Can anyone help me out... I was wondering what exactly photons disable in a sector. I know they disable ships, but recently I photoned a sector, and I still got blasted by the quasar cannon. So my question is,

What do photons do to a sector,
And what don't they do?

Thanks

Photons have a wave duration period that lasts as long as the setting is set for by the sysop. in the game you are playing is it set to one second? if so you probably did not get into the sector before the wave duration ended and thats why you got blasted. photons will disable fighters in a sector and mines (not limpet) and planet cannons as long as you get into the sector before the wave duration ends. macros are very usefull for photoning and moving into the sector. photons do not disable a ship completely though. it will take the turns away from a player but they can still attack you fire photons or land on a planet.

Well, this was my own server I was testing, and I had the duration set to 35 sec. So I made it in in plenty of time. I don't know what happened.. I always thought that they should disable sector level quazar cannons and atomsphere quasar cannons too. But maybe it was a glitch in the game that time... I will continue testing...

If the planets are L5+ and have 200+ shields, photons do not affect them either. This could be the case, conidering 35 sec photon duration (which I wouln't recommend for any actual game). Otherwise, unless something is messed up, a non-shielded planet won't fire as long as the photon duration lasts.
-Aranarth

Oh, that is how they work. Ok. Gotcha. Will have to test that out. Thanks for the info.

a long photon duration like 35 sec has it's advantages in certain cases, when paired with Photon Multi-fire turned off. Since Pwarp/Photon scripts are so prevalent these days, it can be nice to only allow such attempts every 30 or 60 seconds. This makes clearing sectors a little easier, and makes for a more aggressive game.

I agree with CK. Macros and scripts make even 1 second duration photons pretty easy to pull off.

i am having alot of trouble pullin off 1 sec photon invasions....Could it be because of the ship delay or anything like that...

Your problem is that 1 second photons are not truly 1 second. They are between 1 and 1000 milliseconds. So if you fire a photon at 9:30:00.982 PM, you only get an 18 millisecond photon duration.

There are ways around this, such as trying to sync your script up with the server clock, but for the most part, I'd advise sysops to set durations to 2 seconds or higher.