Mega robs.....

Yeah.. I don't recall mega robs around before, or they were and we hadn't discovered them yet, or a few kept them to themselves.

Why may I ask has this bug been alowed to become a feature?

Now what I see is that a normal no haggle buy-down takes two before there's enough cash in the port to mega rob.

I've also heard of scripts that pump the cash in even faster with over-offering so you can mega rob with one buy-down now.

So much about this game is much easier now that it was before. Not sure that I like that. Can we put a toggle on this? I do understand it's only in the MBBS mode, not Gold.

Because it's fun, and some times people like fun things. With all corps doing it, it
doesn't upset the balance. What it does do is shift attention to aggressive play.



Yea... It's called "worst buy" and there's at least a half-dozen public scripts for that.
Basically it reverse haggles to put 3.2m on a port in 32760 eq. Takes about 130 turns,
ish, to do it. Does require a decent port, or atleast very low experience. If you have
high experience and a crappy port, you might need to get ore or org to make it happen.

Still, 32760 eq, sold off at a good MCIC, eh, 5m. 5m/130 turns = 38400 cr/turn.



Not easier. Harder. It shifts from cashing to gridding. Much more difficult.

And yes, you can toggle it all you want. Turn MBBS mode off. Or you can make ptrade
suck, like 30% ptrade. People will ship haggle then, and it'll cost more turns (less cr/turn).

Or you can make colts that don't land... ROTFLOL.

I haven't been squeezed out of a game with gridding yet, but expect I may soon be, or not. Honestly, I still see gridding as a waste of time and resources. It took them a couple weeks to close the back-door to SD, EVEN after I boasted about planet busting at SD. (I’m red) I had jump figs for days next to the 0 port... did I mention I’m red? I’ve been p-torped, but they never came in for the kill.. they are blue, I am red. They were p-gridding when they got me, so this was NOT an AFK p-torp.

I am having fun re-learning this game, and examining the strategies of the players who rely too heavily on automation. This does not change the fact that this is a bug.

Eh, most people don't care about the back-door, it's not that big of a deal.
If you're fast and using the right stuff, you won't get hit busting as a red
at dock. Additionally, if they are all blue then it's probably a blue edit.
Why interrupt your enemy while they're making a mistake?

Usually I try to go in for the kill, but it's not always possible. Depends on
a lot of factors, and maybe they just felt sympathetic. Who knows, I wouldn't
put much stock in it.

You're still thinking of grid as controlling little areas of space, or near critical
areas. That's not the way grid is done now, grid is a mass sector affair. They're
going to go after deadends before they care to surround the class 0s. It makes
sense too, considering you can just pgrid to where-ever you want to go.



Was a bug. Is now a game feature, it can be toggled... turned on or off by
the sysop. That makes it a feature.

So, the toggle is MBBS or TWGS mode?

I'm just trying to understand. You guys remind me of my old girlfriend who stayed in the same neighborhood and raised her kids where we went to school. In her eyes, nothing much has changed in the past 30 years. I did learn how to drive there, but moved away when I was 20. I have to ask for directions now when I go down for a visit.

You can turn off MBBS and go w/ just gold mode. You can also set
ptrade to suck-town if you want.

Megarob came from MBBS. Ports used to be an unsigned word value,
65535 max. MBBS made a few changes, one of which was changing
the datatype to a signed word value, -32767 to 32767. When this was
done, the data type that held the credits on the port was changed too.
This resulted in a classic problem of "bit flipping." When the credits on
the port got too large, it would accidentally flip that signed bit and go
from +3276000 to -3276000. With negative credits on the port, you
didn't need any experience to rob. Thus you could rob a ton of credits
in a single rob, with regular odds of busting.

Originally this was a bug, but strategies developed around it. It developed
into a type of game where alignment and experience were irrelevant, and
where cash was plentiful. A game like that becomes very aggressive as
there's no real penalty to killing players. Because of this, when the game
was ported to TWGS an MBBS mode was added so that players could play
this mode. At that point it went from a bug to a valid game strategy.

If you don't like megarobs, you can play in a Gold game w/o MBBS. W/o
MBBS settings, megarob isn't possible. MBBS mode exists to allow megarob.

For those who are joining this discussion from the cold.
You can find out if the game is MBBS when you are checking it out to see if you want to play it:
Hit * at the game login prompt

==-- Trade Wars 2002 --==

   T - Play Trade Wars 2002
   I - Introduction & Help
   S - View Game Settings
   H - High scores
   X - Exit

Enter your choice: *

If you see:

Game Stats:
[Version]
Major Version=3
Minor Version=13
[Bigbang Settings]
Gold Enabled=True
MBBS Compatibility=True             <-----This is the money line.
Start Day=11/14/21
[General Info]            
.....

ptrade to suck-town? Lowering planet neg profit margins?



Alright, this is starting to make sence and at the same time is rather sad. I spent a lot of time on the MBBS version so it would have the same feel as High Velocity's MBBS without the bugs. Seems this one slipped through the cracks, I never knew about it before. Now I can see why the game has evolved like it has.

So yeah, in my eyes, the game is broken. Time Limit bug, mega rob bug and the mixed corp penalty is being exploited. So.. not much different from the old days I suppose, we've not gotten it right yet! Just a different crop of bugs from what I remember.

Right. Since part o the profit comes from negotiating that sold EQ.



There's a mixed corp penalty, it always happens at extern. It's just not
a big deal if you keep your alignments low. Megarob is not a bug. And
most people just don't play TL games at all, bug or no.

You start at 147% overbid for equip, drop until it accepts the offer, check the first 5 buys, then stick with that % overbid. Org start with 142%, ore 137%. Having said that, I've never got better than 146% (not sure if even that) and I was always below 1K exp, fedsafe coward. Rule of thumb I used use before upgrading a port was if it would accept a bid of 84 credits for one hold of equip when it was trading at 100%, it would get to megarob level in one shot. You probably know that the port "hides" 10% of it's credits, so if it shows 29250 it really has 29250/0.9 = 32500

Funny thing, I just had a conversation with SG about mega robbing and I thought he said he haggled lowest price. We know the port keeps 10% so it would make more sence to haggle lowest price, maybe get some exp. if you were SDT'ing that day and needed the exp. That would result in higher profits, especially if you had a high profit port to sell to. Just would take two days to build up enough to mega rob.

I know you guys probably don't beleive this, but I honestly just learned of Mega Rob this time around. Maverick taught me to play red, and we had heard rumor, but nothing solid. We never knew the parimeters, and after a couple of failed attempts didn't think it was worth the risk.

For now, I just go middle of the road and buy-down fast with price offered. 2.5 min for equip, 2 min for fuel.

Why in the world would you SDT if you're doing megarobs?! What kind of half-witted strategy
is that? "Oh jeeze, I know, let me burn half my turns... that'll win us the game!"

You do realize that when doing planet negos your experience doesn't matter, right? Whether
you have 1 exp or 4.5m, it's all the same. Planet negos do not use experience in the haggle
calculations. That's only for ship haggles, and it mostly flattens out after 1k.



Get corpie in colt
botname buy e w
botname buy f w (if needed)
redbot mega

Done and done, next port. Fill the planet, then nego. Seriously easy stuff.



Yeh, that's not really the best way to go about it. Why spend 2 turns doing what others are
doing in 1? How is that turn efficient? You once criticized a player for not knowing the game
mechanics... do you realize the irony here?

And why this thread is still in bug reports I'll never know. It should be in smack at this point.

I love it, you guys keep making my points for me. I NEVER used the mega rob bug until just NOW. I’ve not developed strategies for it as of yet. And starting in a game that’s 5 weeks old only to have Team Kraaken bearing down does not give one a lot of resources to upgrade ports, especially when I played as solo blue for a few weeks before anyone joined me.

And still, I’m working on my own SST and SDT scripts. I’m surviving because Team Kraaken is allowing me to. I’m NOT playing competitively at this time. Still re-learning.



Easy stuff, no doubt about that, way too easy! You guys would not be interested in playing the edits I enjoy either. They may be a little too challenging for some.

Or maybe none of this is challenging at all...