Just had a show down with somoene who was using macro's WHOLE lot faster than the auto kill with mombot.. wtf.. anything faster than a macro out there

The thing is , if the commands are set decently .. a macro with spaces/buffering can be
a lot faster then a script that is waiting to trigger.

The main speed advantage is that a macro goes off as soon as key is typed.
The script is waiting for trigger to activate it.

So a good player would use a combo of both to be ready for anything.

Good luck in your next encounter Comet

I prefer script to macro for most attacks. The script reacts faster to the initial situation than I can (provided it is set). A macro would not have the logic of a script to go through as it would just spew out the commands once activated. I believe the difference in speed between script and macro is really fairly small, and much smaller than my ability to react to the situation.

The main thing for macros as I see it - you have to activate the correct macro for an attack, and if you can do that it is probably faster than activating a script with its logic.

[Edit] Was this a fed kill? If so, it probably wasn't a macro manually fired and your autokill didn't stand a snowball's chance. [/Edit]

               / Promethius / Enigma / Wolfen /

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

Pitting script versus macro is a false dichotomy. Each works best in
it's own situation.

Macros work if you know the timing and can execute it w/o error.
Case in point: Attacking someone sitting in your sector. Having a
simple attack macro is critical, it gives you a chance to fire
before they can fire back. You know they're there, so it's just a
matter of pressing the button before the other person has a chance
to press theirs.

However what if you don't know the timing? Case in point: a dock
killer. You're sitting at dock waiting for someone to lift. When
they lift, you'd then attack them. Problem is: If you're sitting
on a macro waiting to fire, your fastest response will be not just
lag, but also a function of your response time. Think about that,
your brain has to recognize they've lifted, then has to go "press
the button" and then your finger has to press it. That's going to
be some 200ms plus lag, at best. A script is easily going to beat
that.

But the situation can change. Lets say someone is running a script
that goes to dock and refills on a timer. You know that when they
land, they're only at dock for a half-second or so. So if you then
fire off a bunch of attack bursts, there's a good change they'll
lift in the middle of them. That means you can have the command
queued before you get the actual "lifts from" message, which makes
things quicker. Depending on their exact timing, you might get a hit
or two.

Mombot's auto kill is slow, you lost because it was slow.

The thing is, a well written script can combine the power of both.
Create a "lifts from" trigger and then fire off a burst of macros.
It won't pre-queue the attack, but it'll beat your own response
time and send a bunch of commands as fast as possible. If you
do want the pre-queued version, just have a "warps into sector"
trigger and fire off the burst there. Hands-free waves of death.

To that end, sometimes macros lose. Prome is exactly right, in many
cases a script is a better choice. I have a sector attack script that
I load when I'm hunting people. It's quicker than I am, and it sends
the same burst I'd use by hand. It gives me a solid advantage when
I have the initiative. Of course, if someone knows I'm running it they
can use that against me. Running their own script, they can fill their
ship full of corbo and wait for me to warp in and power up, then xport
out. I'll eat the corbo, and they could then follow up with a mow-kill
of their own (w/o shields and w/ low figs, I'd be pod bait).

Which of course is the inverse of the dock kill situation. Let's say
I know you're after me. I go to dock, you're there. You power up, I
land at dock. I write a quick macro to lift, power up a few times, land,
buy figs and repeat. I've actually got a script that does that, so I
don't really need to write a macro all by hand, but you get the idea.
So I lift and power up, you power up shortly there-after. I'm going to
get the first hit in, and if I've gotten the count right... I'll dock
back before you have a chance to finish me. That gives me a 2nd refill
and a 2nd set of attacks while you're still working on your first. I'll
win that, you'll be low on figs. Again, it's the initiative that wins
the battle... not the script or macro.

Long story made slightly shorter... it all depends on the situation
and the players you're up against.

Comet,

Before you can even think about scripts and macros, you need to know how to play the game by hand. You need to know how you can colonize, move resources, do buy downs, port pair trading, etc, all by hand. You need to be able to play every aspect of the game by hand.

Only then will you be able to understand how to write a script and macro and figure out what's the circumstance to use either.

That's the problem with Trade Wars today - too many script kiddies that have no clue how to play the game by hand.

Yeh, get a perfect haggle by hand every time... lol. Or run team SST over 1000 turns
between 2 people all by hand, hehe.

Some things just don't work well by hand. Too error prone and not competitive. I'd
rather have 10 eager script kiddies with good keytime than 2 ppl who spend all their
time doing stuff by hand.

Can you imagine world SST in an unlim... all by hand?

Dude,

I'm talking about learning to play by hand to start with. I'm not saying to play the entire game by hand.

In order to learn how scripts and macros work, they need to execute these commands by hand first.

Right now, too many newbies start playing with scripts right off the bat, so they just don't understand the game at all because they think all they need is an uber script and they are good to go.

They need to play a bit of Old School Trade Wars first before they can start using scripts, macros, and bots. Otherwise, they have no clue how to play the fracking game.

That's all I'm sayin'.

I just came back this January after an eight year break, and it's a very sad situation out there with the script kiddies. Timber and I are trying to train newbies in a 1250 turn game. Since these script kiddies "learned" the game in unlimited turn mode running scripts they haven't the foggiest idea about game strategies and making the most out of your turns.

They need to first learn the game before they go flaunting around all these scripts that waste time, turns and resources.

You need to know what the script does, yea. But you don't need the minute details.
For instance, how haggle offers adjust to your experience, and how they differ from
day to day. You don't really need to know that just to play. Let a script do it, spend
your time on something more important.

I think most people, push come to shove, know how to PPT by hand. Port, move,
port, move. I'm sure if they didn't know, they could figure it out. So while it helps to
have a loose idea how a script works, it's not really that important to do it all by
hand first.

And colonizing? Who hasn't twarped to terra, gotten colos and returned by hand?
At least once? If there's anyone out there that hasn't, they'd have to be a tard to
not understand how. Resource moving, same way really. I mean who can't figure
out how to grab eq and drop it on a planet, whether from a port or from another
planet? It's not exactly Fermat's last theorem.

IMO, it isn't that people don't know how to do it. They just don't want to do it the
old way because it's slow and ppl want to be lazy.

As for unlim players, that's just because you're missing the adjustment. Unlims are
about time efficiency, whereas turns are about turn efficiency. Has nothing to do
with scripts, scripts can be made to work in either situation. It's just that when
people are used to running unlim scripts all the time, that's what they run until you
can teach them to run something else. These people have learned the game, they've
learned the unlim game. The unlim game is very different than the turns game.
The unlim game is about speed and grid and cash. It's about invading people quickly.
It does take skill, it just takes a different kind of skill.

The point Timber is trying to make is NOT that you must play the game manually, but that you must at least first know the game.

Example - our noob last night went red, no big deal, we'll teach him red. First thing he does is upgrade the fuel on a SBB port to buy it down. Natually he goes blue again upgrading the port. He's spinning his wheels trying to figure out how to go red again. His alignment is 119, I tell him to jetison 120 colos, he thinks I'm f*cking brilliant! LOL
Before I get a chance to tell him that buying down the fuel on an SBB is not enough to mega rob, and it's got planets with product that's going to be sold which will clean the cash out of the port anyway. Then he runs over to the next port and upgrades that one again pushing his alignment to the blue side again. Never asking for assistance, never asking for my advice. He hits my personal figs again to go red.

I come down on him in e-mail, he blows up a planet and quits the corp. What are you going do? Script kiddies think they know it all.

Timber and Cruncher are both right , most unlim script kiddies don't understand the mechanics of the game.
They just know that script A makes cash and script B will col.
Not understanding there are a dozen ways to cash in a game.
Let alone how to setup to do it.

Many aspects of the game need to be learned , and by hand is the way to learn.
For instance SDT most players don't even know how to do that by hand.
But you tell them to fire team sdt up .. they cash and do ok.
Sure they bust and fake a bit ... probably would do it less if they did a few cycles by hand in a turns game
to understand the mechanics and even learned to off rob a bit.

Teaching someone to play is difficult especially when they refuse to learn and cby when its beyond them.
These people after awhile will have a hard time finding teachers because of their BS.
I hope this gets read by many .. and they strive to understand where these teachers come
from and what they are trying to teach.

Lets keep this game alive another 20 yrs.

I've never really cared for unlimited turn games, and hence haven't played too many of them. its not because I get frustrated or lose. its more the total automation. and yes sing is right, its a totally different skill then a turn game.

I started tw on a bbs. it was a local bbs and only allowed one person in at a time. a little while later I found another palce where my uncle played and introduced me to tw2002. it was a bbs too, but had multiple players in the game. I would call up through a routing number so that it was all local calling for me haha and would play by hand. When we started trying other programs like TWAR for dos, and TWASSIST, we were thrilled with the new tools at our disposal.

as time went on, i found more tw games on the internet so I didn't have to dial into a bbs. and things went from there. I even to start out used a program that converted my comm port dialing to tcp ip dialing. what was that program called again.

anyway, i learnt by hand. and then used tools to help. but at the time there were no unlimited turn games to mess with turn management. I had to learn that all on my own. and ya I learnt most things myself in regard to how align was affected when i did this or that.

personally I think it was good to start with no tools. but now adays I think tools are very helpful. but you have to learn and understand what the scripts you use do. When I played full time on corps, I never relied on any script. A lot of people thought I had a mass collection, but i never did. i had maybe two or three that I used often. most of my kills came with very limited script help. its not because i couldn't write the combat scripts, it was because I didn't need complex combat scripts to compete. I was smart enough to know what was going to happen, so i knew where i had to be.

scripts are great and help with speed for sure. I wouldn't play without them. but listen to cruncher, learn the game first. then use the tools. or at least be open to understand and want to know what is happening and why.

i do see though that its very hard for new players to learn the game away from scripts. i've always wanted to create a game that had beacons all over explaining aspects of the game. like "Next to this sector is a group of personal fighters, go attack them and see how they affect your game ranking." hints would be all through the universe as a teaching tool. another could be a pre-setup sdt site. you wander into it and it starts explaining what and how things work. maybe even have a moderator corp bot that on limpet trigger, it notifies a new player of what they did and what they need to know. or talking players through processes of cashing by bot. a bot would fly over and watch what is going on.

My thoughts exactly, VK. When I'm trying to teach a newbie how to play the game and they don't want to listen, I'm thinking to myself, why did I come back?

I came back because I once loved the game and I do not want to see it die. I want to see some new blood in the game but they are not going to learn if they don't play with a few key strokes first.

To this day, I still do many things by hand. For example if all I want to do is move 1000 units of organics to start a citadel, I can do it faster by hand than having to tell the script what to do. Of course, if I have to move 25000 units, then yeah, I'll run the script. But for a small task like 1000 units, it's easy as pie to do it by hand.

When I'm far enough into the game, I have the planet numbers memorized. I have the sector number memorized. I have the ship numbers memorized. I keep notes. I communicate with my corpie Cruncher with a game plan.

We both are trying to bring back Trade Wars what it was back in the old days - a turn based strategic game, old school style. But we both wondered why do we bother when a newbie does not want to listen.

But for every newbie that does not listen, others are willing to and I'm more than willing to teach the willing ones how to play the game. Soon as I'm done in my current game, I'll move on to a building game to teach some new players.

As I was writing this post, Tweety posted his. I believe I've played with and against Tweety once or twice and let me tell you this, Tweety has been in the game longer than I have so the points that he's making should be taken to heart.

Learn the game by hand first. It will help you a lot in the long run.

I never teach anyone to play by hand. I tell them about scripts, macros, and general information. If they want to learn the commands, hit the ? and get a list. If they move by hand and hit a fig, they die. If they ppt by hand they are out cashed and out figged - what they do in an hour, I do in minutes.

I do play a different type of game than several people who have posted. Very high turn and prefer unlims with a command cycle of 50 or more. I don't like for a game to last more than a few hours at most so I can enjoy it and be done with it to get on with other things. Think of it as speed chess.

               / Promethius / Enigma / Wolfen /

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

k