I'm rather new to tradewar 2002. I've learned about an annoying strat in which someone tows in a friend, and gets blown up. But the towed ship doesn't get shot at by the q-cannon, (they photoned sector defense before entering, this assumes your q-cannons are shielded and can blow up anything, while still pretty much unmothable.) Now the ship that's been towed in fires a g-torp, gets blown up by your q-cannon, repeat many times. How do I prevent this?

Can't repeat many times He can only moth twice and get away with it. Nothing you can do about him towing a ship in.. sit in a ship with an IG, run an IG script that turns it back on when it gets turned off by a photon.. they come in, but don't get out.. unless they can xport out. But, this requires you to be logged in all the time. If you're gonna do that, run a photon script that'll pop him as soon as he enters your adjacent sector.

The obvious way IMHO would be to make sure you are online before and during extern. Then you could ZDY any junk planets in your sector before they have a chance to collide with your more valuable planets.

If your opponent(s) is(are) online, then be careful lest they photon you or (worse) actually catch you on a junk planet and ZDY you. The more teammates you have online at extern the better, since they could watch your back while you take care of the junk.

However it's not always feasible to be online right before and during extern, and I don't see a way to prevent this from happening (besides having a long tunnel with lots of defence). Maybe some of the more experienced veterans have an idea . . .

Oh.. put navhaz in the sector in front of your sector.. that way if they come in with photons, they'll shoot themselves in the foot..

The only way to stop someone from overloading your sector is to set your cannons high enough that they can't survive a cannon blast. Someone that they are towing does not enter the sector until the person photon in makes it past all of the defenses. So, the scenario you listed is impossible. Now, if you know someone can make it into your sector, one thing to try is to massively overload the sector. This will makes the odds of one of your useful planets colliding very slim. Putting nav haz in front of the sector really don't achieve much, since all they need to do is pop a few planets in teh sector to clear the haz before they come in with their photoning ship.

hunt them down and KILL them, heh. then they can't moth anymore if u CAN be online all the time, IG script.. eh, sit on planet and have an automacro/script that has a trigger of a photon being shot in your sector, then pop off planet and kill! its best to just be online and at keys and smoke them foo's.
Slim

uhu.. Guys... He said he was rather new to tradewars. I doubt he has any IG scripts, photon scripts, or photon attack scripts for that matter! (i could be wrong). Best bet is do what Harley said. Make it so they cant get past the cannons. Normally, If someone has the resources, all they have to do is moth enough to live through the sector blast... Then your as good as dead.

may want to consider moving and putting more fuel ore on your planets!

My Q-Cannons can blow literally anything anyone can throw at me into tiny little pieces. So if I blow up the towing ship, the ship getting towed won't enter the sector?

Sorry for the dumb quesetion then.

I don't have to worry about people mothing me, I'm playing in a game with people even more noobish than I who don't understand the concept. Plus I have my Q-cannons set to prevent such evileness.

Right, if you blow the tower up, the towee will never enter the sector.