You have several cases to consider in an attack macro.
The most common:
1. An target (enemy or trader)
2. No enemy
3. A fed
4. A beacon
Basic:
ay1*
Works when there's a target, otherwise it screws up navpoints and risks a warpout.
A aty1*
Works when there's a target and no target. Does not work w/ a beacon. The beacon
takes no fig amount, so aty1* does this:
Quote:
Command [TL=00:00:00]:[3974] (?=Help)? : A
<Attack>
Destroy the Marker Beacon here? Yes
You launch a fighter which quickly destroys the Beacon (and itself)
Command [TL=00:00:00]:[3974] (?=Help)? : 1
<Move>
Warping to Sector 1
That Warp Lane is not adjacent.
Do you want to engage the TransWarp drive? No
Computed.
The shortest path (10 hops, 20 turns) from sector 3974 to sector 1 is:
3974 > 3524 > 15670 > 13855 > 9904 > (1156) > (14255) > 13562 > 16317 > 4 > 1
Engage the Autopilot? (Y/N/Single step/Express) [Y]
And the next enter... sends you warping. So send two of those macros together and
you probably die. A lot of people forget beacons, I've got a "lay beacon chaff" as part
of a kill script for exactly this purpose.
Then there's fed...
If you try aty1* you get:
Quote:
Command [TL=00:00:00]:[16088] (?=Help)? : A
<Attack>
Attack Captain Zyrain (9,997-75,000) (Y/N) [N]? Yes
Are you POSITIVE you want to attack this Federation StarShip? No
That's actually safe, because the enter says No to the confirmation.
That makes this macro only dangerous at beacons...
But:
atzy1*
Doesn't work. Y is the answer to the Z buffer, so that's just going to slow you down
at the worst POSSIBLE time.
So what about:
atyz1*
The last enter makes it fed safe. The z buffer makes it beacon safe. The corp buffer
makes it safe when there are no targets, and of course it works fine when there are.
You can also prompt sync and killfig with something like:
q q q z a 99999* a t y z 1 *
It is possible to make most attack macros safe. The "a y n y q z 1 *" mac is one I use
in public scripts and in the white paper. It's primary goal was to get people thinking
about buffering.
It is a little slower, however. There are some advantages to being slightly slower,
actually. If you're in a ship with high defensive odds you have a chance to flip the
enemy before attacking them. That's the reason why I used it, instead of something
faster, in my citkilla. It's also why I have it reload from the planet after every
wave... since you're likely to get hit if another corp is running one. It's also why I do
all that pod detection.
In games like "pirates" where there's a large gbonus ship, that's one of my favorite
little things to do. Run a single fig attack from the dread flute, slow down the macro
with extra text, and let ppl pound on me w/ a citkilla... just enough to take a single
wave between fig grabs.
Anyway, there's a lot of stuff like this. Buffers are fun.