First off, thanks to everyone on these forums and in the games I've played for answering so many of my questions. It's an absolute pleasure to play with a community that, despite the competition to win, is willing to help. I've had several people provide some good insight and help just before they crushed my poor base...and that's truly a gentleman (or woman).

That being said, continuing on from where I was at in: viewtopic.php?f=13&t=21575

So I've played in about 4 or 5 Unlimited Turn games thus far. I'm sure to some they're not popular, and obviously strategies are tremendously different. However, I feel that Unlimited Turn games have given me the fast-paced learning course I need thus far. It exposes me to every facet of the game very quickly, money and time are never an issue, citadels upgrade quickly, etc.

That being said, with a focus on Unlimited Turn games at this time still:

1. QCanon levels. I've read many different theories, but the most popular seem to focus on the lowest # planets in a sector being set Sector to a low level to clear out mothing. I've been told this is around 1-5%. Next lowest a little higher (i.e. 5-10%), and so forth. Does this sound about right?

Atmospheric, I've been told/read a variety of things. A lot of it seems to focus on the amount of ore, ship sizes, etc. However, the #'s are all scaled, and seem to ramp up from a slightly higher number (i.e. 20%) than Sector.

2. Military Reaction. Most people have said 0% for max defense whenever Photons are enable in a game. True?

3. Sector vs. Planetary Figs. I have yet to get any good advice on these ratios. With Photons, I understand sector figs can be rendered useless. So do I just stick with a low number and focus most heavily on figs on planets?

Without Photons, what kind of ratios of sector to planet do people try to have? Which side are you heavier on?

4. I'm Blue, so what the hell do I do after I'm done building? Or, am I never done making new planets and colo? What about when Terra is stripped, the truce is off, and the war is on?

Do I grid to find my enemies, harrass them, and protect myself? Do I just keep making money and buying figs?

5. Cashing after Truce is over. I know Blue can't compete with Reds in terms of cashing. But, what do I do? Bust planets and harvest their materials (i.e. MomBot's "Pimp" feature)? Do I then fly those planets around to upgraded ports selling O and E?

6. Attack methods and scripts. What do I do? Am I flying planets around, taking figs off, and attacking sectors and planets? How do I keep my Butt out of a jam if I'm not online to defend myself?

I guess I'm just purely lost after the building phase is done. I don't know how to protect myself, or how to truly and effectively go after and attack people and planets.

On MBBS atmos = ore burnt * 2. On Gold it's ore burnt / 2. So you need to know what you're dealing with. Then you also need to know if you're working w/ an unlim or a turns game. In an unlim everyone will be landing in the biggest ship they can, so you should set it to pod that a few times. In a turns game some of us like to do an ore probe, were we land once w/ a cheapo, followed by once w/ the big guy. So at the end of the day it's all just "know thy enemy."



MR is about delivering pods when ppl don't pay attention to shield levels and just blast thru to figs. If you're in a situation where ppl can't spend time pinging your shields to under 200, then MR works pretty well. If you're in a static base defense situation it won't matter, since people can easily torp in. The big hole in MR comes w/ modified ships, if your ship's defensive odds are high you can burn enemy figs by taking an MR blast, retreating, refilling, repeating. In that case it's cheaper to moth down a planet w/ MR set. Of course if your MR isn't properly set and you don't pod the guy, well then there's really no point at all to setting it.



You need sector figs. Why? Because while I can torp under your sector figs, I can't lay my own until I've taken out yours. That means I have to spend extra time, resources and pods running down your sector figs before I can drop one to call a planet in for invasion support. It also takes more precision to get into a sector w/o sector figs, as opposed to a sector w/ only a few where I can just moth you down and pgrid in.

With that said, there's a time and place for all of that. Early on before planets are shielded there isn't much point to either MR or sector figs. Doubly true in non-stock games w/ big odds. Later on, however, yea... get some sector figs. Set them on defensive so people can't run them down w/ big def odds.



Divide your efforts. Build or expand into other sectors, hunt for ports, cash, ore your planets, grid.



Ugh. Most edits come w/ no materials, and frankly I hate the logspam that "pimp" brings. No, the answer is to ptrade. Assuming your cols produce stuff, just upgrade ports w/ decent MCICs and sell to them.



If you're not online to defend yourself you can't keep your butt out of a jam. Simple enough. You can slow the enemy down tho, ore ore ore.



Protecting yourself comes with experience. Until you've been invaded and have invaded others several times you really won't know how to do that.

Thanks Sing. I know you're a long-term and respected player/SysOp, so I appreciate the time. You know, my posts and questions always sound better as I'm jotting them down in my mind before I post. When I start typing they read like I'm a confused and scared 12 year-old.

Thus far my focus has been on Unlimited turn, MBBS, Gold, 2 day Truce games. Some may enjoy them, I know others frown on them. Either way I feel they give me the most options to learn in the shortest time possible. I can afford bigger mistakes, and most are over within 5 days. However, perhaps they aren't the best place to learn strategy as they seem to vary greatly by game type. I am trying to dive in and learn everything in a short period of time...or just live longer than a few days.

Frankly, I'm borderline lost with MomBot. I understand it has a collection of good scripts/macros, and gives other people the chance to use me as a "bot" in certain situations. However, I spend most of my time confused reading all the small "Help" txt files while my WorldTrade script runs alt-tabbed. I still read and click everything one at a time when executing scripts, trying to learn more from them. Or, at least trying to find what is most useful/commonly used.

That, and I really don't have any relative experience yet. I have no idea in these games if 100k or 2 million figs are what's considered "a lot" or "enough". I don't know if I should have 3 planets or 9.

I was going to post more questions here, instead I think I'll just sit and scratch my head for awhile.

Actually, here's an issue I would appreciate help with...

...oftentimes my scripts seem to get "hung up" easily.

I use Swath, TWX Proxy, and MomBot. Two good examples are TWX's Worldtrade script getting hung up, usually at a purchasing/selling/price prompt. I can't find any common-circumstance this occurs under. Sometimes it runs for 20 minutes, sometimes it runs for 6 hours while I sleep.

The other is just about anything with MomBot when I start getting messages about deployed fighters being attacked. Actually, that's with most scripts. I do a CN7 to silence all messages, but MomBot turns it back on (currently trying to use the "Merch" feature).

The second I get a flood of text about someone passing through my figs, the script just sits there.

Oftentimes many other scripts get hung up on "Stop in this sector (Y,N...) [N] ? Sometimes nothing else is going on, so no reason I can see to cause the issue.

edit: Here's an example of right now. Trying to run "Merch". It initially lifted off, Port Neg'd with the planet, landed on the planet, moved it, lifted off, then tried to fly my ship to another sector. Ship moved one sector, sat at the "Stop in..." prompt. Stopped script, landed, loaded again, it did all it's prelim stuff, moved the planet once, lifted off, Neg'd the products, then tried flying my ship again, stopped at same prompt.

Yes, I have all haggling disabled. No, the sector it's moving me to is not a # similar to the price of the goods (i.e. in some way it's still trying to haggle).

There's only 1 way to learn this, as well as game strategies. Find a competitive game where it's needed, and watch how it gets used. First time I ever used a bot was in a game w/ 4 other ppl, and I was learning to do megas. Find a corp and learn. The help files won't tell you how and when to apply things.



Easy way to figure it out... do a CLV, count up the active corps (they should have active players on them). Then hit V, that'll tell you the rough fig count. Take the fig count, divide it by the active corps, that's the average number of figs per corp. Usually in unlims like that 1 corp will have 70% of the resources tho, so keep that in mind. Still, provides a good rough way of judging the value of figs. Same works with the citadels, the cit % and number of active planets is there... from that you can determine the number of developed planets, along with the average planets you should have.



There are a 1000 reasons why scripts can hang. That's standard procedure, really. LOL. Sounds like there's some config bug. Check your CN settings (abort=space?), make sure there aren't any other copies of the script running, make sure you have a twarp, etc. If you're running a ptrader you'll find sometimes ptraders do that if the haggle is rejected, or an amount is sent wrong. My ptrader buffers the amounts to prevent ewarps. Find the script author and ask them, they should be able to track down the problem.

I would make sure SWATH's haggle is off as it can cause some issues when it is trying to buy and another script is doing the same thing.

               / Promethius / Enigma / Wolfen /

"A man who has no skills can be taught, a man who has no honor has nothing."

Thanks, sometimes I ask a redundant question just to have it verified. A simple "At least tell me I'm not the only one/crazy".

As for scripts, I can handle that. So long as I know I'm not the only one.

Obviously I'm trying to learn a lot in just a handful of days, so at times I'm a little unwilling to just let things fly and see how they land. Gotta' walk before you can crawl. However, along the way, I snap up the helpful tidbits. Right now I've produced 100 million in cash in a few minutes by Ptrading. That's better than I was doing WorldTrading before Sing offered his advice.

What I really need next is to find a few willing, knowledgeable corpies and learn from them.

As always, thanks.

A question on grids and gridding.

Is "gridding" loosely applied to any activity where you are laying fighters or mines down as you travel across an area? For example, the figs I lay while I WorldTrade, would someone call that gridding?

Or, is gridding more specifically laying figs, limps and arms down to cover an area, thereby tipping me off when someone passes through so I may attack?

Do you typically grid out from your primary base, areas you think your enemy may be...wherever the hell you please?

Regarding defending myself, let me put it a better way.

Let's say I'm out gridding using MomBot. I want to protect myself from an attack (if possible, I know) by using a trigger to get the hell out of there to my home base if someone comes to attack me.

Or, I'm Ptrading and want to get myself and my planet the heck out of there.

Just some simple ways to potentially defend myself by getting to a safe spot.

Ok, I promise only one more for now...

Is there a way to "stack" or have multiple scripts executing at the same time.

For example, while I'm WorldTrading I want to get scrubbed if I pick up any limpets. So, if I pick one up, another script that is running will stop at SD, scrub, and get back to WorldTrading.

Or, like my above post, a defensive script that'll stay active and try to save me if I get attacked while I'm out Ptrading.

Pretty much.



That would be one way to do it. Of course if you only grid the area around your base it's a dead give-away.



Dead ends and tunnels starting at the furthest distance from my grid, from terra or from dock. That way you get figs down in the bubbles first.



This will be tricky, as most ppl will just pdrop or torp you and not let you escape. As a solo you'll need to be much more careful.



If you're ptrading, fill the ore and set your cannons, then move fast. Unless you have a limpet, you won't be trackable.



Yes, you can load multiple scripts.



It would be difficult to use one script to control another unless that other script is set up for it. Furthermore you don't always get alerted when you pick up a limpet. It's a good idea to just scrub routinely. Once truce is over, however, it won't matter. Someone can pdrop and kill you without having to follow you.