The following is the Strategy Document written up by this writer as leader of the House Forsaken-affiliated Trex Mercenaries of Space Merchant Realms in September, 2003:
In previous rounds of SMR and its forerunner, Space Merchant, planets were at the core of most decent alliances’s strategy. Planets provided a measure of security for members and a base for operations. However, it was always difficult to build up and maintain them since most players considered it dull and boring , not to mention an activity that did little to boost their exp. As a result, only a few committed alliance members worked on the planets.
There have been a number of changes in SMR since the last round that make it very difficult, if not impossible, to build up and maintain planets. These include: no ports in planetary galaxies and no bank interest. There is also the matter of players not being able to plot course and/or use the jump drive any further than bordering galaxies. Trading is far less profitable now than previously. Also, the fact that most galaxies don’t have planets only makes it easier for the mad dog killer outfits to suppress planetary construction through regular raiding. The failure of racial councils to make peace only serves to close them off and makes it harder for traders to avoid the hunters. Likewise, the provision for planetary bonds only serves to increase the insecurity of the planets since there will be more folks aiming at harrying planetary builders in the hopes of hitting the jackpot.
What this means is that we have to do things differently this round than we would have done in previous rounds. Setting up and maintaining sizable minefields are out of the question due to the lack of money brought on in large measure to the lack of bank interest. Since planets are more or less out of the question, we need to use the Fed zones to our advantage. For individual members this means saving up turns to 300+ if you have either a well armed trader or a warbird. Stay within the offensive rating limitations of the Fed zones, arm yourself when you start playing and then sell weaps before logging off.
Counter-hunting is a tactic that alliance members need to use. This means killing all scouts that you find and also figuring out as many trade routes as you can so that if scouts appear on one route, you can switch to another. Avoiding ports that trade in Comps and Lux Items are a good way of avoiding predators altogether. For counter-hunting as an alliance, look down for the term, “combat sweeps.”
As an alliance as a whole, we need to have more folks on their IM’s and in the alliance IRC room whenever they are online, not just when they are in-game. We need to organize and execute some combat sweeps and planet busts. In order to facilitate concentration, alliance members, or at least those with decent fighting vessels, need to trade in the same racial galaxies which means trading up your relations with as many other races as you can.
The term “planet bust” should not require any explanation, although “combat sweep” probably does. A combat sweep is when some alliance members get on a shared communication forum such as an AIM chatroom or an IRC room. These members’s ships are concentrated in the same galaxy and they have scout drones out. Members report what their scouts pick up on them and then the pilots try hunt down/corner ships belonging to other alliances and destroy them. All members can participate in sweeps as long as they have scout drones and can send their information in even if their ships do not actively participate.
Combat sweeps can be a lot of fun and result in some pretty nice kills. However, they require advanced planning, solid committments from members to participate in them, and a target galaxy with a decent number of (at least 3) members’s ships in it. 300+ turns are needed for fighting ships to effectvely participate in them. Scout drones need to be deployed before the op starts and then withdrawn after it ends. It always has to be kept in mind that every sweep has the potential to be either fruitless and/or deadly for our side. Of course, the preferred victim of our sweeps would be the predators of the spaceways, but if they aren’t around, then peaceful traders would have to do.
Because of the importance of these operations, the alliance fund will pay for forces and also fighting ships used in them provided that the ship owner holds on to the forces and fighting ship for the next operation instead of going to a new ship. And please, nobody getting any Battlecruisers or other ships with zero or very little in the line of cargo holds. In order to make ourselves an effective force in the universe, it will be necessary to mount these operations on at least a halfway regular basis.
If we can mount these operations effectively, then we can make a name for ourselves as an alliance as well as individual players. It would also serve to give us something to do as oppose to just mindlessly go back and forth between the same ports. And, if we become feared, then there will be fewer bad persons who will want to mess with us either as a group or as individual players.
Sunday, August 25, 2013
Saturday, August 24, 2013
Aaron Swartz was a Scumbag
Hacking is the same thing as breaking and entering one's home. As Declan McCullough wrote back in the late 1990's, there is no such thing as "hacktivism", only vandalism.
What gets me about this case is the way that his father has been acting. He talks as if MIT committed a great sin by alerting law enforcement to his son's crimes.
He was recently the subject of an article in the Chicago Sun-Times as saying that MIT needed to apologize for its actions and to do what his son wanted them to do: make journal articles and academic journals free of charge. Given the fact that academic journals are pretty expensive to publish, if they were made free, pretty soon there would be no more academic journals around.
Aaron Swartz was a scumbag no different than kidnappers and other kinds of violent hoodlums.
What gets me about this case is the way that his father has been acting. He talks as if MIT committed a great sin by alerting law enforcement to his son's crimes.
He was recently the subject of an article in the Chicago Sun-Times as saying that MIT needed to apologize for its actions and to do what his son wanted them to do: make journal articles and academic journals free of charge. Given the fact that academic journals are pretty expensive to publish, if they were made free, pretty soon there would be no more academic journals around.
Aaron Swartz was a scumbag no different than kidnappers and other kinds of violent hoodlums.
Thursday, August 22, 2013
Posting Suspended
As of now, I have posted just about everything that I have been able to find about the near dead game Space Merchant Realms. If I find anything new, such as a new SMR newsletter, I'll post it. At some time before I do my SMR tribute webpage(s) I'll ask around to fill in some of the mysteries that I have encountered.
For now this is crector over and out.
For now this is crector over and out.
Wednesday, August 21, 2013
SMR Newsletter #36
Dear Players,
Round 67: Galactic Boxing
We have decided since Round 66 was so much of a success that we will hold another draft round for Round 67. The two leaders who have been selected as draft leaders are as XDemonX and JettJackson. They will be the ones who will be choosing the teams for the next game. We welcome everyone to partake in the new draft round. The round will go live this weekend on Saturday or Sunday, August 17th or 18th with turns going live on Wednesday August 21st after the draft. The draft itself will occur at 9PM EDT on Tuesday, which is 21/8/2013 3:00:00 AM Server time. The draft will carry out in #smr and like last time, there will be a draft party on Team Speak, details pending before the draft.
The details of the draft map are in the link as follows here:
A few other details, the draft game speed will be 2x and with a cap of 650 turns. All weapons and ship shops will be found in both neutrals. There will be a change in route distribution this time around however, as we have noted that there was very limited hunting in the previous draft round. We have decided to lower the port density in the racial galaxies and raise the port density in the neutral and planet galaxies. What this does is improves the racial routes and makes building planetary routes a bit more difficult as you will need to bust more ports to achieve a strong planetary route. Planetary levels will remain the same from the previous round which were level 53.33 or 50/100/10 Generators/Hangers/Turrets.
Key Changes
Some new changes have also occurred recently or will be occurring before the start of the draft round.
Some of the changes that are already in place are as follows:
The number of turns you will gain/lose are now shown when viewing a ship.
Alliance leaders can now see on the roster whether players are banned and until when. Any alliance member can see which of their allies are currently online.
Alliance leaders and players without an alliance are now shown how much money is bonded on each planet and for how long.
Cargo jettisoning has been updated with the new base experience formula, so the exp gain/loss should match that for buying.
There is now an input which you can use to centre the galaxy map on a sector.
You can now store a list of sectors under plot course to easily plot to, along with labels and repositioning - thanks RonSilver!
Changed the shade of blue for the experience text, it should now be significantly easier to read.
Viewing scout messages (when collapsed) is now significantly faster.
A couple other changes that will be going into the game have to deal with weapon and ship changes and they are as follows:
The weapon changes can be found here
These are mostly just changes to prices in order to bring them in line with the strength of the weapon, so weaker weapons are cheaper and stronger ones are more expensive. Also the weaker weapons are also more cost-effective for their strength (but who cares about anything other than the strongest weapons anyway?!) The only change you are likely to care about is the PPL going from 34% to 35% accuracy to match the HHG and Nuke.
And the ship changes can be found here
These are much more interesting and I'm sure you'll have comments, feel free to message them to Page in-game/irc, or post on the webboard etc.
In summary:
Buffs:
Death Cruiser
Federal Ultimatum
Federal Discovery
Juggernaut
Assassin (cheaper)
All cloaked traders (mostly in speed):
Thief
Deal-Maker
Blockade Runner
Stellar Freighter
Changes:
Federal Warrant (cheaper but no mines)
Nerfs:
Border Cruiser (defense)
Rogue (defense)
Help Always Needed
Remember Space Merchant Realms is Open Source! SMR has been released under the GPLv3 licence: (https://github.com/smrealms/smr). We are also considering a bounty based system for all volunteer coders. Any questions concerning open source and related items should be directed to Page or RCK. We look forward to some new coders helping to improve SMR!
See you in game!
Thank you,
The SMR Administration Team
Round 67: Galactic Boxing
We have decided since Round 66 was so much of a success that we will hold another draft round for Round 67. The two leaders who have been selected as draft leaders are as XDemonX and JettJackson. They will be the ones who will be choosing the teams for the next game. We welcome everyone to partake in the new draft round. The round will go live this weekend on Saturday or Sunday, August 17th or 18th with turns going live on Wednesday August 21st after the draft. The draft itself will occur at 9PM EDT on Tuesday, which is 21/8/2013 3:00:00 AM Server time. The draft will carry out in #smr and like last time, there will be a draft party on Team Speak, details pending before the draft.
The details of the draft map are in the link as follows here:
A few other details, the draft game speed will be 2x and with a cap of 650 turns. All weapons and ship shops will be found in both neutrals. There will be a change in route distribution this time around however, as we have noted that there was very limited hunting in the previous draft round. We have decided to lower the port density in the racial galaxies and raise the port density in the neutral and planet galaxies. What this does is improves the racial routes and makes building planetary routes a bit more difficult as you will need to bust more ports to achieve a strong planetary route. Planetary levels will remain the same from the previous round which were level 53.33 or 50/100/10 Generators/Hangers/Turrets.
Key Changes
Some new changes have also occurred recently or will be occurring before the start of the draft round.
Some of the changes that are already in place are as follows:
The number of turns you will gain/lose are now shown when viewing a ship.
Alliance leaders can now see on the roster whether players are banned and until when. Any alliance member can see which of their allies are currently online.
Alliance leaders and players without an alliance are now shown how much money is bonded on each planet and for how long.
Cargo jettisoning has been updated with the new base experience formula, so the exp gain/loss should match that for buying.
There is now an input which you can use to centre the galaxy map on a sector.
You can now store a list of sectors under plot course to easily plot to, along with labels and repositioning - thanks RonSilver!
Changed the shade of blue for the experience text, it should now be significantly easier to read.
Viewing scout messages (when collapsed) is now significantly faster.
A couple other changes that will be going into the game have to deal with weapon and ship changes and they are as follows:
The weapon changes can be found here
These are mostly just changes to prices in order to bring them in line with the strength of the weapon, so weaker weapons are cheaper and stronger ones are more expensive. Also the weaker weapons are also more cost-effective for their strength (but who cares about anything other than the strongest weapons anyway?!) The only change you are likely to care about is the PPL going from 34% to 35% accuracy to match the HHG and Nuke.
And the ship changes can be found here
These are much more interesting and I'm sure you'll have comments, feel free to message them to Page in-game/irc, or post on the webboard etc.
In summary:
Buffs:
Death Cruiser
Federal Ultimatum
Federal Discovery
Juggernaut
Assassin (cheaper)
All cloaked traders (mostly in speed):
Thief
Deal-Maker
Blockade Runner
Stellar Freighter
Changes:
Federal Warrant (cheaper but no mines)
Nerfs:
Border Cruiser (defense)
Rogue (defense)
Help Always Needed
Remember Space Merchant Realms is Open Source! SMR has been released under the GPLv3 licence: (https://github.com/smrealms/smr). We are also considering a bounty based system for all volunteer coders. Any questions concerning open source and related items should be directed to Page or RCK. We look forward to some new coders helping to improve SMR!
See you in game!
Thank you,
The SMR Administration Team
House Forsaken is Dead
In the early days of Solar Empre, June-October, 1999 House Forsaken was the mightiest clan in the game. At least that is until the likes of the Evil Empire, TalkHouse & the Trex Mercenaries showed up. Even then, HF's position was strong enough that in January 2000 SE creator/developer/operator Bryan Livingston awarded them their own SE game that was admined by HF members. HF was also a multi-game outfit that also had strong clans in other major online games such as at Battle.net and in Everquest.
However, HF succumbed to hubris and became too big for its britches. This happened in March, 2003 in the game of TDZK that was created/developed/operated by HF members Jerle & Hotaru. In that game 2 HF members, one of whom named Hyperion had played SE under the name of HY and who had originally been a HF recruit in SE (and if a certain story is true played SE with HF back in late 1999 under the name of -=WindKull=-), were caught brazenly cheating. In a related incident in the same month, Hyperion committed treason by destroying a HF planet (Planet OMGN).
Since HF prided itself as being a clan that claimed to have honor at the very core of its being and repeatedly used the idea that it was a honorable outfit in its recruiting that was firmly opposed to cheating, one have thought that the HF leadership would have come down hard on the cheaters. Instead the opposite happened. The leadership acted as if nothing bad happened and that, if anything, the real culprits were those who brought the cheating to the attention of the clan. Additionally, the leadership failed to provide even the slightest discipline to Hyperion for his SE treason.
The end result of all this was the mass resignation of almost every member of the HF Browser-Based Gaming Realm (about half of the membership of ) and with that the single most active unit within HF ceased to exist. From that point on, HF went into a state of decline and fall and after years of being little more than a glorified "forum clan" has ceased to exist.
However, HF succumbed to hubris and became too big for its britches. This happened in March, 2003 in the game of TDZK that was created/developed/operated by HF members Jerle & Hotaru. In that game 2 HF members, one of whom named Hyperion had played SE under the name of HY and who had originally been a HF recruit in SE (and if a certain story is true played SE with HF back in late 1999 under the name of -=WindKull=-), were caught brazenly cheating. In a related incident in the same month, Hyperion committed treason by destroying a HF planet (Planet OMGN).
Since HF prided itself as being a clan that claimed to have honor at the very core of its being and repeatedly used the idea that it was a honorable outfit in its recruiting that was firmly opposed to cheating, one have thought that the HF leadership would have come down hard on the cheaters. Instead the opposite happened. The leadership acted as if nothing bad happened and that, if anything, the real culprits were those who brought the cheating to the attention of the clan. Additionally, the leadership failed to provide even the slightest discipline to Hyperion for his SE treason.
The end result of all this was the mass resignation of almost every member of the HF Browser-Based Gaming Realm (about half of the membership of ) and with that the single most active unit within HF ceased to exist. From that point on, HF went into a state of decline and fall and after years of being little more than a glorified "forum clan" has ceased to exist.
Sunday, August 18, 2013
Lotus's SMR Gameworld
SMR Gameworld
- MainPage
- Screenshots
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Getting Started
- Current Sector
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- What to do First
- Trading
- Hunting
- Making Experience
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Trader
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Other
- Game Terms
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Downloads
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Helpful Links
BoB's SMR Tools
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Space Merchant Realms Live
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Current Game: Fungal Infection
Start Date: 5/28/2006
End Date: 8/13/2006
Game Speed: 1.5
View Galaxy Map
Download FULL SMC Maps
Download FULL MGU Maps
Welcome to the SMR Offical GameWorld Site!
The SMR Gameworld is a collection of information about Space Merchant Realms, designed to help new and old players. It is a growing database of all things SMR past and present. It has many expainations and guidesabout many different aspects of the game, as well as detailed refrence sheets for all kinds of data. There are many Downloads available as well as game maps for both SPace Merchant Companion and Merchants Guide to the Universe. Up to date Game Forumlas with new updates as the happen. Any and all guides are the property of their creators, I try to give credit but if I forgot please just let me know and I will give all credit necessary to the creator.
If you are looking for something and cannot find it, or you have something you would like added to the SMR Gameworld, you can contact LotuS Ingame or in IRC Chat #smr.
This being said, Welcome to Gameworld, hope you enjoy your stay and find what your looking for. please Report Errors, or anything else to LotuS in IRC.
Internet Archive: B.O.B.'s SMR Tools
B.O.B.'s SMR ToolsWelcome to my SMR tools section! I have recently recreated my Mining & Planet Building tools into a Windows Program It is in its Beta Stages, and much more user-friendly than the web counterparts. Please DOWNLOAD and TRY this new tool! If you would like to use the online version of the above tool (not updated as frequently as the Windows Program) see below:Seeds Report This script breaks down into 2 main sub scripts, with 2 minor sub scripts: The seeds portion is designed to let your alliance members know where to seed. The sector portion is designed for your miners. This will allow them to look up a sector beforing going their to see if any seeds need to be filled. Planets Report This script is a simple report that gives you a summary of what each planet needs to be stocked in (shields/drones). There is always a couple of reference tools available: Ship List Tad bit more advanced than the ship list that you will find at SMRealms For instance, each ship row has a drop down menuthat displays what shops will sell the shop. Weapon List Tad bit more advanced than the ship list that you will find at SMRealms For instance, each weapon row has a drop down menuthat displays what shops will sell the shop. Shop List There current is no Shop list that you can find at SMRealms | ||
| B.O.B. Space Merchant Realms v1.0.0 ©2001-2009 Hosted by B.O.B. Script runtime: 0.04 sec | ||
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