No Harley, I didn't do any testing with IGs, didn't even think of it to tell the truth. Thanks for the tip. When I get home from work, I'll fire the server back up and test IGs, I also wanted to test how having no turns (ie being recently photoned) will affect flees.

That Harley what a slave driver, you should give Psion a couple day off

OK, I went back and ran a few more tests. It doesn't make any difference if the defender has an IG or not, or whether it is active or not. If the attacker has an active IG, then the trader will attempt to flee but fail (obviously).

Lack of turns will not keep a trader from fleeing either. Flee behavior was identical after the defender had been photoned.

I played a little bit with trying to determine to which sector a trader would flee, but wasn't able to determine a pattern. Much like pods, traders will flee over their own personal or corporate fighters. Unlike pods, fleeing traders will only move one sector, however. I wasn't able to discern a pattern as to which sector a trader would flee to. Given the choice between fleeing to a sector with personal fighters, corporate fighters, or no fighters the results came out about even. I suspect that it flees to a random adjacent sector without enemy fighters.

I also thought of a new test to run on my drive home from work: mines. Mines seem to have no involvement at all in the fleeing process, and I mean NONE. They do not mark a sector as "blocked" and if a trader flees into a sector with enemy mines, they do not activate, not even limpets. This is the only way I know of besides pwarping to enter a sector and not activate a limpet. Under the right circumstances, this could be used as a sneaky invasion trick if your enemy has limpets and/or mines but no fighters in an adjacent sector.

If anyone can think of any other scenarios to test or factors that might play a role, please let me know and I'll see what I can find out. Once no one can think of any other avenues to explore, I'll type all this junk up nice and pretty and see if Traitor would be kind enough to post it on his strategy page.

quote:Originally posted by Psion

This is the only way I know of besides pwarping to enter a sector and not activate a limpet. Under the right circumstances, this could be used as a sneaky invasion trick if your enemy has limpets and/or mines but no fighters in an adjacent sector.


The only problem with that is that when the off-line player logs in they will activate a limpet. (Although you may be able to find a creative use for that [;)])

If you want to make a full time job out of testing flee conditions, you could include aliens in your testing (both internal and gold).

Well Mantis, offline autoflee behavior is EXACTLY the same as the autoflee behavior of an online trader with Online Autoflee turned on. So you could cause an online corpie (or ex-corpie rather) to flee into the limpeted sector. Its certainly never going to become a common tactic, but I think in the right situation, it could be devastating.

As far as aliens go, what are you suggesting? That I test how aliens cause a trader to flee, how they affect the manner in which a trader flees, or something else entirely? Frankly, I doubt I'll run any alien tests since my focus is on trader to trader conflict, but if you have some application that I'm missing, I'd be happy to hear and consider it.

Just wanted everyone to know that I had an opportunity to use this info in a game last night. Got a pod instead of them bouncing into dock and being safe (which always seemed to happen to me) Amtrak, they got towed adj to dock. They had more figs on them than I could kill in one wave. Dumped my excess figgies in sector, shot them till I could cap their ship in one shot. Pod fled where we wanted it too, and we got the #SD#. Thanks Psion!

Groovy Glad it came in handy

Update: I ran a last test and found out that armids and limpets aren't the only things that aren't activated when a trader flees into a sector. Neither are Qs. Seems of limited use, but could conceivably come in handy. Traitor has also agreed to post this info on tw-cabal, I'm cleaning it up now and it should be posted there fairly soon.