HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
Date: Mon, 14 Sep 1992 13:13:28 -0400 
From: Kevin Michael Bernatz <kb32+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Subject: Re: beginner UN-luck

Excerpts from netnews.rec.games.netrek: 14-Sep-92 beginner UN-luck Jason
D Bowles@IASTATE.E (803)

> I'm getting higher and
> higher kills/game ratios every time I uplink. 

Ok everybody, repeat after me...
	"Dogfighting is useless... dogfighting is useless....dogfighting is useless"
	As any good player knows, dogfighting ability means squat!  All you
need to be able to do is suicide.. if you can do that, then you can be a
good player.  Dogfighting skill used to be something that everyone
thought was mondo, until that great guro of netrek, terence "God" chang
taught us CMU *veterns* about ogging.  To be a good, respected player
(IMHO) this is what you need to know:
	1)  How to observe the "flow" of the game on the galactic map without
being a free kill on the tactical.  This includes the following:
		a)  Spotting when people pick up armies (either from the net-blink
that occurs when they pick up, or by observing how many armies are on a
planet prior to and after the suspected carrier leaves.
		b)  Learning to guess which planet a carrier will go for and
proceeding post-haste to that planet
		c) Learning to observe group enemy movements and determining if they
are ogg waves/escort waves or just coincidence.
	2)  Learning to type and respond to messages without needing to fly
away from the front.  
	3)  Learning that speed kills, and always go max warp when not fighting
someone.
	4)  Learning to think ahead of time, and always know what you are going
to do when you come back in at your home planet.  This can include the
following:
		a)  Continue to ogg the person you missed
		b)  Kill a bomber that you noticed going to a core world
		c)  Grab a base to store armies
		d)  scout bomb if you noticed no-one is doing it
		e) Ogg another suspected carrier 
		(Note: There are not in any particular order)
	5)  Learn to spot people with kills and know who carries with 1 kill,
and who likes to wait until they have 2.  This also includes the
following of their movements on the galactic.

	These are 5 major attributes that I think seperate a "clued" person
from a newbie.  A newbie concentrates on the Tactical display, and hense
fails to observe the entire "play" being performed about him.  A
"vetern" (to use the term loosely) spends more time watching the game
evolve on the galactic map, and only concentrates on the tactical when
he/she has arrived at the location that they desired.  As the samurai
maxim says, "A person who has mastered an art, reveals it in his every
action".  

-KB
 Rear Admiral Akira
 Commodore Sun Tzu
 Flt. Captain Mo
 Flt. Captain Redjac
 Flt. Captain Ame Damnee
 Flt. Captain Fidei Defensor
 Flt. Captain Kill_The_Scums
 Flt. Captain Pallida Mors
 Captain Arbiter Bellum
 Commander Crippler
 Lt. Commander Plasma, Ogg of
From: fadden@uts.amdahl.com (Andy McFadden)
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
Subject: Oh by the way (more MS-II noise)
Date: 15 Sep 92 17:48:26 GMT
Reply-To: fadden@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com (Andy McFadden)
Organization: Amdahl Corporation, Sunnyvale CA

The mystery hang I was getting a while back was caused by getting a bogus
packet from a server which ended up having a length of zero, causing an
infinite loop.  This is now checked for.  This could very well be related
to the packet fragment problems people get while playing at Calvin (I'll
add a note to the log about which server is doing it to me).

An item on my "to do" list is to add a "WHY is the server not responding"
message somewhere.  Not sure exactly where to put it.

At any rate, I'm pretty confident that it won't die anymore.  The other
item on my todo list is to add a sort of checkpointing feature so that I
can kill & restart the process without losing all the state information.
That way I can update the server list without losing all of the nifty flags.

-- 
fadden@uts.amdahl.com (Andy McFadden)
[ Above opinions are mine, Amdahl has nothing to do with them, etc, etc. ]
From: margot@disuns2.epfl.ch (Joel Margot)
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
Subject: Players from EUROPE? --Please read.
Date: 7 Sep 92 21:23:25 GMT
Reply-To: margot@disuns2.epfl.ch (Joel Margot)
Distribution: rec.games.netrek
Organization: Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne

Hi to you, european fans, if any ;-O

My purpose would be to regroup us, european players, by some
kind of newsgroup or mailing list. The aim is to be able to
fill a european server with more than 2-4 players at one
given time. We could set up rendezvous  and even define  
teams.

The problems I met are as follows:
- I haven't the faintest idea on how to open a new news-
  group named either rec.games.neetrek.europe or
  eur.games.netrek (if "eur." is the european newsgroups
  subclassification, which I am not sure of).
- Starting a mailing list is also a problem to me. I 
  thought I could use an account only for this (i.e.
  very small quota and an automatic forwarding of all in-
  coming mails to all people on the mailing list), but
  the only available account for this that I have is a
  VAX/VMS account and it doesn't seem to be possible there
  on my low priviledged level :(

If you have any idea or solution to those problems, I'd be
*very* happy for any answer.

In the meantime, send me your email address if you want me 
to keep you informed on how all this will evolve. 

Hope we are more european players than just a handful...  ;-)


Best, Joel
From: tom@soda.berkeley.edu (Tom Holub)
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
Subject: Re: Changes for Netrek...
Date: 10 Sep 1992 00:33:20 GMT
Organization: U.C. Berkeley, CS Undergraduate Association
NNTP-Posting-Host: soda.berkeley.edu

In article <446Y03eW7dCt00@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com> fadden@uts.amdahl.com (Andy McFadden) writes:
)
)>Who cares?  This is NOT Star Trek.  Some of us despise Star Trek.
)
)Mojo... say it ain't so!

OK, well, maybe 'despise' is too strong a word.  Star Trek, however,
was a mediocre show; not only was the acting and scripting rather weak,
the science was laughable.  It was innovative, I'll give it that, but
I just don't see why it still has such a rabid following.

And in any case, it has nothing to do with netrek beyond bitmaps.
 -Mojo
From: yap@heroes.UUCP (Yap Yap Yap)
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
Subject: Re: The BEST in the WORLD!!!
Date: Fri, 04 Sep 92 11:40:23 CDT
Organization: The Inn Of Heroes.  Public Access UUCP BBS.

"John O. Kim" <jk5x+@andrew.cmu.edu> writes:

>  
> yap@heroes.UUCP (Yap Yap Yap) writes:
>  
> >     The best player in the world is MUCUS.  I think Spaceace is just 
> >jealous of him (that's why he didn't make it in any of Spaceace's 
> >choices) although, I am suprised that Spaceace didn't chose himself for 
> >any of those catagories....
>  
>     I personaliy think should leave themselves out of the "I am the
> Best!" catagories...These discussions are just silly...really....I will
> go on record thou, that I think SpaceAce! is the best player in
> CMU.....Mucus....Well...is real good and alot of fun to play with....is
> not up to Rob's caliber
     Oh well.  Granted Spaceace! is good, there is no way he is as good 
as MUCUS.
>  
>  
> >     MUCUS have a "yap" account?  Nope, this is the one true Yap.  In 
> >fact, I would be suprised if MUCUS even knew I existed.  That's ok, 
> >because I know who the best in the world is though....MUCUS!  All others 
> >(Yea Boy!!!! excluded) are MUCUS wanabees.  Even Spaceace! trys to equal 
> >MUCUS' greatness.  It will never happen!!
> 
>     Sorry.....Rob has been playing longer than MUCUS has and SpaceAce!
> has his own way of playing the game....and that is to win....MUCUS on
> the other hand plays mostly to OGG...Mucus thou is real helpful with
> this most of the time.
> 
> 
     Well, all the more reason for Rob to be better than MUCUS but he's 
not.  Since MUCUS has been playing less it is easy to see he is the best 
player.  It takes skill and talent to OGG (Mucus).  It is far easier to 
play a team game (Spaceace!).
From: fadden@uts.amdahl.com (Andy McFadden)
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
Subject: Re: RSA-reserved.c
Date: 5 Sep 92 21:57:03 GMT
Organization: Amdahl Corporation, Sunnyvale CA

In article <1992Sep5.190939.5615@dsd.es.com> rjones@itchy.dsd.es.com (Ray Jones - Perp) writes:
>In article <18aji1INNgl5@usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu> mcn@b62103.student.cwru.edu writes:
>>  I'm a little confused as to how this whole system will work... Since I  

>It's based on Public Key encryption, of the RSA variety.
[...]
>Did I miss anything?

That's how the algorithm works; how the rest of it works is...

- anybody who builds a client gets private/public keys.  There will be
  different sets of keys for each client (Sun4, Dec3100, Amdahl
  mainframe, etc)
- the clients will continue to be distributed as they are now, in binary form
  via anonymous FTP.
- all servers will maintain a list of keys, hopefully in a separate config
  file.  there will be one entry for every known client.
- some sort of id will be added to the log file, so that if somebody is using
  a borg, the server admin can figure out which code was broken
- if a blessed cyborg is identified, all clients using that key will be
  rejected on all servers (presumably they will communicate through r.g.n).
  (This would have allowed all the servers to unload that hoser with the
  blessed Beef borg who posted here a week ago.)  If the code DB includes
  stuff like "client author e-mail address", a new client can be built with
  a new code and redistributed in a few days.
- servers can have extra keys in their database, allowing special clients on
  their server (I'm thinking of the enhanced Calvin client).  There may also
  be officially "blessed" cyborgs which would have a different set of codes,
  so that borg servers could enforce equal-footing rules during certain hours.

The weak link is the client (as usual): if somebody can pry the private key
out of the client code, they can add it to their borg.  What makes this a big
win is that having the server code doesn't do anything for you (so it can be
distributed freely), and getting somebody's client code isn't that helpful
anymore because the clients can be selectively deactivated and redistributed
with far less impact on the Netrek community as a whole.

Players in countries without generous export licenses will have to fend for
themselves.  One possibility is to have a "European authentication" scheme
which will be tried if the RSA one fails.  However, the server would have to
verify the IP address somehow to make sure that the client was really in a
different country.  I would suggest leaving something like this (perhaps
just the original reserved.c code) in the source code so that people in other
countries don't have to reinvent the wheel if they just want to set up a
local server.

That's how I understand it.  Correct me if I'm wrong.

>                                          rjones@dsd.es.com

-- 
fadden@uts.amdahl.com (Andy McFadden)
[ Above opinions are mine, Amdahl has nothing to do with them, etc, etc. ]
From: rawdon@colby.cs.wisc.edu (Michael Rawdon)
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
Subject: Re: attack of the killer newbies
Date: 7 Sep 92 18:27:23 GMT
Reply-To: rawdon@colby.cs.wisc.edu
Organization: University of Wisconsin Computer Sciences Dept., Madison, WI

Sounds to me like people are confusing "veteran" with "master"?

[Renaissance]
-- 
Michael Rawdon				 rawdon@colby.cs.wisc.edu
University of Wisconsin Computer Sciences Department, Madison, WI

hardware, n. The parts of a computer system that can be kicked.
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
From: esj@cs.brown.edu (Eugene Santos Jr.)
Subject: Madness but extreme fun on rwd4 tonite (At least for Feds)
Organization: Brown University Department of Computer Science
Distribution: na
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1992 03:17:17 GMT

This evening the FEDs on rwd4 after quickly genociding the ROMs deciding
to be not soooo serious against the fed. We tried an all SC team 
except for a newbie stuck in a CA. Oh well. The tactic worked great against
the ORIs when we decided to coordinate into teams. Managed to take all planets
but one in the end. What made this most fun was a little break us
SCs took up in ROM space. Our idea was to get them kill-less which we did
and hide up in ROM space. :) :) :)

Well, to pass the time, we also decided to make letters using our scouts.
After some coordination problems, we finally formed a beautiful 'F'!

It looked thus on the tactical:

    -->     <--      -->

 
	^
	|       -->


    |
    ~

We then decided if we could keep formation and fly together.
We carefully all agreed on a proper speed to fly (warp 6).
We then commenced. Unfortunately, we forgot to choose which direction.
Consequently, we did manage to briefly form an '*'. Of course, during
this time, the ORIs were sweating in there starships wondering what
devious plan we were up to!

Oh man, I haven't laughed sooooo hard in ages. Thanks for the fun
folks!

	rjones
	Commander
	Pirate
	FillInTheBlank
	lagged scout
	(me)


Limofel / Quovadis / timid / (too many others)


uucp:	...!{ihnp4,decvax}!brunix!esj		Eugene Santos Jr.
bitnet:	esj@browncs.bitnet			PO Box 1910, Computer Science
arpa:	esj%cs.brown.edu@relay.cs.net		Brown University
csnet:	esj@cs.brown.edu			Providence, RI 02912
From: srt@aero.org (Scott R. Turner)
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
Subject: New Server
Date: 15 Sep 92 16:02:13 GMT
Organization: The Aerospace Corporation, El Segundo, CA
NNTP-Posting-Host: sun-marino.aero.org

Site: team-play.cs.ucla.edu
Port: 2592
Administrators: srt@aerospace.aero.org,matthew@cs.ucla.edu
Hours: All, No Borgs

Description:

Team-play is a standard four-race galaxy with various modifications to
promote team play and to eliminate mindless tactics such as ogging.

During t-mode, each team generates new ships at a rate of 1 every 30
seconds.  Ships may be stockpiled.  When a player dies, he draws a new
ship out of the stockpile.  If no ships are available, the player must
wait until a ship is manufactured.  All standard ship types are always
available, but normal starbase restrictions also apply.

The government is happy to advance every pilot five ships.  After
that, issuing a new ship requires three other pilots from the same
team to vote "yes" to ship allocation.  When a vote is necessary, a
message calling for the vote appears in each player's message window,
requiring a y/n response.  Vote timer elapses in 30 seconds, with no
response being counted as a "no" vote.  Voting is in effect only when
a wait queue exists.

As always, direct any questions to srt@aerospace.aero.org

						-- Scott T.
From: kb32+@andrew.cmu.edu (Kevin Michael Bernatz)
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
Subject: Dogfighting
Date: 15 Sep 92 18:11:54 GMT
	<88948@netnews.upenn.edu>
Organization: Senior, Chemical Engineering, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA

Excerpts from netnews.rec.games.netrek: 14-Sep-92 Re: beginner UN-luck
Brian C. Paulsen@eniac.s (1112)

> It does wonders to help you stay alive and avoid oggs.

Where does everyone get the impression that dogfighting helps one avoid
oggs?  God.. if Val and guest__ were here they'd be cracking up in
hysterics.  When I see someone stay uncloaked and try to dogfight me as
I approach him in an ogg, I almost drool over my terminal!  By no means
does it guarentee that I'll kill him, but it certainly increases the
odds dramatically!  To avoid oggs, cloaking is THE way to go........ any
fool that stays uncloaked deserves to die......

-KB
 Akira
From: bond@wolverine.cps.msu.edu (Curtis R Bond)
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
Subject: Where can I go?
Keywords: I've been out of the for awhile, so I would really like it if someone
Date: 8 Sep 92 19:54:05 GMT
Organization: Dept. of Computer Science, Michigan State University

would please post a new host list. (Esp. for borgs. (no flak please, I'm not
interested in a borg/no borg debate :)) 
	Thanks in advance.

bond
aka
Gurrr 
Vetterdon
From: surge@cqs.washington.edu (Jonathan Sari)
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
Subject: Client bug--bad packets cause core dump
Summary: An easy way to cheat
Date: 7 Sep 92 21:42:17 GMT
Organization: University of Washington

I was playing on calvin today.  A typical clueless calvin game---there
were only about three or four players total who had any skill.  The
Klinks owned Orion space, and we were the Roms.  When I entered, we
owned most of our space (someone had taken our bottom three planets),
and we had one of their front-line AGRIs.

I'm playing along, doing what I can for a moderate to poor position,
when my client dumps core, with a few unknown packet type: 0 messages.
Odd, I think.  Did calvin's server make a non-standard change?  How
very curious.  I get right back in and continue playing.

After a short time, I and another member of our team, playing as
guest, I think, had taken back our space and two of the AGRIs on the
Orion/Klingon border, and are fighting over the Kli front line AGRI.

I had just finished taking the AGRI under two clueless members of
their team and their only good player, whom I'd run out of fuel with
the help of my escort on the flight in, when my client dumps again
and I see this on my screen:

Unknown packet type: 101, aborting...
Unknown packet type: -127, aborting...
Unknown packet type: 96, aborting...
Unknown packet type: 114, aborting...
Unknown packet type: -22, aborting...
Unknown packet type: 64, aborting...
Unknown packet type: 127, aborting...
Unknown packet type: 110, aborting...
Unknown packet type: 0, aborting...
Unknown packet type: 96, aborting...
Unknown packet type: -127, aborting...
Unknown packet type: 0, aborting...
Unknown packet type: 96, aborting...
[3]    Segmentation fault     netrek.udp -h calvin.usc.edu (core dumped)

This time, there's a queue.  OK.  I stick myself in the queue, if only
to warn the rest of the people connected of the possibility of someone
sending these packets maliciously.

When I get back in, it's 5 on 8, we're down to three planets, none
AGRI, none fuel, an independent home planet, and no armies anywhere in
sight.  Coincidence that I pop into our clued player's slot?  I think
not.

Has this problem been fixed?  I bet that in 2 hours or less, I could
whip up a program that crashes a netrek client running on a specified
host, given the information in this message.

Starting to lose?  Someone just og you while you were destined for
their AGRI?  No problem.  Just crash that person's client, and send
them back into the queue.  No queue?  Fill it up yourself.

If anyone is interested, I still have the core file for Sparcstations.

Ensign Pac-man
surge@cqs.washington.edu
Organization: Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 1992 16:16:41 -0400 
From: Rick <stimpy+@cmu.edu>
Subject: Johnny Mac

After watching him at the US Open this  week, I've decided that John
McEnroe would make a great netrek player. I'd love to see his outbursts
on the ALL board. And his flames on this bboard.

Could someone please give him net access and a netrek client?

--Rick
"Bronco Netrek Server. You will never find a more wretched hive of
scum and villainy." -- Admiral Kenobi (aka Terence Chang)
From: paulsen@pixmap.seas.upenn.edu (Brian C. Paulsen)
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
Subject: general challenge to the world
Date: 12 Sep 92 17:51:48 GMT
Organization: University of Pennsylvania

The Team With No Name issues a general challenge against anybody for
2pm saturday Sep. 11 on flint.cs.brown.edu - see ya there

Brian
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
From: jecoleb@eos.ncsu.edu (have clue, will travel)
Subject: Re: Changes for Netrek...
Originator: jecoleb@c00508-119rd.eos.ncsu.edu
Reply-To: jecoleb@eos.ncsu.edu
Organization: The Ghost Of Christmas Past Society
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1992 00:30:35 GMT


In article <18ls3gINN2pj@agate.berkeley.edu> tom@soda.berkeley.edu (Tom Holub)
writes:
>)---Ship Collisions =>  I believe that you should be able to "run into other 
>)        ships" (enemy ships only of course).
[...]
>
>If this isn't on the Frequently Offered Clever Suggestions list, it
>should be,
[...]

Problem:  Netrek is a 2-D game.

The reason ships fly through each other would logically seem to be that 
they're flying at different Z coordinates (the term "Altitude" used in 
space seems a bit awkward).  This is why you don't blow up when you
fly through planets, etc.

If you're going to implement this, why make it selectively enemy ships 
that can be rammed?  Make it so that ships, planets and other goodies
are solid objects; thus, shots and ships can't go through planets, 
ramming would hurt friendly ships as well as foes, planets can't be 
defended merely by flying over them, etc.

It would certainly make LPSs a lot more interesting. (A ship shot down 
by an escort might pop up 180 degrees across the planet from the taker,
and thus be unable to shoot the taker w/o moving.)

Two problems with this idea:
a)  making sure a ship doesn't pop up on top of another ship when 
entering the game.  Shouldn't be too hard to fix.

b)  Combat would degenerate into a game of hide-behind-the-planet.
"C'mon, try and hit me!"  "No, YOU come out!"  "NO, YOU!"  etc.


This could be an interesting setup for a little-played server or as
a diversion (i.e. netrek hockey, soccer, synchronized swimming), but
really shouldn't become a full part of the game.

Besides, then we'd have to explain to all the newbies why space has a 
roof and a floor on it. :)

 				Commodore Video Sex Pope, NCSU
				 (also the man of 1,000 throwaways)

Flamage welcomed...
-- 
----------jeff the wonder llama, jecoleb@eos.ncsu.edu

------"I am a penis. Worship me."--lead singer of rock band Bicycle Face,
     vainly attempting to gain attention of the crowd at the Cat's Cradle 
     in Chapel Hill, while opening for Mojo Nixon & The Toad Liquors
--
It's not my fault, it wasn't up to you
Christmas Eve comes once a year and that will never do
Your image started fading, I closed my eyes to see
Tell me, do you close your eyes for me?
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek