Below are questions I asked on another forum, about being evil and keeping an ISS. The reply indicates it is next to impossible. I used to play TW back in the day 91-94, always evil and alway managed to keep an ISS, occassionally losing it, but mostly not, it took a lot of thinking ahead but it was possible.

In TWGS is it possible to keep an ISS while evil, and trade/steal/rob etc?
What precautions are necessary now in TWGS?

--- from my question on other forum -----
Newbie kind of question:
I'm preparing for the day I go evil with a ISS.

1. To protect the ISS while trading or steal/rob, do I place a OFF or DEF fighter, to keep the feds out while I trade? If OFF why?

2. Can I transport out of the evil ISS to another ship and still get back in to the ISS?

3. If I have to go to SD, approx. how long can I stay, seconds,or minutes, before the feds show up?

4. Will I only be attacked in MSL by the FEDs with an evil ISS?


---- Reply ----
a fighter in sector wont protect you

if you transport out you cannot get back in

moving at ALL will cost you that ship, you may get lucky and move a couple sectors but eventually he'll get you.

nope, any sector, even your base

And as you where told in another forum, NO .

You may not keep an iss and be red UNLESS the sysop has turned off the commishioned flag for the iss.

you may go red in an iss.

you will not get far in it b4 ur testing a pod.

you can go to sd in it but you will be in a pod quickly.

if you go ssming in it you will again shortly be in a pod.

Personal or corp fighters do not protect you form the feds, they will run you down and pod you as soon as they become aware of
your "transgression".

unless the sysop has changed the iss's settings.

Sector entry... as zentock said, unless the sysop has modified it, you'll risk podding on sector entry. Specifically, as soon as you go red any of a dozen entry events will trigger a warning msg. This includes moving, exit-enter, blowing a planet, maybe even fleeing (not sure on that). You get 1 warning msg, then the 2nd will pod you. Used to be as long as you traveled on your own ftrs you'd be ok, doesn't work that way anymore.

Interestingly you can stay on a planet and pwarp around all you want and be safe. You can even lift from the planet and port and land back on the planet, a useful feature if the "trade ships" flag is set and your corpie is in commish-only ship with 255 holds.

Okay from back in the time you played it was possible to use an ISS for evil, but in this version of TWGS it won't happen, unless, like Zentock said, if the sysop edited out the fed commission on the ship. In other words in the new version of this game, you move some and poof you are in a shinny new pod.

Sorry to bump a 6 year old thread... I was just curious if anyone knows what the last version of Tradewars was that allowed Evil ISS? I used to do it in 1.03, but haven't really bothered since then. I assume the developer(s) changed that at some point because a Red ISS is seen as an abuse of the game...

The game has attempted to keep an evil player from flying an ISS for as long as I've been involved with it (v2b8 ish). Of course, that doesn't mean that there aren't ways to do it. There may still be.

In a stock edit, with the ISS locked, you can only drive an ISS as a red if you go red while in the ISS. In that case, you can be in the ISS as long as you want provided you don't exit enter twice, or change sectors twice. You can stay on a planet tho and ride along, however if you get bumped offline you might lose your ship when you come back in (you usually get 1 warning, then lose your ship the 2nd time).

If the ISS is unlocked, then you can swap into it via the citadel and use it according to the above rules. In a lot of edits, however, you will see "red ISS" type ships. They're not as strong as the blue ISS, normally, but they offer a good compromise.

I think what you're describing is within the intended design. If Gary had wanted to say "absolutely no red access to ISS", he could have done that. Instead, it's risky and a bit of trouble. Seems like I've heard about trapping Zyrain so you can move around freely. I don't recall if that was ever fixed.

Yeh, you can trap Clausewitz and Nelson, you can't trap Zyrain. The actual ship repo isn't connected to Zyrain, it happens whether he's there or not, it just uses his name in the player warning message.

If it wasn't intended, then the sysop has the tools to lock it down. By making the ship unswappable in the citadel, the only way to have a red ISS is to go red while in it. That's risky, since you won't get far w/o losing the ship. Otherwise, it has a very limited usefulness, hence the reason why many edits now have red attack ships.

I see. This appears to be basically useless, please correct me if I'm wrong. Of course you never know how you might find a use for something like this in TW.

AFAIK, there is no reasonable logic that would encourage a Red player to own an ISS?

Also, let me rephrase my initial question. When I was playing 1.03[d], I could get in an ISS, trap the Feds, go evil, and play the rest of the game in an ISS. At some point, a feature was implemented that causes a Fed to be aware as soon as you're Red and in an ISS, apparently triggered by entering a sector. He will send you a verbal warning then transwarp in and kill you after 1-2 more moves. That was not true once upon a time. Does anyone remember when it became true?

You may want to check some of the BBS's still running HVS TW. That sounds to me like it may have been a behavior in HVS (High Velosity Software) who first ported Gary's door game to multiplayer for MBBS.

You are correct Cruncher, it was possible to be evil in an ISS. All you had to do, was drop a fig every time you moved. Off, Def, Toll, didnt matter. Dumb though medium term - if you went to another ship, could not get back into the ISS. It had only 2 uses - walk while sector figging to get into range of another available ship, or use the ISS for the odds. Well, mebbe 3, bragging rights.

Sing is correct, cannot fig trap Zyrain, she will immediately twarp to assist, it was always thus.

I just recently went WAY red in an ISS in an old HVS game I was playing with Cruncher when I attacked another good player who was stronger than me. I sat there for a pretty long time, then was able to warp back to my home sector and climb out of it before anything happened. Shocked everyone I was playing with.

Can't speak to TWGS as I haven't tried it yet.

Having said that, Singularity pretty much nailed it. Once your red, you can do VERY FEW things but you can usually get back home and move out of it before anything happens. I also vaguely remember using an ISS and being red way back in the days of the single player door games. (and I do mean vaguely!)

Yeh, in TWGS the check for alignment restrictions is done on sector entry. Sector entry is done whenever you come into the game (so exit enter, or regular enter), it's also done whenever you sleep in a cit and then lift from the planet, it's also done when you twarp into the sector.

Sector entry is a big deal in TW. It's when cannons go off, mines go off, figs get triggered, limpets attach, navhaz is hit, alignment and experience checks are done on ships, etc. It's one of those things you need to get used to, because a lot of things depend on it.

it's also really important in a corp game, ex: if someone sleeps in the citadel you need to make sure they lift to a friendly sector (aka they need to touch space in a friendly sector). I usually drop a perslimp down before this, so when they lift I know they're clean.

There are little tricks you can do to bend the entry rules, mostly having to do with xport and pwarp. Xport does not trigger an entry. For the point of a red ISS, this doesn't help, since it won't let you xport (it checks before the xport) into an ISS as a red, but for other entry issues it can make a big difference. Pwarp is the biggest, since you can pwarp around all day and not trigger an entry (meaning that pwarp doesn't attach limpets or trigger cannon blasts, either).

When it comes to alignment checks, you get 1 warning and then you're done. So the first entry will trigger a warning, the 2nd takes your ship. This means you can twarp somewhere, drop figs, then xport out.

Time is not a factor, since sitting in a sector doesn't trigger an entry. You could sit there for weeks, if you never moved or logged out, and you'd be fine. You can lift and land on planets, you can port, you can do anything that doesn't trigger an entry. Trigger the entry, you get a warning. Trigger it twice, kiss the ship goodbye.

I found some info about approx. when the evil ISS became impossible to keep. The following note was provided in the release notes for private beta 0.91 of what would become TW V2. This release was made on or around October 31, 1993.

Note: The days of the Evil StarShip are now over.

Additionally, this note was included with release 0.18 for August 15, 1993:

BTW, the Interdictor Cruiser is NOT the "Evil Starship" that people have
been clamoring for. It has some definate drawbacks (slow, few holds) and
is designed strictly for some serious maiming when needed. I have always
and will always refuse to grant an Evil Starship to the Evil players as
they already have it good and should stop complaining. (preaching over)