I know, I have one TWA that I'm working on for my "signature" game. It was up and running on the Swamp for a while. TWGS mode, but MBBS battle odds and 32k ports.

And I would say that someone who thought they could bypass the fighters on a planet by firing a photon first might want to go back and look at the basics before teaching the basics.

Yes, we give new players scripts they can use, but if they ask, just about any of the more well known players in this game, (Vid, Sing, Kewlbreeze, etc...), will gladly teach them the basics and much more if they show interest in learning.

From the TradeWars Bible:

"Photons take care of such unruly hazards as Mines, Fighters, Quasar Cannons, and fighters on planets."

so, it appears that photons did do that in Gary Martin's v2 of TradeWars.

Sure, if they ask. If you run a few rounds manually, using your handy, dandy calculator you get a better understanding of what's going on. You write scripts, you had to figure out the formulas manually before you could code them. (Which FYI formulas are pretty much hard-wired and easy in TWGS, in HVS they were a bit more random, and profits fluctuated with the days of the week.)

I'm sorry but abort display leaves so much out, the first time I saw a script run like that, it was disturbing. I had Vid Kid come run around the sandbox game once while I was chasing him with an adjacent pdrop/photon script to test the planet move timings. I could not tell what was happening looking at that screen.

No, it just disabled offensive fighters. It still does. They're still present tho, you still have to blow up the figs to get thru the planet.

They still do.. but it's Stopping the Offensive fighters on a planet from attacking not totally by passing them as Crucher was saying.

See... told ya! That's why I was so happy to see the HVS game still being hosted, I had to get my bearings back.

Uhm actually no. The equation for MCIC and best haggle is very complex, you won't be doing it with a calculator, nor will you be finding it out on your own w/o a lot of analysis. I'm to about 99% using some lengthy regression analysis, but it took EP quite a while to figure it out. Ship to ship trading, profits still fluctuate day to day. Honestly, if you don't know that, you're probably not in the best position to teach it to new players.



You learn little tricks, things to look for that aren't normal.

Told me what? That someone was going on hear-say about what photons never actually did?

Using my calculator I’ll get 2 points ppt’ing 90% of the time. Now, the planet negotiation scripts I’m very impressed with. I can’t get nearly those profits manually.





If they’re new, how do they know what’s normal and what isn’t?

Right. So you can't teach people to haggle the way a script would? Like I said, some things are best taught from a 500 foot perspective.



Either someone tells you, like [Pause] being in there somewhere, etc, or you just run it and look for what happens when you get torped or killed.

And once upon a time a Rouge planet fig defenses would just shut down, so if you found a L2 you could simply land claim it and all the figs on it. No photon necessary. v1.xx Today defenses remain active on rouge planets.

That's fine, but perhaps it'd be good to review the planet defense order then?

How long does it take to trade a pair port via your calculator?

As long as I've been playing Tradewars, photons have NEVER allowed you to bypass fighters on a planet. That would be pretty neat to have a super photon like that, however, I'm pretty sure I'd never build a planet under such circumstances. I would just buy myself a good photon ship and take everyone else's planets at the cost of a torp. LOL