OK, um when i play normal 5k games and i ZTM, i get, you know, 7 deep bubbles. but when im doing a BIGNABG! and its asking me for the mininum number of sectors in a bubble, the lowest setting is 100! Is there something i'm missing?

quote:
OK, um when i play normal 5k games and i ZTM, i get, you know, 7 deep bubbles. but when im doing a BIGNABG! and its asking me for the mininum number of sectors in a bubble, the lowest setting is 100! Is there something i'm missing?


These are a little different from your average "small, dead end" type tunnels/bubbles. These large bubbles have (default setting) at least 1 warp in/out for every 25 sectors within the bubble. So a 100 sector bubble has a minimum of four warps in/out (and often more). Most helpers don't seem to pick these bubbles up from a ZTM. A 200 sector bubble would have (default settings, again) a minimum of eight warps in/out.

They make for excellent bases later in a game providing you have the planets and resources to block every warp in/out. If you do, you can work the ports within the "superbubble" with a relative degree of safety.

Lisa M. Wilson
aka Rave

Edited by - rave on March 28 2002 12:59:40 AM

quote:
These are a little different from your average "small, dead end" type tunnels/bubbles. These large bubbles have (default setting) at least 1 warp in/out for every 25 sectors within the bubble. So a 100 sector bubble has a minimum of four warps in/out (and often more). Most helpers don't seem to pick these bubbles up from a ZTM. A 200 sector bubble would have (default settings, again) a minimum of eight warps in/out.

They make for excellent bases later in a game providing you have the planets and resources to block every warp in/out. If you do, you can work the ports within the "superbubble" with a relative degree of safety.

Lisa M. Wilson
aka Rave

Edited by - rave on March 28 2002 12:59:40 AM


Is the 1/25 something in recent versions? I played games in .46 or .47 where there were 4 or 5 100+ sector bubbles with only one warp out. I don't know about warps out, because that doesn't really make a bubble any harder to defend.

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with only one warp out.


I meant with only one warp in.

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Is the 1/25 something in recent versions? I played games in .46 or .47 where there were 4 or 5 100+ sector bubbles with only one warp out. I don't know about warps out, because that doesn't really make a bubble any harder to defend.


I should rephrase my earlier comments. The number of links can be as high as one link per 25 sectors. I, for one reason or another, switched that to a minimum of 1 link per 25 sectors. It's possible for the sysop to create a higher number of links during BigBang.

Still even with large single link bubbles, many helpers won't detect them. I recently tried using TWX' bubble search feature to find a 140 sector bubble I knew was in the game, but after increasing the bubble size setting up to 150, it locked up when I ran the bubble finder (I let it sit for about two hours hoping it was just analyzing).

Lisa M. Wilson
aka Rave

quote:
I should rephrase my earlier comments. The number of links can be as high as one link per 25 sectors. I, for one reason or another, switched that to a minimum of 1 link per 25 sectors. It's possible for the sysop to create a higher number of links during BigBang.

Still even with large single link bubbles, many helpers won't detect them. I recently tried using TWX' bubble search feature to find a 140 sector bubble I knew was in the game, but after increasing the bubble size setting up to 150, it locked up when I ran the bubble finder (I let it sit for about two hours hoping it was just analyzing).

Lisa M. Wilson
aka Rave


In my experience, twx's bubble finder is somewhat lacking. I qualify this by saying I haven't tried it in the last several versions, but in 1.06 I think it was, I would turn up simple bubbles that were far from bubbles. Currently, I use a ztm in zoc to come up with a warp list, then for complex (large) bubbles, I import the data into j-twat and let it analyze it. As far as I can tell, it is pretty accurate.

ok well, how would I set it up so that just small bubbles are in the game?