the syn op will either hide SD this game or next - the kicker is that he will change the regular 7 in and 6 out - he wants to make it harder to find - ho idea as to what it will be changed to ... any suggestion on something i can use to do a search that does not need a scaner - i would hate to hand express wrp search. what i'm looking for is something that would search in a predetermind patter - say every 25 sector so it would wrp to 25 then 50 then 75 then 100 and so onb - it does not have to lay figs just do a search pattern

hope it is not a game with aliens that are aggressive or alien planets.  This sounds like an Op that wants to make finding dock a matter of luck.  Personally I would not play this type of game.
To answer your question, I am not aware of a script that will do what you are looking for unless one of the "unexplored" scout scripts work w/o a scanner.  I would doubt that they do since it is very dangerous to scout this way.

               / Promethius / Enigma / Wolfen /

"A man who has no skills can be taught, a man who has no honor has nothing."

Here's what I woudl do....
Grid as much as possible...  and when the MSL's clear try to map a path to were dock MIGHT be.
Just a thought.

Come to think of it, you might be able to use rammar's path blast.  You would have to enter the search pattern, but you could create that before the game starts and then paste it in.  I don't know what not knowing dock's sector will cause the script to do.  You might have to enter a sector for its stardock, but that could be anything you want I would guess.
You could lay out your path something like:  1, 20000, 10000, 5000, 100 or whatever to get your pattern.
Wish you luck.

               / Promethius / Enigma / Wolfen /

"A man who has no skills can be taught, a man who has no honor has nothing."

Actually, I'm not sure how it would work if the SD is relocated, but unless it's changed, all you have to do is hit your navigation point and it will express you to the dock even though it is hidden.  I could be wrong, but you used to be able to.

you are right about the scouting scripts needing a scaner -in fact the only world trade script i found that will wrk with out a scaner is Jtwat. i thought about rammer's path blester - i like it early on in the gamr to grid with but that is wrking funky - it will not open up all it does is give the info screen like when you hit V. so it must want a sector for SD - promethius you said i could put in a sector as SD how do i do that - i know nothing about scripting as far as a search pattern i was thinking about every 25 sectors and yes i have it allready to past - i created a game on my computer to practice on

bid D you lose me completely on wnat you were refering        to but if you can exolain it in simple steps i will give it a try.

loneStar - in the prctice game i have i did grid with the Jtwat world trad script and found both 0-ports which when i transfderred to swath to use the map it showed the blue line between them and terra - is there a way to triangulate?? also it can be assumed i would think that the sectors around SD and on the MSL would have heavy traffic - is there a way to do a reverse tunnel finder - your script finds the least traveled??

Big D - daaa you ment in the game from the comand prompt to hit "N" - when you do that all it showa is terra. heheheheee - that is what i get for tpying answers on the form when tired     

as for path blaster whem you open it i get the same screen as if i had hit "V" and it just waits. since it is a practic game i banged to get ready for the real one i looked up SD went there then opened pathblaster and it wrked this time - so it needs to have the SD sector in it. you were right about that promethius - so how would i enter a sector for SD - the actual starting screen that normally pops up does not because it is looking for a SD sector.    

I would suggest that you use a amtrack script, input in sequential order the sectors for the class o ports, dont deploy many figs perhaps 1 per sector every 3 times you run the script ( remember other players will be looking around the sectors you dont have figs at so give then more sectors to spend time searching) and run it as many time as you need to.

sd 11,50,75,100,125,150,175,200....
ac 12, 25,65,90,115,140,165,190...
ry 13,15,45,80,110,130,155,180...

remembr there are many ways to change the path you will
travel you can do a search pattern based on only odd or even #.s and you can void a few sectors each time you run the script doing this will change the longer warp paths.

hi zentock - i'm not a scriptor so i don't know how to set up an amtrack - is there a public one??? it ssound like it would fit the bill here. as long as it does not need scaners - would it require knowing 1 of the 0- ports?

i went to grimys and the only amtrack script i found was Xa_amtrack and it requires all the MLS to have been explored - which means you have had to been to SD so that script will not wrk.

Triangulate?  not directly. but you can, by process of elimination, filter out the MSL sectors that are known, leaving only those that are cleared-out at tern to give you a proximity to work from --i.e. Grid.  Should be pretty darn simple to do.
re the heavy traffic. You need to keep in mind that you're not dealing with Dock in a 7warp sector. If it's hidden in some 2way, then there will be almost no traffic. My script finds tunnels (based on EP's algo), that are likely to be low-traffic.
Hope this help

Amtrack script won't help, keep in mind that in order to have one you need to know the location of dock. There's no natural correlation between terra, dock and the class 0s. They can be anywhere. But if you find the class 0s you can grid around them and wait for extern to reveal the hidden MSL. Add a ZTM to that and you could take the figclears, determine all courses along those paths and crosslist the sets to narrow down the results.

Anyway, this depends on the turn level. If it's a high turns game, grid and wait for extern and follow the fig clears. Odds are you'll already have found it anyway if you grid enough. Just mow in an incremental pattern like 10 to 11, 11 to 12, 12 to 13, constantly filtering out any sector that's already figged or explored. You can change that to something like 100 to 200, 200 to 300, etc, but you'll miss more sectors that way. The trick is to refilter the target list before each run and clean out any explored or figged sector. That'd be an easy script to write.

If you have a ZTM tho this is pretty easy unless the dock sector has been moved (not just had it's warps changed). Dock itself is not usually a high traffic sector, but if you plot out "traffic" courses from any known class 0s and combine the results you'd probably get a good starter list.

Dock may or may not be in that list, depending on what was done to it, but if you then feed that into a smarter grid search... say grid out those sectors in a descending order of traffic using some kind of search pattern (a limited depth DFS walk, like 7 hops, would probably work best), you'd probably turn it up quicker.

Of course you can also just watch the competition too. Grid around and watch for any changes in their ship type, then go looking around their last fighits. Why waste your turns if you don't have to?

Thanks for all the input guys and i follow most of the princples you have disussed but am at a lost to write scripts - i have no back ground there. pro ztm takes 6 + hrs to do and we will have one person doing that. the other 3 of us will be hunting SD the game has a daily time limit of 10 hrs, but during those 10 hrd you have unlimited turns. - here is what i'm looking for in a script

must be able to run without any scaners or a ztm first. these should be optional so you could run this if you had them. option to drop figs or not - option to drop figs every "X" sector visited. after you get to a sector that you want to start at you enter the interval of secotrs between taget sectors to go to - so if you start in sector 2000 and put in 25 it would go to 2025 2050 2075 3000 - or if you put in 10 it would be 2010 2020 2030 2040 2050 2060 2070 2080 2090 3000, put it a tartget sector to stop at. that way if there are more then 1 person running it the search could be devided up. void out any alien sector it goes into and puts that sector in a file and broadcasts that sector over SS radio, if it receives a message like that it will void that sector if not already voided. put the 0-ports to a list and broadcast that over SS, trade as it goes with either haggle or no haggle, when it droped below "x" number of figs it would go to sector 1 and buy what it can - but keep 10k in cash to start trading with. after it referbs it would go to the next sector on the list. this would be run with twx / swath combo. if anyone wants a project i will pay a reasonable amt. add ons that i might have missed would be welcomed

it would wrk like a combo path blaster / unexplored sector / world trade script for early in a game esp for games where SD is hid.

i have no script that will drop figs without first having a scaner or a ztm or know SD's location. i thought Jtwat's world trade did this but it does not. so unless i can come up with something it will mean doing most od the searching manually - brrrrrrrrr