Updating Slice's War Manual

Grey Gamer · Tue Feb 28, 2023 7:32 pm

People periodically say this has a great deal of great information, but is horribly obsolete.

I know there is a TradeWars 2002 Manual subforum, but people keep mentioning Slice's work, so I wanted to update that.

Kavanagh linked an archive of it here: viewtopic.php?p=248933#p248933

Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20080516092 ... ice-10.txt

I don't know if the Internet Archive messed up ASCII codes or what, but there are about twenty lines in the beginning, and all that I can read is "Compiled by: Slice" and "Version: 1.00."

How old is this? I don't know, but the first paragraph talks about 2.0 Beta 5.

How old is that?

In that thread, TroyTiger asked if you can still look up the last place a trader ported, Vid Kid pointed out that if you sleep in a ship that you never use to port, Grimy can't track you.

Kavanagh asked if you could just change your ship name, Deign responded that Slice wrote that Grimy looks up the ship number, not the name, and Vid Kid said that changing the ship name would just waste time and credits.

RexxCrow posted this

Quote:

Death Delay
This is a SysOp/GameOp configurable setting, if set to ‘On’ all Ship Destroyed players have to wait until Midnight before being permitted back into the game and if set to ‘Off’ Ship Destroyed players are instantly permitted back into the game, (similar to having unlimited lives in a video game.)

herehttp://www.classictw.com/viewtopic.php?p=148864#p148864 because Slice wrote something complicated and out-of-date.

Traitor and Father Cajone agreed [17 years ago] that people should only use Slice's manual if they are playing ancient versions of the game.

Here: http://www.classictw.com/viewtopic.php?p=115633#p115633, Supreme Galactic Overlord wrote that Slice's method of waiting idly before using genesis torpedoes consistently worked to get desirable planets.

Cherokee wrote

Quote:

I have the best luck making gold planet types (planet type records 7 and higher) when there are several planets AND 10-20% nav haz in the sector. shooting a single Gtorp, blowing it up, and shooting another, almost always seems to result in the 7 original planet classes.

and Orion Blaster wrote

Quote:

In advanced stages of the game, I use a level 4 planet or two into the sector I want to build the planets at, and then overload the sector with 1 or 2 above the limit and then bust the undesirable planet and shoot another gtorp. After clearing the navhaz by making another gtorp or two, I move the level 4 planets out so the number of planets are at a safe level.

Harley Nuss wrote

Quote:

There are all kinds of myths that people want to believe about things like that. If it gives you warm fuzzies to think that waiting between planet busts will help, go ahead. It's one of those things that won't hurt.

and Slim Shady replied

Quote:

it DOES hurt. every minute you wait to shoot a torp is another minute other people are getting all of your colonists cause they didnt wait two minutes to get their glacial planet. they shot it, and blew it and shot it again. also there is a distinct difference between correlation and causation. make sure not to infer the latter when you have the former. rule #1.

Rave mentioned the max holds bug here: viewtopic.php?p=114206#p114206 and I am confident that every bug enumerated there has been fixed for an extremely long time.

Are these correct so far?

Does anyone remember other errors from Slice's manual or specific ways it is out-of-date?

Updating Slice's War Manual

Who is online