what are some ways that I can tell how many figs and how much money my opponents have? there is also a dead corp in the game, which used to own the game before they went the way of the rogue mercenaries...

One way would be to ask them. They may not tell you but its worth asking. I have found that if they seem to be a little arrogant in their playing they wont have a problem with bragging about how much they have. The other way is to look at the game stats, V from the main menu. Look at the number of planets in the game and what percent have citadels verses the age of the game, number of fighters and mines in the game etc. Then compare it to yours and all the others you know of. Remember the fighters in the game include aliens and their deployed and planet fighters. What it doesnt show is the number of fighters on ships in the game. This is a good way for people to hide how many fighters they have, they fill IC's with them and they dont show up in the stats. You can get an idea of whats out there by applying this information compared to what you know. Depending on good or evil you can also guesstimate what they can make a day based on turns in the game. I use about 1 Mil per 100 turns as a good estimate of what a red can make. A blue in an ISS can make about 1.2 mil per 1000 turns just trading. This doesnt take into accout for planetary trading. I can tell you with just casual play it can give reds many times more than blues depending on game and ship edits. Just think a little and do some math and you can prolly guess at a ballpark figure for each player or corporation.

quote:Originally posted by Shorty

What it doesnt show is the number of fighters on ships in the game. This is a good way for people to hide how many fighters they have, they fill IC's with them and they dont show up in the stats.
Just a note, it doesn't show figures on unmanned ships. If the ship is manned, the figs are counted on the V screen.

problem with the fig approach is that the ferrengi are the strongest power in the game. 50k figs at every turn...

Thanks for the tip Harley, didnt know that part.
As for the Ferrengi fighters, I set avoids for all the sectors I run into like that unless they are in MSL in which case they will be cleared at extern. This way I only need to total my avoids and multiply by 50k and then take a guess at how many I dont know about. Its not an exact science but you can make pretty informed guesses by looking at all the info available to you.

Another option is to keep an eye on the alignment changes of opposing reds. I believe each change of 1K in MBBS games equals about 1 million creds earned doing their evil deeds. When experience starts building rapidly you can assume they are into megarobs and figure about 1.8K exp for each mega. Might want to check those changes watching your own reds work.