From: botelle@eniac.seas.upenn.edu (Justin Botelle)
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
Subject: Re: One nagging question
Keywords: stick with this post, it gets interesting
Date: 16 Aug 92 22:46:35 GMT
Organization: University of Pennsylvania

In article <l8tk9pINNak3@alcor.usc.edu) rone@alcor.usc.edu (Ron Echeverri) writes:
)Why is tbird, perhaps the worst server cpuwise, so popular?  I mean, netlag
)is above average already w/o having to deal with the local admiral scums in
)GAs with tracking plasmas coming in in sl o  w    m  o   t    i     o      n
)and you simply are trying to phaser it but by the time the phaser actually
)shoots the plasma is cracking your shields....

I believe I have an answer.  I was playing on discovery and talking with Rick
on Bronco after the AA match (he was watching GBO/RS from the cluster), and
I telnetted to bigdog.  I quit out of discovery to go home (I could hardly
keep awake, and was really sucking), but then I changed my mind, not wanting
to take a cab, not being able to catch the escort bus (too late), and not
feeling brave enough to walk 15 blocks in a city at 2:00 on a Saturday morning
(prime hunting hours, no doubt, as it is probably near bar let out time).

Anyway, I telnetted to bigdog, and saw queues at calvin and tbird.  I was
convinced that there must be tmode scumming at one of the places.  I got
into calvin first.  It was ugly.  I kept getting a write 5 error or something
attempting to enable UDP, so was forced to TCP only, and it was bad.  Someone
told me that there were really two addresses to calvin, and gave me the IP
address of presumably the other one (I dialed up the alias address calvin.usc.
edu).  (UDP eventually worked when I got back in, but I was not interested 
by then).

	    Finally, (stop nodding off) I got into tbird, still convinced
that there was tmode scumming going on.  Lag was moderate.  I found that
there was actually a game going on, and that there was an enemy SB at the
front line.  After I killed him (alone, of course), I noticed that there
was a GA in the game.  I also noticed that the plasma had a wicked curve
to it.  I bitched to some Admiral on my team (who probably does not read
this group.. but more on that later) about them.  He had some not nice
comments to me, and I assume he ran the server, since I was removed by
divine mercy, but not forced out.  After killing the enemy GA, I then 
asked the all board if anyone there played in the INL.  The only post I
saw was INL???????????.  Hmmm.  Perplexed, I then asked if anyone had
ever played on a CMU server.  I got two personal me replies.  I chuckled.
I left for a game that was forming on bezier.

 After the bezier game disbanded, I went back to tbird.  It was even
worse.  They were Rom, we Fed.  They were down to core.  I went up to 
the front, got two easy kills, took a planet (alone, of course), died,
and repeated.  At one point, about to take Rom, I was smacked by a nasty
plasma and unfortunately died.  Pissed, I again complained about the
stupid plasma.  The guy told me to stop whining.  I think he was a captain
pylo or something (not like it matters).  So I told him I would kill him,
which I did on the first try.  10 minutes later, he popped up on me again,
so I killed him again, and again, and again although once it actually 
took me two tries to do so.  During this time, I told him that he should
take another planet so that I could kill him in a base.  A little while
later, he obliged.  Unfortunately, he was on Rom, so my 500 pt oggs were
not that effective.  Plus they had a 7-4 numerical advantage (but it was
still tmode -- which I posted, but of course no one switched).  After posting
several times (make that many) to base ogg, I finally got help from one 
teammate (he was the only other one who ever posted, though he did not
respond to me right away).  He ogged in an AS.  At one time, we had all four
of us ogging, if you could call it that, since none of the others (with the
possible exception of the one who could read, who would do so occasionall)
would ever cloak.  It was unbelievable.  Finally, after pummeling the base
who would shoot 3 plasmas per ogg at me (a total of 2 of them hit me), he
wtemped (I mentioned the possibility of this earlier to him, but he told
me that he knew how to fly his ship and to stop whining), he wtemped.  I
started to orbit Rom to refuel, when one of the other idiots on the team
actually hit him with a torp to kill him.  Hmmm.  Someone from berkeley
joined the Roms (think it was hack or something like that), who still 
enjoyed a great numerical advantage against us.  Even though I was able
to kill them two or three at a time, they always had kills (it seems I would
have been better with 7-1 teams), and this coupled with a poor army supply
brought us (me) to our core.  After a while, most everyone quitted out.

Basically, tbird is its own microcosm.  Think of it as a Galapagos.  A sort
of pristine place untouched by the civilization of netrek.  Go there as
archaeologists, but remember the prime directive.

)5150
)stupid questions that keep me up at night

Justin/Hector (ok, I'm now self-actualized.. Yes, I'm schizophrenic)
(stupid posts that keep me up all night)
Organization: Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA