BOT BUSTING How to kill robots ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 29 Jul 91 15:46:00 -0400 (EDT) From: Robert Edward Timlin To: Bulletin Board Administration Subject: Bot-busting Tips Since HunterKiller is now an integral part of netrek, I thought I'd post some of the things that I find work well against him and his kind. For the usual battleship robot, there are two ways of approaching his destruction (if that is what is desired - sometimes you might want to lead him into enemy space to wreak havoc). First is when you don't care whether you live or die in taking him out - a suicide run. A cruiser is adequate for the task; battleships are harder to dodge in, and smaller ships have lesser firepower and weaker hulls. At any rate, you need to fly at the robot while dodging his torpedoes. Then, right at the range the Bot would start using phasers, you tractor him in. Timing is critical here; you have to fire a full spread of 8 torps into him at just the right moment. Fire too soon and he'll just dodge. Wait too long and you're history before you can fire. Your ship will normally explode right on top of the robot, inflicting 100 points of damage. Meaning all your torps and phasers have to do is score for 160 (only 4 cruiser torps). If you fire at just the right moment, you're pretty much assured of the kill. You WILL die, however, even if you kill the Bot first; with the damage you'll have taken getting in there, his explosion will toast you. Also, DO NOT use plasma if you have it. ALL robots will blow it up before it's even out of the tube if you're in phaser range. Killing the robot without dying is a lot trickier, but it can be done. If you go it alone, the best strategy is to try and lure the Robot over to a wall. Robots have a hard time with walls, plus torps that miss detonate against the wall behind him, causing him damage. A handy little trick to avoid the robot's torps is to orbit a planet. The robot has a hard time hitting a ship in orbit since the velocity vector keeps changing. His accuracy improves with reduced range, however, so watch out. The best is to pin the robot against a wall and orbit a fuel planet within medium-long torp range. You can pummel him quite a bit with relative impunity. If you have help, killing the Bot and living is a lot easier. This is because the robot pays attention ONLY to the ship he is currently firing at. He ignores all others AND their torpedoes (unless another ship passes closer than the one he's currently fighting; then he will switch targets). At any rate, all that is needed is for a decoy ship to draw the robot's fire, then a killer ship to hose him down while he's not looking. Robots also ignore torps from dead ships, so he could drop shields and start to repair right in the path of your final torp spread if you should die fighting him. The robot situation is somewhat different on the Auk server (soon to become rwd4 I think). There you can have multiple robots flying together. Getting in close to them is difficult, to say the least. I will usually lob torpedoes in at them to break them apart, then attempt to deal with them individually. Things get really interesting here, because in addition to that, the robots now come in different ship classes - they even come in as starbases. Destroying a HunterKiller starbase can really be tough. Sometimes it's just better to lead it to enemy space and let them deal with it. I've seen basically two strategies used to destroy a CyberBase: first, many ships attack at once. The base only engages & dodges torps from the closest ship, and all the other torps go unheeded, many of which will hit. A second, more brute-force tactic is useful only when the base wanders to your home planet. This can happen by accident or by design (only bring the Bot base home with you if there's no real war going on and your team isn't in a lot of danger). Basically all you do is attack blindly, die, re-enter and repeat. Tractoring the base is good, too, because that pulls it closer to the home planet (usually) and pulls it into the blast radius of your ship explosion. And if the robobase is damaged and no other ships are in the immediate vicinity, it will try to repair, REGARDLESS of whether or not it is over a planet. The armies on the planet surface will be more than happy to oblige and shoot at it. ("Hey sarge, look! A starbase!" Bwwweeeee Bweeeee zot zot KABOOM!) So luring a base over a planet and fencing it in there with torp spreads is a valid strategy. Well, that's about it. Hope you new players find this useful when the robots come after you. -Robb ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 29 Jul 91 23:20:27 -0400 (EDT) From: John Andrew Markiel To: Bulletin Board Administration Subject: Re: Bot-busting Tips Excerpts from andrew.games.xtrek.clues: 29-Jul-91 Bot-busting Tips Robert Edward Timlin (4502)} > And if the robobase is damaged and no other ships are in the immediate > vicinity, it will try to repair, REGARDLESS of whether or not it is over a > planet. The armies on the planet surface will be more than happy to oblige > and shoot at it. ("Hey sarge, look! A starbase!" Bwwweeeee Bweeeee zot zot > KABOOM!) So luring a base over a planet and fencing it in there with torp > spreads is a valid strategy. This actually works with the normal H-K's too, although it's a little more difficult to manage. I saw it happen once, where H-K fled from Earth, and made it exactly to Canopus before stopping to repair. The poor thing sat on the planet for about 60 seconds before blowing up...how sad. My favorite plan is to lead it to the enemy home planet. I actually used this to take a planet once...H-K was near Romulus, and people kept popping up right on top of him, so I was able to fly in and take Romulus while all the Roms and H-K were fighting each other. Usually, unles he's really close to your home planet, it saves time to try to get around him and lure him to the enemy space. Let them deal with killing it :-) -Andrew (jm79@andrew) : R. Adm. Grey Elf Admiral Neutrino ------------------------------ From: tom@headcrash.Berkeley.EDU (Tom Holub) Newsgroups: alt.games.xtrek Subject: Re: If you wanna be commander in 5 hours. Date: 29 Oct 91 05:30:41 GMT In article chisolm@hydra.unm.edu (Chris Chisolm) writes: > >Is it considered bad form to take a scout and lead iggy from your space >to the opposing teams space especially if it can be lead to a starbase. I wouldn't consider it bad form. But if the starbase is good, Iggy will be gone very quickly, and he probably won't do much damage, either. Hell, one decent battleship should be able to take out a Hunterkiller in one run. The key, for those who don't know it, is to fire one torp where he's heading, and then tractor him and fire everything you've got to where he will be turning to. Iggy only dodges the closest torp (on most servers). Blam. If you have plasmas, it's even easier. Just get in close and fire one- it doesn't even need to be aimed at him, 'cause he'll phaser it even if it would miss. -Mojo ------------------------------ From: hadley@aten.ics.uci.edu (Tedd Hadley) Newsgroups: alt.games.xtrek Subject: Re: Beginner's questions Date: 1 Nov 91 19:23:59 GMT >4. Lastly, for now, how does one kill the robots? They never >miss a shot. True, but their predictability is their primary weakness. When you attack, _expect_ them to shoot directly at you and dodge accordingly. Robots also do not correct for accelerating or decelerating ships. I assume you're talking about server robots here (Hal, Guardian, M5, Colossus, HunterKiller, etc.). Other weaknesses: 1) they dodge only the closest enemy's torps, 2) the dodge algorithm causes them to "break off" the attack if more than 4-5 torps are fired at them. Here's a simple server-robot killer algorithm for 1 player: (a) Fire 2 torps on direct hit line or slightly in front of robot. (b) 1 second later, as robot starts to turn away from previous torps, fire remaining 6 torps on slightly curving path just in front of robot's apparant new path. (b) works effectively because the robot accelerates once it detects 4 of your torps. If you've aimed correctly the robot plows right into your torp stream. I should add, however, that 9 times out of 10 it's far better to declare peace with the robot team. The above becomes necessary only if you've got Hunterkiller after you (on CMU servers), or if a server robot is fighting on a human team. ++ Tedd Hadley (hadley@ics.uci.edu) ------------------------------ From: peyote@umiacs.umd.edu (Gary W. Flake) Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek Subject: I LOVE Iggy!! (Or, how to kill Iggy every time.) Date: 21 Jul 92 23:06:04 GMT Since the "Iggy sucks" thread has been resurrected, I'd thought I'd add some info. Note, that I am against all proposals that explicitly eliminate iggy from the game. Although, I wouldn't care too much if he was placed away from players initially. Anyways... Recipe to kill iggy: ------------------- Since iggy is polymorphic, and takes the shape of his nearest opponent always use a scout. Iggy in anything else is a pain, since more hull + sheilds mean you actually have to hit him more. Also, a scout, being the most agile ship (no DD descel flames) allows you to get within a quarter screen without taking any torp hits. When you get within about an inch or two on your tactical lock, tracter, and max warp. Unload eight torps, and phaser until you die. If you do this correctly, your explosion alone is almost enough to kill him. Add a hand full of torps, and a phaser or two at close range, and iggy is toast. I can't emphasize this enough: this is *very* easy. One of my favorite things to do is to go on to a server where everyone is complaining about iggy, and announce "Oh, I'll go ahead and kill him for you," as if by some magic touch I've attained the Bhudda Nature of war. I've probably got about a 0.9 ratio against iggy. I've done this in only a single run in probably the last dozen or so times. So, If iggy is pestering your team, ogg him, and be done with it (for at least fifteen minutes). Otherwise, use him to your adavantage. Gary (toe-jam, Animal, Happy Fun Ball!) ------------------------------ End of BOT BUSTING ******************