Tips - The Cabal's Secret Hideout

1) Cloak-Tow (v3.12)

A common strategy is to have your reds cloak in fedspace. Another common strategy is to wait for other's reds to show up in fed. One way to avoid this is to do a Cloak-Tow. You can tow a cloaked ship, as long as you lock on BEFORE they exit and cloak out. What you do is get a blue (preferably fedsafe, and in an ISS) and your red in the same sector. Usually this is the same sector that the red was cashing in. The Red deploys his figs in the sector, so he has zero figs on him. The blue then locks on a tractor. The red then picks up his figs and cloaks out. The blue then checks to make sure his buddy's cloak worked, and then warps into fedspace, with his red still in tow. Then the Blue disengages the tractor, and you're done. Your red ends up parked in fed, with zero chance of him getting attacked.

2) Your Blue's turns are money too

Never let your reds move if they don't have too. Since the average Red running an SDT can pull in 10-13 mil a day per 1000 turns, every turn that your Red spends not cashing is costing your corp as much as 13k. It's far better to have your Blue Furber tow your Reds to the next location than it is to have the Reds move themselves.

3) Never let your reds go to SD

If their ship needs more cloaks, probes, or whatever, have them hop out of their ship, have a blue tow their ship to SD and buy everything they need, then tow it back to them. SD is a dangerous place, and unless you're willing to risk losing your reds, don't let them go there.

4) Keep your extra ships at SD (v3.12)

You can even keep them there over extern, provided you do the following: Have a fedsafe Blue lock the ship in tow just prior to extern. Your Blue MUST be logged in during extern. So, you need one Blue per ship you want to keep, since you can only lock ONE ship in tow at a time. You can also hold a ship while you are at the shipyards. Go to the Sell Extra Ships menu, and select the ship number that you want to keep. STAY AT THE "Still Interested" prompt until extern is OVER.

5) Unmanned ships with figs

Unmanned ships with figs on them DO NOT count towards the # of figs in the game. You can hide your resources from the enemy by getting an Interdictor, and loading it up with figs, and parking it somewhere safe.

6) Never park on your planets

Until you get shielded planets, NEVER park on your planets. Even if the enemy can't take your planets, they can still photon you and play the turn denial game. Fedspace is the preferred parking place. If you do park on shielded planets, remember to have at least 200 planetary shields, since it requires a minimum of 200 planetary shields (2000 ship shields) to keep the planet from being affected by photons.

7) Have your blues be your banks

Have your blues be your banks, not your reds. When your blues first sign on each day, have them get 100,001 credits, then exit and re-enter. Your blues only get taxed once per day. 100,001 credits is the minimum taxable amount. (See Tax for detail on how taxation works.) Once they are taxed, then you can keep the cash on your fedsafe blues, and not worry about your reds cloaks failing, or getting podded in fed with 20mil on them.

8) Exchange with cloaked corp members

If you are in the same sector as a cloaked corp member, you can still exchange cash, figs and shields from the corp menu.

9) Citadels earn interest

Citadels earn interest at 2% a day. 500 mil will make 10mil/day, like having an extra red on your team. If you leave it alone for 35 days, you will have doubled your money.

10) Extended game settings

When you are considering joining a game, you may want to look at the extended game settings before you leap in. You can access these settings by hitting '*' at the game prompt.

11) Empty ships and attack sequence

Empty ships appear at the bottom of the Sector Display, but FIRST in the attack sequence, followed by players. The order players appear in is dictated by the order they first signed on. See Pre-Lock.

12) COLTs and Corbo

Your reds spend most of their lives in COLT's. Here are a few things you can do to make it harder for the enemy to capture your colts: First, never have any figs on your colts! Second, don't fill it up with shields. We usually pick a random ODD number between 300 and 400. Third, Corbo. Don't be tempted to fill them all the way with corbo, 100 to 500 units of corbo can go along way. The idea is to make them think twice.

13) Photon Timing

A lot of games are now running one second photon duration. One thing to keep in mind is that the photon duration works off the SYSTEM CLOCK, and it's NOT based on when you fired it. If you want to get the most out of your photon, then you should hit 't' from the computer prompt a few times to get the timing of the system clock down, then fire your photon just as the system clock turns to the next second. (See Photons)

14) Fire photons from citadels

Since you can fire photons from the computer prompt, you can fire them from within your citadels. (See Photons)

15) Mobile planets as offensive weapons

Mobile planets make the best ships in the game. Once you stop thinking of them for their defensive capabilities, and start thinking of them for their offensive capabilities you will be amazed at what kind of mischief you can cause with a photon firing LV 6 planet. Just keep clear of the MSL's when extern is close...

16) If it seems too good to be true...

If the target appears too good to be true, then it's a trap. Never go hunting the enemy 5 min before extern. It's easy to loose track of time.

17) Stay focused

Never let them draw you out with smack-talk. Smack talk is for guys with little dicks, or losers who make up for their lack of skill and finesse by trying to verbally bully everyone. Fed-com chatter is just fluff. Let your actions do your talking for you. Trust no one not in your corp. They are always lying to you.

18) Stardock Blockades

Unless you are absolutely willing to commit 100% to keeping a blockade going, Stardock Blockades are usually a big waste of time. Focus on your infrastructure at the beginning, not glory kills. Every SD blockade has its weaknesses, and a good corp will find them and exploit them and punch right through them. See Blockades.

19) Avoid direct conflict when starting out

When you are just starting out playing, avoid direct conflict or ship to ship combat. Control the resources, control space, eliminate enemy planets at every opportunity. Planet control is the key to victory. Once you get more comfortable with the game, then by all means, go for ship to ship kills or on-line invasions.

20) Limpets are your friend

They cost you no turns to deploy but they cost the enemy turns to scrub them clean. I try to have 200+ sectors covered with limpets. Limpets work, but only in quantity! (See tip 34 for ideas on clearing limpets)

21) Drop figs and mines everywhere

Every sector you go into needs at least one fig and one mine. This cuts down on the enemies ability to probe for your sectors, and mines can slow the enemy down. Limpets slow them down even more.

22) Ditch alignment quick

Need your blues to ditch alignment quick? Attacking and killing a port gives you 50 exp, and -50 alignment. Jettisoning Colonists is a quick way to loose 1 align for each collie jetted. See the formulas section for more detail on alignment changes from combat.

23) Ditch exp fast

Need to ditch exp fast? If you have less than 200 align you can go to the underground, and enter the wrong password a few times, and you'll loose 1/2 your exp eventually. BE SURE YOU DON'T GO BACK TO THE UNDERGROUND AFTER YOU LOOSE EXP! Otherwise, you'll get killed.

24) Q-Cannon Settings

There are two things to remember about QC's: 1) Planet #'s matter; they fire in order from lowest to highest planet #. 2) You want to have your cannons start small, and as each planet fires, you want them to do more damage. See the Formulas section for detail on how the #'s work.

25) Ship combat odds vs Q-Cannons

Your ship combat odds only count against other ships and deployed figs. Your ship's combat odds do NOT count against Mines, Q-Cannons or Nav Hazz.

26) Class 0 ports safer than SD

The Class 0 ports (Alpha Centauri and Rylos) are much safer than Stardock for Reds. While they are cleaned at extern just like normal Fedspace, you can drop figs, mines and even planets in the sector.

27) Fig and shield prices change daily

The cost of figs and shields changes daily. It's a set pattern tied to the day of the year, and NOT tied to supply and demand.

28) Don't port at destroyed ports

Don't port at a destroyed port, until the radiation clears. You will end up podded.

29) Zero turns doesn't mean you can't act

Just because you have zero turns, it doesn't mean you can't attack or land on a planet. This is useful to know when you have been photoned in the middle of an invasion.

30) Speed up displays with ANSI

When using photons to invade a planet, turn on ANSI and turn off Animation. This will speed up your messages, and allow you to get more done within the photon wave duration. See tip 39 for info on aborting displays and CN9 settings.

31) CEO succession

If you are playing on a TWGS server, when your CEO leaves the corp, the remaining player in your corp with the highest experience will become the new CEO.

32) Blind warp rules

If you blind warp to a completely empty sector, you will live 100% of the time. If ANYTHING is in the sector, you will fuse 100% of the time. This is not configurable.

33) Backdoor sectors

In most games, there will be 1 one-way warp into the class 0's. There seems to be 6 warps out of them 100% of the time. These extra ways in are called backdoor sectors.

34) Finding Stardock with ZTM

You can do a ZTM to find all the sectors with 6 ways out and 7+ ways in. Once you get that list, then you can be relatively sure that SD is somewhere on it.

35) Cleaning limpets

The known ways of cleaning off limpets from your ship: 1) Cleaning them off at Stardock or at the Class 0 ports (usually at a cost of 5K). 2) Picking up a new limpet (which may or may not solve your problem). When you pick up a new limpet, the first one falls off.

36) ISS repossession

If you are a Blue, and you have an ISS, as long as your alignment is not negative (zero is ok), you can move around and your ship won't get repossessed. If it ever goes negative, even to -1, your ISS will get shot out from under you by the Feds if you move.

37) Robbing ports - the 11% rule

If you are robbing a port, remember that the ports really have 11% more on them than they show. So, if the port shows 10,000 credits available, you can really rob 11,100 credits.

38) Photons and shielded planets

Once you have reduced a shielded planet to less than 200 shields, you might want to consider going back to Stardock and getting a photon. Once a planet has less than 200 shields, then are no longer protected from photons. See Photons.

39) CN9 and aborting the display

From the computer prompt, you press N to access the Set ANSI and misc settings menu. Option 9 controls how much text gets spewed on to your screen. You MUST have ANSI (CN1) ON for this to work. If you have CN9 set to ANY, then ANY key will abort the display.

40) Contracts and Rewards

You can only collect on a contract or reward if you #SD# someone. Podding doesn't count.

41) V Screen Info

When you press 'V' from the command prompt, it shows the in game stats. Fighters in the game counts: Sector Fighters, Player Planet Fighters, occupied ship fighters. It does NOT count fighters on empty ships!

42) Radiation Clear

The radiation clear (from destroyed ports, including stardock) works off a cycle, similar to the bust clearing cycle. By default this cycle is 14 days. What this means is that when you blow up a port, the radiation will clear on day 1 of the cycle, not 14 days after you blow the port.

TIPS (Almost current as of v3.12 :-)