On another server, a couple of people are making a major fuss about Amtrak. I've left out all the finger pointing and name calling. Here is the URL to the complete thread, if you want to read it yourself.

http://64.164.135.228/tw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=65&sid=f8c599f569fe7e0e64eb420a0567b254

They say the following:

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"You can't AMTRAK someone out of fedspace. It only works if they are going to be towed by the feds anyway"

"AMTRAK only works if they get towed. Loading up SD won't necessarily work because Fury was there first causing him to fall under fed protection. Anyone coming in after the limits of fedspace were reached would be the ones to be towed"

"I was under the impression that if you exit game and do not get any warning from the feds, ie; you are violating the armament agreement or exceeding the number of traders in fedspace, you don't get towed no matter what happens after you log off. If number of traders per sector is 5, and fury was one of the first five, and received no warning from the feds during his log off process then he's not at risk for being towed."

"Towing is NOT random. ...you cant "FORCE" someone outof fed space thru amtrak
They will only get towed if when they logged out they recieved the message about too many people in sector or too many figs on thier ship..

PERIOD

i and many others have tested this two ways to sunday and sparkles is
absolutly 100% correct,,,,You CAN'T FORCE someone out of fed space... "

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My question isn't really about AMTRAK, but about how the game decides which ships to tow at Extern.

My belief is that, at Extern, the game first tows all the ships with 100 or more fighters out of Fedspace. After that, if there are still more than the maximum number of traders allowed in a sector still left in any Fedspace sector that extern will RANDOMLY tow out as many as necessary to get to the limit for that sector. The key word in my contention is 'randomly'.

I even ran a test of this on my server. I rebanged a fresh game with the setting of a maximum of 5 traders per sector. I then created(locally) traders named "1" to "10", one at a time. I left each trader in sector 1, logged them off, and then created the next one. Traders 1 through 5 didn't get a squatting warning, which makes sense. Traders 6 through 10 did get a squatting warning, which also makes sense. I ran Extern and logged on a new character called 'test' and found 1, 3, 5, 6, and 9 left in sector 1 and the others (2, 4, 7, 8, 10) towed out. That would seem to support the idea that the ships chosen are random, since they were otherwise identical.

Am I missing something here, or does extern choose (after towing the ones that violate the fighter limit) traders randomly like I believe it does? The test I ran would seem to support that belief. Does Extern look at experience, alignment, or any other factors (besides having 100 or more fighters) in deciding which traders to tow?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Midnight, you're right. At extern the empty ships in Fed are repossessed, the traders in Fed with more than 99 figs are towed, and then in any sector still over the max, offline traders are chosen at random and towed out until the maximum is reached. Online traders don't count and aren't included either way in the totals. It doesn't matter how much experience or alignment traders have, whether they're red or blue, whether they're cloaked or not. They get picked at random---at least all of that has been my experience. I don't have a TWGS, but I've watched and helped with Amtraks. That's the reason Amtrakkers jam a sector and quit just before extern runs. The more in the sector, the more get towed, the more chance of the one you want getting towed.

Thanks.

For those of you who have a copy of TW and want to test that, you can bang a new game and create traders 1 through 10, one at a time and in numerical order, quitting each one in sector 1. Traders 6 through 10 will all get a Fedspace limit warning. Run extern and create another character to see which are left. The chances of it being 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, are very slim (1 in 5,040 if my math is right).

Maybe Rave or John will comment?

quote:Originally posted by midnight

Thanks.

For those of you who have a copy of TW and want to test that, you can bang a new game and create traders 1 through 10, one at a time and in numerical order, quitting each one in sector 1. Traders 6 through 10 will all get a Fedspace limit warning. Run extern and create another character to see which are left. The chances of it being 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, are very slim (1 in 5,040 if my math is right).

Maybe Rave or John will comment?

Well, you are right and you are wrong...
First off, it's more than 100, not more than 99. If you have 100 fighters and there aren't too many people, you won't be towed.
As to who is towed, it is somewhat random. I ran 20-30 tests one night and someone with 0 fighters will get towed significantly less than someone with 99 or 100 fighters. I didn't notice any sort of corelation between who was towed and who logged out when.

As to a response from Rave or John, I doubt that is likely unless you email them specifically. Rave recently stated she was pretty much done with her involvement in tradewars, and john doesn't seem to get involved in these forums very often.

quote:Originally posted by midnight

Thanks.

For those of you who have a copy of TW and want to test that, you can bang a new game and create traders 1 through 10, one at a time and in numerical order, quitting each one in sector 1. Traders 6 through 10 will all get a Fedspace limit warning. Run extern and create another character to see which are left. The chances of it being 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, are very slim (1 in 5,040 if my math is right).

Maybe Rave or John will comment?


It is the policy of EIS and teamEIS not to discuss specific formula's for what is intended to be random happenings with-in Trade Wars, things like the bust code and extern towing are included in this. Knowing these formulas would defeat the basis of game play.

That being said there is no such thing as random anything as far as computer code goes, everything is a mathematical formula to produce random like events... extern towing, like busts, planet creation and countless other intended "random" happenings with-in Trade Wars all have a base number (percentage) that is effected by multiple variables and applied until the condition is met, in this case lower then the set traders per sector under 100 fighters. If you feel you have figured it out then great, but I think you will find that the events have a great deal of mathematical possibilities and that it will be close to impossible to figure out the formula as people have been trying to figure out the bust code since the beginning of time (it has been changed a few times over the years)

One of the variables that is applied to the tow formula is the tow warning flag, but even if you don't get the warning you are still subject to the mathematical formula. Just a note, it no longer works to drop carrier in a fed sector instead of quitting to be placed at the bottom of the tow percentage, it is factored by how many traders are present in the sector when your character leaves the game, be it normal exit or dropping...

That makes sense. Thanks for clearing it up.

Personally, I think the people who actually got the fedspace warnings should be the ones getting towed. But oh well :p