quote:Originally posted by Slim Shady

harley has similar intrests to that of michael jackson!
Harley likes to dance and sing and pull at his croch?

No Akor that’s Traitor who likes to do those things. (but I have only seen him do that when he really needs to go to the bathroom.)

Also Slim is a big Liberace fan told me so himself.

the last 6 posts are the most valuable in this entire thread.

Invadeing Planets is a complicated situtation, depending on the edits.
As there are so many differant things to consider no one answer or tactic will work in every situtation.

A brief list of obviouse considerations are this.

1- Stock planets and ships.

This is one of the more balanced planet to ship combat settings
as ships are not overly powerful relative to the most powerful
planets the player has to choose from. The "standard" mothing
method is often most effective in this setting.

2- Gold planets and ships.

This option has more of a risk factor for the invader who has not
seen all the planet types as here is where sysops tend to "super-
size" there planet types. This makes it more risky for the invader
especially when large numbers of planets can be based in any
specific sector as this lowers the per planer ore consumption
ratios.

Additionaly the production rates on gold planets can vary
so much that they have immense impact on other considerations
such as #4 below

3- GOLD OR MBBS set for planet considerations.

Even more of a death trap for the invader comes when MBBS is active
and gold planets of immense capacitys are known to exist in large
numbers per sector. Once a planet reaches level 6 its sector ig
activated and assumeing all the planets in the same sector have
the same name, well the invader has little chance takeing this
sector as with mbbs on the atmospheric cannon blast is now the
most powerful weapon in the game.

4- Avalibility of fighters, shields, and cash.

This consideration limits the type of method used to invade as
when a player or a team has little of these and still intends
to attempt to invade the possibility of total loss is a factor
that all but the most reckless players take into account.

5- Limited or unlimited life supply.

For plain reasons this is a critical factor in deciding how to go
about invadeing, especially if limited lives are set.

6- Phase of the game, ie. begining, mid, or end game*, invasion
attempts.

Begining phase is the "safest" for invadeing as baring fast gold
edits for planet cits, it will be a few days before a planets
defenses become a factor.

Mid game the risk starts to get higher as more colo and ore have
been allocated to planetary defensive fortifications.
Also fighters in ever larger quantitys are being deployed to the
planets surface to defend the planet from invadeing ships.

*End game phase is more and more never reached in games these days
as most players do not have the dedication to any one specific
game for the time needed to overwhelm a set of doors with
maximum planets filled to capacity and tweaked for max defense.


7- Offline or online invasion attempt.

Offline invadeing of planets is easy for the attacker as there is
no active defense being offered of the planets that are under
attack, this takes the least skill and in times past was considered
to be a cowardly way of attacking a planet or door.

Online invadeing is the most deadly form of invasion for the
attacker as a strong and vigorious defense can be mounted more
often then not this method is the most costly and lethal to the
attacker. However this method of invasion when it succedes is the
highest form of validation of a player or teams skills and the
team or player who perfects this method is truly a player or team
to be feared and respected by all.

8- Alien or human planet is being attacked.

Alien planets lack the continual adjustments and setting
refinements to maximize the avaliable resources thus they are the
optimal choice of planets to be invaded. Also due to the lack of
active adjustments and more often then not default initial settings
alien planets fall way faster then trader planets to the most
comman mothing methods.

Human planets depending on the game phase become more difficult
to invade as unlike above the planets defensive settings can be
refined as often as needed to optimize the avaliable resources.


9- Known skills of the player or corp that owns the planet(s) being
invaded.

For example, if an unknown player or team is being invaded then its
more likely that the invader will be more conservitive.

And if the team or player being invaded is a known player of little
skill pertaining to planets and there defensive settings and
potentials, the tendancy to be more reckless and forceful will be
manifest. Sometimes this can lead to disaster if the player being
invaded has recently trolled the forums for info on how to better
employ his planets resources.

Lastly if the player or team is known to posses considerable
skills at planet defens and base protection, then it may be a good
idea to go looking for safer prey to invade rather then expend the
resources you would need to keep another player or team from
invadeing your own planets.


10- sector planatary limits.

The more planets the more power the defender has at his disposal
and the more defenses an invader has to overwhelm.

11- corp member limits.

this setting will determine how many colo can be moved or product
(ore) distributed by multiple turn supplies to the planets to
produce additional defenses

also this effects how many total lives a corp can expend
attempting to smash a targets defenses.

12- Lastly the turn avalibility for the specific game.

This component is the final in a series of considerations for its
the one that ties all the others together. I am not going to go
into the mechanics of turns and there uses for this article.



any combination of the above considerations can also effect the best tactic to use.

Additionaly there is the player factor.

Some players are quick to sacrafice their corpies to cannon blasts in low bp capacity ships to burn ore rather then amass the assets needed to attempt to keep there corpies alive to repeat an attempt at mothing thus further depleating the planets ore supply.
This is prolly one of the most comman methods used as it costs the least in cr. However it requires alot of advanced planing so all corpies are there at the correct time and know whats to be done, and all turns are used beforehand to there best effect before the corpies die on the cannons.

Other players are reluctant to allow there corpies to die in any operation other then the defense of there own home base(s), dead corpies cant man defenders or guardian ships or sit on cits with photons loaded ready to defend hearth and home.
Or be able to keep the threat of an active grid defender hanging out there to inhibit the less determined trader.

After all when your dead your nothing.

I hope that this answers some of the question people have.
I will not do the math for you if you feel that need then do it for your self, the formulas are not secret.
I am not going to step down, I fully understand I dont know everything about this game, but I am now in a position where I will learn more and more each day. and as time passes eventually I hope that my detractors will change there minds and accept me as a moderator worth the respect any other moderator has .

Perhaps there needs to be three different titles.

Moderators, who moderate posts by moving threads, editing them, enforce the rules of the forum and EIS.

Gurus, who answer game questions and provide more information and advice on the game.

Technicians, who troubleshoot technical problems with the forum, TWGS, and other things related to Tradewars.

One can be a moderator without being a Guru or Technician, and one can be one of each, some of each, or all if they want to. Maybe add it to their signatures so the rest of us don't get confused? Just a suggestion.

I like the fact that Zentocks finally answered the question, and I wonder why he took so long? Part of being a moderator is to constantly monitor the forum, at least a few times a day. If you don't do that, it is almost like not showing up for work and forcing others to do the work for you. Just my personal opinion on the subject.

Consider that I am still a newbie/rookie an nowhere near the guru level of Tradewars knowledge. I wonder why Zentlock forgot the P-Torp setting. See when I did some mothing, it was important. If the enemy corp is online, they might be able to P-Torp the moth taking away his/her turns. This is an important risk factor to consider. P-Torps being disabled means even if an enemy is online, they cannot take away your turns. I have used macros in mothing to fire a P-Torp in a P-Torp ship, and then transport to the Butt-Kicking ship and avoid the sector blasts unless the planets were sheilded. Then I could just try to land on whatever planet we tried to take over. If the Butt-Kicking ship survived, we had a stash of figs nearby on a t-warppable planet to refill on figs and sheilds and then use the P-Torp ship to launch another mothing attempt on that one planet. Repeat until the Fuel Ore is depleated, then go for a capture. If the enemy is online, you need to know if they are running a bot or not. Try to defeat the bot somehow by tricking it until it runs out of P-Torps by using a macro to warp into and out of the sector it is monitoring, when it goes back to buy more there is a delay to moth the planet with and avoid a p-torp. You have to know the max P-Torps the enemy ship can hold and count each time it launches. If it warps a planet when a fig is hit on the grid, you need a corpmate to trigger the fig hit at the same time you are mothing the sector, and hope that they get out of the way of the P-Torp attack. If you plan it right, you can do fig hits to take down the fuel ore and hope the bot isn't buying more fuel ore for the planet. Bots can be outsmarted by players if played right. Going against another player is another story. I usually try to moth a planet when the other corp is not online, like pick an odd hour of the night when hardly anyone is online. Then let them wake up to find their planets gone, or stripped of all colonists. Just ask Graz from that one Lord of the Rings game, we stripped his planets bare of colonists after mothing them using the macro to launch a P-Torp and transport into the Butt-Kicking ship. If there is an unlimited amount of pods, you can use weaker ships. I myself don't like to waste pods unless I have to. Too many pods and you are out of the game unless the pods are unlimited.

Just my opinion, two cents, etc. I could be wrong, I tend to get easily confused at times due to my mental and physical illnesses. No disrespect meant in this thread, I just wanted to know Zentock's level of TW knowledge, was all, and why he didn't answer and let the other moderators answer for him.

Knowing how to moth isn't a prerequisite to moderating a forum, its apples and oranges. The fact that kemp happened to be both a responsible mod and a high calibre player doesn't [edit : shouldn't ] make that the base standard.

Perhaps but the general assumption here are that the moderators have a certain level of knowledge in the game and are able to:

#1 Answer questions.

#2 Moderate posts

#3 Address technical issues.

Or at least this used to be the general consensis of the majority here, which now appears not to be the case.

The fact that Kemper was able to display multi-talents only confuses the issue further, because he apparently set the tradition that a moderator was a Tradewars Guru as well that could answer any question and wear many hats. Which are what the public here came to expect out of moderators, born out of tradition. Hence my suggestion of assigning titles to the various moderators so we won't be confused over which one is a Tradewars Guru or not. There also needs to be a disclaimer that not all moderators are able to answer every question, but will give it their best effort and try to answer in a timely manner. Just another suggestion. I mean that is what help desks and tech support forums usually say anyway, that they will give it their best effort and respond in a timely manner. Some things might require more time and research, or the assistance of other moderators or members, etc.

I responded to Graz's post 16:17 mins after he posted his, as of this time it is 11:29 PM so do the math what time did he post? Though the forum stamp says it was at 7:18 am what time zone must that be in ?
And the delay was due to my catching it so early this am, that I decided
to wait, think on my words, compose my response then post it at my lesure, I am not going to be rushed into a post to satisfy anyone.
To do so would be irresponsible and insulting to the users of this forum and the moderators that I will be working with.
As to my knowledge of the game, none of the users of this forum have any true idea what I really know. (Though some may want to think its less then what I do know for reasons of there own.) And I am quite able to perform my mission on this forum, as will become evident in due time.

Oh and Orion, P-ton Defenses are an assumed part of the online offline defense risk. I didnt mention it as its the most obviouse component, and the article was written on an attackers point of view.

Nor was it written to ellucidate the the tactics of bot, anti bot combat.

Considering a level six planet with 200 planatary shields is immune to p-tons i further didnt feel the need to mention it.

But then personaly I dont leave my planets shielded that weakly, but thats just another can of worms to be opened and my "inexperiance" challenged?

you guys there are like 13 players left in tw are we are fighting over who is moderator? i wouldnt care if akor was a moderator, actually since akor is my friend i would like it. Lets focus on what really needs to happen to start producing better games. there needs to be less servers. think if everyone only had like 5 servers to choose from, you would get alot of good action packed, multi corp games.

quote: think if everyone only had like 5 servers to choose from, you would get alot of good action packed, multi corp games.

I agree.

14 Players. I have come back out of retirement.

I estimate roughly 900 unique players on the 25 servers listed at http://thestardock.com:8808/twgssearch/allservers.php.

Shocking, isn't it.

+EP+

And to add to that i know for a fact theres over 1000 servers out there. So twars is not dead yet, not by a long shot.

Back in Jan or Feb of this year, as soon as I learned of telnet and was nostalgic for old style BBS games, I found a list of old style BBSes called the BBS Corner list http://www.dmine.com/telnet/. They had around 20 boards that advertised TW on them with most having some players. Most didn't have corresponding webpages and no one I chatted with ever heard of EIS; prolly thinking that the Martins still owned the copywrite. I would add 100-200 players to that count.

TBH Good to see ur back, when you get called out, I've got a DM server if you need to use it.

Zentock -

Honestly, I'm fascinated by your response... I truely never thought I'd see anything more than "its written somewhere else, go read it" or "I don't need to explain how to moth a planet to you"... I'm very impressed, and somewhat humbled by your response. Good man zentock... good man.

I didn't read the entire post, as I seldom do, because sometimes you babble (that's ok) but the important parts were there, and your variables were right on... T diddadly awesome... Please, forgive me for I know not what I say.

Graz