Crime Pays!!

Intro:Who is Crosby?

Robbery: You mean you can Rob and Steal?!?
MegaRob: Skip ahead to this MegaRob Buisness.

Playin' Evil: What's the difference between playin' Good vs. playin' EviL?

Seek and Destroy!!: How do you get ahead and keep ahead?

Good Guys don't even know this function exists, as the option to 'Rob Port' isn't displayed until a trader's alignment is under -100. When the align. is under -100, every time you port, you get a new option, Rob Port. This enables you to dock with the port, as in trading and either (R)Rob credits, if available, or (S)Steal product, if available. Note that the port either has to have an amount of goods on the dock, like it is selling product and is at 100% in the case of Stealing. If robbing, the port will have credits if traders have been using it, porting and buying stuff will enrich the port. So if you know of some Good-Guys doin' a lot of pair-port trading, you can go to those ports and rob the credits that the GG's have generated for you.

Robbing Rules:

There are limits to robbing, it isn't as if we eViL types have a way to get free money. If you try to rob from a port twice in a row, you WILL get busted, as the port personnel will recognize you. Even if you rob from a port, leave and rob elsewhere, then come back, you stand a chance of getting busted. Once you've been busted at a port, you must wait til the port 'clears' your bust. This can happen in one of two ways, someone else can get busted at the port, the port remembers the most 'recent' bust. So you're Cleared!
You might have to wait for the bust to clear natually. The Busts clear on a two week cycle unless modified. So check how long the game has been running and devide by 14 to see where you are in the cycle. Simply reset your busted ports the day the cycle changes. Don't worry, busting a port happens all the time...
_Click here for a word on 'BUSTED'

Stealing Stuff: Stealing abitities are based on experience/ranking.
(Your Rank)/20 = # of holds you can steal So if you have 500 Exp. you can try to steal 25 holds of 'stuff' in relative saftey. Anything more than that is 'possible' but your chances of getting busted increase geometrically.
Robbing Credits: Robbing credits is also determined by Ranking.
(Your Rank) * 7 = # of credits you can rob. Again, these numbers vary wildly, and should be used as a guide. A dramatic version of robbing credits is MegaRob.

MegaRob

This is from MacAhan who caught this oversight on my page...
Mega Rob : If the port has over 3.6 mill credits in it, you can "safely" rob it ALL in one try.. The chance of getting caught is like the chance to get caught when you try exp*7. BUT there seems to be an upper limit around 6.5 mill. (We have no reports of successful robs over 6.5 Mill. If you get one, let us know.)
Mega-rob can be done as soon as your under -100 alignement. No exp is needed. You will GAIN MUCHO experience points. When you rob 3.6 mill you get 1800 exp points :) (realy nice :) ) But if you get busted you're gonna lose TONS of holds.. you lose around 1k holds =) oops.. No ship has that much so if your busted you end up with no holds on any ship. So don't use your colt to mega-rob, use an MF. Some think this is a bug. I don't... And all evils that know about this use it and noone screams about it.. If that is a bug I would like to know where in the game docs it says that you can't rob more that this amount at one try.....

MacAhan's Inaccurate Port Notes:

The secret of amount-of-cash in port : There is a little secret not known by too many... Ports ALWAYS have more credits in 'em than they show when you do P(porting)--R(robbing) The amount of cash it says it has isn't true. They have more.. In fact exactly 11% more.. So when you rob, rob (port-report-of-credits)*1.11=credits to rob. But don't rob more than exp*7=credits
Remember this also..... NEVER mega-rob a port which is report-of-cash*1.11= "below 3.6 mill" you will get busted..... The min amount "report-of-cash-amount" you can mega-rob is 3243k credits (ie 3243*1.11=3.6mill)
So if your helper has some config to set how much percentage of credits in port to rob, you should set it to 111% ...
If you use TWHelp it is /o14 first value 7 (Rob factor), second value 111 (percent of hand) third value "what ever" (min amount to rob) Any other helper your on your own..

The dark side of the force is the strongest. Fell the dark side of the force in you. Give in to your hatred. - MacAhan (You will meet me at any of these boards today : FEN, Rippers, Eclipse, Pir8 and Braintoys.) --

Playing Evil vs. Good

Good Guys continually wonder what goes on in the mind of an evil commander to start attacking them early in the first week. If left to their devices, a Goodie will paired-port themselves into an ISS. They will start by paired-porting til they can afford to get a commision, attacking evil aliens, posting bounties, making planets, etc. Any way to boost their align. to 500. Then they colonize with their ISS, transwarping directly to the FedSpace Beacon at Sector 1:Terra. You see where I'm going here? Their focus is diverted from making money to colonizing. Not a bad strategy really, when a planet with 15M colonist will generate 700 fighters/day + or - a few. And colonizing is easy for an ISS captain to do cheaply, using Fuel Ore from his planet to finance his T-warping needs.

Evil Philosophy

That distraction from makin' money is where Good and Evil have a parting of the ways. An eViL commander will also paired-port to get some cash, but rather than wasting it on alignment manipulation, they work on gaining Exp./Ranking. Once an evil player gets enough experience to steal a modest amout, say a Rankin' of 1000 or so. An EviL commander with a rank of 1000 or more can safely steal 50 holds of 'stuff' at a crack, and that's incentive enough for me to GO EVIL!!

Dropping Align: Getting your alignment down to under -100 is quite easy compared to getting positive align. Go to Terra and load up full with colonists. Leave FedSpace and (J) Jettison the colonists into deep space. For this malevolent act, your align will drop 1/colonist killed. Still not under -100? Goto StarDock and get the password to the underground by asking the 'Grimey Trader' about 'Underground.' Then go and post a couple of hundred credits reward on some good guy. Presto; -100 alignment!!
Making Money: Once you can rob, your options on making money open wide up! SSM,SST,RMR,RTR a veritable alphabet of Stealing strategies are now available. For an awesome rundown of these tactics, check out this (one way) link to:
Gypsy's Playing Evil Page
For a more comprehensive rundown of EviL links, check out my link page.

So you see that while the Goodies are colonizing, the EviL types are already making roughly 4 times the credits that a good guy could make in a days paired-porting. And in fact, if they run true to form, they aren't concentrating on trading, but colonizing. If you then note that while they maybe make 700 fighters/day from a 'fully' colonized planet an eviL commander is buying 4000 fighters a day with the money they're stealing. It then just becomes a race to find those Colonized planets before they have their citadels upgraded.

Seek and Destroy!!

Early in a game, like the first couple of days, there is really no need to go on the hunt. An EviL commander should worry about makin' money primarily. They should approach the making and stealing of capital like a slavering greed-starved beast. After all, when you meet your first Good-Guy in his ISS, you wanna make a good impression!! So when to hunt?

Citadel Threat: Keep an eye on the Version page daily. It displays the number of planets and citadels in the game. Ferrengal has a citadel on day one, so don't panic at seeing that there is a citadel. Even if there is a ton of planets, no big worry. It's when the percentage changes, like the someone's just completed their level 1 citadel. Assume that they upgraded it THAT DAY, and start the clock. Assume the worst, it only takes a couple of days to upgrade a class L planet to Level 2, so you DO have a little time to search.
Being Homeless :^(: After a week of stealing and robbing, you should have a load of cash. Oh sure, you've maxed out the number of fighters on your ship. You may have even been stockpiling fighters in a dead-end 'base' somewhere as a way of banking your cash after filling your account at the Galactic Bank at StarDock. But now you're starting to get enough excess cash that you're considering stickin' it in a bank for the interest. If the goodies don't have a citadel YET, you may be able to find one that's just been started. If you are that far ahead, say they started late in the game or something, you can find their stuff and just steal yourself a pre-fab home.

You should have a comfortable lead in fighters, and some serious cash as well. Sit at StarDock and smother the Universe with E-Probes. Buy 25 and shoot 'em off, going for the most unexplored territory possible. In the best case scenario you will have explored quite extensively looking for ports, this job of exploring the rest of the Universe should be completed now in your search. Don't be intimidated at spending millions on E-Probes, remember, money is the one thing you should have plenty of, as you've been stealing everything that isn't nailed down for at least 3 or 4 days! Anything that destroys a probe should be investigated. If you have explored the whole universe, say by zero-turn mapping, exaustively check the various dead-end sectors with probes.
-=Another good way to check for hideouts is asking the Grimey Trader at StarDock about 'Trader' you can pay him a modest fee and he'll rattle off the ports that the trader in question has docked at and when. By studying these ports for trends, you can spot places to investigate with probes or plant limpet mines.

No Mercy!!

Remember that early in the game, when you've been makin' cash, and the goodies have been colonizing, the EViL types have the advantage. This advantage will be anulled if the good-guys succeed in upgrading their citadels past level 2. Once they get a Q-Cannon, they can make invasion a VERY expensive ordeal. At that point, the odds will be almost even, and they can move on to getting Planetary T-Warp and can start making BIG money doing planetary trading. If the balance tips in this direction too far, an EviL player will be spending all that big time stealing money just keeping up. Keep that in mind when you're getting soft-hearted about destroying a planet, or stealing someone's hard-earned citadel. Are they gonna show YOU mercy when they have the upper hand? Yeah, right!!

More to come, this site is under construction...=8^0

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