Someguy's Tradewars Manual Additions & Corrections to the May 1997 version. ------------------------------------------------ The Authors are constantly tinkering with the game specifications, so it's sometimes difficult to keep up. The following information was added after the current manual was published: 1) The T'Kasi Orion ship now can carry a HoloScanner, which makes it a serious contender. It has only 7% less Trading Efficiency as the Merchant Freighter, and carries much better armaments. Having a Safety Rating 2.5 times the Freighter, and an attack power 3.4 times that of the Freighter makes it a serious consideration for starting players in games where there's a lot of shooting going on. Including Holo, the cost is now 101,420 credits. 2) The Ferrengi Assault Trader now can carry a HoloScanner and now has combat odds of 1.2, which is a nice improvement, but still not a terrific ship. 3) The Ferrengi Battle Cruiser now has combat odds of 1.4, and they first appear on Day 60. 4) The Ferrengi Dreadnought now has combat odds of 1.6, and they first appear on Day 90. 5) The Ferrengi Scorpion has combat odds of about 3.4! The Interdictor Cruiser does NOT hold the Overlord in place, but you CAN attack him while you are in a Ferrengi Dreadnought and it will take about 107,000 fighters in total to destroy him. With a total fighter capacity of 15,000 on the Dreadnought, you will have to locate the Overlord at least 8 times, to polish him off. You will generally be able to get off 3 waves of 5,000 fighters each, before the Overlord warps out of the sector, and you must then relocate him each time. If you are quick, you can fly home and reload your fighters and you might be able to shoot a 2nd or even 3rd load of fighters at him, but then he will vanish. If you don't find him that day, he will regenerate his full 50,000 fighters at cleanup each night. It is possible to destroy his ship, which leaves a 50% haz behind, but you get no points or credits. It is NOT possible to capture the Overlord's ship in present versions of the game...maybe in future versions. As it stands, the Overlord is an annoyance that you can really do nothing about and he is not useful for anything. 6) If you are towing a ship and someone else captures it as you pass thru their sector, this does not break the Tow. Capture it back in the next sector, then run like hell. Alternatively, if someone tows a ship thru your sector, shoot a single fighter at it and capture it, then jump to Stardock and wait for it to arrive. If the victim does not realize he is towing YOUR ship, he may tow it all the way to Stardock, and you can sell it out from under him the moment it arrives! Nasty! 7) How to get cheap holds: The Colonial Transport (ColTran) is a very useful ship, but installing the holds is extremely expensive. Buying the 51st hold costs only 1202 credits, but each succesive hold is 20 credits more expensive and it adds up fast. The 200th hold costs 4182 credits and the 250th hold costs 5182 credits! But, if you were to use your ColTran to destroy an unarmed freighter that has 63 or more holds on it, you will find that you "salvage" 22 of it's holds and they get added to your ship automatically. Get an ally to buy the freighters for you at a cost of 70,427 credits for each one, including the total of 63 holds needed. For the first holds, it is cheaper to buy them at stardock, but the later ones are best salvaged. Here's the math: Purchase Method: Salvage Method: Basic ColTran 63,600 Basic ColTran 63,600 200 Addl holds 638,400 112 Addl holds 258,944 4 Freighters 281,708 Total---> 702,000 Total---> 604,252 Your cost savings comes to 97,748 credits, not bad eh? There is an even more important implication for evil players running Sell/Steal in a ColTran. When getting busted stealing 250 holds of equipment, you are penalized 22 holds. You can then buy 22 new holds for 109,384 credits, or salvage a 63-hold freighter which costs 70,427 credits. That saves you 38,957 credits plus all the turns it would take to transport the ColTran! It's so much easier to have your ally stockpile a few freighters for you. 8) Defensive sector fighters have combat odds of about 1.15:1 Offensive sector fighters have combat odds of 0.8:1 Toll sector fighters have combat odds of _________ 9) Alignment changes for attacking sector fighters: 10) System crashes: Never play tradewars on any system that crashes regularly, or if there is a known way for a caller to bring it down! Here's why.... If you enter the game with a full load of fighters, and then deploy them in the sector and then you crash the system... when you later relog you will find those fighters are both on your ship and in the sector, thereby doubling your fighters. There's no point in playing when other players may be doing this!