
                      I A G O' S  W A R  M A N U A L

                               for playing

                      TradeWars 2002 v1.03 and v1.03d


                "The winds of Hell, have a sulphur smell,"
                     Reads a card from the late Iago.
                 And the brownish haze, on the warmer days,
                     Reminds him of Chicago..

                                                     -Jim Bianchi (Iago)
                                                      sysop, Garbanzo BBS
                                                      (707) 539-1279

                               o    o    o


     I'd like to acknowledge (among others) Joel Downer, Albin Gersich, 
Fred Polli, Dan Roseen, Leonard Adolph, Steve Genardini, Stephen Whitis, 
Dave Myers, Woody Weaver, Eugene Hung, Kris Lewis, David White, Jason Boyd, 
Jim Pittman, Mark Cothram, and, of course, Gary and Mary Ann Martin, the 
author(s) of TradeWars 2002. I'd like to thank you one and all for provid- 
ing much of the mat'l for this file and helping to make the game of Trade-  
Wars a most entertaining diversion. 

     Much of what follows was obtained from the files TWTIPS12, TWINFO, and 
from monitoring the FIDO and RIME TradeWars conferences. And from playing 
the game itself.

CONTENTS:

  (IAGO1)
     HISTORY
     QUESTIONS
     TACTICS                      
     EVIS ISS
     MORE ON SHIPS
     ALIGN AND XP CHANGES
     5XP SELL/STEAL

  (IAGO2)                     (IAGO3)
     ATTACKING                  QUICK 'N DIRTY
     BUGS                       REFERENCE
     MORE BUGS
     PLANET CLONING BUG
     USING BUGS
     MAPPING
     ATTACKING
     FERRENGAL
     COLONISTS

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
                            --[ HISTORY ]--
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

     The latest release of TradeWars 2002 is v1.03d. Many sites are still 
running v1.03; this older version has many ..ah, bugs, in it that are cons- 
idered to be extremely destructive to game play, most notably the infamous 
planet cloning bug and the multiple colonist jettisoning bug. v1.03d fixed 
both of these in the course of improving the DESQview timeslicing. The new 
v1.03d mods are supplied as an archive containing only the four executable 
files: TEDIT.EXE and TEDIT.OVL and TW2002.EXE and TW2002.OVL. Since there 
is no player data stored in these files, they can be installed (dropped in) 
over a running game with no loss of loss of player assets or points. Aside 
from resetting the game defaults in TEDIT (initial holds, ftrs, creds; base 
moves, etc), the only thing required to be done is to reenter the reg code 
for the game.

---
First I would like to give you a brief history of the Trade Wars games.
This will help you and others understand where the game has been and where 
it is going.

Trade Wars first game into being as a programming assignment for the Unix 
system. (Authors unknown.) Much like the great old DND game Moria first 
came about.

Then it was ported over to the IBM world and Chris Sherrick and Alan
Davenport had a go at the game and we had TW 500 and TW 1000 (there may be 
a few other numbers in here...memory fails me at times). These games were 
the jewels of BBS door games. Everybody played them.

BTW, the style of play in all of these games remains pretty much the same,
the look, feel and playability. This very echo used to be filled with
information on these early games.

Then for some reason Chris and Alan parted ways. Chris teamed up with
John Morris and they have gone on to TW 1114 (I think is the last version
number). They have many features new to the game, multi-node play, etc.
But the game still retains the TW look. Alan Davenport came up with
Yankee Trader.

That game was also in the TW tradition and also had the same playability.
Only this time instead of battling the evil Cabal, you had the Xannor after
you. Alan's game was a big hit, and still is in many parts of the country.
He is still upgrading and improving the game and his latest version is
YT35.

Alan's game Yankee Trader soon took over this echo. It reigned surpreme
for a long time. Until Gary Martin's version, TW2002 hit the BBS's. This
game too, had some improvements and captured the fancy of all the TW and YT
players that it soon took over this echo. But like all the others before
it, it had the same look, feel and playability of the original Trade Wars
game. His evil alien race were the Ferrengi. He added planet defenses and a
different way of moving planets, and some nice ship types. All in all a 
nice improvement upon the game. Now this game holds the attention of the
echo.

So to answer your question, all of the above are the REAL Trade Wars. None 
of them are clones, just natural progressions of one of the finest space/ 
war trading strategy games. The credit for concieving this great game goes 
to some anonymous programmers who are more than likely stockbrokers some- 
where with no time or thought to what they started. Everyone else has made 
improvements. Even Gary Martin who DID NOT CREATE THIS GAME, only improved 
upon the original concept. The game you are asking about is TW2002, and the 
latest version of it is v1.03d.

Gary Martin may or may not finish this beta version (v2.0) he is slowly and
reluctantly working on. And from what I hear in this echo is considering 
reneging on his one time registration fee, and perhaps going to charge for 
this new version. Tis not enough that he let us all sit here for 2 years 
waiting for an updated game (read the docs). Or that he felt an obligation 
after getting so many $$$'s in registration fees for the game that he would 
not or perhaps could not fix the over 100 bugs in the game.

Must stop now, or I shall say something that perhaps I should not...why
burst your bubble. Anyway I hope that answers your questions about Trade
Wars, who created the game, where it has been, and where it is going.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
                            --[ QUESTIONS ]--
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

To answer some of the most often asked questions: 

Question: If I am a CEO and I buy a Corp Flagship, then I quit the corp, do
 I get to keep the flagship?  Wondering if corp members could all be CEO for
 a day and buy flagships and then rejoin the corp, each retaining the prize
 ship?

 (1) Yes, you can keep the FlagShip when you quit, but (2) no, no one
with a FlagShip is allowed to join a corp.

---
  1. To rob, you need to have -100 alignment or lower. Then, in a 
sector with a port; (P)ort (R)ob (R)ob credits or (S)teal products. 

  2. To figure how much you can likely get away with when you steal,
it's your experience divided by 20, for easy figuring. The real numbers
are less, but use this one. For robbing, its your experience times 8. 

  3. In version 1.03(d) THERE IS NO WAY TO KILL A FED! PERIOD. No MATTER 
what the odds are, whether or not you p-missile, etc... Maybe in an earl-
ier version you can, but not 1.03!!! Stardock, Class 0, or Sol are POSSIB-
LE, but VERY difficult. 

  4. ISS means Imperial Starship. You need +500 alignment to get a Federal
Commission (required before getting an ISS). But then you can turn evil and 
keep it if you're skillful enough. 

  5. Colonists do regenerate as they're removed from Terra. 

  6. The average amount of colonists for peak production is 1000 in each 
group (+/- 1 in Ore, +/- 6 in Org, +/- 12 in Eqp). This will make 55 fight-
ers a day. 

  7. "Computer Upgrade" is a HOAX. It DOES NOT EXIST! PERIOD. The Combat
Scanners showing an opponents shield level is NOT the fictitious upgrade. 

  8. To track someone talk to the Grimy Trader in the Tavern. Ask him 
about TRADER. He'll say I can tell you <blablabla>: answer no. Then he'll 
say "Well, is it a particular trader your interested in?" Say yes and enter 
the name. 

  9. To get the password to the underground ask the Grimy Trader about 
MAFIA or UNDERGROUND. Once you have the password, the StarDock command is 
"U". 

 10. To lower alignment, go to sector 1. Land and take colonists. Go 
out of Fed Space and (J)ettison the colonists. In v1.03 games, you can
(Q)uit the game then go back in and repeat as necessary. In v1.03d games,
you can do this only once per game day.

 11. To have an invincible planet, get 16390 ship shields and put them on
a level 5 planet. 

 12. To get the extra 32 holds, get busted stealing 365 holds of Equip or
660 holds of Organics.

---
     If you take damage points (from any source) while carrying a ptorp,
it MIGHT go off sympathetically. If it does, the only effect on you will be 
that all the remainder of your turns for that game day will be lost. ALWAYS 
carry a cloak when you're carrying a ptorp.

     If you take damage points (from any source) while carrying an adet, it 
MIGHT go off sympathetically. If it does, the effect will be to destroy 
your ship entirely. Like blasting caps, adets are useful but dangerous when 
mishandled. Generally speaking, you do NOT want to carry a ptorp or an adet 
"just because."

---
* Originally by David White 

 - How can I find Stardock?
Type "V" at the main Command line, ask another player, post a universal
announcement, use Joel Downer's FINDSGA, included in TWUTIL10.ZIP, or use 
Dave Myers' CLASSZER (in LDTxxx.ZIP).

 - What is FedSpace for?
Any players with a non-negative alignment, less than 1000 experience points, 
and less than 50 fighters can log off overnight in sectors 1-10 and the 
Stardock sector completely safe from being killed by other players. 

 - What are the tricks to stealing?
A player with -100 or lower alignment can steal credits and goods from
ports. There is ALWAYS a chance of being busted while trying to rob a
port, but some good guideline ratios are,

  your experience / 20 = holds you can steal
  your experience * 10 = credits you can steal.

 - What's the "steal/sell" cycle?
With a full load of equipment (or any other commodity), dock at a port that
buys that commodity and sell it to them.  Then steal it back, and sell it
to them again. Repeat.

 - What's the "holds bug"
A player with -100 or lower alignment who gets caught stealing 365 units of
Equ. or 660 units of Org. will be fined -32 holds (meaning the player will
GAIN 32 holds) and will lose 10% of his or her experience points. This
trick can be repeated up to a maximum of 32 holds more than the maximum
amount of holds allowed for that particular ship  (e.g. 182 holds for an
Imperial StarShip (ISS), 102 for a Starmaster, etc.) These holds will be
lost as soon as the player ports, unfortunately, unless the technique below
is used.

 - How can I keep an extra 32 holds on my ship?
Using the above technique, get the maximum + 32 holds on your ship. Go to
earth and get a load of colonists. Port, and steal ONE unit of organics
(or another commodity you don't plan on using any time soon). Continue to
your planet and drop off the colonists. You will now be able to trade and
steal/sell with 32 extra holds PROVIDED you do NOT try to buy, steal, or
pick up organics (or whatever commodity you chose) and you do not get
busted or destroyed, and you do not S)urrender your cargo to the Ferrengi.

 - What's the "shield bug?"
A planet with a level 5 citadel and 1639 or more planetary shields cannot 
be successfully invaded by other players.

 - What's the fighter overloading trick?
Join a corporation, then go to the same sector with a corp member with at
least as many shields/fighters as you want. Transfer a negative amount of
fighters/shields to the corp. member. Repeat as often as you like up to a
maximum of 32,767 fighters/shields. This trick is especially useful with a
Scout Marauder, which fights at 2:1 odds. Docking at a port, however, will
cause the excess shields/fighters to vanish.

 - What's the shield overloading trick?
Use the above technique, or transfer a negative amount of shields to a
citadel that already has as many ship shields (planetary shields * 10) as
you need. Docking at a port still causes you to lose any extra shields,
however.

 - What are the rules to successfully Transwarping (T-warping)?
Transwarping your ship to a sector that contains at least one of your
fighters is always safe. Blind ship transwarps are possible only if the
destination sector is completely empty of ANYTHING. Blind planetary
transwarps are not possible. Ship transwarping costs 3 units of Ore per
sector jumped, and planetary transwarping costs 400 units of Ore per sector
jumped. Transwarping takes 1 turn regardless of distance traveled.

 - If I'm busted, can I ever return to that port again?
Yes, your name will be removed from the port's records in 14 days or as
soon as another player is caught there, whichever comes first. Until then,
do not try robbing OR trading at that port.

 - When can I be commissioned?
You can be commissioned if you have an alignment of at least +500.

 - Can an evil player have an ISS?
You must be commissioned to purchase an ISS, but after you have it, you can
become evil and still keep the ISS. Running into any of the three Federals
(Zyrain, Clausewitz, Nelson) however, means certain death.

 - Can I kill the Federals?
No. Zyrain, Clausewitz and Nelson are indestructible. However, you can
trap them in a dead-end sector by placing a fighter right outside the
dead-end, since Federals will not travel into a sector that has deployed
fighters in it. As long as the fighter stays there, all three Federals can
be trapped, though Captain Zyrain will automatically warp out of the sector
to rescue players who qualify for protection in FedSpace.

 - Can a non-CEO have a Corporate Flagship?
You must be a CEO to purchase a Flagship, but you can quit as the CEO of
your corp. and keep the Flagship. You will not, however, be able to join
another corp.

 - Can I be killed while my ship is cloaked?
No, while you are cloaked, you are absolutely invulnerable until your next
login (contrary to the documentation, cloaks do not lose their effect- 
iveness over time.) However, if some player were to figure out which
sector you were cloaked in, he or she could mine your sector. The mines
would explode as soon as you logged back on.

 - What are all the settings for my planetary defenses?

Examples:

Military Reaction level: 20% -- 20% of all the fighters on the planet will
attack (at 2:1 odds) any player who moves into your planet's sector. The
remaining 80% of the fighters will attack (at 3:1 odds) only if the player
attempts to land on your planet.

Quasar cannon sector level: 30% -- 30% of all the Ore on the planet will be
used to fire on a player entering the sector with your planet, causing 1
point of damage to the player per 3 units of Ore used.

Quasar cannon atmosphere level: 60% -- 60% of all the Ore on the planet
will be used to fire on a player who attempts to land on your planet,
causing 1 point of damage to the player per 1 unit of Ore used.

 - What are the hidden options in the Stardock?
 "U" -- Underground, where players with 100 or less alignment can change
        their name, and post and collect bounties on other players.
 "+" -- Library, useful only for determining which ships are currently
        being used by the Ferrengi. Data on alien derelicts is useless.
 "B" -- Single's Bar, where you can get robbed. Nothing more.

 - What is the computer upgrade the Grimy Trader talks about?
It doesn't really exist. It's just a hoax.

 - What is the secret message in "Vulcan Thunder?"
The secret message (if it exists) seems to have something to do with the
characters "9C." Gary Martin has hinted to its existence, but as of yet,
no one has found any significance to it.

 - What's the secret to winning Tri-Cron?
Contrary to what the Grimy Trader says, the winning numbers seem to be
completely random.

 - What is Computer Interrogation Mode (CIM) ?
From your "Computer Command?" prompt within TW, using the numeric keypad,
type <ALT>-200, <ALT-201>, <ALT-202>, <ALT-203>, <ALT-204>, <ALT-205>, to
get a : prompt.  From there, typing "I" (without the quotes) will give you
information on all explored sectors, and "R" will give information on all
explored ports. ("Q" will quit CIM and "F" will give a path-calculator
similar to the one on your ship's computer). To use the information, open
a capture file for both sets of info, then use a utility like TWVIEW or 
TWASSIST that reads the data and arranges it into something useful.

---
     You should be aware that as long as you have a positive alignment you 
will be assessed a 10% "tax" if you have 50,000 creds or more on your ship 
each time you log in to the game -- NOT just once each game day -- and in 
return, you are given some neato positive align points. Depending on how 
you feel about paying taxes, it may be desirable to pay the 10% Fed Tax 
whenever you log on, in order to get the positive align shift for use in 
obtaining a Federal Commission (and getting an ISS). 

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
                            --[ TACTICS ]--
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

* by Joel Downer 

Question: In a new game, what should be your goal in the first few days?

     Let's assume a corporate strategy, for a corp of 3-5 players, to keep
this simple. (That's what I've usually been playing these days anyway.)
Let's also assume that we're playing a game with *no* treaties or rules
about the shield bug.

I plan on playing evil wherever I play. I expect to find the StarDock
the first day of the game -- if it isn't displayed in the Game Status
screen, I or one of my corp-mates will run FINDSGA to locate it. As
soon as we find StarDock, we trade in our Merchant Cruisers for Scout
Marauders (with the trade-in value of the average Merchant, you can buy
a Scout with 25 holds and a density scanner, and have a little left over
with which to go out to dinner <grin>). The Scout is the single best
ship in the early stages because of its move rate.

My choice from that point depends on the game configuration. If
FedSpace is open to squatters, my teammates and I will spend the first
3 - 4 days parking in FedSpace and working trade pairs to build up
experience. I like to use the evil Imperial StarShip, so I will try to
upgrade to a StarMaster the second day, a Mule the third or fourth, get
my commission by the fifth or sixth day, and keep the StarShip from then
on. My teammates will typically turn evil by the fourth day (after you
have about 375 experience, stealing will be *substantially* more
profitable than trading); one way I'm likely to get a quick commission
is to coordinate logins with one of my future teammates so that I can
blow my *future teammate* up.

Objectives for the first 4 - 7 days (depending on the turn rate): to get
myself into an Imperial StarShip with slightly less than 1,000 experience,
and to get the team members who *won't* be in StarShips stealing in Star-
Masters with at least 1,100 experience. We do *not* usually set aside turns
for exploration; when we need to find new trade pairs or dead ends, we use
ether probes.

Objectives for the next 2 - 4 days: to build a well-concealed planet
and stock it with 3,000,000 colonists. I will deploy a fighter in a
dead-end sector and create a planet there. I will frequently ask my
future evil teammates to deploy fighters and mines *in the sector
immediately adjacent* to the dead-end. The fighters and mines protect
the planet; I enter and exit the sector using TransWarp.

Objective for the succeeding 1 - 3 days:  to assemble the corporation in
final form. I dump colonists to turn evil, start stealing conservatively,
and "bust planets" (create and destroy empty planets) to try to build my
experience up to 2,250, where I can steal 150 holds. My teammates steal
aggressively.

Objective for the succeeding three weeks:  to build a planet to level
five, preventing our enemies from building or defending a planet to a
level II citadel. We use ether probes and search aggressively whenever
new citadels appear in the game status screen (find as many uses as you
can for TWView's OFFLINE program, using version 0.91 if you can; you
also may want to look at my FINDHOLE utility). Because of my p-missile
capabilities, I can destroy *any* planet that doesn't have a level II
citadel at a trivial cost. We upgrade our single planet aggressively,
placing the maximum defenses on it at any given time (32,000 fighters;
1639 shields the day it turns level V). If the relative strengths of
the teams in the game justify the move, we may invade Ferrengal and
either (a) destroy it, or (b) defend it, to prevent our enemies from
seizing a ready-made level III citadel.

End-game objectives:  If we have a level V citadel, and we can prevent
our enemies from building or defending a planet, we expect to control
the game. We continue to steal full-speed, and stockpile money in our
shield-bugged citadel until the combination of our stealing and treasury
interest is overwhelming.

Through this process, we probably spend 95% of our turns stealing from
ports. We use the five-point stealing cycle, but we don't otherwise
worry about experience unless our score is low enough to interfere with
our stealing. We kill only when absolutely necessary:  we expect
competant opponents to stay cloaked unless they have a reason to *want*
to be attacked.

---
* by Stephen Whitis 

> Can someone tell me a successful way of earning money and ruling the
> universe in the shortest time possible?

The info below doesn't discuss using holds-bug, but if no unbug utilities
are running, you should consider it. Later, after you have a citadel, you
should run CMH bug (again, assuming no unbug utilities are running.)

 Read the FIDO-TradeWars echo daily. You'll learn a lot there. When you
 ask questions, try to be specific, and try to read the FAQ first. Save a
 copy of the FAQ for later reference.

 Get a copy of TWAssist, TWView or a similar utility and use them. You
 can't be competitive in a quality game without them. These are utilities
 which parse out the ton of information and make it useful. See the end of
 this section. Also look for TWTIPS12, a collection of tip files for TW's
 which covers most of the bugs and basic strategy.

 If possible, try to join a game that hasn't been going long. A game
 that's been around for awhile is hard (or impossible) to succeed in if the
 players who were in it at the beginning are any good at all. You might
 learn some things in that situation (that's how I started) but to win, you
 really need to get in near the begining and PLAY EVERY DAY.

 DON'T SELF-DESTRUCT!  There is always a better solution. You don't get to
 start from scratch if you self destruct, and you'll have to sit out of the
 game for two days, so it's not worth it. If you don't know where stardock
 is, and get stuck in an escape pod, attack a port at the end of your turns
 for the day. The next day, you'll start in a scout.

 DON'T ATTACK ALIENS OR FERRENGI! They are a distraction. Attacking, or
 running from Ferrengi ships will put a grudge against you, and you will
 probably regret it later.

 Don't give up. Everyone gets blown up from time to time, and when you are
 learning the game, it can happen quite often. Learn from each mistake,
 ask questions, read the FIDO-TW echo, and come back for revenge!

 The docs are available throught the game, at the main menu, and some
 sysops  have them available for DL. Capture them, read them. But beware
 that the docs are sometimes wrong.

 Fedspace includes sectors 1-10 and the sector with Stardock. No other
 sectors are fedspace, regardless of the fact that someone may have created
 a beacon which claims a sector is fedspace.

 The first day you play, your #1 goal is to find the stardock. Use the V
 command at the main menu to see if it's listed. If not, run FINDSGA
 (distributed as part of TWUTIL10.*), a utility written by Joel Downer
 which often helps locate it. If that doesn't work, try posting a public
 msg asking for the location (or private messages to traders in any ship
 other than an escape pod or the default merchant ship. Players in scouts
 may have gotten them due to getting an escape pod blown up.)  Warping over
 long distances, with ANSI on so you can tell which sectors you haven't
 visited yet, will usually help you find it, as it usually has one or two
 warps in and five or six warps out, and that makes for a fairly high-traf-
 fic sector. If you have to look for it this way, the sectors you explore
 will be useful later, and perhaps you'll find some good trade pairs. Don't
 explore randomly. Turn on ANSI, and travel down long paths with lots of
 red (unexplored) sectors using the autowarp. 

 As soon as you locate the Stardock, trade in your ship for a scout. It
 won't have a lot of holds, fighters, or shields, but it has a high turn
 ratio. If you drop your fighters in the sector just outside the sector
 containing stardock, you can pick them up after trading ships. Fighters
 don't have much trade in value, so that saves you some money.

 Buy a scout (for the high turn rate), maximum holds (25), and you can
 probably afford a density scanner, which is worth the money. Don't buy
 anything else the first time you are there unless you've already been
 trading while you hunted for stardock. Try to put a little money in the
 bank on stardock, for emergency use. Eventually, have 100,000 there.

 If you are planning on playing Evil (recommended) then find a port which
 will buy Equipment and sell Fuel and Organics. You want it to be adjacent
 to a port which does the opposite (sells Equipment, buys Fuel and
 Organics.) Trade at these ports, and at the port which sells Fuel/
 Organics, use half of your holds for one, half for the other. Always
 bargain prices, and you should be able to get 2 experience points each
 time you make a deal. That will raise your experience pretty fast (it's
 called triple-trading, since you trade three types of equipment during
 each set.) You need experience to be able to Steal effectively, so triple
 trading can help you get that experience. You can triple trade whether
 you are evil or not. It takes some practice to get 2 pts per trade
 regularly, especially in a scout with max 25 holds, but it's worth it.

 Use the V command at the main command prompt. If ships are allowed to
 stay in FedSpace overnight, then plan on using FedSpace until either you
 turn evil or (if planning on staying good) you can afford to cloak
 nightly. You will be protected there if you have 0 or higher alignment,
 under 1000 experience, and less than 50 fighters. Until you go evil,
 FedSpace is your safe haven when you aren't playing. Just save your money,
 don't buy a lot of fighters and shields. If the Ferrengi want to rob you,
 let them. You do want to buy holds, though.

 In the early part of a game, when you are using Fedspace for protection,
 you can drop extra fighters (over the 50 ftr limit) in a sector outside of
 fedspace, to pick up later. Someone *may* kill them, and if you leave
 them in a major space lane (such as the route to Stardock from Terra and
 back) the feds will remove them. But it's an option I find useful.

 Don't go evil until your experience is at least 375-400. Then you can
 jettison colonists or post bounty's in the underground to turn evil. You
 need to have a -100 or less alignment to Rob/Steal. Some players prefer
 to keep trading (or triple-trading) until their experience is much
 higher, say over 1050, so they can steal-sell 70 holds in a starmaster.

 Once you've turned evil, FedSpace isn't going to protect you, so start
 cloaking every night. (In some games it may not be needed, but in
 general, plan on it. Once you start running a Steal/Trade system, you can
 easily afford it.)  If you divide your experience by 20, you have a good
 idea of how many holds of equipment you can steal without getting caught.
 Exp / 15 is a little more risky, but still pretty safe. Regardless, there
 is *always* a chance of getting busted. If necessary you can steal
 equipment several times to fill your holds, and sell it all at once.

 To run the Steal-Sell loop, start with equipment in all of your holds. Go
 to a port which buys equipment. Sell your equipment. Steal equipment
 (5%-6.6% of your experience or so) until your holds are full. Sell it
 again. Just keep doing that, and always bargain prices. Your experience
 will go up as you do this, so eventually you will be able to steal more at
 a time. Five point trading means selling your equipment for 100% best
 price every time. It's maximum profit, and raises your experience five
 points each time you sell, so it's worthwhile. It will be explained
 elsewhere in the FAQ.

 I keep using the scout until I have enought experience to steal 70-85
 holds at a time safely, and then move to another ship. Usually your
 choice is between a starmaster and a corp. flagship, if you are head of a
 corporation. If not, the starmaster is almost always the best ship. For
 advanced players, the evil ISS is the way to go.

 Whenever you buy a new ship, you should have enough money to buy the ship,
 maximum holds, a new density scanner (or holo scanner), and a cloak.
 Otherwise, you should probably stay in the ship you are already in a
 little longer (unless it's an escape pod. Never stay in an escape pod.
 You can trade it in for a scout right away, and you should.)

 When you buy a ship you plan to keep for awhile, buy a holo-scanner.

 Cloaks don't fail unless an external utility is causing them to, and you
 should cloak nightly unless you qualify for fedspace. Even in games where
 cloaks do fail based on a low %, use the cloaks. But if they can fail,
 you may want to move to a dead end to cloak.

 Use the density scanner any time you are moving to a sector you haven't
 visited, and use it when the surrounding sectors are unexplored. It will
 tell you when a port is adjacent, and help locate dead ends, planets, and
 other ships.

 If you (or a corp. member) plan on using a ship with transwarp you should
 drop single fighters regularly. Especially in dead ends, where they will
 tend to survive longer. These fighters will also slow your opponents who
 try to Eprobe to explore. I drop them even when I don't plan on using a
 ship with Twarp capability.

 Once you've located stardock, don't use a lot of turns exploring. 95% of
 the time (or more) you want to be making money with your turns. This is
 very basic, but many players use turns warping around, chasing aliens, or
 being sidetracked by Ferrengi. Use your turns to make money. To explore,
 spend money on Etherprobes and use them.

 The database utilities will allow you to get a list of sectors which not
 only have you not explored, but which no sector you *have* explored has a
 warp to. By eprobing these sectors, you will gain info on at least two
 sectors. If you use the computer F command with ANSI on, you can look for
 paths with lots of unexplored sectors, which is useful mainly in the early
 stages of the game when you haven't explored very much.

 In a corporation, usually only one person needs to do much exploring...
 The other players just make money. Eventually, you'll need that money!

 Your long term goal is to develop a well defended planet, while keeping
 your opponents from doing the same. Ideally, your planet will be shield
 bugged. In games where shield bug isn't allowed, you want max shields and
 32,000 fighters on the planet. With a well defended planet, you can stock
 money in the citadel, which will gain 4% interest a day. When that amount
 is high enough, no one without a similar source of income will be able to
 harm you. If you can shield bug a planet, you probably only need 1. If
 you can't, you may need a few, but most players build more planets than
 they need, and when a planet is partially developed, it's high-risk. An
 opponent might steal the level-4 planet, Twarp it away, and then all the
 work is in their hands...

---
* by Jim Bianchi 

     Teamwork is the key to winning games. A four or five man corp can 
easily clear 2.5 -- 3.5 million creds/day once established. To start, one 
of the corp members should, after SD has been located, spend most of his 
time there, where he has easy access to a source of eprobes. (Note: Dave 
Myers' TWFT and the mapping routines in TWASSIST may modify this somewhat.) 
Using the eprobe mapping routines in PWRMACS or TWFT, this person maps the 
universe, providing data to the other members on paired ports.

     Meanwhile, the other members should pound ports, triple trading them 
right down to the ground if possible. The objective is obtaining xp and 
creds, NOT exploring. The creds should be funneled to the member who is at 
SD, either directly, or through the galbank. As the universe approaches 
100% mapped, the members start building up their own galbank accts. 

     Ships: The usual policy seems to be to, once SD has been found, go 
there and trade in your merchie for a ScoMar, a dscanner, max holds and 
enough to get started trading again. This should prob be the course the 
mapper should take, as he'll need to physically investigate places where 
eprobes have been destroyed. The rest of the crew should prob stay with a 
stock merchie until they can get into a StaMas with max holds (as soon as 
they have the necessary creds). With close teamwork, transferring ftrs and 
shields is easy between corp members. (It is possible to tfr a neg amt of 
shields or ftrs to temporarily overload a fellow corp members ship while 
you trade in the one you have and buy another.) Esp in the early stages of 
the game, every cred saved when buying ftrs/shields can make a difference. 
However, don't let not having a close-by teammate stop you from buying a 
new ship. And ALWAYS buy at least one ftr with your new ship. I once got a 
new StaMas, a few shields and max holds, and zero ftrs. On my way out of SD 
to the sector where I'd "parked" my ftrs fm the old ship, I entered the 
wrong sector number and ended up running into 'prox 50 offensive ftrs left 
by someone else. Fortunately, my <esc> pod was functioning normally..

     Good vs evil: For the first few days, game parms permitting, you 
should plan to park overnight in FedSpace. You can stay uncloaked in Fed- 
Space overnight as long as your xp is less than 1000, the number of ftrs on 
your ship is 50 or less, your align is +1 or greater and the number of squ- 
atters in the FedSpace sector you end up in is less than the nr posted on 
the V screen -- otherwise, when the extern pgm runs, you'll be towed out 
into space (nothing else will be done to you by the Feds).

     Under some circumstances, this can be exploited to aid in exploring 
the universe in the very early days of a game. If the Feds tow you out to 
space for one reason or another, you will usually end up somewhere on one 
of the MSLs. In a low turns game, this can be used to give you a "running 
start" on exploration. Log on very soon after midnight, however, to get 
yourself into a more protected area where you won't be attacked by other 
traders.

     In a game with no squatters allowed overnight in FedSpace, there seems 
little need for remaining good (unless, of course, you WANT to be). Recom- 
mended ways of turning evil are: jettisoning colonists, killing good play- 
ers or game generated good aliens, placing a hit contract on another good 
player in the underground, cursing the grimy trader in the tavern, blowing 
up starports and blowing up planets. Once you have -100 align you can start 
robbing creds fm ports (use xp x 7 = creds to rob in any single attempt); 
or stealing product (use a max of xp/20 = nr of holds to steal). Each suc- 
cessful robbery will gain you xp and neg align points. 

     A tactic that has been used VERY successfully in one local game in- 
volved four corp partners who started the game as above. The "mapper" early 
on discovered Ferrengal. Further mapping, combined with some course plotter 
investigation revealed that Ferrengal was in a dead-end tunnel and that 
there was an empty sector behind it. By the time this was discovered, the 
leader was almost done with mapping the universe, so he bought an ISS 
(buying his pos align with creds supplied by the rest of us). Then he 
bought a ptorp and a gtorp (several gtorps, actually), used the ptorp to 
temporarily neutralise the Ferrengi ftrs while he moved THROUGH that sector 
without otherwise disturbing them to get to the one BEHIND, where he fired 
off his gtorps and placed ftrs so that each of the rest of us, as we in 
turn bought our commissions and got into an ISS, could twarp there.

     In this way, our planets were (more or less) safe from detection dur- 
ing the critical phase while they were upgrading, as they were in a dead 
end tunnel with Ferrengal as the "front door." We each then turned evil by 
dumping colonists and busting planets (and killing good aliens/players when 
avail). One of us juggled his align so that it was only -1 (so as not to 
drag down the xp of the others in the corp). Upon logging in each day, the 
normal increase of one align point was sufficient to bring the align up to 
neutral (0) and allow safe access to Terra for colonising the planets. Us- 
ing twarp, it was possible to bring out nearly 1 million new happy campers 
each session. To get down to neg align again, this person would jettison 
one hold of colonists each day at the end of his play.

     As the corp grew stronger, Ferrengal itself was eventually invaded and 
added to our list of corp planets. By this time, we had each of the five 
sectors in the tunnel heavily mined (99) and those sectors with planets had 
30,000 defensive ftrs (the rest only had 5000). We've successfully blockad- 
ed SD several times with ftrs/mines and have caught just about everyone at 
least once. The game is rather boring for in spite of us leaving taunts and 
hints in the Tavern conversation, there is NO organised resistance. There 
are NO other planets and the only other corp folded a week ago. The vast 
majority of the ftrs and mines in the universe are ours. We have six L5 
planets, each w/1638 shields (by agreement they are not invulnerable).

     One tactic we use is to build a class 4 (ssb) port in the same sector 
with our planets and as the port is completed, move a planet one sector up 
the tunnel to support construction of another class 4. In this way, we can 
each run sell/steal in a totally secure area and cancel each others busts 
if necessary. Hey, four or five players, each in an evil ISS (150 holds), 
can make a LOT of creds when all they need worry about is hold replacement 
when getting busted. I log in to the game, fill my holds w/equip, lift off 
and run sell/steal at the port that is right there for 66 turns (on a bust 
free day), land on the planet and deposit my 'prox 700,000 creds inna tre- 
asury. It's almost boring! It is perhaps a commentary on the quality of the 
local competition that when one of us is busted, we LOOSE more xp than the 
highest ranking non-corp player has TOTAL! 

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
                             --[ EVIL ISS ]--
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

* by Jim Bianchi 

     The ISS (Imperial StarShip) is considered to be the most potent ship 
in the TradeWars universe because of its combo of 150 holds, twarp drive, 
and the ability to carry and use a photon torpedo. It can also carry a lot 
of shields (2000), ftrs (30,000) and mines (150).

     A player who is "good" can just ignore most of what follows. Much of 
it is concerned with avoiding the three Feds, who will repossess an evil 
ISS on sight.

     To get an ISS requires the player to have a minimum +500 align and to 
go to the FedPolice sta at SD and apply for a commission, after which their 
align will automagically increase to +1000 and they'll be permitted to buy 
an ISS.

     To get the initial +500 align, you can kill other evil players or game 
generated traders ("Annoyances" or Ferrengi), create planets or starports 
or you can "buy yourself good" by posting a bounty on an evil player in the 
Fed Police sta at SD. The first method is expensive in terms of ftrs and 
shields used and can be somewhat uncertain. The second and third methods 
are simply not cost-effective for these purposes and can potentially result 
in assets that can be exploited by hostile forces. The last method, posting 
a bounty on evil players, is the way most seem to do it. 

     When posting a bounty on an evil player, of course, it's nice if you 
know definitely where one is, for then you can go and kill him, then run 
back to SD to collect it. BTW, if you blow away a player who has a "good"
align, you might want to check in the UG to see if there has been any hit 
contracts placed on him; or if he is evil, at the Fed Police sta to see if 
there are any bounties.

     It's expensive and not really cost effective, but I once found myself 
dab in the middle of Ferrengal, taking out Ferrengi ftrs by the bushel, as 
well as Ferrengi assault traders. When I finally managed to disengage, my 
<esc> pod was functioning normally and I was headed back to SD. I noticed 
when I did "I" that I now had something like +600 align and enough creds to 
get an ISS straight off, which I did. On the way back to my home sector, I 
was jumped by four angry Ferrengi who "have been looking for you, HooMan!" 
Fortunately, my <esc> pod was functioning normally.. <sigh> (They're STILL 
looking for me ..diamonds and Ferrengi blood feuds are forever.)

---
* Originally by Joel Downer 

Keeping an Imperial StarShip when evil:

  Avoid FedSpace as completely as possible. *Never* travel through sector 
1-10, and only travel to the StarDock using the strategy described below. 
Be *very careful* in all areas adjacent to FedSpace, and spend as little 
time on the Major Space Lanes as possible. 

  Deploy single toll fighters wherever possible when you travel. The Feds 
cannot travel through sectors with fighters in them, so (a) when you're in 
a sector with a fighter in it, you are *completely* safe from the Feds, and 
(b) the more fighters you have scattered outside the Major Space Lanes, the 
less the Feds will be able to *travel* outside the Major Space Lanes. 
Imprisoning Admirals Nelson and Clausewitz would be wonderful, but an evil 
StarShip captain should *never* try it him/herself. It's altogether too 
dangerous. 

  Travel by TransWarp whenever possible. When you *must* travel by convent- 
ional warp, use the following pattern: move-deploy-scan, deploying a toll 
fighter immediately in each sector you enter. Whenever you visit the Star- 
Dock, buy a full complement of ether probes and cloaks: ether probes are 
necessary for blind TransWarp, and cloaks can bail you out if you get stuck 
somewhere (even Zyrain can't attack a cloaked ship!). Carry at least 750 
shields and keep mine disruptors, in case someone tries to mine you to 
death; don't carry more than a few thousand fighters -- they won't help
you if you run into the Feds. <grin> 

  Find out how many entrances the StarDock has -- usually, it'll have one 
or two. If it has one, the approach to the StarDock is pretty simple: fire 
an ether probe into the StarDock, blind TransWarp into the *completely 
empty* sector nearest SGA. Deploy a fighter immediately, warp in, and do 
your business. If you see one of the Federals at or near the StarDock, put 
off your business until he leaves the vicinity -- you may want to restock 
your shields or holds at Rylos or Alpha Centauri. Don't try to deploy a 
fighter AT the StarDock; DO deploy a fighter at Rylos or Alpha Centauri 
when you go there. 

  *NEVER*, unless you have some special reason (e.g., hiding the path to 
your planet), remove your fighters when you're done in a sector. Forget 
about the 200 credits. You won't miss them. 

  *BEWARE OF MARKER BEACONS*!!!  Marker beacons and wandering aliens are 
the two greatest dangers to blind TransWarp. Never place them, and destroy 
them when you can. 

  Don't take unnecessary risks with corbomite. If someone leaves you bait 
-- e.g., if a hated enemy parks in a major transit sector with 0 fighters 
in a Scout Marauder -- politely decline the invitation. Well, not *TOO* 
politely. Leave 99 mines in the sector to let him/her know you still 
care... ;> 

  When you choose stealing sites, look for places where a port that sells 
equipment, a port that sells fuel ore, and a port that buys equipment are 
in close proximity. TWView and my "EVILPAIR" utility are both useful for 
finding these ports. 

---
* Quoting Dan Roseen 

Here's some evil ISS tips we have in our trainer:

EVIL IMPERIAL STARSHIP (EVIL ISS):

A trader that received a Federal Commission and bought an ISS will have
an evil ISS by keeping their ship and changing their alignment to negative.
Keeping an evil ISS requires taking precautions to ensure that you don't
move your ship into a sector with a Fed in it, because any one of the
three Feds will destroy your ship immediately if this happens.

The following precautions will help you keep your evil ISS by helping
you avoid the Fed ships (keep in mind that the precautions listed are
'above and beyond' normal precautions like carrying cloaks and protecting
yourself against fully mined sectors).

  -  Deploy a defensive fighter everywhere you go (do not attempt to deploy
     a fighter in Federation sectors 1-10 or the Stardock, in fact avoid
     these sectors as much as possible). In most cases, deploying the
     fighter will be the first thing you do after you have scanned the
     sector and moved into it. Toll fighters should rarely be used
     because many traders will either pay them and leave you mines for
     when you transwarp, or destroy them anyway. The Feds will not move
     into sectors that have a deployed fighter or a mine.

  -  Be sure you have a transwarp drive. Use your transwarp drive as
     much as possible for your transportation. Always carry fuel when
     going into suspicious territory.

   - Know how to blind transwarp. Blind transwarping is usually safer
     than single-stepping your evil ISS through sectors without deployed
     fighters, and more efficient.

  -  Always have MORE than 37,000 credits on your ship. If you have no fuel
     to transwarp out of a hazardous situation, you will be able to build a
     class 4 port, steal enough fuel to transwarp, and continue with your
     turns, hopefully ending up in a safer location, and won't have to use
     another 25,000 credits to replace the cloak you would need to use if
     you cloaked hoping you might be in a safer situation later in the day.
     Since all ports under construction have products when they are first
     created, you can immediately steal the fuel you need (you are evil,
     you don't have to wait until the port is open for normal trading).

     After stealing the fuel, you can easily destroy the port to deny its
     use to hostile forces and increase your own xp and negative align.
     Initial Port construction DOES NOT REQUIRE a planet in the same sect-
     or. Upgrading (and "opening for business") DOES. 

   - v1.03(d) BUG: A trader must have more credits than the cost of the
     port in order for TW to let the trader create the port. For example,
     a 30,000 credit port would require 30,001 credits or more onboard,
     even though only the 30,000 credits would be used for port construct-
     ion.

  -  Use a good TW database utility. In addition to the regular
     advantages a TW database will give you, a TW database program will
     help you tremendously in avoiding sectors that Feds can move in.

  -  Always use your scanner unless you are absolutely sure that the next
     sector is safe (e.g. if you have just been there and you know there
     is a fighter or mine in the sector). Be aware of the different
     densities of the Fed ships.

     The Fed ship densities are:
                                    Captain Zyrain . . . . 489
                                    Admiral Nelson . . . . 462
                                    Admiral Clausewitz . . 512

  -  When going to the Stardock, first attempt to send an etherprobe there
     to take a preliminary look for Feds. If you see any in the vicinity
     of the Stardock, try to hold off your business there until a later
     time or date. When at the Stardock, fill up on etherprobes, cloaks
     mine disruptors, and mines so you can make as few visits as possible.

   - Use the two class 0 ports that are not in Fedspace sectors (Rylos 
     and Alpha Centauri) as much as possible when you want to get class 0
     items. (Holds, ftrs, shields.)

  -  If you must go to the Stardock, and other traders seem to continually
     have Zyrain trapped at the Stardock (or other Feds) with deployed
     toll fighters, you can either try desperately to get into TW
     immediately after maintenance or you can release the Feds yourself.
     To release them yourself, create a route of mines from the
     Stardock where there are fighters. You may be creating a tunnel for
     the Feds to move in so you will need to make sure there are not any
     ways for the Feds to get out of this tunnel and end up in your face.
     And then go next to Zyrain's sector (remember you MUST be in a sector
     that has a fighter and a mine) and destroy the fighter. Then go to
     the next sector away from the Stardock and disrupt the mine. Continue
     this, until you lead the Fed away from the Stardock enough to where
     you cannot run into him when going around him to the Stardock. You
     may have to cycle throught the command prompt many times until he
     warps into the sector you want. You can safely watch him move into
     the desired sector with your scanner since you will still be in a
     sector that is protected by a mine and/or fighter. You may want
     to block his path to the Stardock while you are at it, however, if
     you have made it safely to the Stardock and get off the Stardock and
     notice a Fed has moved into the sector, realize that he won't attack
     you at that moment, but you are strongly advised that your next move
     is to transwarp immediately out of the Fed's vicinity.

  -  Have at least one other trader without an evil ISS that can help you.
     If you have an ally you can trust, your ally can help move Zyrain to
     different parts of the universe by starting to attack a trader that
     is safe in Fedspace, and then changing their mind when Zyrain
     warps in to protect the trader. A corp partner without an evil ISS
     can help with this also, and can additionally help with things like
     getting colonists from Terra, buying mines from the Stardock, etc.

   - Realize that without a trusted helper, and without a safe home, that
     a lone evil ISS will most likely have very difficult times against
     good competition, because the the trader needs to cloak or have a
     safe place to rest the ship.

   - Your helper can also help you out considerably by trapping Admiral
     Nelson and/or (preferably 'and') Admiral Clausewitz so they cannot
     move about the universe. They can be trapped with deployed mines
     and/or fighters. Captain Zyrain will transwarp over a trap when
     a Fed-protected trader needs his protection.

  -  If you are going into an enemy sector that appears to be of some
     special value to your enemy, and you suspect it to have one or more
     other warps into it, and if you cannot check out the contents of the
     other warp(s), use a photon when going in so the fighters remain in
     the sector. Your enemy may have one or more of the Feds trapped in
     an adjacent sector and if you destroy the fighters you will be in a
     very precarious position.

---
* by Joel Downer 

     Some additional comments. First of all, as I probably said in
EVILSTAR.TXT, if you're not comfortable with ether-probing and blind
TransWarp, don't use an evil I.S.S. I have had people disagree with me,
but in my personal opinion (a) intelligent use of blind TransWarp is
necessary to keep the ship against any competition worth beating, and
(b) blind TransWarp is the biggest reason to buy the ship in the first
place. It can save you 15-18 moves a day -- even more if you're
following up destroyed probes in search of a planet. Without blind
TransWarp, the I.S.S. is a less efficient stealing ship than the
StarMaster; with it, the I.S.S. is much *more* efficient. (And yes,
I'd be willing to argue that with anyone who disagrees. <g>)

Second, the main difference between playing in an evil I.S.S. and
playing in another ship is that you've got to pay more attention to
every move and choice in the evil StarShip. I assume you already
density-scan wherever you go, and I know you're comfortable with
database utilities. You also have to make a lot of cost-benefit
decisions. For example, if you don't have good competition, it's always
wise to deploy a fighter in the sector where you cloak, because
(assuming you're not in an MSL) doing so virtually guarantees that you
will not have a Fed waiting for you when you log in. Against a smart
enemy, though, the fighter may do more harm than good. Is it safe to
cloak at your stealing site?  Maybe not, even if your ship is named "The
Merchant Marines" (it's possible to track "The Merchant Marines" using
date docked; it's just harder and more expensive). Is it better to
cloak a couple sectors away, with no fighters in the sector?

     Against the very shrewdest opponent, you may even want to take the 
precaution of TransWarping on your last turn and cloaking in the sector to 
which you TransWarped. Why? If your enemy creates a multisector trap for 
you, and you're forced to retreat as soon as you uncloak, you will retreat
into the *last sector visited*, even if that sector is halfway across
the universe. Sound arcane? By an interesting series of coincidences,
that feature of the game saved my ship once when I was playing against
an extremely devious enemy named Tony Cichan.

An intelligent enemy will probably make the elimination of your StarShip
one of his/her top priorities. If you don't have teammates, you will
have to show extreme care around the StarDock, and *extreme* care if you
need to invade a planet -- what better defense for a planet than herding
Clausewitz and Nelson into the sector and trapping them with a fighter?
An enemy may also create planets directly off FedSpace, banking on your
reluctance to travel through sectors 1-10 -- someone did that to me in
the last game I played, and I barely caught on in time to keep him from
putting together something defensible. What you're doing is assuming an
enormous vulnerability in exchange for a ton of freedom. Against a weak
enemy, you'll have no trouble covering up the vulnerability. Against a
good enemy, you've got to do everything you can to exploit the freedom,
because the vulnerability will nag at you.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
                           --[ MORE ON SHIPS ]--
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

* by Jim Bianchi 

     Wanna provoke an arg on one of the Tradewars conferences? Write a msg 
of type: "the very best ship is an xxxxxx." Second only to calls for inf- 
ormation on the "bugs," that topic seems to take up most of the bandwidth 
there and it's a pity, really, because after the first few exchanges, there 
is never anything new in the way of using xxxxxx ship, or real detriments 
in one type or another ship shown (with the exception of the Tholian Sent- 
inel).

     What is the "ideal" ship? For each stage of the game, this author is 
convinced that there is an ideal choice or range of choices, but in this as 
in most things, there is ample room for alternatives and outright disagre- 
ement. For instance, I prefer the CorFla to the ISS, esp when playing 
alone. Perhaps it's because I've had four of them shot out from under me by 
Ferrengi on a blood hunt (and those things are EXPENSIVE!) and maybe it's 
because I like to be able to warp around and not worry about running into a 
Fed and loosing my ship.

     Another very serious thing to consider is, is this a game in which 
bugs are allowed? If so, the obvious choice is a ship most of us would 
never consider otherwise: the Havoc Gunstar. It is inexpensive. It can 
carry enough firepower to adaquately defend itself. It has twarp capabil- 
ity. It can be swopped in a citadel. And when "hold bugged," it can carry 
an impressive payload. Since you needn't be evil to run the Corporate Mega 
Holds bug, a CMH bugged HavGun is the ship of choice for use in games that 
allow exploitation of bugs; at least until an ISS can be purchased.

     Since I play almost exclusively in non-bug games (where bug use isn't 
engaged in by agreement or bug use is monitored), my choice is the CorFla. 
I like it. It's like a StaMas with twarp and 15 extra holds.

     When starting in a new game, I tend to think that the basic default 
"merchie" is much underrated. It can have fifteen more holds than a StaMas, 
and while it doesn't have near the ftr or shield capacity of a StaMas, 
these things aren't (or shouldn't be) very important in a just starting 
game anyway, when the objective is to make creds and xp. (Leave the "shoot 
'em up, bang-bang" to the kiddies). I first try to improve my merchie to 
max holds, then max shields. I figger that, by the time I loose it to enemy 
action -- as I eventually always do -- the universe has become too danger- 
ous to warp about in without some serious protection and I get into a maxed 
out StaMas, or if I'm CEO and have the creds, a CorFla.

     The ScoMar has the benifits of having a much larger base turn rate, 
and the highest combat odds of any ship in a non edited game. It is these 
odds that make the ScoMar the ship of choice in bugs-allowed games, for if 
it is overloaded with ftrs and shields (up to 32767 of each), it is nearly 
unstoppable and is capable of (two times out of three) destroying SD and 
most of the other class 0 ports. In a non bug game, it still possesses a 
large base turn rate and this makes it attractive to many who prefer to go 
see for themselves, as opposed to sending an eprobe.

    The StaMas has what is generally accorded the best ratio of firepower 
and cargo carrying ability to moves of any of the other ship types.

     If a secure area is provided (preferably containing a class 0 port), 
the ColTra, with its 250 holds, can prove a real money maker for one who is 
sufficiently evil to be able to sell/steal 250 holds at a whack.

     The only advantages that I can see to a Missile Frigate are that it is 
cheap, can be had by anyone, and can carry a ptorp. It is only nominally a 
trading ship. 

     Here are the shipspecs:

---
* Originally by Jason Boyd

                      Min  Max        Max   Max    Max  Max Max  Max Max    
            Cost  %Mv Hold Hold  Odds Ftrs  perAt  Shld P-M Mine G-T Bcn L P T
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
esc pod 0  free    50    1    5  .8:1    50    10    50   0    0   0   0 Y
MerCru  1  26300  100   20   75 1.0:1  2500  1000   400   0   50   5  50 Y Y
ScoMar  2  13200  200   10   25 2.0:1   250   250   100   0    0   0  10 Y Y
MisFri  3  28800  100   12   60 1.3:1  5000  2000   400  10    5   0   5
BatShi  4  40500   83   16   80 1.6:1 10000  3000   750   0   25   1  50 Y Y
CorFla  5  71000  100   20   85 1.2:1 20000  6000  1500   0  100  10 100 Y Y Y
ColTra  6  54400   58   40  250  .6:1   200   100   500   0    0   5  10 Y Y
CarTra  7  59400   67   40  125  .8:1   400   125   800   0    1   2  20 Y Y
MerFre  8  36200  150   30   60  .8:1   300   100   500   0    2   2  20 Y Y 
ImpSta  9 128600   83   40  150 1.5:1 30000 10000  2000   5  125  10 150 Y Y Y
HavGun 10  29500  125   10   40 1.2:1  3000  1500   500   0    5   1   5 Y   Y
StaMas 11  48000  133   30   70 1.4:1  5000  2000  1000   0   50   5  50 Y Y
ConSte 12  40500  100   20   70 1.4:1  5000  2000   750   0   25   2  50 Y Y
TkhOri 13  36000  133   30   60 1.1:1   750   250   750   0    5   1  20 Y Y
ThoSen 14  27000   90   10   50 1.0:1  3000  1000  1000   0   50   1  10 Y 
TauMul 15  53600   83   40  150  .5:1   300   150   500   0    0   2  20 Y Y

L P T: Long Range Scanner, Planet Scanner, TransWarp Drive.
Only the Missile Frigate and ISS can carry a ptorp.
The Feds will destroy on sight an ISS used by a player with neg align, no 
questions asked. (Just make sure they don't SEE you..)

---
* by Leonard Adolph 

I figured out hold cost some time ago. Just for fun, here it is again.

      SUM(216+20*(x-1),a..b)

Where a is the number of holds on your ship and b is the number of holds
desired. Add up all values for the formula (SUM) replacing x with all
values from a to b.

The above formula works in a program called Ultimate Calculator.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
                       --[ ALIGN AND XP CHANGES ]--
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

* by Jim Bianchi 

     To get the initial +500 align required for a fed commission (and an 
ISS) you can kill evil players; you can kill evil game generated chars; you
can post bounties on other evil players; you can build ports; you can build 
planets; you can upgrade ports; or you can pay taxes.

     The surest method is prob to post a bounty on another evil player. 
You get +1 align for each 1000 creds posted. This is esp effective if you 
have found an evil player who is vulnerable -- you can go to SD, place the 
bounty, blow up the evil player, and return to collect the bounty you post- 
ed (plus any other bounties on that player). Your align goes up for posting  
the bounty in the first place and again for killing the evil player. 
 
     To gain neg align, you can kill good players; you can kill good game
generated chars; you can post a hit contract on a good player in the under-
ground; you can destroy starports; you can jettison colonists; or you can 
destroy planets. 

     The formula for the amt of align shift when killing other players or 
game generated chars is:

     Same align -- you get 1/4 their align subtracted from yours
     Different align -- you get 1/2 their align added to yours

     You can land on Terra (or any populated planet) with empty holds, take 
on a load of colonists, warp to the closest non FedSpace sector and jettis- 
on them for a shift of -1 align per hold of colonists jettisoned. In v1.03 
games, you can repeatedly quit the game, come back and do this again and 
gain neg align each time. In v1.03d games, you can only get neg align once 
per game day. 

     The fastest method is prob to post a hit contract on another good 
player. You get -4 align for every 1000 creds posted. This is esp effective 
if you have found a good player who is vulnerable -- you can go to SD, 
place a contract, blow up the good player, and return to collect the 
contract you posted (plus any other contracts on that player). Your align 
goes down for posting the contract in the first place and again for killing 
the good player.

    If you go to the underground and repeatedly attempt to enter and give 
the wrong password each time, eventually you'll be knocked unconcious and 
all creds you have stolen (deposit all creds in the galbank or leave them 
in a citadel first). Keep attempting to enter and you'll be killed and ret- 
urned to the BBS. The next day, when you log into the game, you'll be in a 
ScoMar, with 0 align and 0 xp. All personal and corp assets will be undist- 
urbed. If you are a CEO and have a CorFla, sell it first, get a ship with 
minimum holds or use your existing ship to "moth" an enemies planet and get 
killed in an <esc> pod.

     To gain xp, you can kill anyone; triple trade; create or blow up  
starports; create or "bust planets." For evil traders, the latter course
is prob the fastest and surest method. You buy a gtorp (25,000 creds) and 
an adet (15,000 creds), "take them outside and set them off." Which is to 
say that you use the gtorp right at SD and then land on the newly created 
planet and destroy it with the adet. You'll get 75xp for creating the plan- 
et and 50xp for destroying it, for a total of 125xp. The align change will 
be +10 for creating it and -50 for destroying it for a net change of -40. 
Total cost per iteration: 40,000 creds.

     It should be noted that once you're evil, planet creation shifts align 
by -10 instead of +10.

     Blowing up ports is an effective way to gain both xp and neg align. 
You'll get 50xp and -50 align for each port destroyed. I typically use 1000 
ftrs from an ISS, CorFla or a StaMas on ports with no shielding. I've enco- 
untered a few with "class one" shielding -- on these I use 2000 ftrs. I've 
not been zapped yet. Typically, I loose 'prox 55-80% of the ftrs when at- 
tacking "no shielded" ports, and from 40-75% when doing the "class one" 
shielded ports. 

     One way to gain xp, pos align and creds is to attack Ferrengi ftrs, 
assault traders or Ferrengal itself. I once found myself dab in the mid- 
dle of a cloud of Ferrengi ftrs. When the smoke cleared, I'd knocked down 
close on 5000 ftrs and was in my trusty <esc> pod, headed for SD, with more 
than enough pos align to get a federal commission and sufficient creds for 
an ISS. Wheee! Unfortunately, this was my first ISS and not only didn't I 
know how to drive one, I couldn't fight one effectively, and got bounced by 
several angry Ferrengi on a blood hunt on the way home. I finally got there 
in an <esc> pod. Had I had this file then, things would've gone quite dif- 
ferently. At any rate, as a means of gaining xp, align and creds, deliber- 
ately attacking Ferrengi isn't acceptable for many reasons, most having to 
do with the cost/benifit ratio. The bounties paid you for killing Ferrengi 
ftrs simply aren't enough to cover the replacement cost of the ftrs you 
expend. And there is always the chance that your attack won't succeed and 
YOU'LL be the one in an <esc> pod -- in which case, you'll have to add the 
repl cost of the ship you were in to the equation. However...

     One possible way to rapidly shift align and xp toward zero and make a 
lot of creds in the process is to run several CT hold bug loops. This 
involves buying a ColTra and nothing else (except possibly a cloak) and 
getting busted attempting to steal 365 holds of equip or 660 holds of 
organics at eight different ports. Each time you do this, you gain 32 
holds, but loose 32 align points. 8 x 32 = 256 + the original 40 holds
= 296 holds. Optimally, one will plot a "robbing course" involving eight 
ports with SD as the terminus. When you reach SD, you sell the ship to
the shipyards for a truly incredible number of creds. Apparantly, it's
that last "bust" (the last 32 holds) that really puts you over the top. 
NOTE: the holds gained in this way will disappear if you port normally,
or if you jettison cargo or are bounced by the duty Ferrengi. You CAN
sell them at the shipyards, however. Hmmm, lessee, an <esc> pod w/33
holds is worth..

     'prox 750,000 creds can be obtained in this manner.This "CT hold bug 
loop" is best utilized by at least two corp players who run the same loop 
and "cancel" each others busts. 

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
                          --[ 5xp SELL/STEAL ]--
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

     The sell/steal cycle is a procedure whereby you sell a load of equip 
to a port, steal it back, then sell it to them again. Repeat as necessary. 
<grin> For those players with sufficient xp to steal 150 or 70 holds at a 
time (3000xp and 1400xp respectively) the sell/steal cycle should prob be 
the major source of income since it offers the greatest return for the 
least effort. You use one turn to sell the equip, you use another to steal 
it back. The theoretical max selling price of 150 holds of equip is 25,000 
creds, but in reality, this is seldom seen. In my experience, about 22,500 
creds is more commonly obtained, making each move in an (evil) ISS worth 
'prox 11,250 creds.

     5xp (and 2xp) is the amount of xp gain given for getting the current 
price for the amt of equip you're selling spot on (100%) or nearly spot on 
(99.xx%). The next segment discusses ways to calculate this "best price," 
and obtain 5xp per sale.

---
* Originally by Eugene Hung 

    All ports have a BEST price, which will get one 5 experience points if 
one bids that exact number. The best price is determined by the number of 
holds, if uneven, then the best price is usually a fraction, though I am 
not sure, since I always get holds in groups of 5 and 10, up to my maximum.  
Some ports have just ONE best price, those are the easy ones.

     Let us say one is in a StarMaster with 70 holds (the most useful ship 
for robbing and attacking). Get a psychic probe to help determine the best 
price. The first time, either accept the port's initial offer for no exp- 
erience, or bid a little higher than what they offer. The psy-probe will 
tell you how far you were off from the best price, then you steal the 70 
equipment back, and use your calculator to figure out the best price and 
nail it on the head for 5 exp. each time. However, most ports have more 
than one best price (which I will explain). You must use a different strat- 
egy for this, which is an extension of the strategy I just previously out- 
lined. 

     Ok, so you have a psychic probe, and have just found out ONE best 
price. Port again, and look carefully at the initial offer. If the offer is 
within 20 credits or so of the previous time (when you sold 70 equ to them 
at an absurdly low price), the best price is the same as last time, and so 
you should bid your calculated best price from last time. You may be off a 
credit or two, but eventually you'll figure out the best price through the 
probe. Now, let us hypothesize that inital offer is substantially different 
than last time (around 50-90 credits). That means the best price has MOVED. 
But, after lots of testing, I discovered that the best price can only MOVE 
up or down in multiples of a certain number, n. THAT NUMBER IS THE NUMBER 
OF YOUR HOLDS. Thus, going back to the example, the port's best price can 
fluctuate up or down multiples of 70. Knowing this, you look at the initial 
offer, see whether it went up or down from last time, estimate how many 
multiples of n it went up or down, and bid the best price plus 70 * roughly 
how much it went up or down. This is a little confusing, so I'll illust- 
rate:

     Let us say the port offers 9600 credits for 70 equ. You accept the 
offer, and figure out with your psy probe and calculator that the best 
offer was 10199. You steal the 70 equ back. Now you port again. If the 
offer still is around 9600(9580-9620), bid 10199. Voila, 5 exp. If you 
continue to steal-sell, and the offer varies very little, this is a one- 
price port. However, if the offer ever deviates by 50 or more, it is NOT a 
one-price port. So let us say the 2nd time, the port offer 9665(65 more 
than last time). Since you have 70 equ to sell, the port's best price must 
have gone UP by 70 credits(since the offer went up around 70 creds). So one 
bids 10269, or 10199 + 70. You steal, and port. The port offers 9510 
credits, or 90 below 9600. That's around 70 below the original best price, 
so you bid 10129, or 10199 -70. You steal, and port. The port now offers 
9650, around 50 above 9600, so the best price is probably 70 above this 
time, so it's 10269. You steal, and port. The offer is now 9385. That's 
roughly 210 credits(70 * 3) below, so you bid 10199 - 210, or 9989 credits.

     As you can see, ALL THE BEST PRICES ARE RELATED by the NUMBER OF 
HOLDS. This strategy also works in other ships, such as a Corp FlagShip 
with 85 (bid up or down multiples of 85 from the first figure).

     There is a flaw, though. One may not estimate the number correctly. In 
the previous example, what if the port offered 9635?  One could not tell 
whether the best price was the same, 10199, or 70 up, 10269. IN CASES OF 
DOUBT, OVERBID. What I mean by that is, bid the higher figure, in this 
case, 10269. If it WAS 10269, I get 5 exp. If it was 10199, the port will 
raise its bid by 20-21 creds(30% of # of holds), also raising the best 
price by 21 credits(30%). THE BEST PRICE CHANGES through overbids, by 30% 
of the difference between the bids, towards your offer. So, let us say we 
misestimated, and bid 10269. The port now offers 9655, which means we were 
over by 70, so we bid 10199 + 21(30% of 70), or 10220. Bingo! Realize, if 
one UNDERbids, the port will immediately accept the offer, and you will get 
only TWO exp, for being 99.31% off or so. So always choose the higher 
figure, when in doubt. And if you overshoot by 140, the port offer goes up 
by 40 or so, so the best offer goes up by 42 credits(30% of 140), and you 
should bid 98(140 -42) credits less to get the best price. 

---
     That is the theoretical basis behind the 5xp sell/steal algorithms 
seem in Polli's Powermacs and Myers' TWFT (with improvements, of course, 
but that's basically it). Personally, I'm tempermentally incapable of sit- 
ting at a keyboard running sell/steal for 67 moves, getting 5xp each time, 
so I depend entirely on the Powermacs or TWFT, each of which is capable of 
obtaining 5xp for each iteration. I've lifted off planet with full holds 
(150 in an evil ISS), run sell/steal at a port in the sector and with the 
exception of the first sell ("only" 2xp), have gotten 5xp each time I've 
sold, using both Powermacs and TWFT. I can't speak for TWHELPxx, for aside 
from a brief period when I was starting to learn the game, I've not used 
it. By all accounts, it is a fine pgm, however.

---
* Originally by Joel Downer

 The basic steal-sell cycle works as follows: find a port that's selling 
equipment, and steal or buy 150 holds. (When you're using ports identified 
with EVILPAIR.COM, it's actually smarter to buy, rather than steal, your 
first load. Don't risk making a port angry with you when you may need to 
buy fuel ore there the same day!) 

Move to a port buying equipment -- preferably a port at 100%. Sell the 
equipment for the best price you can negotiate (see the section on the 
five-experience point trick, below). Now, port and *STEAL BACK THE EQUIP- 
MENT YOU JUST SOLD*. Sell the equipment again, steal it, and repeat the 
process until you're caught or out of turns. When you get caught, you'll 
lose 13 holds (out of 150) and 10% of your experience. Sometimes you'll be 
caught more often than you like, but if you steal a sensible amount (no 
more than one hold per 15 experience points), you'll typically make more 
than enough to compensate for the trouble. 

Important: When you get caught, write down the location and the date. You 
won't be able to port there for at least 14 days without getting busted 
again (even if you just port to *trade*, you may get nailed). After a 
couple of weeks, you can go back and work the ports again. 

The five experience-point cycle works as follows. The first time you dock 
at a port, accept the port's first offer for your equipment. Write down the 
offer, and using a calculator and the results from your psychic probe to 
calculate and round off the best price. (E.g.: first offer was 19,200; 
psychic probe reports 96.69% of best. Best price = 19,200 / .9669 = 
(int)19857.2 = 19857. 

Steal back the equipment and dock again. If the first offer is within half 
your number of holds (75 in a StarShip) of the first offer from last time 
(19125 - 19275) bid the number that you calculated last time (19857). If 
the offer is substantially higher or lower, adjust the best price by a 
multiple of your number of holds. If the offer is 19,325 (125 higher), bid 
150 higher; if the offer is 265 higher, bid 300 higher; if it's 700 higher, 
bid 750 higher. 

When in doubt, overbid. If the port refuses your initial offer, you can 
still often get the five experience points; just understand that the best 
price will *change*, by 30% of the difference between your offer and the 
original best price. 

Example: The port offers 19,278, and you bid 20,007. Oops! The port tries 
to barter, telling you that you guessed wrong -- evidently, the best price 
was still 19,857. Your error has changed the best price by 150 * .30, or 45 
credits, so the *new* best price should be 19,902. 

This approach will not work at every port. Some ports don't seem to have a 
best price; at others, the initial estimate with the psychic probe will 
actually be a few credits low or high. If you master this technique, 
though, you'll be able to get five experience points on *every sale* at 
many ports, and on *most sales* at many others. 

Price guidelines: *very good* equipment-buying ports will pay 22,000 - 
23,500 credits for 150 holds of equipment. Spending tons of turns looking 
for the perfect port can end up *wasting* money, though, because every turn 
in a StarShip is worth at least 9,000 credits. (What's more, tooling around 
in a StarShip when evil is *dangerous*!) I'm usually content to work a port 
that offers 20,000 for 150 holds, and I'll sometimes put up with ports pay- 
ing as little as 19,000. Ports that only offer 16,000 - 17,000, however, 
are taking things a little far... <grin> 

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=[ end part one ]=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
 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

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
                               --[ BUGS ]--
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

* 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.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
                            --[ MORE BUGS ]--
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

* 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...

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
               --[ THE PLANET CLONING BUG (v1.03 only) ]--
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

* 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.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
                           --[ USING BUGS ]--
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

     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.

---
o 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.

---
o 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.

---
o 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.

---
     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.)

---
o 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 

When you enter a defended sector, the sequence of events is: 

 1:  Mines detonate.

 2:  Quasar cannons fire at sector level.

 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 fires at 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.

     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.

 5:  If the citadel is level 5 and has at least 1 shield, the
     player must destroy the shields to continue.

 6:  If the citadel is level 3 or higher, the quasar cannon fires
     at atmospheric level.

 7:  If the citadel is level 2 or highter, the planetary offensive
     fighters attack. If the ship has 26214 (hex 6666) or less
     fighters, the number that attack is determined by the military
     reaction level. If the ship 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.

During a photon wave, only steps 5 and 8 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 ]-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
   PART THREE of IAGO'S WAR MANUAL for TradeWars 2002 v1.03 and v1.03d

   Contents:
     QUICK 'N DIRTY
     REFERENCE

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
                        --[ QUICK 'N DIRTY ]--
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

     This section is for all the interesting little bits that are important 
enough to be included in such a file as this, but aren't worth a category 
of their own.

---
* by Leonard Adolph

Here's another little trick with large numbers of holds:

If you locked your holds with fuel ore then find you want to move large
amounts of fuel ore, you can. Unload one of the other products to get
empty holds and fill them with colonists. Now lock the holds using the
product you just emptied, put the colonists back and move your fuel
ore. A corp partner figured this one out when I asked him to restock
the quasar cannons in a game we have decided to end.

---
* Originally by Kris Lewis

Density scanner readings:

0  - Nothing          40  - per Trader, Alien, or Ferrengi
1  - Beacon           50  - Destroyed Starport
5  - per Fighter      100 - Starport/Stardock
20 - per Mine         500 - per Planet

Any density not ending in a 0, 1, 5, or 6 is a Federal.

---
     The latest controversy to hit the FIDO TradeWars conference involves 
the question, "is it possible to positively find a cloaked player (and 
destroy him)?" The obvious answer is no. (After all, what are cloaks FOR
if not to render the user totally invisible and thus invulnerable?)

     What it IS possible to do is to, using a variety of methods, such as 
asking the Grimy Trader in the Tavern about a particular trader, analysing 
high traffic areas, learning the habits of the target as regards favorite 
places to stay for the night, plotting destroyed ftr patterns, examining 
sheep entrails, and so on, to make an approximation, a SWAG. But it will, 
no matter HOW (pseudo)scientific, STILL be a wild ass guess. Unfortunately, 
as in anything depending on random chance, occasionally someone will guess 
that so-and-so is in such-and-such sector AND HE IS. And yet another "urb- 
an myth" will be born about how to find a cloaked trader.

     Several methods for guessing (fairly closely, but a guess is still a 
guess) the location of a cloaked player have been put forward, but the best 
of them is only a guess (what can I say? they ARE). There have also been 
put forward several schemes that sound good at first, but do not stand up 
to rational analysis or empirical testing. Among these are:

     If you suspect a player is cloaked in the sector, hit "A" to attack 
him. If he's there, the game will respond as it normally does when you go 
over to combat mode.

     If you suspect a player is cloaked in the sector, hit "W" to tow him. 
If he is really there, you'll be notified that towing a ship with ftrs on 
board is not possible.

     Hmm, just after I'd finally mastered move-post-scan in an evil ISS, I 
gotta add two more steps to the dance: move-post-scan-attack-tow. (Parsely- 
sage-rosemary-thyme.) Needless to say, neither of these work. They've been 
tested on private games by people I trust and they simply DO NOT WORK.

---
* by STEPHEN WHITIS

> Does anyone know of a real quick way to get pos align (say 7000+)
> down to neg align?

How much money do you have? How much experience? Are you planning on 
running an evil ISS once you turn evil?

I know a way an evil player (doesn't matter *how* evil) can turn good, get 
an ISS, and turn evil again for a few million credits. I suspect a variant 
on that would work. I'll post the evil version, but as I think about it, I 
don't see any reason it wouldn't work pretty much straight out for a good 
trader. If you don't want the evil ISS, you can skip that part. But unless 
Aedit or something is keeping you from using the evil ISS, I think you 
should get one. If you don't know the tricks for keeping an evil ISS, then 
ask, and I'll post about it.

I haven't used this, but I trust my source (Joel Downer). The biggest 
problem is that I might not remember it exactly right...

The evil version: Get killed trying to enter the underground without using 
the correct password. Do this near the end of your turns for the day. The 
next day, you'll start with 0 exp, 0 alignment and a default ship. Post a 
reward at stardock on an evil trader... 1000 credits = 1 alignment point, 
so you'll need 500,000 credits for this. If you know of a easy to kill evil 
trader, and where he is at, you can go kill him after you get the ISS, and 
collect the reward you posted (plus anything the Feds have posted on him) 
before you turn evil again.

     Once you have +500 alignment, enter the FedStation on stardock, and 
ask for a commission. That will put you at +1000 alignment. Go buy the ISS. 
If you need to kill off the evil trader you posted on, this is the time to 
do it. (If you want, you could have a corp member with 0 ftrs and 0 shi- 
elds, nothing on board to speak of, waiting, knowing you would kill him.) 
Now, you've got an ISS, no exp to speak of, and positive 1000 alignment. 
Stock your ISS with everything it can carry. You can get fighters/shields 
elsewhere, but get your eprobes, cloaks, scanner, etc now. In an evil ISS 
you don't want to come to stardock any more often than you have to. Before 
you start turning evil, post a single fighter at every entrance to Star- 
dock, to keep the Feds from walking in and finding you there. Once you are 
evil, if you run into a fed, you lose your ISS, no questions asked.

To turn evil again, start busting planets. Buy max planets & max atomic 
detonators. Build a planet, blow it up. Repeat. This will give you xp and 
neg align each time you do it. Do that until your alignment is under +100.  
Then go into the underground, post a bounty on a good trader (preferably 
one you know where to go kill). In the underground, 250 credits = 1 neg 
alignment point. You need to reach -100, where you can start stealing. By 
the time you've busted enough planets to drop your alignment, you'll have 
enough experience (I think) to rob 150 holds safely.

---
     Having recently been in a situation similar to the above (a friend was 
at plus 4000 align and wanted to join my (evil) corp), I'd like to point 
out that apparantly, there is some threshold of positive align beyond which 
it is impossible to get into the UG. Not only can't you get IN, you can't 
even get KILLED there. A nasty looking Corelian will bar your way but that 
is all he'll do. (Likely there is a similar mechanism for evil players vis- 
a-vis the Fed Police sta.)

     Busting planets to get a negative align shift is tedious in the extr- 
eme and almost prohibitively expensive. You'll pay 25,000 for a gtorp and 
15,000 for an adet, making a total of 40,000 creds. This will get you -40 
align points. (Or -1 per 1000 creds.) Planet busting IS a good way to gain 
xp in order to be able to steal. Of course, the neg align is nice, too, but 
that isn't what it PRIMARILY is for. In order to get to 0 align from +7000, 
175 planets will need to be busted. At 40,000 creds each, that works out to 
seven million creds -- for planets and adets alone. (Not even counting the 
cost of buying and outfitting an ISS or posting hit contracts on good play- 
ers to bring your align back to evil.) 

---
     One way to lower (or raise) align is to blow up game generated chars. 
Aliens "enter" the game via SD. Kill one and another will appear at SD to 
replace him. On one game, one of the routes out of SD is a one way warp to 
a sector with only one exit. I've put a ftr trap in the second sector and 
about once a week, I'll load up on ftrs and go have a look. Typically three 
or five aliens will be trapped there, unable to go on because of the ftrs 
and unable to go back because of the one way warp in. Determining which al- 
iens to blow up so that your align moves in the desired direction is fairly 
easy by just reading their titles. If you're still unsure, the Crai has a 
listing of all the current good and evil game generated chars. If you put 
ftrs in each of the sectors leading out of SD, go blow up a game generated 
char and return to SD to remove one ftr, eventually a new one will move 
out. Of course, you have no control over what you get -- it might be some 
poor slob in a MerCru with 20 ftrs or it might be the three-legged Grand 
High Poo Bah from the planet Xyzzy in a Battleship with 15,000 ftrs, max 
shields, and loaded to the gunnels with corbomite. 

    Truly, altering one's align direction by anything over 1000 points is  
a procedure which is time consumingly tedious, expensive and potentially 
hazardous. It CAN be done (but not very easily) and it can be done in many 
different ways (some of them mutually incompatible). It is not a project 
which should be undertaken lightly. 

---
* Originally by Craig Randle

Getting something for nothing:
 
1 - Ported at a port, and steal ALL the equipment from it (max holds)
2 - Sell it back after haggling for awhile
3 - Buy the max holds of whatever it is selling, but instead of 
    haggling the price, put 0.
4 - You'll get the good ol' "Nothing is free in this universe" line..
5 - Then when you go went to steal the equipment again there will 
    be as more than it started with.

This could be a fast way to get a port in your home sector LOTS of 
equipment, and then steal it. Why? Use it to stock planets, for 
starters... 

---
     For the fun loving among you, if you find an (uncloaked) player and 
fire a ptorp at him, he'll loose all his turns for that day, no matter 
where he is -- FedSpace or not. Better still, if you fire a ptorp into, 
say, SD, and drop carrier while the p-wave is still in effect, you'll have 
created a "perpetual p-wave" that will remain in effect until extern runs. 
Anyone who warps into SD will suddenly loose any remaining turns. (This 
apparantly works for any sector, but it seems like an espescially droll 
thing to do to SD or one of the class 0's.) Do this right after midnight 
and you'll have denied use of that sector to all players for the rest of 
the day. <grin> 

---
     TriCron seems to have a fascination for many. When played with ANSI 
off, with a macro, at 14.4kbps, it seems an acceptable way to get creds to 
purchase eprobes for the initial mapping of the universe, but otherwise it 
seems a waste. I b'lieve that one of the earmarks of the relatively unskil- 
led player is the amount of time he spends playing TriCron, investigating 
the library, the theatre, the singles bar, the UG or FedPolice HQ at SD. Or 
trying to track other players by asking ol' Grimy. Now I've investigated 
all of these things, and so should you -- once. There has been a good deal 
of effort expended on those animated ANSI screens (that TriCron screen is a 
work of art!) and it should be appreciated. After you've seen them for the 
first time, however, turn ANSI off; the display will go a LOT faster, esp 
at 2400bps or below.

     A recently discovered bug involves dropping carrier immediately you've 
lost all the rent at TriCron. When you sign back on, you'll have all your 
creds back. (You'll also have the sysop pissed at you, but what's that next 
to the 156,000 creds you needed for planetary defense? <grin>)

---
     If you run across a hated enemy, do you blow him all the way up? No, 
you tow his <esc> pod to a one deep dead end tunnel and install him there 
with, say, 100 defensive ftrs in the NEXT sector. When he logs back on, 
he'll be blockaded and won't be able to move out of the sector he's in. 
This can be VERY frustrating and may even lead to the target self destruct- 
ing as it appears that there is no way out of this trap. Esp if he has no 
one to call on for help. If he self destructs, he looses his ship and any 
creds on it and he won't be able to get back in for two days. <chortle> 
(Which was the purpose of the exercise.)

---
     If someone has found your <esc> pod, and blockaded you with, say, 100 
defensive ftrs, take a deep breath and have a glass of ice water. No, have
TWO glasses of ice water. There is a way out, but it's gonna involve some 
work. First, try to holler for help. Call someone who might be able to rem- 
ove the blockading ftrs. If this is impossible, there is an alternative to 
self-destructing. Notice carefully what happens when you try to move into a 
sector with defensive ftrs and you refuse combat (you retreat). Occasional- 
ly, one of those defensive ftrs will follow you back. Occasionally, one of 
those defensve ftrs that follows you back will attack you. What you must do 
is move into the blockaded sector, then retreat. Move, retreat. If the gods 
smile on you, one of those ftrs will get lucky and blow you up and you'll 
start the next day in a nice ScoMar. It'll take a looong time, but hey. No 
one SAID it would be easy. Just keep moving and retreating, moving and 
retreating. 

---
     For the evil twarpers out there, ALWAYS carry at least 30,001 creds 
(let's make it easy and say 40,000). If you get stuck in a place you don't 
want to be, without twarp fuel, stop. Build a class 7 port (sss). All ports 
under construction have product on the docks (the planet is only needed to 
upgrade the port and allow it to open for business) and if you "P" and "R,"
you'll be able to steal more than enough fuel to get you out of there. And 
since new ports are rather vulnerable, you can kill it rather easily, gain- 
ing xp and neg align shift at the same time. (You prob don't want to leave 
a class 4 just laying around for hostile exploitation.)

     The reason for carrying 37,001 creds is due to an ..ahem, bug, in 
v1.03d, which requires a player constructing a port to have MORE THAN the 
amt it takes to build. I just grab 40,000 creds whenever I leave home.

---
* by Leonard Adolph

Argh! You people are driving me crazy! ;-)

I have in the past figured out and posted the formula for cost for holds
you buy. I won't bother resubmiting that information at this time.
But...

When you sell a ship the price paid by the shipyards for holds is:

INT (holds * (180 + (holds - 1) * 8.1))

for a ship with 0 kills and 0 portings. The 8.1 figure will decrease
with enough ports and kills by a ship.
If you don't know what the INT is, don't worry about it. Just drop
anything to the right of the decimal point in the answer.

BTW, 1821 holds is the turn around point and that amount of holds brings
27,172,962 credits for the holds. The above formula matches the price
paid for holds up to 1821 and fails after that. I have no idea why that
figure is the turn around point but I suspect it has to do with Turbo
Pascal's Longint being divided by 100 (percentage?) and the floating
value for the 8.1 in the formula, depending on ports and kills. A ship
with 1822 holds, 66 ports and 5 kills brings 25,303,922 for the holds.
The same ship with 0 kills and 0 ports brings 27,143,659 credits for the
holds, less than what is paid for 1821 holds.

If the price of holds in The Mall is set at 17,207 each, the dreaded
1821 (renamed by me) holds bug will be eliminated. That will make the
cost of 1539 holds (1821 - 282) more than what will be paid for them in
the Shipyards. If maximum holds are modified higher than 250 the price
of holds in The Mall should be recalculated higher:

27,172,962 / (1821 - (maxholds + 32))

I have great hopes that the next version of The Mall will price holds
the same as in the game. (Neil?) That should help the "good guys" as a
ship with 300-400 holds could hit the trading pairs as heavy as
steal/sell but as an "evil" I would not want to risk a few million
credits worth of holds getting busted stealing 30,000 credits worth of
equipment. I *would* follow the "good guys" around though and rob those
pairs blind.

I have not done much testing on the effects of ports and kills on
pricing but I do know that 101 ports drops prices by less than 10% and 9
ports does not affect prices. 9 ports is of course what is used to bug a
CT to 282 holds and port at Stardock, assuming that stealing at a port
(and getting busted) adds to the ports your ship has. I am not sure if
it does or not at this time.

Also BTW. Just kidding about the driving me crazy part. I enjoy this
stuff. :-)

---
     The source for this is somewhat questionable, so I'm unable to vouch 
for its veracity. It SOUNDS fun and destroying ports is a valid xp build- 
ing and neg align shift gaining technique. Of course, the cost of the ftrs 
required to just blow it up without upgrading first might be less than the 
cost of the upgrading. It all depends on how badly you want to destroy that 
port, I guess. I can concieve a situation where denying a port to a hostile 
force might well outweigh mere cost considerations and boil down to simply 
"what's the easiest way?"

Upgrade Overload bug:

Upgrade a port over 32,767 and then blast it. You only need 2 fighters to
destroy it, every time. Take the amount the port CAN trade (buy or sell) 
and divide by the trading percent. Then, multiply by 100 to get R. Subtract 
R from 32,767 and add 100 (possible decimal rounded off could throw off R) 
to get U. Then upgrade ore (cheapest) by U.

Press PA2<cr>. Goodbye port!

     What this procedure supposedly does is to cause the upgraded product 
to "roll over" the 32,767 figure and thus go negative. Apparantly the reac- 
tion level of ports is related to the amt of product avail. If there is a 
negative amt of product, the defensive capability of the port drops to a 
really low level, allowing it to be destroyed by just two ftrs.

---
     For those with a spare level 5 planet and 'prox 53 billion creds just 
laying about and who still feel threatened by another player/corp, here is 
what you do. This is MY favorite tactic for taking out opposing L5s too. I 
do it ALL the time.. <snicker>

If you get over 55 billion on a planet, then you will be locked out of that 
planet and every planet in that sector regardless of what amounts of cred- 
its you have on the other planets. When you try to land you will be thrown 
out of the game. It's a favorite tactic of mine for taking out level 5 pl- 
anets. I put about 53 billion on a level 5 and twarp it in there. In a day 
or two the interest will make the whole sector corrupt and no one can ever 
land on any planet in there. You can't even fix it with TEDIT cause it 
throws ya out of that as well.

---
     And with that inspired bit of lore firmly committed to memory, I close 
this segment.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
                          --[ REFERENCE ]--
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

     More on holds cost:

* by Woody Weaver

          -=> Quoting Leonard Adolph to Brendan Connell <=-
 BC> I don't know the algorithim, [for the cost of holds] although I've
 BC> found that when you get to about 135 holds, each new one starts at just
 BC> over 2000 credits and goes up.

 LA> I figured out hold cost some time ago. Just for fun, here it is again.

 LA> SUM(216+20*(x-1),a..b)

 LA> Where a is the number of holds on your ship and b is the number of
 LA> holds desired. Add up all values for the formula (SUM) replacing x
 LA> with all values from a to b.

Good work Leonard, but there is a little more you can say.  The constant,
216, varies a little bit; I've seen as low as 200 and as high as 240.  Also,
you can rewrite the formula without the sum, by using the trick that if
       s = a + (a+1) + (a+2) + ... + (b-1) + b   [ write sum forwards  ]
       s = b + (b-1) + (b-2) + ... + (a+1) + a   [ write sum backwards ]
so:
      2s = (b-a+1)(a+b).

Your formula works out to
    cost = (194+20a)+(194 + 20(a+1))+...+(194+20b)
         = 194(b-a+1) + 20(b-a+1)(b+a)/2
         = (194 + 10(b+a) )(b-a+1)

So, for example, to go from 20 holds to 75 holds (b=75, a=20) it would take
    cost = (194 + 10 (95) ) (56) = 64,064 credits.

---
     To build a Level One citadel, you need:
            500,000 Colonists to support the construction,
                300 units of Fuel Ore,
                200 units of Organics and
                250 units of Equipment.

     To build a Level Two citadel, you need:
            1,000,000 Colonists to support the construction,
                  200 units of Fuel Ore,
                   50 units of Organics and
                  250 units of Equipment.
                    4 days to build.

     To build a Level Three citadel, you need:
            2,000,000 Colonists to support the construction,
                  500 units of Fuel Ore,
                  250 units of Organics and
                  500 units of Equipment.
                    5 days to build.

     To build a Level Four citadel, you need:
            3,000,000 Colonists to support the construction,
                1,000 units of Fuel Ore,
                1,200 units of Organics and
                1,000 units of Equipment.
                   10 days to build.

     To build a Level Five citadel, you need:
            3,000,000 Colonists to support the construction,
                  300 units of Fuel Ore,
                  400 units of Organics and
                1,000 units of Equipment.
                    5 days to build.

     Once the upgrade to the next highest level has begun, all population 
and product can be removed for use elsewhere and the upgrade process will 
proceed unhindered.

---
     Below is given the report as seen from the planet menu. The planet is 
shielded (and shield bugged), the populations have been adjusted for max 
production and there is product and max ftrs on this planet. Note that the 
military reaction is 0%. This is to prevent the "6666" bug having any ef- 
fect in the event of an invasion and wasting all the ftrs. Since this plan- 
et is shield bugged, there is no real need for the ftrs -- in fact, I edit- 
ed them into this screen just to indicate the max nr possible on planet. 
The max amt of any product on planet is 10000. The max nr of ftrs is 32000. 
The max population is 6000 (2000 per prod group). 

Planet #9 in sector 707: Garbanzo
Class M, Earth Type
Created by: Iago
Claimed by: Corp #1, Los Sanfrangeles Trading Co.

  Item    Colonists    Daily     Planet      Ship
           (1000s)    Product    Amount     Amount
 -------  ---------  ---------  ---------  ---------
Fuel Ore    1000        333      10000          0
Organics    1000        142       7280          0
Equipment   1000         75       5632          0
Fighters     n/a         55      32000      13027

Planet has a level 5 Citadel, treasury contains 25000000 credits.
Military reaction=0%, QCannon power=100%, AtmosLvl=50%, SectLvl=2%
      -=-=-=-=-=- TransWarp power = 25 hops -=-=-=-=-=-
    Planetary Defense Shielding Power Level = 1639

---
     The items avail in the hardware store at SD and their prices are:

+-------------------------------------+
| <A> Atomic Detonators ..... 15,000  |
| <B> Marker Beacons ........    100  |
| <C> Corbomite Devices .....  1,000  |
| <D> Cloaking Devices ...... 25,000  |
| <E> SubSpace Ether Probes .  3,000  |
| <F> Planet Scanners ....... 30,000  |
| <M> Space Mines ...........  1,000  |
| <P> Photon Missiles ....... 40,000  |
| <R> Long Range Scanners:            |
|         Density scanner ...  2,000  | 
|     Holographic scanner ... 25,000  |
| <S> Mine Disruptors .......  3,000  |
| <T> Genesis Torpedoes ..... 25,000  |
| <W> TransWarp Drives ...... 50,000  |
| <Y> Psychic Probes ........ 10,000  |
+-------------------------------------+

     Alpha Centauri, Rylos and Terra are the three class 0 ports. At each 
of these, holds, ftrs and shields can be purchased. The shipyards at SD
also sell class 0 items. Hold prices vary according to the number of times 
you buy them for any particular ship. Ftr and shield prices move up and 
down daily, with a low of 'prox 134 creds and a high of 'prox 234. When 
shields are cheap, ftrs are dear and vice versa. 

---
     Building and upgrading starports is a valid way to gain pos align
points, as well as having the ports avail for trading/stealing.

+========================================================================+
|   StarPort Construction    |   Initial Construction Costs     | Import |
|----------------------------+----------------------------------|   or   |
| Port Class  Ore  Org  Equ | Credits | Ore | Org | Equ | Days | Export |
|------------------------------------------------------------------------|
|     1      |  B    B    S  |  39,250 | 120 | 120 |  60 |   6  | Import |
|     2      |  B    S    B  |  41,500 | 140 |  70 | 140 |   7  | Import |
|     3      |  S    B    B  |  48,000 |  80 | 160 | 160 |   8  | Import |
|     4      |  S    S    B  |  37,500 |  50 |  50 | 100 |   5  | Export |
|     5      |  S    B    S  |  34,000 |  40 |  80 |  40 |   4  | Export |
|     6      |  B    S    S  |  32,500 |  60 |  30 |  30 |   3  | Export |
|     7      |  S    S    S  |  30,000 |  20 |  20 |  20 |   2  | Export |
|     8      |  B    B    B  |  50,000 | 200 | 200 | 200 |  10  | Import |
|     9      | Not Available | ------- | --- | --- | --- | ---- | ------ |
|     0      | Not Available | ------- | --- | --- | --- | ---- | ------ |
|------------------------------------------------------------------------|
|       Ports will initially produce 100 units/day in each category      | 
+========================================================================+       

     Though ports generally require producing planets in the same sector
in order to upgrade, it should be noted that newly created ports always 
have product on the docks (that can be stolen). 

+================================+
|  Upgrade Starport Production   |
+--------------------------------+
| 1 Fuel Ore,   costs $250/unit  |
| 2 Organics,   costs $500/unit  |
| 3 Equipment,  costs $900/unit  |
+================================+

---
     These are the various ship specifications:

The Merchant Cruiser is the standard fare for earning a living in the
universe. These craft are moderately fast, well armored and have hard
points for many different accessories. Many cartels use the Merchant
Cruiser as their only ship type. The Merchant is the craft by which
combat specs are rated for a standard.
|SHIP2

The Scout Marauder is currently the fastest, conventional drive ship
known to mankind. This small speedster can easily outdistance even the
powerful Corellian Battleships. It is not equipped for controlling many
fighters or shields, but it fights at 2 to 1 odds due to its quickness
and small size. This craft cannot carry mines or Genesis Torpedoes.
It may be small, but this ship's speed and range make up for much.
|SHIP3

Missile Frigates are really nothing more than a retro-fitted Merchant
Cruiser. They maintain the same speed and range of the Merchant but can
carry twice the firepower. Commanding a Frigate means that you cannot
take advantage of much of the additional starship equipment available,
but their combat advantages make up for that. The Missile Frigate is
the only ship outfitted to carry the awesome Photon Missile. These
weapons of destructions can turn StarPorts into space junk in short
order. The Photon Missile was also used effectively in the Trantorian
conflict to totally destroy the enemy's home planet.
|SHIP4

The Corellian Battleship is a dangerous craft indeed!  This ship packs
the most punch of any ship in the Federation. Battleship's can carry
four times the fighters of a Merchant and deliver them with a much
higher degree of effectiveness due to their superior combat computers.
The shield generators on Battleships are capable of shielding the ship's
fighters as well. This craft is one of the more prestigious and powerful
ships available today.
|SHIP5

Few words can actually describe the sheer awe associated with a
Corporate Flagship. Only available to Corp CEOs, this huge craft is
the ultimate in power and capability. Not only can it carry up to
20,000 fighters at one time, this ship carries a powerful combination
of options that will make any foe turn tail and run.

The most impressive capability of the Flagship is the TransWarp Drive.
This device enables the ship to TransWarp to any other sector in the
Universe provided one of your fighters is already there emitting a
locator beam. Without this, a ship can disapear into TransWarp and
never be seen again.
|SHIP6

The Colonial Transport is a massive structure that can only barely be
called a ship. This huge craft is ideal for moving large amounts of
products or colonists from place to place. Though it has a standard
drive, this ship is rather slow due to the mass involved. Also, the
combat computers are rather limited on this craft due to the excessive
needs of the navigation computers. The Transport is not outfitted for
carrying or deploying mines. Conflict brings the Transport's major
weakness to light. Due to the size of the craft, it is very hard to
defend against fighters.
|SHIP7

The CargoTran is a large ship indeed. Though not as fast as some of its 
related trading cousins, this ship can move vast amounts of goods. It is
typically a pacifist's ship as it does not carry much in the way of
offensive capabilities but it's very large array of holds makes up for all 
of that. The large shield capacity of this craft makes it safe to wander
 hostile territory as well. This ship is considered by many to be one of 
the top money-makers in the Universe.
|SHIP8

The Merchant Freighter is the ideal ship for those traders that do not want
to concern themselves with political matters. It is not a very powerful 
ship in combat, but its strengths are many. This ship can carry a large 
number of shields and manages to outdistance most ships. After all, "Those 
who fight and run away, live to fight another day" still holds very true in
the universe as we know it today.
|SHIP9

The commercial version of a Federation StarShip is not available to just
anyone. This craft is only available to those who are commissioned by the
Federation to aid in their cause. StarShips are the most closely guarded
technology in existence. They can carry massive assault power and through
the use of the TransWarp drive, they can deliver this power almost anywhere.

The Imperial StarShip is truly the most powerful ship that a private
individual can command. More information about qualifying for a Federal
commission is available at a Police station near you.
|SHIP10

The Havoc Gunstar is a recently developed ship that owes its existance to 
new developments in micro-miniaturization. This mid-sized ship is the only
one of its size to be able to house a TransWarp drive. Though it doesn't
carry a large amount of holds to fuel the TransWarp, it still has a decent 
T-Warp range and can arrive at its destination packing a moderate fighting
force in the bargain. Watch for this ship to become the favorite of the
Mercenary legions in the Universe.
|SHIP11

The StarMaster represents the latest in technological advances for star 
travel, meeting the needs of those who desire a ship with great speed and 
medium cargo capacity. Developed to counter the growing threat of space
piracy, the StarMaster posesses a formidable fire control and weapons syst- 
em, and a high shield capacity. The price for this state-of-art craft is 
not cheap, but discerning traders will find that the investment will pay 
for itself in the long run.
|SHIP12

The Constellation is the direct offspring of the Correlian Battleship.
While not quite as powerful as its distinguished parent, the Constellation
makes its own mark with greater speed and range. Traders have dubbed it
the "baby battleship", but this "infant" is one of the most powerful and
maneuverable ships available in the universe today. |SHIP13

The T'Khasi Orion is the perfect ship for traders who want the speed and
cargo capacity of the Merchant Freighter but need a bit more firepower.
Offering substantially higher combat odds and fighter capacity, the T'Khasi
Orion is an excellent intermediate ship.
|SHIP14

Young corporations in need of planetary defense should consider the
Sentinel. With its new planetary combat guidance system, this ship's
normal combat odds of 1:1 shoot up to 4:1 when defending a corporate
planet. When an enemy ship enters a sector containing a Sentinel set in
defense of a corporate planet, the hostile vessel must first destroy the
Sentinel and all of its fighters before it may land and attempt any action 
toward the planet. Remember:  The Sentinel was designed primarily for 
Planetary defense, if used for offensive purposes its combat odds are 1:1. 
|SHIP15

"Big, slow and ugly...", seem to be the words most often overheard when 
someone is describing the Taurean Mule. Designed in direct competition
with the CargoTran, the Mule is somewhat faster and possesses a higher
cargo capacity, but it is even more vulnerable to piracy and attack than
it's competitor. However, this is still a good ship for traders who have
staked out "safe" trade lanes and do not have to worry about enemy attacks.

---
     These are the game specs for the planetary defenses. The first one, 
military reaction, is a fairly useless one due to the "6666" bug, which can 
potentially result in the loss of all ftrs on the planet with zero affect 
on an invader. For this reason, the military reaction is typically set to 
0%.

Military reaction level:
0 would be totally defensive, 50 would use half of the fighters on the 
planet in an attack against an intruder landing on this planet and the 
remaining half would drop back to defend the Citadel, 100 would use all of 
the fighters in an assault on the intruder. Remember that your defensive 
fighters on planet have much better odds than defensive fighters deployed 
in space. If a Trader tries to blast your planet with Photon Missiles 
(after blowing up the fighters you had in the sector) then the Combat 
Control Computer will send this percent of your fighters into the sector
to attack.

Quasar Cannon reaction level, in the Atmosphere:
0 would be totally defensive, 50 would use half of the Fuel Ore reserve on
the planet (for each firing), and 100 would use all of the Fuel Ore remain- 
ing against an enemy. Remember that the Quasar Cannon is MUCH more effect-
ive against an enemy that has entered the atmosphere of the planet.

Quasar Cannon reaction level, in the Sector:
0 would be totally defensive, 50 would use half of the Fuel Ore reserve on 
the planet (for each firing), and 100 would use all of the Fuel Ore remain- 
ing against an enemy. Remember that the Quasar Cannon is MUCH more effect- 
ive against an enemy that has entered the atmosphere of the planet. So sho- 
oting at an enemy in the sector will not do as much damage at that range.

     The Quasar cannon reaction levels are much more significant. When 
calculating the Atmosphere setting vs. the amt of fuel avail, remember that 
due to a bug in the program, only half the expected fuel will be used to 
inflict the same amt of damage. In other words, assume 1000 fuel and an 
Atmospheric qcannon setting of 50%. You would expect the first atmospheric 
shot to consume 500 fuel, but instead only 250 fuel will be expended, and 
this will do the same amt of damage as would 500.

---
