I've heard of passive gridding. I have also heard of causual gridding. What are the different forms of gridding and their strengths and weaknesses?

Heh, not surprisingly, no one has jumped on this thread to answer. If you play a bit and read a bit, you won't need to ask so many questions and can limit the complexity of the ones you do ask. This one requires a lot of different answers and STILL won't be all inclusive. It took me this long just to get it all written down. If anyone has any questions, feel free to ask:

Definitions:

Gridding: Leaving one (or more) of your fighters in a sector

Efficiency: Refers to the number of turns needed to grid a single sector on average. The fewer turns, the higher the efficiency.

Desperation Gridding: Any of a type of gridding designed solely to increase your grid, not to actually find anything.

Charging: Synonymous with lawnmowing.


Gridding types:

Passive gridding: Gridding only those sectors with no figs in them at all.
Pros: Avoids enemy fighters making it one of the safest methods of gridding. The enemy will have no fig hit messages to trigger off of. Fairly turn efficient in an empty universe. You don't have to take turn intensive evasive maneuvers
Cons: You won't find anything but empty space. Enemy bases are surrounded by enemy figs. If you're not hitting enemy figs, you won't see their bases. Additionally, as the game progresses, there are fewer and fewer sectors to passive grid. This makes your efficiency decrease. Finally, it is still possible to die this way. You must still watch out for enemy limpets and if you move slowly enough, it is possible you could be tracked via a cim script.


Active gridding: Any of a multitude of types of gridding where you hit enemy figs. Specific types to follow.


Casual gridding: Typically something by hand, although not always. Basically, you hit a sector, scan, then move on to the next sector based on the results of your scan.
Pros: Very turn efficient. Also, you won't run into any enemy planets or large groups of figs. You can concentrate on a single corp or player's figs as well.
Cons: Very easy to be photoned and killed doing this. You are moving slowly enough that my grandma playing on dialup in China could photon you. Most good players can warp in and kill you by hand without ever even using a script.

Lawnmowing or Straight charge gridding: This is a method of picking a target and plowing straight at it, killing everything in between you and it. Basically, you macro the entire path at once. This can be done with displaying the sector or without. Same with scanning, although even if you scan, it is just to see the sectors around you, you don't actually wait for a response.
Pros: Very fast. It is difficult to hit with a straight adjacent photon script. Also, you are able to grid a specific list of targets.
Cons: Because you aren't scanning, it is easy to run into an enemy base and be destroyed by quasar cannons/deployed fighters. Also, if you aren't scanning/displaying your sector (makes it even faster), you could potentially run right by or through your enemy's base and never know it. Finally, while it is hard to hit this method via a straight adj photon, it is fairly easily to predict where you are going and hit it with an anticipation photon.

Random Surrounds: This method picks a random sector in space, twarps to it, then surrounds the sector with your own figs.
Pros: Very difficult to anticipate or hit straight adjacent.
Cons: You are extremely unlikely to find anything. It isn't very turn efficient. Also, there are scripts out there that are able to target and hit you doing this.

Short Charges: One of the options in RammaR's twarp gridder. This method will charge a set number of hops toward a target sector, then twarp out and move on to the next target. If turns permit, it may return and try to return to targets that weren't reached on the original short charge.
Pros: Harder to anticipate than straight charging, just as difficult to hit straight adjacent
Cons: Still can be somewhat easy to anticipate it, depending on the length of the charges. Also easy to run into an enemy base (cannons, figs) and die. Turn efficiency is less than straight charges.

Flex Charges: One of the options in RammaR's twarp gridder. This method will do a charge until it hits a low warp sector, then twarp out and do a different path. Like short charges, it may return to a certain path if the target was not reached and you have enough turns remaining.
Pros: Very hard to anticipate. Difficult to hit straight adjacent
Cons: Still possible to anticipate, but very difficult. Inefficient on turn usage.

2-Ship Gridding: There are many ideas of ways to do this, both ships move, one ship stationary, one ship follows, etc. I am just going to go into the basic theory of it here. You clear a sector with one ship, leave a fig, 2 limpets, xport out to a second ship. You then pause, xport back in, pick up one limpet, scan, and repeat. The limpet is to keep the sector density constant when you xport back in, so someone can't dscan photon you.
Pros: Impossible to hit straight adjacent. You can scan every sector before you enter it. Turn efficiency is pretty good.
Cons: You are limited by the xport range of the ships you are using. Your ship is vulnerable to capture when you are not in it. Also, it moves slow enough that a good enough opponent has lots of time to trap you. All the possible ways to trap this are beyond the scope of this document, but suffice to say, there are many. Also, there is no public script that I know of that will handle 2-ship gridding for you.

2-Ship With A Planet: This is the same basic idea as 2-ship gridding except you take a planet with you and move both ships in tandem. You clear a sector, xport to a second ship, land on the planet, warp your planet into the sector you just cleared, then repeat.
Pros: Very turn efficient. You are able to scan where you are going. Impossible to hit straight adjacent. Very hard to anticipate.
Cons: In order to be safe, it is slow. This leaves your second ship in sector vulnerable to capture. Also, you are subject to traps because of how slowly it moves. Finally, it requires a lot of planet ore, which if you are buying it instead of producing it, greatly reduces your turn efficiency. You can't use this method until you have shielded planets.

1-Ship With A Planet: This requires the coordination of two players with good connections. The gridder calls a saveme to sector A, then moves in to grid sector A. The idea behind this is, the moment the player gets a fig down in A, the planet driver will appear with the planet, allowing the player to safely land.
Pros: Very turn efficient. If done with random delays between sectors, it is nearly impossible to hit in any way at all. You are able to scan before entering any sector.
Cons: It is slow. It can take hours for one person to grid all of their turns. It requires two people plus a shielded planet. If your driver hits a spot of lag, it leaves you vulnerable. It uses very large amounts of ore.


In summation, my personal preferences on gridding are straight charges early (before the enemy is ready to start firing photons), flex charges once they are ready, and 1-Ship with a planet if I am unable to successfully flex charge. Unfortunately, there is no movement delay associated with planet warps or planet transporters (pwarp, bwarp), so it is possible that someone with a fast enough script and a fast enough ping can hit you straight adjacent whenever you're not using a planet or 2-ship gridding. You will have to learn your opponents and figure out what works best against them for yourself.

Wow, that needs to be a saved as a tutorial somewhere.

Seriously.

+EP+

I emailed it to traitor, hopefully he'll put it up at tw-cabal.

On another note, anyone have any critiques of it? More pros/cons? Perhaps some gridding methods I've missed?

quote:Harley Nuss (teamEIS) Posted - 09/10/2005 : 11:38:57 PM
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On another note, anyone have any critiques of it? More pros/cons?

I think you covered all the major pros and cons there Harley. And EP is right it will make a great tutorial, I hope Traitor gets time to put it up. Thanks K3 for some valuable info.

Could somebody please clarify the density part about using an extra limpet, I am not getting a handle on that one. Each mine counts as 2 points of density correct? So if you pickup one up the density of the sector decreases by two points and if you lay one down it increases by 2 points.

Would you consider it a con with the 2 ship xport in the fact that you are actually losing more turns due to the xport, one to the 2nd ship, 1 back to the first. So you're leaving yourself less turns to grid. Too bad this method is not used more these days, I've never seen it actually done. I'll have to practice that one day.

quote:Originally posted by RexxCrow

Could somebody please clarify the density part about using an extra limpet, I am not getting a handle on that one. Each mine counts as 2 points of density correct? So if you pickup one up the density of the sector decreases by two points and if you lay one down it increases by 2 points.


An empty ship is 38 density, a manned ship is 40 density. When you export into the empty ship, the density goes up by 2, however, when you pickup the limpet in the same macro, it goes down by two, making it unchanged for the guy dscanning. You have 2 and pick up one so there is still an anomoly there. In reality, someone will only try to dscan photon you once or twice, considering you have time to scan before moving, he's going to eat a photon and probably die every time he tries it. The biggest problem comes from random photons. In any given cycle, you will spend x amount of time in a sector because of the inherent movement delay. If your time between sector hits is only y seconds, then a random photon has basically a x/y chance of hitting you. So, as you increase time between hits, you decrease the chance of a random photon hitting you. However, in decreasing that, you give the enemy more time to set up other nasty things to do to you.

quote:Originally posted by LetsDrinkCoke

Would you consider it a con with the 2 ship xport in the fact that you are actually losing more turns due to the xport, one to the 2nd ship, 1 back to the first. So you're leaving yourself less turns to grid. Too bad this method is not used more these days, I've never seen it actually done. I'll have to practice that one day.


Turn usage isn't so much a pro or a con as a sliding scale. There isn't a set point at which extra turns becomes a con, but more of a relative efficiency. Those extra two turns make it less effecient than a straight charge, but when you compare it to say flex gridding, it is more efficient. And as always, eating a photon really screws with turn efficiency.

Well done ! [;)]

I'm going to add it to the Glossary section of my site. However, I've decided to wait till this thread dies down, as a few clarifications and points have been made. I'll compile it all together and post it soon.

I'm trying to think of things to add.

One thing that I would like to point out is that the method that DOESN'T get you photoned is the most efficient. [:D] It's best to mix it up a bit to keep the enemy from having enough time to get a trap setup. Doing the same thing every time will surely get you photoned. Knowing your enemy, and knowing when they are actually at keys is just as important as grid method selection. I don't think Kemper stressed that point enough.

Seems like there could be some way of offsetting the drain of FO when doing planet gridding by robbing ports of ore.

You do buydowns, but that takes turn. 1.6 turns for every sector moved in a stock game.

quote:Originally posted by LetsDrinkCoke

Would you consider it a con with the 2 ship xport in the fact that you are actually losing more turns due to the xport, one to the 2nd ship, 1 back to the first. So you're leaving yourself less turns to grid. Too bad this method is not used more these days, I've never seen it actually done. I'll have to practice that one day.


I've seen two ship gridding done using a macro, however the person did not do what K3 said with the limpet and he did lose his turns. Setting up his macro move to a sector took too much time between moves and a dscan caught him.

               / Promethius / Enigma / Wolfen /

"A man who has no skills can be taught, a man who has no honor has nothing."