I have looked around the TW 2002 websites and found a bunch of information on Pair-Port trading, Citadel constructions and types of planets etc.. I havent seen anything on how to calculate how many fighters to use to knock out the shields and destroy their fighters so I can capture a alien ship. I end up blowing it up .. thanks in advance for the help!

You need jsut enough figs to kill theirs and take down the shields of the other ship...plus one. The way I use is:

their figs (f)
their shield percentage (p)
the total availabe shields for that class of ship (s)
the combat odds of their ship (e)
the combat odds of your ship (m)
((((p*s)+f)e)/m)+1=# of figs you need.
so their shield percentage time the total shields their ship could have then add the number of figs they have, multiply this all by the combat rating of their ship and divide it by the combat rating of your ship.

for example they have 2000 figs 25% shields and are in an ISS (combat 1.5 stock, 2000 max shields)
vs.
you in the CF (1.2 stock)

(((.25*2000)+2000)1.5)/1.2
(500+2000)1.5=3750
3750/1.2=3125+1=3126 figs to capture

Now this will vary some as the shield percentages will not be exact so you may need a couple more or a couple fewer figs to actually capture, there is still some luck involved.

Hope this wasn't *too* complicated I know it may look like it but it seems to work for me.

No not at all. I hope to write an excel spreadsheet to help me calculate it on they fly. Thank you again!!

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

Now Im Jealous! I havent had time to crawl it out for myself, but I will use your example to make it go faster. I havent had too much luck 2 out of 5 trys ended in me netting a ship.

Thats cool how your able to capitalize on the calculation.. and yes, THANK YOU Fire.

Nightcrawler (aka Joe)
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

"Alien Traders" carry about the same, usually 1500 corbomite, good for money. I use a MUSH command to calculate it.

dont forget one thing though people, any ship WITHOUT an escape pod will blow up when captured. aso even though you have beaten the "enemy" down to 0 shields and 0 figs, and only hit with 1 fig, they may still go BOOM !

In regards to the calculations, I'm just curious as to how you determine the shield percentage of the enemy ship?

It happens in the Non Gold, Gold and MBBS settings. But, it only happens when you have a ship that has a combat computers. The following ships have the combat computer: Battleship, Flagship, Missle Frigate, and the ISS.

In edit games, such as gold games, with new ships. It happens to be what ever ship the sysop/game-op has setup to have the combat computer.


The WABBIT
ICQ# 12988803
http://www.shadowworldgame.com

And just to mess with your mind........
There are times when you can cap enemy's and thier ships still have figs on them.

it's like a 1 shot capture. Doesn't happen all the time but it does happen

Velocity

"We are Dyslexia of Borg. Your Butt will be Laminated"

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!"

quote:
It happens in the Non Gold, Gold and MBBS settings. But, it only happens when you have a ship that has a combat computers. The following ships have the combat computer: Battleship, Flagship, Missle Frigate, and the ISS.

In edit games, such as gold games, with new ships. It happens to be what ever ship the sysop/game-op has setup to have the combat computer.


The WABBIT
ICQ# 12988803
http://www.shadowworldgame.com


Classic games do not enable the iss to have shield percentages show. And when i think about it i dont think i've ever been in an iss that showed shield percentages. it was always the advantage that the corp flag had that made it hard to chose between the iss or the corp flag. age old argument, isnt the corp flag really a better ship in a stock game.

I'll sleep when i die!

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.

lone wolf, corp flag ship isn't that great compared to the ISS in stock games. sure it is only a 3 turns/hop ship while ISS is 4/hop, but the ISS has almost 2x as many holds, more than 2x as many fighters ( 50000 i believe in the recent tw versions) and more shields.. as well it can carry photons and has better odds than the cfs. a ISS with only half its max fighters could still toast a decked out cfs.

ISSes do not carry combat scanners. Though, they are good for cheap capping (tolling the sectors around a ship and sending wave after wave) and if you mess up, you can still moth the 30k damage.