A variation by Kemper3 of the popular Red Alert edits ( SETTINGS ) will open Wednesday, at 7pm Pacific (10pm EST). Stardock TWGS, on the comeback!

We’re cracking down hard on dupes. If you feel you’ve been
locked out of a game unfairly, dispute at sysop aaat thestardock dizzot com

All Winners

Congrats to all winners!! It was a big year for Kemper3, Cherokee, TWX and Jerry from Coastgames. A big thanks from Stardock and contributing editors for all you have done for the game. Keep it up, and here’s to another seven!

Bravo!

Today is the last day to participate in the 7th Annual TW Awards. As was the case last year, there are several very close categories, so your vote really does count.

Voting will be closed at 7pm eastern time tonight!

The awards are being hosted at The Lost Traders Tavern

Visit the TWGS Beta Page for details.
https://www.eisonline.com/twgs/beta/

City of Industry ( SETTINGS ) will open tomorrow night at 6pm. Two hour time limit, 5 min instant time penalty per login, 750 turns. The game itself is actually geared for some violence, but it’ll take some time to get there.

Anyone caught trying to get around the time limits with Main Menu bots will be disqualified, if not banned. Your enemies WILL turn you in, repeated logins are being monitored. Stardock has games for the hardcore Res Judicatas of the world.

City of Industry will open automagically.

Ok, my biggest problem is opening the games on time. I’m a forgetful soul, so I’ve written a little script to do it for me and scheduled it.

The game tonight will open by itself tonight at 6. No more late openings! wooo

I don’t know why some of you are so upset. EVERYONE practices plans to end games quickly. I used to, it was a source of pride to be able to shut down 4-5 games in a row within the first 48hrs. The fact that a corp was able to do it within 90 mins, in a tournament no less, thats freakin awesome.

Best tournament plan, EVER.

Next, I’ll be banging the USO4 edits tomorrow night at 6pm Pacific ( SETTINGS ). It’ll also be on the latest version of TWGS, whatever that may be. the reverend wants to play, so declare a holy war and get some revenge.

Macros, I guess I am writing this as the master hC is unavailable. I learned the best combat macros playing with hC during WTC2001. I have since trained several peeps in the Art of Combat with zoc/twx The focus of this article will be ZOC user buttons and RES-Macros.

First off current version of ZOC has 32 user defined buttons. 20 user defined Fkeys, 32 Auto Replies and 32 Auto Macros. We shall cover the 32 user defined buttons, using my set up as example.

Ok 32 buttons here is a view of standard.zoc in the zoc/options folder.
err well I have 31 here, leaving 1 button for on the fly use.

[OPTS_MACROS]
UserDesc#00=”game”
UserDesc#01=”XPORT”
UserDesc#02=”SD”
UserDesc#03=”Voids”
UserDesc#04=”Ansi”
UserDesc#05=”Zone”
UserDesc#06=”Buy EQ”
UserDesc#07=”Buy Ore”
UserDesc#08=”Kill Port”
UserDesc#09=”Move”
UserDesc#10=”PAIR”
UserDesc#11=”Mega Buy”
UserDesc#12=”Sell”
UserDesc#13=”MEGA”
UserDesc#14=”LAND 38″
UserDesc#15=”NS Dock”
UserDesc#16=”STOP”
UserDesc#17=”a999″
UserDesc#18=”SD1″
UserDesc#19=”SD2″
UserDesc#20=”SD3″
UserDesc#21=”SD4″
UserDesc#22=”SD5″
UserDesc#23=”SD6″
UserDesc#24=”SD7″
UserDesc#25=”SD8″
UserDesc#26=”SD9″
UserDesc#27=”Tdrop”
UserDesc#28=”HOLO 2″
UserDesc#29=”CASH”
UserDesc#30=”Photon-Move”
UserDesc#31=”Pdrop”
UserValue#00=”rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr”
UserValue#01=”x1^Mq”
UserValue#02=”uy^M.^Mc”
UserValue#03=”cv0^Myyq”
UserValue#04=”cn1qqd”
UserValue#05=”^RUN=SCRIPT everend_zonedeploy.ZRX”
UserValue#06=”$ss2_BuyDown^M30^M0^M”
UserValue#07=”$ss2_BuyDown^M10^M0^M”
UserValue#08=”pay20000^M^M”
UserValue#09=”$ss1_Move^M”
UserValue#10=”^RUN=jackalpair.txt”
UserValue#11=”^RUN=SCRIPT everend_class7.zrx”
UserValue#12=”^RUN=_port_negotiate.ZRX”
UserValue#13=”^RUN=_megarob.zrx”
UserValue#14=”l 2^Mc”
UserValue#15=”x42^M”
UserValue#16=”$sx^M”
UserValue#17=”a999^M^M”
UserValue#18=”ay9999^M^M ay9999^M^M ”
UserValue#19=”any9999^M ^M any9999^M^M ”
UserValue#20=”anny9999^M ^M anny9999^M^M ”
UserValue#21=”annny9999^M ^M annny9999^M^M ”
UserValue#22=”annnny9999^M^M annnny9999^M^M ”
UserValue#23=”annnnny9999^M^M annnnny9999^M^M ”
UserValue#24=”annnnnny9999^M^M annnnnny9999^M^M ”
UserValue#25=”annnnnnny9999^M^M annnnnnny9999^M^M ”
UserValue#26=”annnnnnnny9999^M^M annnnnnnny9999^M^M ”
UserValue#27=”^RUN=_tdrop.zrx”
UserValue#28=”qqshl 2^Mc”
UserValue#29=”tcyf99999999^M^M”
UserValue#30=”^RUN=SCRIPT everend_photonandmove.zrx”
UserValue#31=”^RUN=_pdrop.zrx”

Ok that is a partial view of standard.zoc file which is the backend of zoc buttons. The way to manually add a button is much different then editing this file. However, you can edit this file and save/reboot zoc to take instant affect.

Adding a Macro go to Options-JumpTo-Buttons

Click Add

Ok name your button then add the macro make sure you choose “TEXT TO SEND”
thats it, now you have a new button.

Ok procedure is same to add an Fkey however you just type in the macro

Ok my sample LIST from Standard.zoc file

The most common used macro in TW is ATTACK I have 9 attack buttons for FED or DOCK. Notice I have spacing in my macros, a double space will send a SPACE to TWGS. The purpose of this SPACE is to abort display.

Various messages will be displayed while in combat in TW. Some of these messages and displays are time consuming and take up lots of screen

Take for example landing on a planet with 30 planets in sector. When you use l to land you see all 30 planets listed below. If you use l with double spaces you tell TW to Land but dont display planet list. example “l 30^M” will land on cit #30 without filling up your screen with the full sector list of planets

Another use is in combat, where you attack and blow up some one. if you use double spacing after each attack, if you kill some one, you wont get the DISPLAY Message that you killed them, thus eliminating the SCROLL after KILL message. Example “ay9999^M^M “

Now remember RES always attacks with 2 or more shots at same time so my standard attack would look like this. “ayy9999^M^M ayy9999^M^M ” Notice also I have 2 ‘y’ in this sample.

The extra y is for BEACONS, if you were to attack me with a beacon in sector your macro would hang up on
the beacon, giving me time to POWER-UP. Whereas if there is no beacon the extra y will not effect the macro.

WARNING WARNING

IN FED if you use “ayy9999^M^M ayy9999^M^M ” and miss your target the second wave might SHOOT A FED, hence you DIE. Recommend not using extra Y attack macro in FED, I use it mostly in my Fkey set up for planet battle.

Ok back to display messages, you get a BIG LONG message while Pbusting planets for EXP. You can use spaces to speed up this macro to be 99.99% untouchable at dock

ok sample bust macro for dock “quy.^Mcl zdy uy.^Mcl zdy ps “

This will bust 2 planets and land back on dock. Notice there is no planet scanner on ship If you have a planet scanner, you must use exact CIT numbers. This gets tricky as you can be vulnerable at dock.

Another factor to consider is when entering a SECTOR with CANNONS. If you warp into cannons you get a new PROMPT/PAUSE from being HIT by sector blasts. To remove this you would use a macro like this. Example “m8834^M^M”

Double Enter characters will keep you moving through combat messages when being hit with cannons. So mothing its important to have lots of ENTER KEYS to keep your macro moving fast.

Well that about does it for this article.
Take a close look at my buttons you will see how I use ZOC buttons to run TWX scripts as well.

Enjoy

Res Judicata

Oh Where Oh Where has my little pod gone!

One final word of warning. The mechanics of getting podded have changed in almost every version of twgs for the last couple of years. The descriptions above are written based on revision .55. Don’t expect it to be the same in future versions. If yer gonna do some complex invasion, and it matters, test it first in a test game, or pay the price.