While some adjacent photon scripts are used to defend a home base, they are also used to block SD if the option to fire photons from fedspace is enabled by the sysop.

I think it is a hit or miss to try and beat such a script. I decided to test it on my local machine by running a "Foton A" script on Mombot after having SD surrounded.

I then had a mower bot mow his way to SD. He barely beat the photon. In fact, he made it into SD in time to see the "photon launched" prompt from the foton bot. After the foton bot replaced the fig, the mower bot was able to mow his way out with no problem. I tried it again and this time the mower got torped in mid-warp on his way back into SD. He still made it into SD, but with no turns on him.

After going into TEDIT to reset the mower's turns, I decided to see if the mower can successfully run an SD surround without getting torped. The mower didn't get past the first fig as he got torped right there. I reset the turns and ran the SD surround again and again he got torped.

I suppose playing on a local machine, there is no lag whatsoever for both the mower bot and foton bot, which made it a 50-50 chance that one or the other would win the battle but it did make me think - who is more likely to be successful in a photon blockade of SD assuming both have similar ping- the foton bot or the mower trying to beat the blockade?

Thoughts appreciated.

A local machine is not an accurate test bed. Ping matters much more for the defender
than the gridder. Granted, the gridder's ping does matter a small amount, but even a
10ms difference is huge.



This will depend on the ping of the torper. If you just m1234*r you can get past a
lot of torpers, you'll trigger the enter and retreat before they can fire... depending
on settings you can then mow right on out if multiples are off, or you can keep going
till the torper is drained.

But a really fast torper can still hit you. The most typical way of testing a torper is
to do something like... m1234*za99999*m1*yy so that you hit, kill, and twarp off
without laying a fig of your own. If you still get hit, they're running pretty fast.



The odds of making it on a local machine varies, but do it on another server and test
it and you'll see how it works. Ping affects torper differently than it does the gridder.

Keep in mind that there's a setting that allows sysops to turn off fedsafe fotons for
exactly this reason.