These are new to me and I see they will be used in the upcoming HHT. What are black holes, how do you spot one, do you avoid it and how, can you use it to your advantage?
Any thoughts and tips on this subject would be greatly appreciated.



"I'm not that girl!"

If you should fall into one, your ship and whatever is on it are gone. You obviously can't warp out, and it won't let you transwarp out, either, regular or blind.

Oddly, though, you can transport out. Every ship that you have will show a transport range to it of 0 hops, and you can transport to any other ship no matter where it is.

If you don't have another ship for some reason and can't get anybody in your corp to bring you one (such as might happen in a solo game), you might still be able to get out if there's a port in the sector. You can put all of your fighters down except 20 or so, then attack the port with 1 fighter at a time until it goes through your shields and pods you. Your pod will show up in the sector you visited just before you entered the black hole. If that sector is clear of enemy fighters (and whatever else is in it doesn't blow up your pod), and if it has exits to open space, you can move on from there. If there's no port in the sector, you'll have to self-destruct. If the sector you escape to doesn't have any exits besides back into the black hole (some sysops like to put a one-way warp into the sector that leads into the black hole), then you're screwed and have to CBY.

I know all of the above is true, because I tried it on a test game on my TWGS.

Moral: In a game with black holes, always have another ship somewhere.

To spot black holes, ZTM the universe after you've gone through your turns for the first day. Some helpers like SWATH can find black holes. When you find them, fire an eprobe into each one and do a C-I-sector# on the sector just in front of each black hole to see if there's an exit out. If not, do a C-I-sector# on the sector in front of it, until you find a sector that has exits to the main universe. Then use the C-V avoid feature to avoid all sectors with no exits to the main universe.

You can use your imagination to figure out ways to make use of black holes, but here are a few ideas for them.

1) If you're in a weak combat ship and are running from somebody in a strong ship, a black hole and transport to your home sector might be the best avenue of escape.

2) If you're re-entering the game, and the universe is littered with fighters, again, a nearby black hole and transport home might be the safest way to get to your base.

3) If you want to secure a planet, and there's an xBx port in the sector, and transport out. Later in the game, you could pwarp an oceanic in there and do planet negotiatons by transporting to and from a ship in the sector. Somebody else might go in and capture the planet, but they aren't going to move it anywhere else.

4) If you're really devious, try this: In a game without photons and with an an enemy logged on who has a wild hair for you, especially if he (she) is riding around in a nice fat ISS with 50,000 fighters or Flag with 20,000 fighters, hop into a Merchant Freighter with 30 fighters and head for the black hole. Don't lay a fighter there. Have all your corpies log off. Then 'accidentally' say on Fed-Comm: "Hey, corpies, will one of you come get me and tow me home? I'm in sector 625 and I'm out of turns! You can bet that he'll eprobe the sector and cautiously approach you, checking the # screen for sudden logins and firing more probes. As soon as he enters the sector, fire off a macro to transport out to another ship. Voila: His nice loaded ship bites the big one.

Mid

quote:Originally posted by midnight

If you should fall into one, your ship and whatever is on it are gone. You obviously can't warp out, and it won't let you transwarp out, either, regular or blind.

Oddly, though, you can transport out. Every ship that you have will show a transport range to it of 0 hops, and you can transport to any other ship no matter where it is.

If you don't have another ship for some reason and can't get anybody in your corp to bring you one (such as might happen in a solo game), you might still be able to get out if there's a port in the sector. You can put all of your fighters down except 20 or so, then attack the port with 1 fighter at a time until it goes through your shields and pods you. Your pod will show up in the sector you visited just before you entered the black hole. If that sector is clear of enemy fighters (and whatever else is in it doesn't blow up your pod), and if it has exits to open space, you can move on from there. If there's no port in the sector, you'll have to self-destruct. If the sector you escape to doesn't have any exits besides back into the black hole (some sysops like to put a one-way warp into the sector that leads into the black hole), then you're screwed and have to CBY.

I know all of the above is true, because I tried it on a test game on my TWGS.

Moral: In a game with black holes, always have another ship somewhere.

To spot black holes, ZTM the universe after you've gone through your turns for the first day. Some helpers like SWATH can find black holes. When you find them, fire an eprobe into each one and do a C-I-sector# on the sector just in front of each black hole to see if there's an exit out. If not, do a C-I-sector# on the sector in front of it, until you find a sector that has exits to the main universe. Then use the C-V avoid feature to avoid all sectors with no exits to the main universe.

You can use your imagination to figure out ways to make use of black holes, but here are a few ideas for them.

1) If you're in a weak combat ship and are running from somebody in a strong ship, a black hole and transport to your home sector might be the best avenue of escape.

2) If you're re-entering the game, and the universe is littered with fighters, again, a nearby black hole and transport home might be the safest way to get to your base.

3) If you want to secure a planet, and there's an xBx port in the sector, and transport out. Later in the game, you could pwarp an oceanic in there and do planet negotiatons by transporting to and from a ship in the sector. Somebody else might go in and capture the planet, but they aren't going to move it anywhere else.

4) If you're really devious, try this: In a game without photons and with an an enemy logged on who has a wild hair for you, especially if he (she) is riding around in a nice fat ISS with 50,000 fighters or Flag with 20,000 fighters, hop into a Merchant Freighter with 30 fighters and head for the black hole. Don't lay a fighter there. Have all your corpies log off. Then 'accidentally' say on Fed-Comm: "Hey, corpies, will one of you come get me and tow me home? I'm in sector 625 and I'm out of turns! You can bet that he'll eprobe the sector and cautiously approach you, checking the # screen for sudden logins and firing more probes. As soon as he enters the sector, fire off a macro to transport out to another ship. Voila: His nice loaded ship bites the big one.

Mid

Could you email me at Kemper3@roguesrattery.com or ICQ me at 5278795? Thanks in advance.

It's good advise... using swath will help you find them in a game. Depending on the game, doing a ZTM at the begining is a good thing and then you can look for the black holes with the bubble finder swath has built into it.

Actually, I tried it, and Swath's black holes function doesn't work at all. It probably has to be done manually.

If your CIM displays onscreen as the helper executes, and if there is a black hole, you will see:
FM > 3104
TO > 1

*** Error - No route within 45 warps from sector 3104 to sector 1
Clear Avoids?

where 3104 is a black hole, assuming you have no avoids set (not much point running ztm with avoids grin). The one I use will keep attempting to plot courses from black holes despite previous lack of success, so when it gets to the point where it has no new warps from last extraction, you can see onscreen a list of any black holes.

quote:Originally posted by Kavanagh

If your CIM displays onscreen as the helper executes, and if there is a black hole, you will see:
FM > 3104
TO > 1

*** Error - No route within 45 warps from sector 3104 to sector 1
Clear Avoids?

where 3104 is a black hole, assuming you have no avoids set (not much point running ztm with avoids grin). The one I use will keep attempting to plot courses from black holes despite previous lack of success, so when it gets to the point where it has no new warps from last extraction, you can see onscreen a list of any black holes.

That isn't entirely accurate. Some games, especially those with gold bubbles and long tunnels such as the current hht, will have distances between two sectors longer than the max couse length. It appears that in creating the gold bubbles, big bang doesn't take into account the max course length settings.

Thanks for the info, used happen before TWGS also, I assumed that that bug had been fixed.
Simple workaround is, if you get:

*** Error - No route within 45 warps from sector 3104 to sector 1
Clear Avoids?

Script F3104 T5000 and decrement 5000 to 2 until you find a path, if none, its a BH.