I've been reading through old posts. I frequently encounter things I don't understand... like the passage below about plocking limpet clearers.

Can someone explain Singularity's second paragraph to me? Is he saying that the player clearing limpets is also clearing figs in the same sectors? Because as far as I know that's the only way you could get a p-lock, but I don't know many people dumb enough to clear figs and mines at the same time...

Or am I missing something?

The original thread is locked and is in TWGS Beta and is from sometime in 2010.

I think what he means is that you manually set the plock, after your fig is hit wait for the limp hit to fire it. The point being, one normally would grid, stop, clear mines and grid again.

Remember that plock depends on fighter decay. That can be from 1 minute to 1440 minutes depending on the game settings. The idea is that once you are locked on a sector, even if the fig is killed you keep the lock until the decay period expires.

H

Ah okay. I do have a mental note telling me that mining newly gridded sectors right away is not such a great idea. I guess that's why.

edit:
This doesn't seem all that useful to me, though... you have to plock before they even hit the fig. I guess I'm not very good at finding gridding patterns... I never seem to be able to figure out what sectors they are likely to hit next.

I have been told to plock a sector with 5 or 6 warps (they should have a fig adj)

H

A few days ago i was successful in plocking a ugridder. it wasnt all that difficult because his grid was very small. Instead of triggering on a limp i trggered on the fig, then turned on cannon and citkill and waited for him to come back around. Unfortunately, when he did come back around he kept going like i wasnt even there.. my cannon didn't even fire... I guess he didnt exit/enter. I don't think I even hit him with a fig wave, but not sure...

Am i doing it wrong? Do i just need a better ping? I was in UTW battlestar, he in privateer.

You did nothing wrong. You Just need a a faster CPU or better script to play your TW game for you.

Did you have cannon set on sector? or Atmos? Sector is the only way it would have fired. Plus this method works better if you use a L6 and IG turned on. I am only guessing about IG since you did not mention it.

So you were locked on a fig...then he hit it and your
planet warped in. Now, did you see him in sector? If
he was still in sector when you warped in, he had hit
your fig already, so nothing to trigger citkill, eh? He
was already in sector, so no sector cannons, and if
you had no PIG on, he just eased out and on his way.
If you Did have your PIG on, he must've exited the
sector before you warped in...

Sing was saying to plock on a fig, having multiple
limps in sector. When they hit the fig isn't when
to drop, it's slightly after, when they are exit/entering
to clear the sector limps. Then you'd have 'em.



Class commentary from the anti-TWX crowd. Shouldn't
you be getting back under your bridge?

Cannon was on sector. Pretty sure IG was on too but that has no effect if they exit the sector via PWarp, correct? Same deal with cannon afaik, since he didnt exit/enter.

Well, he didn't go back in to clear limps right away. I waited for him to stop his grid run, and then start up his minesweeping run, when he eventually hit the sector for the second time. Is there some way to clear limps without triggering sector cannon?

Come to think of it, maybe I simply didn't have any limps in the sector ... seems like something I would make sure of but now I can't remember checking for them.

I keep hearing people say the scripts play the game for us, but to me that's not the case. Scripts simply remove the tedium of entering individual commands by hand, allowing us to focus on higher-level tactics and strategy. I think of it a bit like being an executive instead of a clerk, or an officer instead of a front-line grunt.

Anyway, there's no way to be competitive against script runners unless I also run scripts.

Well, to exit the sector via PWarp, he'd have to have his
planet in sector. I doubt you'd have missed that.

So you plocked on the fig he hit, but you jumped in
too soon. He made an initial run clearing figs, then
he'll go back much later (after your plock is degraded)
and clear the limps out. He will then have his own
planet in sector and you're gonna have a time getting
him. Counter grid maybe?

Here here .. sounds like someone has figured out todays play ..
Now for extra bonus points <j/k'n> can bots play the game for us ?
or is it just another script .. be it one very large script .. but a script no less.

He DID have his planet in sector...
I guess my original post wasn't clear... here's the sequence of events:

1. Enemy is gridding, probably using UGrid, and disrupting all surrounding mines for each sector he hits.
2. I watch the mine disruption messages and inspect the sectors. When I find one that has 5 or 6 warps out, I plock it using Ugrid plock without a delay.
3. My plock fires when he eventually hits my fig. My planet warps in, but he's long gone by that time. There are 50 of his figs in the sector now, and 3 of my limps.
4. I wait for him to come back around... pretty sure what he's doing is when ugrid runs out of sectors he runs mombot's minesweeper.
5. He does eventually pwarp in to clear any limpets. If he exit/enters, I know that my sector cannon will fire.

My cannon didn't fire, which means he didn't exit/enter, which means one of two things, as far as I can tell:
- I didn't actually have any limps in the sector
- I had limps but he didn't exit/enter

I think I probably didn't have any limpets down... pretty dumb but I've done worse. Anyway, I understand all this a bit better now.

No, nobody can think of every possible situation. Human interaction is required. That's why computers don't run the world.

For the bonus points: a bot is just another script.