obvious ones). If we had more hours and lots of energy to repeat the
process now, I would estimate that we could double the length of the
list.

I recently found this list on an old archive disk. After I sent it to
Gary, I backed it up and forgot about it. I received word from Kris
that Gary had fixed all of the problems on the list in "just a few
hours" of coding. Given that assertion, I'm surprised to see some of
the same problems cropping up in the 2.0 beta. I think that reposting
the list now might be helpful to the beta team, and might satisfy some
curiosity on the echo.

                    Additional bugs in Version 1.03

               compiled by Joel Downer and Gerard Droege

1.   shield overload using negative numbers in citadel.
2.   Alien % alignment bug in V-Screen in early game.
3.   All evil aliens appear as annoyances instead of by true rank.
4.   Good aliens' rank is unrelated to true experience.
5.   Cloak is 100% reliable (vs. what the docs say).
6.   Permanent p-missile -- if you quit the game while a p-missile is
      in effect, the q-cannon will sometimes fail until another
      p-missile fired. (?unverified).
7.   holds bug (stealing 365, losing -32 holds)
8.   p-missiles are not affected by planetary shielding system (vs. the
      information in the docs and the menu screens).
9.   player kicked out of the game when blown up destroying a
      planet (as if ship was destroyed; actually in *** Escape Pod ***).
10.  player kicked out interrupting sector display invading Ferrengal
11.  TEDIT frequently hangs when accessed directly after TW in local
      mode (locking up computer).
12.  game flakes out after players have more than 10-12 billion credits
13.  kill-kill cycle for experience and credits
14.  repetitive colonist dump
15.  cost for changing name follows no reasonable pattern -- always
      resets to 100 credits when player exits game
16.  Repeated insults after unreasonable price -- you keep getting
      "Make a real offer" stuff even when you get back to negotiating
17.  Port quantities change when thrown out of port (violation of law
      of conservation of matter . . . ). Evil player can use this bug
      magically to "create" commodities that otherwise aren't available
      (excellent for moving planets out of contested areas).
18.  Allowed to steal from port under construction (bug?).
19.  5 point stealing cycle
20.  Ability to protect yourself from Ferrengi by carrying 0 fighters a
      many shields.
21.  integer overloads on alignment (when placing large bounties and
      killing many fighters), with prices at Class 0 ports and in
      hardware emporium. (When carrying millions of credits, Class 0
      reports that you can buy a virtually random number of fighters and
      shields between 32,000 and -32,000, depending on amount and ship
      type.)
22.  Corporate planet scan must be done twice to get correct
      information.
23.  Corporate planet scan confuses current planet record about level
      of credits: makes the game think that current planet has same
      credit level as the last planet on the list.
24.  Quasar cannon only consumes half as much ore on atmosphere fire as
      it should.
25.  No way to interrupt ship catalog -- end up getting 19 ship lists.
26.  Ether probe "forgets" current sector and self-destructs without
      reaching objective. (Plot course, move, then fire. It'll get
      mixed up virtually every time.)
27.  Ether probe that cannot find target clears avoids without
      prompting the user.
28.  Downloading CIM information before plotting a course and doing a
      port report causes game to crash.
29.  "planet-busting" for experience
30.  can't interrupt failed course plot (e.g., with {Esc} key); takes
      up to 1.5 minutes on some systems.
31.  BIGBANG forces sysop to reinsert code (bug?)
32.  BIGBANG doesn't always reset aliens list, Ferrengi, or tavern
      conversation
33.  Getting murdered in the underground resets experience, alignment;
      doesn't disturb assets. (bug?)
34.  Federation-posted bounty in the log is extremely inaccurate (small
      percentage of final bounty).
35.  Sysop cannot cloak ships using TEDIT. (May not be a bug, but it's
      *VERY* annoying.
36.  Space bar aborts *display* of planet scanner, but doesn't abort
      the scan. Scanners turn out to be an enormous nuisance.
37.  Player penalized for not attacking an enemy when he/she is
      carrying zero fighters (and cannot attack).
38.  Possible to steal from port that hasn't been finished yet. This
      may not be a bug, but combined with the fact that upgrading a
      port under construction directly increases *quantities available
      to steal* from the port, it makes the game silly sometimes.
39.  Docs bug. For some strange reason, the help files suggest that it
      is possible to create more than one port in a single sector.
      Unless we're all missing something important, that's not so.
40.  Last six characters of personal messages and corporate memos are
      truncated. Quite confusing for new players.
41.  Every time a player who has the rank Fleet Admiral (but who does
      not have 32,000 experience) does something to earn experience
      he/she gets "promoted" to Fleet Admiral again.
42.  "Scan sector" from citadel rarely works, even when enemy forces
      are deployed in the sector.
43.  When a player is destroyed by a corbomite reaction when destroying
      another ship, the name of the player/alien/Ferrengi piloting the
      other ship is lost and replaced by the name of a Nebula or other
      random item.
44.  When a player carrying colonists is accosted by Ferrengi, his/her
      amount of holds is decremented, but his/her number of holds of
      colonists stays the same. (Ends up with more holdsful of items
      than holds.)
45.  (May be bug and may not be.)  When a player tries to warp to a
      distant site that is avoided (accessing the course-plotting
      system), a warning system repeatedly interferes with the warp. On
      the other hand, the avoids system will *NOT* warn a player about a
      warp into an adjacent avoided sector. (This feature is hardest on
      novice players.)
46.  Mail and log items frequently scroll off a 24-line display,
      despite built-in pause feature. Best guess: the counter function
      miscounts three-line items as two-line items.
47.  When a CEO is deleted for non-play, the corporation continues to
      exist. All players can desert the corporation, and at least for a
      time, the corporation continues to exist *with no members*.
48.  Player can frustrate traces by the Grimy Trader by naming his/her
      ship "The Merchant Marines." (bug? certainly *useful*...)
49.  Player can acquire list of unexplored ports by changing ship name
      to "The Merchant Marines," and doing a Trader Trace on him/herself
      (again, lends itself to some *very* handy applications...).
50.  Overflow in Tavern prices. When a (silly) sysop sets a very high
      date, players are *paid* for asking for the Underground password
      and eating and drinking in the Pub.
51.  When a player is deleted from a game by the sysop, and is parked
      in a citadel at the time of deletion, his/her ship is still
      considered available for trade. Furthermore, if the planet is
      destroyed, the message "[PLAYER NAME] GOT BLOWN UP TOO!" appears
      in the log.
52.  Players can neutralize the StarDock as a trading point (one solid
      attack with 4,000 fighters in a BattleShip will do it), and it can
      be upgraded. This element is primarily important because of the
      steal-sell cycle, which evidently won't be an issue in the next
      version anyway...

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               --[ THE PLANET CLONING BUG (v1.03 only) ]--
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-- by Joel Downer:

                               SUMMARY

2002 version 1.03 (and before) has a problem with corporate or personal
planet scans run from citadels. Running a scan from a citadel makes the
game think you're on the *last planet listed on the scan*, rather than
the planet you're actually on. Usually, this confusion is temporary.
However, if you upgrade the citadel of the planet you're on immediately
after you do the scan, you can make the confusion permanent, "cloning"
the last planet on the list and everything on it (including, most
important, the fighters and treasury). By "reconfusing" the planet and
repeating the cycle, YOU CAN CREATE AS MUCH MONEY AS YOU LIKE WITHOUT
SPENDING TURNS OR CASH.

                             HOW TO DO IT

To use this bug, you need two planets with citadels, at least one
*below* level 5 (as a level 5 citadel may not be upgraded). The bug
works best when the two planets are in the same sector so that you can
move money back and forth without spending any turns. Both planets
*must* have a citadel or upgrading *from* a citadel won't be possible.

Tip:  Say you have five corporate planets. Two, in sector 50, have
level 2 citadels. One, in sector 283, has a level 4 citadel. Two, in
sector 847, have level 5 citadels. If you do a corporate planet scan
from a citadel, the game will think you're on a level 5 planet and won't
let you upgrade. The solution is to go to sector 50, claim the two
planets *personal*, and do the cloning bug there with the *personal*
planet scan. The other planets won't appear on the personal scan, so
you can do the whole thing from the same sector.

The planet that appears last on the list (either your personal or
corporate planet scan) needs to be ready for upgrade -- it must have all
the colonists and materials necessary. Let's say for future discussion
that you have *personal* planets with two level 2 citadels in the same
sector. (This strategy will work just as well with corporate
planets, we're just trying to keep things simple.)  The second one on
the list has all the goods needed to go to level 3. The first planet
that appears on the list is stripped bare.

Put all your fighters on the second planet's surface, put all your money
in the second planet's treasury, and put all your shields in the shield
bank (you can do this even if the planet isn't level 5 yet). Blast off
the planet and land on the first planet. Go into the citadel, access
the computer menu, and do a personal planet scan. When you quit the
computer menu, the game will tell you that you have money on the planet
-- the exact amount you put on the second planet!

Don't get greedy and try to remove money from the treasury right away,
or it will disappear. Instead, start the *upgrade* on the planet.
Doing so starts it on its way to level 3, but it also permanently
changes the planet so that it's identical to the other planet. (The
only things that aren't "cloned" are planet number and location, if the
planets happen to be in different sectors.)

Now comes the fun part. Take all the money out of the treasury, take
the shields from the shield bank, and pick up your fighters from the
planet. Leave the planet, drop everything off on the *second* planet,
and DO THE WHOLE PROCESS AGAIN!  Because you're making the first planet
on the list *think* that it's the same as the second planet (which
hasn't been upgraded), you can "start an upgrade" on the first planet as
many times as you like in a single day. If you move everything you've
got to the second planet before each upgrade, your money, fighters, and
shields grow at a geometric rate (100,000, 200,000, 400,000, 800,000,
1,600,000, 3,200,000, 6,400,000, 12,800,000, and so on...).

                             LIMITATIONS

Be forewarned that having more than a couple billion credits on your
ship, or more than about ten billion credits on a planet, will make the
game extremely unstable. The game may even crash and prevent you from
landing on your planets. If you're going to use this bug, use it to
make a couple billion credits at a time; spend them, and *then* create
more as needed.

Other than that, this bug has precious few limitations. Using a macro,
you can go from 100 credits to about 10 billion (the most you can safely
make without risking a complete game crash) in about five minutes. You
can also use this bug to "instant-upgrade" planets from level I to level
IV, so it could be a way to create a large armadda of TransWarpable
planets; but the money is by far the most important issue. If you have
a billion credits when no one else does, you should be able to dominate
the game completely in a matter of a day or two.

                       HOW TO PREVENT THIS BUG

If you're a sysop who wants a successful game, or a player who wants
serious competition, you will definitely want to fix this bug. Luckily,
a fix is very easy to come by. 2002103D.ZIP is an authorized update to
2002 that completely (as far as I have been able to determine) fixes the
planet cloning bug. (I have heard rumors that there is a way to clone
in 1.03d, but I have heard no confirmation or evidence, so I currently
regard those rumors as false.)

1.03d is a "drop-in" replacement that doesn't require a game reset and
adds DESQview timeslicing support to the game. It is incompatible with
older utilities that modify the .EXE's and .OVR's of the game, but
newer, 1.03d-compatible versions of these utilities are now available.

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                           --[ USING BUGS ]--
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     There is a "religious war" which has sprung up regarding the use of 
the various bugs in TradeWars 2002. Some people call bug use "cheating," 
but think nothing of zinging about in the universe with one ftr and max 
shields or running sell/steal or using any of a dozen or more other ack- 
nowledged bugs. Others quote Ender Wiggins, saying, "Use what they give 
you."

     Be this as it may, it is surely not improper to make reference to 
these things in order that forewarned may be forearmed, at the very least. 
Many otherwise inexplicable happenings can be shown to not be cases involv- 
ing sysop intervention with TEDIT or AEDIT (which is true cheating), but 
instead merely someone taking advantage of yet another relatively unknown 
bug. Also, since about the only (semi) valid charge regarding these things 
is that, by and large, they are undocumented, documenting them will, at 
least in my eyes, remove this last impediment to their use.

     With that said, lets examine some of the more useful and popular bugs 
and how they might best be used:


-- Originally by David White:

To get and KEEP the hold bug of 32 additional holds;

1)  Get busted robbing 365 holds of equ. to lose -32 holds, leaving the
    ISS with 182 holds.
2)  Go to Earth and get a load of 182 colonists. Your inventory should
    show 150 total holds - 182 colonists. (The bug we'll be taking
    advantage of is, if you were to port NOW, you wouldn't technically
    lose any holds; instead, you'd be ask if you want to buy -32 of
    whatever product was being sold.)
3)  Before taking your colonists to your planet, stop at a sector with a
    port that sells a product you DON'T PLAN ON USING ANYTIME SOON (I
    usually choose Org., since I'll want Equ. for steal/selling, and Ore
    for T-warping).
4)  Port, choose S)teal product, and choose the product you don't plan on
    using. (I'll use Org. in my examples). It'll ask "How many holds to
    want to swipe [-32]?"  Just steal 1 unit of Org. You'll get the usual
    "Success!" message, though the Org. won't show up on your inventory.
5)  Continue to your planet and drop the colonists off.

At this point, you can safely port and deal with Ore and Equ. using 182
holds. The one unit of Org. you stole earlier will keep your extra 32
holds from being lost. Especially useful, you can now steal/sell 182
holds of Equ. or Ore. (You can also continue to steal credits from
ports, transport colonists, etc. without losing the 32 holds.)

However, do NOT try to buy or steal Org. (or pick it up off your
planet) or you'll drop back to 150 holds. (Always answer 0 when it
asks "How many holds of Organics do you want to buy? [-32]?") I don't
know why, except TW thinks you have -32 holds of Org after you
stole 1 unit, and that will be ruined if you try to get more Org.
If you really want to be dealing in Org, choose another product for
step #4. 

Also, do NOT try jettisoning anything.  This seems to also clear out the
-32 holds of Org., leaving you with 150 empty holds.

Unfortunately, you can't rob 365 equ. and get an ADDITIONAL 32 holds. :)


-- Originally by Joel Downer:

The bug that makes this trick possible is *not* the infamous holds bug,
which allows you to gain rather than lose cargo holds when you try to
steal 365 units of equipment. You can use the holds bug to load your
ship with max + 32 holds, but if you want any more, you'll actually have
to *buy* them.

HOW TO OVERLOAD YOUR SHIP WITH HOLDS:

To load a ship with extra holds, you must be evil. You may choose any
ship, but the best choices are the Imperial StarShip (because of
TransWarp drive and combat capabilities), the Corporate FlagShip
(because of TransWarp drive), and the Scout Marauder (because of turn
rate and combat odds). If you're using a FlagShip or Scout Marauder,
you can get a lot done with relatively little money. If you're using a
StarShip, or if you want to load *any* ship with more than 250 holds,
you'll need a great deal of money.

The best way to start is to get your ship to max + 32 using the holds
bug:  let's say you're now in a FlagShip, and you now have 117 holds.
Go to Terra, and pick up a full load of 117 colonists. Now, find the
nearest port that *sells* equipment. Try to steal 364 (*yes, THREE
HUNDRED SIXTY-*FOUR*) holds of equipment. You will lose 32 cargo holds,
but, due to a bug in the game, you will still be carrying 117 colonists.
Next, find a port that sells organics (you don't want to use fuel ore,
because using fuel ore will make your ship incapable of TransWarp; you
might choose differently if you're overloading a Scout). Steal one hold
of organics (what you're actually getting is -64 holds of organics, but
don't worry about this). When you're done, you will have 53 cargo holds, 
and 117 holds full of colonists, with zero empty holds. Now you can go to 
Sol and buy 32 more cargo holds: doing so will leave you with 85 cargo 
holds, 117 holds full of organics, and 32 *empty* holds, for a total of
149 cargo holds.

You can pick up more colonists and repeat as often as necessary. I'm
not aware of any limit on the number of cargo holds, but two warnings:
(a) the price of holds increases geometrically as you buy more and more
-- buying a thousand holds would cost millions upon millions of credits,
and (b) you need to think carefully about how many holds you can effect- 
ively *use*.

The caveats about this trick are the same as for loading your ship
with max + 32: if you surrender to a Ferrengi, get busted, get blown
up, or try to buy or sell the commodity you used to "cement" your extra
holds (usually organics, sometimes fuel ore), you'll lose them. Obviously, 
if you're using a heavily overloaded ship for the steal-sell cycle, you're 
going to lose a great deal of money each time you get busted, because 
you're going to have to repeat all the busts and repurchase all of those 
holds. However, (a) with the right combinations, the risk can be *very* 
worthwhile, and (b) I can think offhand of many other interesting uses for 
this bug.


-- by Jim Pittman:

 DG> What is the CT megahold loop?

To do a proper megahold loop, a la Nightstalker, you run the <R>obbing
spree option on the TWVIEW OFFLINE to set up a closed loop of 8 ports
starting at Stardock. Then purchase a CT plus 18 holds. Hit each of the
8 ports stealing 365 eq or 660 org, getting busted for -32 holds each
time. You will then have 282 holds on your CT and can get around 700k
for it when you trade it in at Stardock. Have a team mate run a loop
before you log on again and you can do it each day.

I like to start my day in a Starmaster (or a Scout) for the turns, do
some trading, waste some aliens to rebuild exp and -align (you lose it
when you are busted so much), then when I'm down to CT turns, run my
loop. You can usually run two different loops per day with CT turns,
see how many after you have set up your loops with OFFLINE. That gives
a two man corp almost 4 million a day, depending on what they do with
the Starmaster. Then, when you sell your CT the second time (or third
if you have the turns) be sure to buy a high turns ship to start the day 
tomorrow. And don't forget the cloak.


-- by Leonard Adolph:

 JV> Hey, I'm new to this echo, and missed the post on the -32 holds bug...
 JV> Could you explain this one to me? Thanks.

If you are able to steal (-100 alignment or lower) you can attempt to
steal 365 holds of equipment or 660 holds of organics (the amounts are a
little variable but those are the numbers I first learned and still use)
at a port that has at least that much available (usually selling the
stuff). If your experience is not so high that you could actually get
away with those amounts you will be busted, fined -32 holds and
penalized +32 alignment.

Now the good stuff. Find 7-8 ports where you can do this quickly and do
it in a brand new Colonial Transport. With 8 ports hit this way you will
end up with 32 holds more than the ship can normally hold. If you port
your holds will fall back to the maximum the ship can carry. However, if
you trade in such a ship in the Shipyards you will be paid over 700,000
credits for it. To run a complete route you will need to have your
alignment down to at least -324 before you start. You will be penalized
+32 alignment at each of the first 7 ports leaving you with the -100
needed to hit port number 8.


-- by Jim Bianchi:

    One thing not mentioned above (or anywhere, for that matter) is that
it IS possible to steal product from class 0 ports. Typically there will
be only 1 or 3 holds of each product on the docks but hey, you only need 
one hold to "lock in" your new holds. Next time you're evil and pull up to 
a class 0 port (ANY class 0 port), hit "P." You won't be offered <R>ob as 
an option, but if you hit "R" anyway, you'll be offered the familiar "rob/ 
steal" menu. Knowing this can make holds bugging really convenient at, say, 
Terra, where you have a source of colonists (and a place to put them when 
you're done with them) and a port from which you can get both the single 
hold of product needed to cement in the new holds and the new holds them- 
selves. 

     Another alternative might be to later on in the game twarp one of your 
planets to Rylos or Alpha Centauri to make colonists easily avail and use 
the class 0 port there for these purposes. 

     Now if I can figger a way to steal ftrs or shields..


-- by John Fleming:

Here are some docs on the Corporate Mega Holds bug that I keep on file.

The Corporate Megaholds Bug

    The commands from the planet meny are: CRYY...then...ACEYLD...CEYLAD 
...CEYLAD...CEYLAD...etc. Some sort of citadel is required, and you'll need 
another corporate member in the citadel with a ship with trade capability 
that's unlocked. The initial CRYY is to leave the game with your ship un-  
locked, else once you've exchanged, YOUR ship likely will be locked. After 
you've done this, leave the planet and steal one hold of fuel or organics 
and the holds are locked in. Don't trade any of the commodity that you use 
to lock the holds in with. If you jettison cargo or surrender to a Ferrengi 
the holds will disappear. I'd suggest carrying zero fighters if possible 
but have carried up to 5 fighters on my Scout. Flee from the Ferrengi until 
you're ready to lose the holds. You will sustain minimal damage from them.
They will block your path, however you can get around them. I have had up 
to 3500 holds, but probably 32267 is possible. The amount of holds you get 
is dependent on the amount of equipment you have on the planet. The bug 
generates some equipment and organics can be used as well, if you're wil- 
ling to lock in with fuel. You cannot sell the holds but can use them for 
colonizing planets and trading.

    I'd suggest starting with trading pairs that trade equipment and fuel 
only trading as much as you can. Then switching hold configuration and 
trading equipment and organic pairs more lightly, trading 280 to 500 holds 
per trade. This will give trading pairs a chance to regenerate product 
within a few days. Then Steal credits at the ports where you've traded. If 
you get busted you'll lose your holds but you can CM again. Of course with 
experience points you could drastically increase profits during steal sell 
loops. With 5000 experience a popular formula (TWHELP Brandon Bannerman) 
would allow for theft of 250 holds per turn. Also, you could sell several 
thousand in one turn. The legitimate max of 85 holds per 2 turns(about 1000 
per 9 turns) is increased to 2000 holds in 9 turns by stealing 250x8 holds
and selling 2000. This doubles your profits without extra turns however, 
more turns are available than those allowed a Corp. Flag.

    The bug is very useful for colonizing and upgrading planets. With 2450 
holds you could populate two planets with 2 million colonists each and have 
room for enough organics and equipment for upgrade in two trips. Of course, 
Fuel is required too, which would require changing configuration or waiting 
awhile.

    Havoc Gunstars are the ship of choice for many of the CMH users. They 
have Transwarp capability with a fair turn rate. Many ships can be used, 
all except the Corporate Flag or ISS. I use TWVIEW94 to identify my intend- 
ed trades for a session. I'll identify about ten pairs for a trading run in
a Scout with 200 turns (100 base turn rate). So far I have not explored all 
possibilitys of the CMH. This should be enough to get you started or at 
least explain why those guys in the Havoc Gunstars are so rich.

  I
  <Info>

  Trader Name    : Enemy of the People Deadeye Dick
  Rank and Exp   : 7350 points, Alignment=-5306 Demonic
  Times Blown Up : 1
  Corp           # 3, Ghost Shirt Society
  Ship Name      : no really,
  Ship Info      : Sverdlov BattleShip Ported=17 Kills=19
  Date Built     : 04:04:02 AM Sat Feb 09, 2005
  Current Sector : 635
  Turns left     : 67
  Total Holds    : 55 - Empty=5001
  Fighters       : 7007
  Shield points  : 542
  Corbomite Level: 22
  Cloaking Device: 2                Ether Probes   : 19
  Mine Disruptors: 10
  LongRange Scan : Holographic Scanner
  Credits        : 81,353

  Command [TL=00:52:06] (?=Help)?
  ...

This how your ship will look. Also, saw another combo of commands that I
haven't tried: ACEYLACEYLD...CEYLAD...CEYLAD...that may generate more
Equipment. You can make 1-2 million easy.


-- by Nathan Clark:

A variant of the PC bug, one which works in v1.03d, will allow you to 
restock fuel on a planet as if by magic.

This bug is like the PC bug, but can be used with 1.03d. Claim a planet 
with whatever product you want personal, then land on a planet and enter 
<C>itadel <C>omputer <Y>list planets <Q>uit <L>eave <A>ll. If the planet 
you listed has 10,000 ore the planet you're on will have 10,000 ore. You 
get as much as you want by repeating the process. It works best with the 
65xxx CMH's (for obvious reasons) and only works if you say <A>ll right 
away.


-- by Albin Gersich:

 I have recently seen a number of messages asking about the 6666 bug.
Here is the info.

 The bug is related to the number of fighters on the attackers ship
when the planetary defense fighter attack routine is entered. If the
ship has 26215 or more fighters on it AND the planetary military
reaction level is anything but 0 then ALL fighters will attack, not
just the percentage the reaction is set for. If the ship has 26214
or less fighters the planetary fighters react as you would expect
with only the set percentage attacking.

 The number of shields on the ship has no effect on triggering the bug,
only the number of fighters counts. You can enter the sector and start
the attack with more fighters and lose some when attacking shields or
to quasar cannon blasts, but the number that counts is how many are left
when it gets to the planetary fighter attack routine. This will happen
for all ships and for all citadels of level 2 or higher. Any non-zero
reaction level will have the bug, even 1%. Using a photon will stop the
bug because it forces the military reaction level to 0% during the wave.

 Now for the real kicker... The planet will lose ALL its fighters, not
just the number required to destroy the ship. Normally when you set the
reaction level to 100% you will lose enough fighters to destroy the
attacking ship (or all of them if there are not enough) and any left
over will remain on the planet. When this bug takes effect every fighter
on the planet is gone. Even if there are 30,000 fighters on the planet,
which is more than enough at 2:1 offensive odds to take out any of the
standard TW ships with 26215 fighters, they will ALL disappear. Except
for the quasar the planet will be wide open.

 I originally ran across this bug after someone told me to set the
planetary military reaction level to 1% because some funny things
happen when it is set to 0%. While doing some testing to understand
citadels I came across this bug when I was testing a level 5 and
thought it was associated with it. I have since determined the fine
details of the bug. Although a limit of 26214 is a strange number for
a bug to appear I think it is interesting that when converted to hex
it is 6666. I wonder if Gary had a devilish influence when he was
writing this part of the code.

---
     But what if there are "unbugging" utilities in use? One of these is 
TWUNBUG by Albin Gersich (the author of TWCAPD and TWASSIST). TWUNBUG is 
a superb util for trapping such as the "cloaked ship exchange," the "player 
#2" and the "heir to the throne" bugs, but the general consensus seems to 
be that AEDIT does a much better job of dealing with the various holds and 
shield/ftr overloading bugs. Whatever, here's a msg that shows how one ent- 
erprising player got around TWUNBUG's holds bug checks.


-- by TOM ROLLINS:

> TWUNBUG will assess a holds bug usage penalty. This
> could be a warning, getting put into an escape pod,
> or getting an escape pod and locked out of the game
> for up to 5 days. It will let small usage of the holds
> bug go through but not serious usage.

I was playing in a TWUNBUG game where I used the Holds Bug as much as I 
could. I would kill myself by the end of the day (stardock underground, 
attack Zyrain, attack a port).

The penalty was not applied to someone with a "Ship Destroyed" status. In 
this way I could avoid the penalty (kind of like what people try with the 
IRS) by pushing it into the future.

I would start each day in a scout and do what I could. I had to keep every- 
thing as corp material so fighters would not turn rogue.

My opponents were shocked at how many fighters a "Ship Destroyed" player 
could aquire in a bug-proof TWUNBUG game.


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
                           --[ MAPPING ]--
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

     The latest innovation in TradeWars seems to be Level Diagram generat- 
ion. The excitement over this was initiated by Dan Roseen's report that 
Albin Gersich had developed a utility with which he was able to 1) map 99% 
of the universe, 2) correctly locate SD, and 3) correctly locate Rylos and 
Alpha Centauri, all within 15 mins of logging on to a new game and without 
moving from sector 1! Albin is currently refining this utility and it is 
s'posedly to be released to (rather impatiently) waiting TradeWars gamers 
as an "early christmas present."      


-- by David Myers:

 SH> Ok. I was hoping it would come across on the echo
 SH> eventually, but since it hasn't I'll ask. What is a
 SH> level diagram? Just something people made up in my
 SH> three and a half month absence to confuse me? :)

     A level diagram is generated when you plot courses from
     a selected sector (called a root) to all other sectors
     in the universe and back again. What you end up with are
     course plots (that I convert into a .SCT file), a series
     of distances from your root, and a list of sectors that are
     extreme to your root (i.e., not found on any path to any other
     sector).

     What are the advantages of a level diagram?

     1) You don't have to move, and yet you can still map most
     of the warps in the game.

     2) multiple level diagrams increase warp coverage in the game
        approximately as follows:

        # LDs     % total warps
-----------------------------------
        1           78-80
        2           90-91
        3           95-96

     3) Since the vast majority of sectors on the extreme lists are
        dead-ends, you get a handy list of dead-end candidates, useful
        for locating planets. Alternatively, you can use this list to
        hunt down your opponent's planets.

     4) A level diagram generated at stardock creates a list of extreme
        sectors that is the optimal list of eprobe targets to insure
        100.0% coverage of the TW universe.

     5) A couple LDs give enough information to locate stardock and
        class 0 planets.

     I've worked out a technique similar to a level diagram that I've
     been calling a variable root algorithm. A variable root algorithm
     increases the coverage from 80% of all warps to 93% of all warps
     and does so in the same amount of time (15 min at 14.4k). So, if
     I wanted to find stardock in a modern game, I wouldn't use FINDSGA;
     I'd use the variable root algorithm and my program CLASSZER from
     the LDTOOLS package.

     A little about the history of the level diagram:

     Albin Gersich announced a method to map the galaxy
     to 99+% completion in 15 minutes at 14.4k, except he
     followed the announcement with the comment that he
     would be unable to implement such until later
     (he used the phrase 'early Christmas present' at one
     point). This got a number of us pretty excited,
     and Woody introduced an alternative method that he
     hoped would obtain about 90% of all warps called a
     level diagram (this message is in the text file
     MAPPING.TXT, which should be in both LDT105A and
     TWFT102A). After talking about the idea *a lot*
     I came up with an implementation, followed by
     Woody. Pretty soon, Rick Cooney adapted his macro
     package TWPLAY to Woody's routines. So the three
     ways I know of to generate LDs are:

    (1) via TWFT102A, which leaves you with the course
    plotter information in a .SCT type format.

    (2) INSTMAP.ZIP, by Woody Weaver, consisting of Telix
    macros, a conversion program, and some other tools
    for those who have no access to Telix and wish to
    take a LD.

    (3) Rick Cooney's TWPLAY13, which interfaces with
    INSTMAP.ZIP

    If my conversations with Rick Cooney are correct, the
    latter two utilities leave you with a text capture of
    CIM reports on courses.

    Fred Polli says that the forthcoming Powermacs will
    support a kind of LD generation.

    I have a series of LD support utilities called LDTOOLS
    that deal with course plotter info in .SCT format, but
    not as raw captures (Someone does need to provide some
    conversion programs for the raw capture people.)


-- by WOODY WEAVER (MAPPING.TXT):

The new TWASSIST feature has piqued my mathematical curiousity. For those
who just want TW tips, space bar now. For developers or those who might be
interested in the algorithms of mapping the universe, keep going.

The problem, of course, is to generate the directed graph that is a trade
wars universe. Currently, the number of nodes in the graph is 1000, the
graph is sparse, with at most six outgoing edges and average between two and
three outgoing edges, and is mostly strongly connected (i.e. a path between
any two nodes in either direction). What we have going for us is an oracle
that will display the shortest path between two nodes. The time it takes to
get a response from the oracle is a function of the actual distance, but
appears to be more than a tenth but less than a second if the path actually
exists.

Let's talk undirected graphs, then modify things later. (In particular, for
practical results, assuming all edges are two-way is probably useful; it
doesn't solve the problem of finding the star dock, as Joel's findsga does,
but for general trading/combat issues its a good first approximation.)

The level diagram of a graph rooted at r is an ordering of the nodes of the
graph by distance from r; i.e. r, then all its neighbors, then all nodes at
distance 2 from r, then all nodes at distance three, etc. An edge (u,v) is
an external i-edge if u is at distance i from r, and v is at distance i+1;
the edge is an internal i-edge if u and v are both at distance i. (Note
that EVERY edge is either an external i-edge or internal i-edge for some i.)

Okay, here is an algorithm. The first pass is to pick up all the external
edges rooted at 1. Set a bit for each node as an extreme vertex. Set a bit
for each node as unattached, set the bit for sector 1 as attached, then run
s from 2 to 1000 with

if s is not attached,
  plot the course from 1 to s
  parse the course to get v0=1, - v1 - v2 - ... - vn = s
  store the edge (vi, vi+1), i=0..n-1
  set vi as attached, i=1..n
  turn off the bit for vi as extreme, i=1..n-1.

How many course plots do we have to make?  A priori, I don't have an answer;
if the graph were pathological and we were unlucky, it could be as much as
the size of the graph. Note that we have to at least attach each dead end,
this is a lower bound. Let's estimate that we have to make 500 course plots
at a 0.75 sec each, or around 7 minutes.

At this point, we have ALL the external edges. Moreover, we also know that
any edge we are missing MUST be between a pair of nodes at the same distance
from 1.

Here is some data: the format is "number at distance(internal/external edges)"

St.Marys bbs, stellar dispersion from sector 1:
    1(  0/  6)     6( 12/ 21)    14(  2/ 43)    27(  2/ 77)    51(  2/146)
   97( 19/290)   177( 47/450)   233( 91/487)   198( 51/345)   112( 15/179)
   50(  2/ 75)    20(  0/ 30)     9(  0/ 12)     3(  0/  4)     1(  0/  2)
    1(  0/  1)     0(  0/  0)     0(  0/  0)     0(  0/  0)     0(  0/  0)
There are 0 unreachable sectors, 1000 reachable sectors.
Average number of warps in reachable sectors: 2.411
Average distance to (known) sectors: 6.99

diogenes.club bbs, stellar dispersion from sector 1:
    1(  0/  6)     6( 12/ 22)    16(  2/ 49)    33(  2/102)    75(  6/221)
  140( 36/393)   225( 91/512)   224( 65/436)   152( 19/245)    73( 13/110)
   36(  2/ 46)     9(  0/ 17)     7(  0/  9)     3(  0/  3)     0(  0/  0)
There are 0 unreachable sectors, 1000 reachable sectors.
Average number of warps in reachable sectors: 2.419
Average distance to (known) sectors: 6.51

grateful.med bbs, stellar dispersion from sector 1:
    1(  0/  6)     6( 12/ 20)    13(  2/ 35)    22(  0/ 71)    51( 10/142)
   92( 10/250)   150( 43/375)   191( 66/424)   183( 63/362)   142( 22/247)
   83( 10/127)    35(  2/ 57)    16(  0/ 25)     7(  0/  9)     2(  0/  4)
    2(  0/  2)     0(  0/  0)     0(  0/  0)     0(  0/  0)     0(  0/  0)
There are 0 unreachable sectors, 996 reachable sectors.
Average number of warps in reachable sectors: 2.406
Average distance to (known) sectors: 7.33

The numbers are pretty consistent. The point is that this is fairly effective.
For SMC, there are 243 internal edges that would be missed, 2168 external
edges, so 90% of the internal edges.

Now consider the one-way character. Just reverse the procedure!  I.e. here,
we first clear all the attached bits, then plot courses back from s to 1.
We won't have to do as many course plots this time: start with all the
"extreme" sectors (since you have to do that anyway) and that will cover
everything except sectors with back doors. Just pick up the remaining, and
you will have developed the entire level diagram.

Now what is missing?  The internal edges, since they won't have been seen in
any shortest course plot. Its likely that this is a sufficient place to 
stop: we've used up ten or twelve minutes of bbs time, and we've got 90% of
the edges, and we certainly have a good picture of the stellar dispersion
from sector 1. (Actually, because you want to buy etherprobes at the star- 
dock and fire them off from there, it might be nice to do all this from
the stardock rather than 1.)  This seems to meet all the tactical issues,
and then if you fire etherprobes at all the extreme nodes and parse the
reports back, you will have a valid map (because you've passed through
every sector).

What if you don't want to spend the money on the four hundred etherprobes?
Because of one-way warps, the level diagram of the opposite directed edges
rooted at 1 will have a slightly different structure in terms of nodes at a
fixed distance, you can actually gain more negative information about where
the internal edges are *not* located. At this point, one could do two
things: as you are developing the original sector scans, build the sets of
nodes at the same distance, and then do course plots between pairs to see if
the edges exist. (These course plots would run very fast, as most of the
time the paths would be of length 1 or 2.)  Alternatively, one could just
repeat the above process of generating the level diagram rooted at another
node. Now, the edge would have to be internal to both level diagrams to be
hidden; if r and s are your two nodes, and (u,v) is the hidden edge, then u,
v have to be the same distance from r *and* the same distance from s, in
*both* directions, which should be rather unlikely in these random graphs.
Probably best is a hybrid: for each level diagram rooted at r, you get a
partition of the nodes (by distance). Combining level diagrams, you simply
refine the partitions. Repeat until the size of each partition is one or
two, then directly course plot between the nodes to determine if the
internal edge exists.

Interesting. I first thought about using the silly oracle several years ago
-- it is absurd that you don't have direct information about warps, but you
can plot all of the warps leaving a node -- but didn't think very hard about
it. It easy to see that you can get a complete set of information by
plotting 1000*999 course pairs, but a million course plots is clearly a
waste of time. Albin, it was very insightful to recognize that this can be
quickly done. The other reason that I didn't write the routine is that it
would (I thought) take all the fun out of exploration.

Now, I find that exploration is rather boring, and that knowledge of the
warps is not as important as knowing the location of the ports and whether
or not the port has been visited/blocked -- i.e. the etherprobe informat- 
ion. What would perhaps make the most sense is to have readily available 
the "map" of the universe, i.e. the warps, but that we can't have set up 
contacts at a port (i.e. visited it) unless we pay a fee to contact the 
port administrator, or have an etherprobe pass by (and deposit a permanent 
transmitter, aka "visiting"). It seems to me that this feature of TWASSIST 
is very useful and very sensible.


-- by Stephen Whitis:

>Ok. I was hoping it would come across on the echo eventually, but since
>it hasn't I'll ask. What is a level diagram? Just something people made
>up in my three and a half month absence to confuse me? :)

New technology, the best thing to happen to utilities in a while...

TWASSIST should add support for it (I think) in the next release. INSTMAP 
contains telix scripts and other support for LD's now, as does TWFT. I'm 
working on something myself.

Basiclly, you pick a base sector, then run the utility to create a LD. It 
plots routes from your base to every other sector and back again. For 
instance, if you use 175 as the base sector, it plots courses from 175-1 
175-2 175-3, etc, and the reverse paths as well. That info can be parsed 
out into a CIM sector report for use in utilities like TWVIEW and TWASSIST.

One LD will give you over 80% of the warp info in a universe. Another with 
a different base sector can up that to almost 90%, I think. The third would 
be about 93-94 %. (I'm not sure of exact percentages, which will vary a bit 
anyway. But you get the idea.) So without ever using a turn, you can locate 
the deep tunnels, get good estimates on where to find stardock & the class
0's, etc.

By doing an LD from stardock, you can figure the "extreme" sectors from 
stardock. Those are the sectors which, if you were to eprobe each from 
stardock, you would have explored 100% of the universe, with no probes 
wasted (assuming none are destroyed on the way). Saves you money and time.


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
                             --[ ATTACKING ]--
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

* Originally by Kris Lewis

How to calculate the minimum number of fighters to attack with:

                (his ftrs) * (his odds)
(your ftrs)  =  -----------------------
                     (your odds)

     Ex: If he has a Scout Marauder (2.0:1) and 200 Ftrs, and you have a
BattleShip (1.6:1), you need to attack with (250*2.0)/1.6, or 312.5 (313)
fighters. This assumes no shields on his craft and does not account for
the slight random factor in the calculations the game uses. Shields are at 
2:1 odds, regardless of shiptype (I THINK. I'm sure Joel or Gary will cor- 
rect me if I'm mistaken.)

Ferrengi ship's odds:
Assault Trader - 1.0:1
BattleCruiser  - 1.2:1
DreadNaught    - 1.4:1

Alien ship's odds are the same as player ships of the same type.


-- Originally by Albin Gersich:

I have seen a lot of discussion lately about the Military Reaction
Level settings for planets and a message about the sequence of events
when invading. In many cases the messages posted had incorrect
information, probably from people who believe the doc. Below is the
sequence of events that occur when a ship enters a sector and lands on
a planet. I have posted this info before but I have revised a few of
the steps to provide a little more detail. This should answer most of
those questions about what the MRL is and what happens.

The question left is what good is a non-zero MRL? I used to size up
my competition. If they were not expert players, or at least not
experts in invading, and they travelled around in smaller ships (i.e.
StarMasters or lower fighter and shield capacity) I would consider a
non-zero MRL. The reason is I wanted to destroy their ship in the
process so they can not reload. Even though it would cost me more
fighters (2:1 odds instead of 3:1) it would also cost them a lot to
replace their ship and all it's gadgets. In addition they would
likely lose a lot of turns when they end up in an escape pod and need
to use their remaining turns to get a new ship and back to safety.
These days I am not sure I would do this. All it takes is one expert
invader in the game to mess up the plan, and the quality of my
competition has significantly increased. In addition with the bugs
known these days, in particular the ship overloading bug, it is much
harder to size up an opponent predict what is likely to happen. I
take the conservative approach. I assume the invader knows what they
are doing and when they come in to invade they will have all their
assets ready and take steps to keep from being destroyed. When they
come in it is very likely they will conquer the planet (the 1639
shields bug not withstanding). I want to make it as costly for them
as I can so I set the MRL to zero because I want all my fighters to
get the higher odds.

The sequence of events is:

   When a ship enters the sector:

      1:  Mines detonate.

      2:  Quasar cannons fire at sector level. The amount of fuel
          used by the cannon is determined by multiplying the fuel
          ore on the planet by the sector quasar cannon percentage.
          The amount of damage points the invading ship receives is
          1/3 the amount of fuel used.

      3:  If there are fighters in the sector:
             If offensive, they attack. If toll, the player may pay
             the toll or attack. If defensive the player may attack.
             After the toll is paid the quasar cannons fire at sector
             level again. If the player attacks the fighters, after
             each attack round, even if 0 fighters were used in the
             attack, the quasar cannon fighters sector level. If the
             player does get all the fighters in one shot and attacks
             five times the quasar will fire all five times. Continue
             until the toll is paid or there are no fighters in the
             sector. Damage and fuel calculations for these firings
             are the same as in step 2.

   When the ship attempts to land:

      4:  If the citadel is level 5 and has at least 1 shield, the
          quasar cannon fires at atmospheric level. The amount of
          damage the invading ship receives is determined by multiplying
          the amount of fuel ore on the planet by the atmospheric quasar
          cannon percentage. The amount of fuel deducted from the
          planet is equal to half the damage.

      5:  If the citadel is level 5 and has at least 1 shield, the
          player must destroy the shields to continue. If the planet
          has 1639 or more shields the invader can not get past this
          step.

      6:  If the citadel is level 3 or higher, the quasar cannon fires
          at atmospheric level. Same damage and fuel calculations as
          in step 4.

      7:  If the citadel is level 2 or highter, the planetary offensive
          fighters attack. The number of attacking fighters is
          determined by multiplying the number of fighters on the
          planet by the Military Reaction Level percentage. These
          fighters get 2:1 odds. If the invading ship at this point
          has 26215 or more fighters AND the Military Reaction Level is
          not zero, then ALL planetary fighters attack and are lost.

      8:  If the citadel is level 2 or highter, any fighters left on
          the planet defend. The attacker must destroy them to land.
          These fighters get 3:1 odds.

      9:  The player lands on the planet and has full access.


During a photon wave, only steps 5, 8 and 9 are in effect. All others
are nullified. If the photon wave runs out part way through the
sequence the remaining steps will be in effect.


-- Originally by Albin Gersich:

If you are landing on a planet that has a military reaction of anything 
other than 0%, and you don't use a photon, and you have more than 6666 Hex 
(more than 26214) fighters, then the military reaction of the planet will 
react at 100%. The funny thing about this is that all the fighters on the 
planet will be lost while trying to destroy you, whether they were all 
needed or not.

Normally only an ISS can have more than 26214 fighters, and usually they go 
in during a photon wave so this bug would not come into play. With the 
overloading of fighters bug any ship could have this many fighters. What 
matters is how many fighters the invading ship has left after the shields 
and quasar cannon. This is when the fighter attack routines go into effect. 
If the ship has at least 26215 fighters and the military reaction level
is non-zero, even 1%, then ALL fighters on the planet will attack at 2:1 
odds. When this happens ALL fighters will be lost. Normally only the number 
of fighters that are required to destroy the ship are lost, or all of them 
if there are not enough. When this bug takes effect ALL of the planetary 
fighters are gone, even if there should have been some left.

Since the photon wave temporarily sets the military reaction level to 0%, 
this bug will not take effect if the wave is still in effect when the plan- 
etary fighter attack routine is reached.

From the planets owners point of view, you most likely would destroy his 
ship so he can not reload, but your planet is now wide open and it cost you 
more than it should have. From an invaders point of view this bug can foil 
your plans. Even if the planet has a level 2 citadel this bug will take 
effect. If you go in with a fully loaded ISS to invade a level 2 citadel 
and wanted to soak off some of the fighters by landing and retreating rep- 
eatedly, you will instead be destroyed.


-- Originally by Kris Lewis:

A planetary Quasar Cannon has two firing levels, both expressed in the 
percentage of stored Fuel Ore to use to power the Quasar Blast. The first, 
the Sector reaction level, determines how hard a hostile will be hit for 
just entering the sector. Usually this is kept fairly low, and inflicts one 
battle point per three units of Ore expended. The second, the Atmosphere 
reaction level, specifies how much of the remaining ore is to go into fir- 
ing on one who tries to actually LAND on the planet. This shot is much more 
effective, doing one battle point per unit of ore expended. 

There is an oddity in that the sector firing uses all the fuel ore you exp- 
ect it to, but the atmosphere shot only takes HALF the expected amount.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
                          --[ FERRENGAL ]--
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

-- Originally by Kris Lewis:

Ferrengal itself is usually a Level 4 planet (Level 3 Citadel - Quasar 
Cannon). It is usually located in a dead end, and the Nebula name will 
always be "The Ferrengi Empire". The planet itself usually STARTS with the 
following: Colonists: 600 per area, 10000 Ore, some (low) amount of Organ- 
ics and Equipment, 5000 Fighters, 100,000 credits in the Treasury, a Milit- 
ary reaction level of 40%, and Quasar cannon levels of 30% (atmosphere) and 
0% (sector).

Destroying or invading Ferrengal by itself will not prevent the Ferrengi 
from regenerating. The sector defense force must also be neutralized AND 
replaced. Once destroyed, Ferrengal will NOT regenerate. If the planet is 
taken over AND the sector defense force is replaced by that of a player, 
then the Ferrengi are out of the game, aside from the ships that are still 
at large. Once destroyed, they will no longer regenerate. Taking the planet 
and NOT deploying your own fighters in the sector is an easy way to get 
every Ferrengi ship to attack you on sight, and they WILL still regenerate. 

As an aside, the Ferrengi ships base the number of fighters with which to 
attack you upon the number of fighters you carry. If you're being hounded, 
carry a small number of or no fighters and maximum shields. You can then 
pretty much ignore them.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
                           --[ COLONISTS ]--
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

     Colonists are initially avail only at Terra. As stated elsewhere, the 
optimum amount is 1000 holds of colonists on each product (3000 total). If 
this figure varies significantly one way or the other from this amt, prod- 
uction of the associated product will decrease.

     1000 holds of colonists will produce 333 holds of fuel ore and 34 ftrs 
each day. It is a part of many players end game strategy to have a lot of 
"farming planets" which can absorb the excess colonists as they increase, 
in order to ..ah, harvest, the ftrs and fuel. After a certain point in the 
game, it should no longer necessary to buy ftrs except in cases of emerg- 
ency and the fuel is handy for qcannon and twarping. 

     An interesting feature of planetary expansion (upgrade) is that once 
an upgrade step has been initiated, all colonists and any remaining prod- 
uct can be removed from the planet and the upgrade will still proceed ac- 
rding to schedule.

     One tactic I've heard of is for one corp member to deliberately pick 
up colonists from Terra and jettison them -- eventually, the supply will be 
depleted to the point where there are none left to be used for colonising 
other competitive planets that may be constructed. The number of colonists 
on Terra maxes out at 100000 holds. You'd be surprised how easy it is to 
drain that number down to 0 with a CMH bugged ship. Of course, as soon as 
you jettison anything, you loose your extra holds, but hey, CMH is free, it 
requires no turns to do, can be done by good as well as evil players and is
fun to do besides.

     At any rate, the topic of colonist increase/decrease cycles came up on 
the FIDO TradeWar conference and Leonard Adolph provided this report:


-- by Leonard Adolph:

I have been asked to look into the rates involved in the colonist
increase/decrease cycle.

I have found that the colonist i/d cycle is based on 30 days with the
base being the beginning of an individual game. Due to rounding and
other factors a day may be added now and then, throwing the absolute 30
day cycle off over time. The game begins with the colonist cycle on the
decrease with colonists dying off for 10 days. At the end of 10 days
colonists begin increasing and do so for 20 days.

Now the tricky part:

During the 10 day decrease cycle colonists die off at 1% the first day
and continue dying off at a sliding percentage that averages out to
about .1% change per day. That is on day two they die off at about .9%,
day three at .8%, etc. It is this sliding scale that creates periods of
seeming stability when colonists neither increase nor decrease. With
fewer colonists on a planet the stable period will be longer.

During the colonist increase cycle colonists increase from about .1% on
the first day up to a maximum of 2% twenty days later, at which time the
decrease cycle begins with a 1% loss as outlined in the previous
paragraph. The stable period of no colonist change marks the end of the
decrease cycle and the beginning of the increase cycle.

I am not absolutely positive on the 30 day base being the beginning of
an individual game. This is easily checked by others here though as my
tests were done local in a game 32 days old and in the second decrease
cycle. The colonists in my local setup will appear stable (2895 total on
a planet) on days 39 through 42 at 10:30 pm. On day 43 they will
increase by 3 and continue increasing by increasing amounts until on day
62 they will drop from 3525 to 3492. The increases and decreases are
continuous throughout the day and amounts will vary depending on the
time of day.

To run these tests I copied out all the .DAT files from my \TRADEWAR
directory and did planet scans after which I exited the game, changed
the date in DOS and re-entered to redo planet scans. I did this for
about an hour and went from day 32 through day 76 with a short break at
day 74 to run EXTERN to see if there was any effect (there wasn't).
I copied the .DAT files back in so my son can continue with his play.

Am I obsessed or what? (Is that Gary chuckling in the background?) :-)

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=[ end part two ]-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
