I use Swath and do the ZTM mapping tool and then look for bubbles and dead ends.

Big problem I am having, I get a list of bubbles or dead ends and then go exlore there. BUT, find out it was wrong and not a dead end or a bubble.

Any hints as to what I can do?
Any better ways of finding what Im looking for? A way that is accurate in locating dead ends and bubbles?

a big TY in advance,

You need a better ZTM. ProZTM works well and gets 99% of the warps. Swath will have better results with a full ZTM, or you can use ProBubble.

viewtopic.php?f=15&t=22088&p=187247

Are you checking all 4 boxes in SWATH's ZTM? Just to
be clear, you're just using SWATH, not TWX?

Yes, you would need TWX Proxy to run Prom's scripts. Swath won't do as well, even if you use all four methods.

OK, I will have to look into TWX Proxy.

With Swath I have 3 of those boxes checked.

The 3rd box I didn't check. It says "Pass (3) 0 random sector pairs"
The 0 being what is initially put in that input box.
I will check that box also now.

Wondering what 0 random sector pairs are?

Also Im curious has any game actually had a black hole?

You need to change the zero. Swath will plot how ever many random courses you put in the box. It's basically a shot in the dark at getting a path you haven't already found.

Where Prometheus and others have improved ZTM, is by setting avoids to force lower traffic paths to be used. This gets you that last 20% swath is missing.

I couldn't find a working download for TwxProxy, so I put this in my dropbox:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/391 ... oxy204.zip

It includes the TwxProxy205a.exe that is needed for Windows 7.

For the latest alpha version, you need to contact EP:

memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=2400

Ok, So what should I change the "0" to?


and TY for the help.

100, 1000, 100000, or whatever you want. Chances are that it won't find very many new warps though. IMO, just a waste of time.

You don't even have to finish the first pass to have a good chance of finding Stardock and the Class 0s. And to get a really good map, I don't think there's a better algorithm than The Reverend's single pass ZTM. It takes a fairly long time as ZTMs go, but the only thing it misses are warps that can't be discovered without being there. I believe there's a TWX script for it. It's also available as one of the few public scripts for my own helper, Weapon M.

I can't find The Reverend's ZTM, but I ran across this thread that was interesting.

Subject: Some ZTM questions

Attached is Rev's ZTM, 2004 vintage, not sure if it is the one you meant.

Just curious actually. I didn't even know I had Zoc installed on this machine... lol

I don't think you meant single pass ZTM. I refer to Rev's ZTM as a 6-pass ZTM, though all 6 passes don't have to be run. My comments in the thread Micro referenced above provide empirical data on this.

I assert that every warp can be determined from a ZTM (read: CIM), without a visit, though it's somewhat complicated and offers very few (sometimes zero) additional warps discovered. Rev's 6-Pass method might only miss 5-10 warps in the average bang.

Additionally I speculate that there's no better algorithm when it comes to warps-discovered/minute (or however you want to measure the warps/time density). I'm certain that Pass 1 is as high as possible for density, but subsequent passes can be tweaked slightly. I did come up with an evolutionary (vs. revolutionary) improvement that adds a fair amount of complexity and saves some time, but it's been made moot with the shorter ZTM times TW now allows.

I'm using the term "single-pass" in the SWATH sense of "single-algorithm". My understanding of Rev's algorithm is that you plot courses out of each sector, setting an avoid on each adjacent sector as it is discovered. When there are no remaining routes out of the sector, clear all avoids and move on to the next sector. This can be sped up significantly by buffering plots on the server, and perhaps slightly in other ways, but I don't see how you would gain anything by running a pass of any other algorithm.

You're right that every warp can be discovered by ZTM, but some warps can only be discovered if you specify the origin and destination exactly. To be assured of finding them, you would have to run n * (n - 1) plots, where n is the number of sectors. That's almost 25 million plots for a 5K universe. The game would be over before you finished. And such warps cannot be part of any longer route, so they aren't very important anyway.

That happens in one of the later passes. The first pass is the same as the one swath uses plotting 1 to 5000, 2 to 4999, 3 to 4998, ... you can speed up this pass by skipping any sectors that already have 1 or more outbound paths.
Avoiding sectors is time consuming, so many players might run a quick ZTM at game start, and then full the full ZTM later.