So...I'm now the proud owner of most every TW helper in existence and I've been screwing around with all of them. While I have my favorites, I find that no single helper works for me all the time. For instance J-TWAT, which so many love to hate, has, in my opinion, one of the best colonizing scripts I've ever seen. It allows you to decide what planet you are colonizing. Then you decide how to get to Terra whether it be a single hop or making a stop in between i.e. a red coloer who jumps to right outside Fed then walks to Terra, whether to use Twarp for the jumps or the tpad. YOu also decide where the fuel comes from. You then decide how to get back to home whether walking or Twarp. Plus it has some pretty basic and easy to use yet effective attack script like Pwatch and Pdrop. TWX is my favorite overall for its speed and the amount of scripts I can get for it, but even then I switch back and forth between differennt versions of it because I can't find scripts for 2.02 to replace some have for 1.09. I've recently gotten into ZOC and I love the whole binding scripts to keys thing (thanks for help on that Rev). And now I have gotten SWATH and I love its whole interface. Very nice to look at. Nice maps. So the whole POINT of this I guess is to poll the rest of you guys and see what you use and WHY.

PS The editing was typos. I HATE typos.

i use twx and zoc, have all of revs scripts for zoc. i would use swath because i hear it has awesome java scripts.. but then i saw how much of a pain it was to make the java scripts work and i said screw it, im lazy. if someone knows an easy way to make the java work in swath let me know. thanks

I'm a huge [url="http://www.swath.net"]SWATH[/url] fan. Oh, and it can do that same colonizing bit (just as customizable). I've learned quite a bit of Java using SWATH and have a pretty good library of scripts which I've downloaded and customized to behave how I want.

SWATH can also use ZOC scripts, and Stein is adding more functionality all the time.

I use swath and Twx now,I did have twx,jtwat,swath and attac all running at the same time and it was crazy switching to the one i wanted to use.Then I learned how to write twx scripts so now i need something I make it.Ask some of the good scripters for the script you are looking for,or ask buddies,someone may have it.YOu never know.
Xide man you rule.Keep up the twx updates cant wait to see new update heh.

Swath and TWX rocks, the only part of J-twat I even like is the way it handles its auto trade or auto ssm, and I love the multi player SST, its killer as long as the Darn thing doesnt crash in the middle of it. Add this to Swath and J-twat will die. By the way, the java scripts in Swath are easy to set up, just the directions for doing it suck. The biggest pain is that 33 Meg java download you have to do from Sun. Drop me a line and I can help you with it, its not as hard as it looks.

If anyone has trouble getting started scripting with SWATH, my advice is to download some other good scripts and start from there until you get used to the API. I guess you could say the same about any TW helper scripting language, however.

ZOC/REV HELPER/TWX

My 120 buttons spinning

Res Judicata

SWATH can work with Java quite easily, all you need do is edit the SWATH.INI file in your WINDOWS or WINNT directory (desponding on the OS you use).

Here is my SWATH.INI file:

quote:
[Java]
JDK=C:\Program Files\Java\j2re1.4.2_03
ClassPath=Scripts

[UserDefinedScripts]
Scr1=SmartExplore
Scr2=VitoTrade
Scr3=SmartMove
Scr4=ResourceMover
Scr5=PhotonWatch
Scr6=GrabSell
Scr7=MegaDump
Scr8=ISGrabSell

[RexxScripts]


Notice that JDK should equal the path you installed the JDK or JRE to. Mine is the latest JRE from Sun that I downloaded to the default directory.

[UserDefinedScripts] is where the Java Scripts go, put them in the subdirectory in the Swath directory named in the ClassPath above. In this case "C:\Program Files\SWATH\Scripts" is where you unzip them to. As you can see I defined a few scripts using the Scr1 - Scr8 options.

I assume we do the same thing for the [RexxScripts] option but I never tried it yet.

I use ATTAC for colonizing as SWATH appears to be a bit weak there. Also ATTAC seems to be faster in the buy dump, colonizing, and resource moving than SWATH is. Thank goodness when I registered ATTAC, I got a $6 discount on SWATH. ATTAC is buggy on WorldTrade, WorldSSM, so TWX is used for that but I got to watch my turns as TWX does not count turns.

J-TWAT is nice, you can set a turns watch to 50 turns or whatever to stop the scripts at and use those turns to get to a safe sector or your base or whatever. J-TWAT is what I would reconmend to Linux, *nix, MacOS, MacOSX, OS/2, etc users, just get the JRE for your OS and load the SWATH Java files for them. Only pet peaves with it are no self destruct protection, no blind t-warp protection, won't load saved games without crashing, and at some times it is buggy. It is also good as a freebie TW-Helper until you can afford register something else.

Love VitoTrade. Mine is heavily modified though. I can set a maximum sector density (to enter) and a couple other nifty features. It's never gotten me killed (unlike unhacked VitoTrade).

It is "Horses for courses".

If you like/can work with a specific helper, go for it, unless you are comfortable writing code, in which case, use a terminal program. Any one. The "helpers" are becoming more and more and.... effed up everytime Microsludge upgrades (err, downsludges).

I love Windows. I hate Macs.

The Rexx scripts are set up similar but you need to include the entire path to them. Here is my Swath ini file as an example

[Java]
JDK=C:\jdk1.3.1_01
ClassPath=Class

[UserDefinedScripts]
Scr1=PhotonTollFighter
Scr2=PlanetDrop
Scr3=PhotonWatch
Scr4=FillBubble
Scr5=ProbeHunter2
Scr6=Rosetta2
Scr7=Furber
Scr8=ResourceMover
Scr9=GrabSell
Scr10=ISGrabSell
Scr11=ListTargets
Scr12=VitoTrade
Scr13=TollFig

[RexxScripts]
Scr1=C:\Program Files\SWATH\Scripts\_buyshieldsrylos.zrx
Scr2=C:\Program Files\SWATH\Scripts\_backdoor.zrx
Scr3=C:\Program Files\SWATH\Scripts\_explorer.zrx
Scr4=C:\Program Files\SWATH\Scripts\_buyfurb.zrx
Scr5=C:\Program Files\SWATH\Scripts\_sectorfigdelay.zrx
Scr6=C:\Program Files\SWATH\Scripts\_fightersdelay.zrx
Scr7=C:\Program Files\SWATH\Scripts\_assm.zrx
Scr8=C:\Program Files\SWATH\Scripts\ssm-speed.zrx
Scr9=C:\Program Files\SWATH\Scripts\_worldssm.zrx
Scr10=C:\Program Files\SWATH\Scripts\tri-con2.zrx

I would test any Rexx scripts before using in an actual game tho, there are still a few issues that Swath doesnt handle or doesnt handle correctly.