You keep attacking the target after placing fighters around the sector warps. If it is an alien, HOPE they attack back so they will go to 0 fighters. Also, hope that you got rid of all their shields. After that, just use one fighter to cap them. For the 30k damage, that would happen when trying to capture a fully corbomite loaded Alien Trader and you screw up.

Ok.. cap'ing a manned ship is pretty straight forward, but does anyone know the odds of attacking an un-manned ship? I know it defends at much worse odds but not sure of the exact number.

Thanks!

I'me gonna jump on the end of this because I see alot of post that are really nuts and confusing to say the least ..

Firstly a combat scanner is something that some ships have (usually a battleship and corp flag ship) and when you power weapons it tells you the sheild % that the ship has .. a sheild % of 0 still means it has sheilds .. just not enough to reach the 1% mark ..

Unmanned ships defend at 1/2 of their normal odds "thanks to survey says for this info"

Gold Ferrengi/Alien Traders can be difficult to capture .. this is my method that I found works best ..
use a ship with a combat scanner .. attack sheilds + 1/2 figs * his def odds / your offensive odds .. after U do that he'll attack you back with is figs .. then attack him 1 fig at a time until you cap him .. remember .. they'll fire back!! .. let them do the hard part and get to 0 figs .. then the cap is quick and easy .. This can be difficult when sheilds are > than 10k because they regen sometimes as fast as U can fire 1 fig ..

one shot caps are something you'll see .. a good script can get a 1 shot cap if everything is just in place but for the new/returning player I think that they shouldnt worry about using one shot cap's ..

Also a good thing to note .. now that .55 is out gold ferrengi/alien's no longer carry the massive cash that they previously did .. so you'll not get rich by capping them anymore ..



>

Edited by - Doctor Who on March 09 2002 11:56:07 AM

Sorry Dr Who but you are wrong about the unmanned and manned odds on ships. Here is a test I ran with 3 stock ISS which had no shields.

Sector : 666 in uncharted space.
Ports : New Narbonne, Class 2 (BSB)
Traders : Civilian Ser, w/ 42,025 ftrs,
in Test1 (IonStream Imperial StarShip)
Ships : Test2 [Owned by] Ser, w/ 32,122 ftrs,
(Axis Industries Imperial StarShip)
Warps to Sector(s) : 334 - 956

Command [TL=00:00:00]:[666] (?=Help)? : A

Attack Ser's unmanned Imperial StarShip (30,000-32,122) (Y/N) [N]? Yes
How many fighters do you wish to use (0 to 10,000) [0]? 10000

You lost 10,000 fighter(s), 20,000 remain.
You destroyed 20,117 enemy fighters, 12,005 remain.

Command [TL=00:00:00]:[666] (?=Help)? : A

Attack Ser's unmanned Imperial StarShip (20,000-12,005) (Y/N) [N]? No
Attack Ser's Imperial StarShip (20,000-42,025) (Y/N) [N]? Yes
How many fighters do you wish to use (0 to 10,000) [0]? 10000

For attacking this trader you receive 285 experience point(s).
You have been promoted to Sergeant Major!
and your alignment went down by 2000000 point(s).
You lost 10,000 fighter(s), 10,000 remain.
You destroyed 10,134 enemy fighters, 31,891 remain.


Almost 2x as many points of damage on the unmanned ship.

The manned ship gets 1.5 odds, and the unmaned ship odds fell to approximatly .75

quote:
The manned ship gets 1.5 odds, and the unmaned ship odds fell to approximatly .75


That's correct, unmanned ships get half the odds. Also, unmanned tholian's get the defensive bonus (divided by 2). You are best served by capping all the planets before you attack an unmanned tholian. Once none of the planets belong to the other corp, the tholian stops getting it's bonus.

quote:
Sorry Dr Who but you are wrong about the unmanned and manned odds on ships. Here is a test I ran with 3 stock ISS which had no shields.



Thanks! for correcting me .. unmanned ships are 1/2 of stock .. I'me going to correct my previous post .. but I was wrong .. thanks to survey says for correcting me ..

Regards

<<Doctor Who>>

quote:
I did write an Excel spreadsheet to calculate it on the fly. There happens to be a race in the game I play (maybe it's in all Gold games, dunno) called the Psyclos, who carry big truckloads of corbomite with them all over the place. So, I've started capturing their ships and selling them off for 250k-1M each! Woohoo! Here's a basic rundown on the spreadsheet:

Cell B2 has the number of fighters on their ship
Cell C2 has the shield %, as a decimal (I.E. 41% becomes 0.41 on the sheet)
Cell D2 has that ship type's max shield level
Cell E2 has that ship type's combat odds
Cell F2 has my ship's combat odds.
Cell H2 contains this formula:
=ROUND( (((((C2*D2)+B2)*E2)/F2)+1), 0)

And it works perfectly! Thanks a bunch for the formula, Fire!

--Me




Doesn't this require you to have a complete listing of the odds of each ship type that is in the game, plus the max shields, etc. Then when you encounter a target you start calculating all this stuff and by the time you are thru he is long gone. Might be better to send a few fighters and chase the bugger around for a bit wearing him down, that is generally my strategy anyway.

quote:
Doesn't this require you to have a complete listing of the odds of each ship type that is in the game, plus the max shields, etc. Then when you encounter a target you start calculating all this stuff and by the time you are thru he is long gone. Might be better to send a few fighters and chase the bugger around for a bit wearing him down, that is generally my strategy anyway.


In most games there are only a few ships that people will actually be in. I normally check the odds at the beginning of hte game and just remember them, then do some rough figures in my head when I need to hit them. I can cap an online player about 50% of the time this way.

quote:Originally posted by smthng

Just because I'm really bored and an absolute freak about data structures, I thought I'd post a slightly cleaner version of the magic formula.

=ROUND((C2*D2+B2)*E2/F2+1, 0)

You really only need parens when multiplying or dividing something you've added (which only happens once in that formula).

This is the kind of thing that happens when watching a script run to make up all the cash lost when someone hacks your corp and steals all the fighters you set up so you could go on vacation for two weeks... be warned!


--smthng

"All your planet are belong to us!"


D'oh silly me, I made the odds an integer long when they should have been a floating point single. Here is the corrected function:

Function TWAlienCap(lAlienFigs As Long, lAlienShperc As Long, lAlienMaxSh As Long, sinAlienDOdds As Single, sinYourOffOdds As Single) As Long

TWAlienCap = CLng(((((lAlienShperc * lAlienMaxSh + lAlienFigs)) * sinAlienDOdds) / sinYourOffOdds) + 1)

End Function


? TWAlienCap(5000,1000,1,1.4, 1.2)
7001
? TWAlienCap(5000,1000,1,1.5, 1.2)
7501

Nothing like testing out your functions before using them.

Those formulas are great if you want to blow up the ship half the time. To cap a ship you need to kill 100% of the shields and 90% of the figs. There is a significant random factor, so if you hit it too hard... poof... ship is blown. A good rule of thumb is to knock out 95% of the figs, giving you the best chance to stay between 90% and 100%.

Would this formula work better then?

Function TWAlienCap(lAlienFigs As Long, lAlienShperc As Long, lAlienMaxSh As Long, sinAlienDOdds As Single, sinYourOffOdds As Single) As Long

TWAlienCap = CLng(((((lAlienShperc * lAlienMaxSh + (lAlienFigs * 0.95))) * sinAlienDOdds) / sinYourOffOdds) + 1)

End Function

Or should I create two parts of the function, one to calculate 95% of the alien figs at alien def odds divded by player off odds plus the shield max time percent of shields times alien def odds divided by player off odds?

Also important to note, that not all ship edits have a combat scaner to see what percent the alien shields are. If so, assume max shields and attack max shields and no figs. If figs get destroyed then figure the alien has no shields left.

those formulas should be ok when the defending ship has a decent amount of figs (say, over 100). At lower numbers, you need to be more conservative. i.e. if the defending ship has only 10 figs, and you try to kill 95%, you might attack with 9 figs (assuming you round down). The random factor will make you blow the ship up a good percentage of the time.

I usually attack with enough firepower to kill 100% of shields (if shields are known), 95% of figs, minus 5 (with a minimum of at least 1 fig per attack of course). So, if I'm attacking a ship with only 10 figs, I'll only try to hit it for 4 damage.

If you don't have a combat scanner, you MUST assume 0 shields. For example... you attack a manned Colonial Transport that only has 10 figs. If you assume it has 500 shields when it really has none, you might attack with 200 figs, and blow it to bits. Hello Corbo!

Cant get access to the site i am forbidden, how did you find out I am so evil lol
TW55

quote:Originally posted by pennystash

I've also posted a long article about calculating ship-to-ship attacks for the TW manual. It can be found at:
http://www.johnnywales.com/tw/attack_math.html

And, yes, I'm a big enough nerd to have my name as a domain name.

First, Cherokee, I want to thank you for the brilliant info. I have learned a lot reading your posts. This is helping me learn more about the game in a Math/Science way.

Second, it is helping me redefine and improve the formulas to make them more effective.

So what I got now is this:

Function TWAlienCap(lAlienFigs As Long, lAlienShperc As Long, lAlienMaxSh As Long, sinAlienDOdds As Single, sinYourOffOdds As Single) As Long

If lAlienFigs > 100 Then
TWAlienCap = CLng(((((lAlienShperc * lAlienMaxSh + (lAlienFigs * 0.95))) * sinAlienDOdds) / sinYourOffOdds) + 1)
Else
If lAlienFigs > 5 Then
TWAlienCap = CLng(((((lAlienShperc * lAlienMaxSh + ((lAlienFigs - 5) * 0.95))) * sinAlienDOdds) / sinYourOffOdds) + 1)
Else
TWAlienCap = CLng(((((lAlienShperc * lAlienMaxSh + 1)) * sinAlienDOdds) / sinYourOffOdds))
End If
End If

End Function

If 5 figs or under, it should select just 1 fig to attack with. If 100 to 6, it should attack 95% of the figs minus 5 to be safe.

TW55: I found the Archive cache thanks to Mr. Peabody and his boy Sherman at http://web.archive.org/web/200107130724 ... _math.html

But their server that caches it seems to be down right now. The Wayback mnachine must have blown a gasket?