HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: blojo@xcf.berkeley.edu (Jon Blow)
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
Subject: Re: New Server: ww2.cs.ucla.edu
Date: 6 Nov 1992 22:23:06 GMT
Organization: Experimental Computing Facility, Univ. of California, Berkeley
NNTP-Posting-Host: cory.berkeley.edu

Scott suggests:

> I'm certainly not going to bash people for playing a variant, like
> some people seem anxious to do to Sturgeon.

People bash on Sturgeon because it's dumb, not because it's different.
Many people would say (and I agree) that the game is not nearly as
interesting.

> an interesting mod would be to greatly decrease the radius used for
> ship detection, perhaps as low as 1/10 of the galaxy width.

> On the surface it might appear that this would make ogging much
> easier, because you wouldn't have as much advance warning.
> I think it will balance out; but maybe not.

This would make ogging much harder.  Since you don't know where your
target is, you'd have to go search for him at cruise speed, which means
it takes you forever to get to him, so your oggs are less frequent.
You spend more time running into his teammates and getting killed.

It also becomes much easier to take planets, because nobody will know
exactly where you are going until it's too late.

I think this would be a pretty darn bad idea for normal netrek.  If you
hiked the player limit to 32, maybe.  It would definitely suck when
combined with the next idea you propose:

> First, make every ship except the SB and the AS be able to carry 3
> armies, regardless of number of kills (including with no kills).
> This has a number of effects: (1) Obvious ogg targets go away.

They don't go away; there will just be less.  You would still (theoretically)
see people pick up. 

> (2) More coordination is needed to take planets.

On the contrary, less coordination is needed to take planets.  Everyone
just picks up 3 armies in a scout, goes somewhere, and drops.  If you
need to take an agri, you just have 3 people pick up.  If two of them
die the third just runs off and drops somewhere else.

Since you don't need any kills to pick up armies, you can use armies as
soon as they pop.  People who are "free kills" no longer hurt the team
they are on.

If the sensor radius is reduced as you suggest, it becomes Very Stupid
to fly anything but a scout (or a starbase) over the course of most of
the game, except the initial bombing and the LPS.

> Second, make anyone who dies with 1 kill or less and without taking a
> planet to wait 30 seconds before re-entering the game.  This has]
> several effects: (1) Suicidal ogging becomes much less effective

What is non-suicidal ogging?

> (2) LPS play will change (exactly how is difficult to say - probably
> the advantage goes to the attackers).

LPS is no longer an issue-- you just have 6 players run up to the home
planet in BATTLESHIPS and DOOSH everybody there, who won't come back for
30 seconds.  (If they had kills, you just do this twice in a row.)  Then,
you have two players just waltz up during those 30 seconds IN SCOUTS
WITH NO KILLS and nonchalantly drop armies on the planet till the game
goes poof.

  -Jon (Hell Peacock)
From: echeverr@scf.usc.edu (Luc Robitaille)
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
Subject: Hockey All-Star team...
Date: 6 Nov 1992 18:09:26 -0800
Organization: Los Angeles Kings
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: sal-sun199.usc.edu
Keywords: GO KINGS!!!!


Hockey-Ikki
bav
Red Shirt
Duck Dodgers
Buehgler
don't THINK so (at goalie)

bench:
Luc Robitaille (heh heh)


5150
(of course, this is all that comes to mind right now, i may have forgotten
	someone...)
From: bdhall@beggs.ecn.purdue.edu (Brian D Hall)
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
Subject: Ftp stuff
Keywords: vector torps, borg
Date: 5 Nov 92 19:47:07 GMT
Distribution: US
Organization: Purdue University Engineering Computer Network



	Before I go wallowing through all the ftp sites AGAIN looking for what
I need I would like to ask first.

	I am looking for the following:

SERVER SOURCE code diffs for vector torps

SUN3 binary for the grandfather borg.  I looked on grind.isca.uiowa.edu, but
	could not find a SUN3 binary.



    Brian Hall
From: hill@norman.VI.RI.CMU.EDU (Robert Hill)
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
Subject: Re: sunscreamer's How to be a Scoutbomber, part 2
Date: 8 Nov 92 23:00:24 GMT
Organization: School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon

Andrew Markiel writes
> Some of the ways you can counter this are:
> 
> 1) *always* be dodging. Spin left, swerve right, change speeds a lot. 

You should always do this when lagged or not.  Being local gives an even  
bigger advantage to doing this...your lagged enemy has a much harder time  
predicting your position.

> 2) Try to sucker your opponent into doing something, so you can counter 
> before actually seeing anything. A classic one is to fly directly at an 
> enemy, 

Again...even more effective if you are local.

> factor) turn 90 degrees, tractor, and fire 10 torps about 1/2 inch in 

[..]
> catch him right in the face. Of course, if he doesn't fall for it, you 
> just wasted about 200 fuel...but it is often quite effective. The key 

10 torps is 200 fuel?  

> 3) Remember that you can't really see what your opponent is doing, so
>think of *everything* that he might do, and use what you can see as clues 

Good to say.  Against the clueless, it works...the clueful pound you.

> 4) Be prepared to react to some fraction of your commands get delayed or 
> lost.

Yes..yes...yes.  This is very huge.

> 5) have an easy to reach update all key. You'll be using it a lot.

If packet loss is bad...playing may not be worth it.

> I can also see why FITB gets angry a lot...I find playing with lots of 
> lag very stressful. The problem is, if you want to avoid exploding all 

Lag is painful.  I think that most people get upset because they know that  
they can do better, but the lag is stopping them.  Don't let it bother  
you....consider the lag in how well you are playing.

Just the other day, I saw FITB on bronco...he went up to ogg me, spewed  
torps and phasers behind me...I felt bad about killing him...:-)

Jim, how much is this notorious lag?  120 ms?

> But things are looking up...I just pinged CMU, and only got 6% packet 
> loss.
> -Grey Elf

As number 6, i'd have to say:  keep your distance...you can't react as  
fast as they can, so stay away from them.  Depending on how much lag you  
are talking about, cloaking is useful for >300 ms lag.  Cloak alot.

See you on the net,

Rob
aka Spaceace!
From: nm0w+@andrew.cmu.edu (Nanci Ann Miller)
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
Subject: Re: GB vs TWNN
Date: 7 Nov 92 22:43:37 GMT
Organization: Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA

blojo@xcf.berkeley.edu (Jon Blow) writes:
> Well, the GB vs TWNN game just ended.  the result was something like
> 12-7-1, TWNN victory.
> 
> This was the absolute worst game I've played with this team this
> season.  I'm not going to give any details (someone else probably
> will), but it felt like everyone on our team was playing down and
> just being lame.
> 
>   -Jon (Hell Peacock)

Was this an official game or just a scrimmage?

Nanci
From: tjk5@po.cwru.edu (Timothy Kordas)
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
Subject: Re: NETREK BANNED !
Date: Thu, 5 Nov 1992 23:10:40 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University
NNTP-Posting-Host: b62144.student.cwru.edu
Keywords: banned

In article <1992Nov5.211143.1177@ncsu.edu> jecoleb@eos.ncsu.edu (have clue, will travel) writes:
>1) Work with the sysadmin.  While he does sound like a bit of a prick, that's
>his job.  To use my favorite quote from an old rec.games.mud flamewar, "If I
>hire a sysadmin and he's NOT a fascist, I've wasted my money."
>
>He said that it "looked" like too hard of a thing to deal with.  (How hard can
>a fricking cron job be?)  Well, find a way to show that it's NOT that hard.
>Propose an honor system of playing only after certain hours, with offenders 
>having their accounts spooged or getting whapped on the hand with a long wooden
>ruler or something.  Do whatever it takes to get official words-on-paper that
>it's okay under SOME circumstances.
>
>Or:
>
>2) Use trekhopd to hide your connection, or go all-out and compile a local
>server from time to time.  Good luck keeping it secret...  If you're *TACTFUL*
>about when and where you use it, this isn't so bad an option.

3) get the sysadmin addicted to netrek :-)



-Tim Kordas
tjk5@po.cwru.edu
From: sjsmith@cs.umd.edu (Stephen Joseph Smith)
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
Subject: Re: Flt. Captain tufu?  I don't think so.
Date: 6 Nov 92 17:32:00 GMT
Article-I.D.: mimsy.61795
Organization: Dept. of Computer Science, University of Maryland at College Park

gdearing@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Gregory D Dearing) writes:
>After fingering netrek@bronco, I happened to notice this entry.
>
>    Name               Hours      Planets     Bombing    Offense     Defense
>Fleet Captains:
>124 tufu                3.54     10  1.10   187  0.78   138  1.51   130  0.78
>
>He has 3.39 ratings and by my best estimate should make Commander with
>a little effort and patience.  Anyone have any idea why he's listed as
>a Fleet Captain?

The standard answer to questions of this sort (people whose ratings are
inconsistent with their rank) is fourfold:

1) Rank is assigned on the basis of ratings at the time of promotion.
2) Rank can never decrease.
3) Ratings depend on global averages.
4) Global averages can increase.

For example: When a server first starts up, let's say I scum for 1 hour,
and take 10 planets.  Now let's say that the global average at this point
is 1 planet every 32 player-hours.  (Say almost nobody knows about taking
planets.)  Ok, 10 planets when the average is 1/32 planet/hour is 320 DI.
So I have 320 DI in 1 hour, and a 320 planet rating.  Voila, I'm an
Admiral.

Now the server gets clue and the global average rises to, oh, 3 planets
every player-hour.  10 planets are now worth 3.33 DI, and I have a 3.33 DI
in 1 hour, and a 3.33 planet rating.  Voila, I'm still an Admiral.

The famous E.g.: Mojo Riser is an Admiral on some weenie chaos server with
about 3 hours of what are currently about 3 ratings...

- Gamera
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
From: books@fsunuc.physics.fsu.edu (Roger Books)
Subject: Re: Married NetTrekers (was : RE SB...)
Organization: FSU nuclear physics
Date: Fri, 13 Nov 92 14:55:05 GMT

In article <1992Nov13.041954.9449@colorado.edu> sherod@newton.Colorado.EDU (Scott Herod) writes:

>Well I know two more married players.  The BIG question is how many
>people out there have kids?
>
>Actually D&D cost me a girlfriend once.

Are you kidding?  I've never had a girlfriend that didn't game.  My current
one helped me develop my current RolePlaying game.  Now if I could just get
her interested in war games and Netrek...

>
>Mad DDogg

Sherlock

Roger
books@fsunuc.physics.fsu.edu
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
From: books@fsunuc.physics.fsu.edu (Roger Books)
Subject: Re: SB ogging
Organization: FSU nuclear physics
Date: Fri, 13 Nov 92 19:18:05 GMT

In article <97514@netnews.upenn.edu> paulsen@eniac.seas.upenn.edu (FreeKill) writes:

>In article <books.97.0@fsunuc.physics.fsu.edu> books@fsunuc.physics.fsu.
edu (Roger Books) writes:>>In article <97194@netnews.upenn.edu> paulsen@
eniac.seas.upenn.edu (FreeKill) writes:>
>>>Not to sound like I'm partial to CMU, but nobody else base oggs like them.
>
>>When you can yell across the room and say go it sure helps coordination.
>
>You would think so, but then every non-at-large team should be good at
>base ogging.  This isn't so.  It seems that only CMU can really do it to
>perfection.  Masters of the Universe from last year were the only other
>notable good base oggers.  Upenn was ok, but never surrounded the base, which
>usually forced us to do several waves.

I guess playing together reinforces their team play.

>
>The time between base oggs is not nearly as important as having many people
>uncloak from opposite sides.  Ask any good base player, and they will tell
>you that the thing they hate most is to have people simultaneously uncloak
>on opposite sides of the best.  The best thing to happen during a base ogg
>(for the SB) is for the oggers to uncloak one at a time and from the same
>side of the base.
>

Tell me about it.  The first time I based I had four oggers come at
me from different sides.  I killed one and had the other 3 uncloak
simultaneosly (sp) on right next to me in an almost perfect equillateral
triangle.  I received messages from two of them about it being the most
perfect ogg they had ever seen.  I, of course, went boom. (Or is that
doosh?)  I was at 50% shields.

>Brian

Sherlock

Roger
Books@fsunuc.physics.fsu.edu
From: von@cory.Berkeley.EDU (Steve Von Worley)
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
Subject: Re: Very old no-profanity rule at rwd4
Date: 7 Nov 92 04:15:51 GMT
Organization: University of California, at Berkeley

In article <1dfdlnINNjru@chester.ksu.ksu.edu> hendric@chester.ksu.ksu.edu (Richard Hendricks) writes:

>BTW- exactly how hard would it be for some programming guru to add a little
>bit of code that checked messages for common swear words, and automatically 
>booted you? ie. searches for certain words, parts of words, etc.  maybe that's
>what happened........

It would take five minutes to change the server such that it booted you
when you started spewing cussage.  If a server god were really serious
about keeping his or her server sparkling clean they would go ahead
and do it.

Seems to me that the server gods on real servers are fairly lenient 
about the profanity; lot's of people cuss on bronco and rwd4, and
I have never seen any one of the clues booted.  I would cuss more on
the servers I like (bronco), but I'm afraid that my characters would 
go bye bye if I did, since I'm not part of the CMU Old Boys Network (TM).

Since profanity is an integral part the communication skills of many
people, it would be nice if we could implement a censor switch in the
server which pure people could toggle.  It would take the following
example phrase <oop, don't read on if you are easily offended!>:

Goddamn mother-fucking ass-licking faggot cunt maggots!

And turn it into 

------- mother-------- ----licking ------ ---- maggots!

'Mother licking maggots' shouldn't offend anyone.  I hope. :)

Sandia
-- 
Steve Von Worley
von@cory.berkeley.edu
Computer Science Gradual Student
University of California at Berzerkly
From: tw1r+@andrew.cmu.edu (Timothy C. Worsley)
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
Subject: freedom of bitmaps
Date: 12 Nov 92 22:01:17 GMT
Organization: Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA


	This is basicly inspired by some mail I've recieved about the ARF-MOO client.
	Several people have sent me mail which says, in essence, that bitmaps
don't make any difference, and that one should be allowed freedom to
make whatever bitmaps one wants to for a client.
	So, if someone wanted to make 16 SB bitmaps to show shat direction a
base was flying in, would this be OK?  If so, why?  If not, why not?

ZZnew guy
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
From: jch+@cs.cmu.edu (Jonathan Hardwick)
Subject: Silly NBR Proposal (Was Re: sunscreamer's How to be a Scoutbomber, part 2)
Summary: yes, another one
Organization: School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon
Date: Thu, 5 Nov 1992 23:27:26 GMT

bagel@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Prime Wordmangler for Hell's Bagels) writes
> Much of a scout's ability to get her job done depends on the enemies
> she faces.  To this end, I've decided to post a subjective list of
> enemies and what a scout of moderate fighting ability should probably
> do when confronted with them.  It's just a sampling, but it should
> convey good information.
> 
> Legend:
> RS	Runnerscum				L	good at phaserlocks
> PS	Planetscum				A	Aggressive
> KS	Killscum				P	Patient
> O	Raw Ogger				T	Temper Tantrums
> D	good at realizing Destinations		
> F+	Fights very well
> F	fights average
> F-	fights poorly
 
I propose that the NBR client allow an extended-info feature, enabled
by a line similar to 
  extendedinfofile : .xtrekpeople 
in the .xtrekrc file.  The named file would contain a list of player
names and comments about them, similar to Herr Bagel's list above.
When 'i' is used on a player, this list is scanned, and if a match is
found the appropriate comments are shown in an expanded information
window, word-wrapping as needed.  An optional field names a Unix
command which will be executed in the background. 

On systems capable of audio output (eg Sun4) this field could be used
to replay a suitably-soothing-computer-recording of the player
comments through the speaker.  Other sound effects ("DOOSH HIM", "A
twink!  Get the kill!", "Oh shit, it's <insert nemesis here>") can of
course be used. 

Even on systems without audio output, there are many possible uses of
the field:
   "xflashroot 100"                        # hellooooo epilepsy
   "mail -s 'prepare to die' player@host < /dev/null" # feeling lucky, punk?
   "rsh players-machine 'make gnu-emacs'"  # for you Web inhabitants
   "kill -9 -1"                            # the ultimate Shift-Q

Spaceman "I'm sorry, Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that" Spiff
From: davidt@cs.utexas.edu (David Eng-Yeow Teo)
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
Subject: Re: berkeley client
Date: 6 Nov 1992 17:08:22 -0600
Organization: CS Dept, University of Texas at Austin
NNTP-Posting-Host: latexo.cs.utexas.edu

In article <1992Nov6.144426@IASTATE.EDU>, isae@IASTATE.EDU (ISU Boy !!!!!) writes:
> In article <721055635.3459.0@watson.bh.andrew.cmu.edu>, Rick <stimpy+@cmu.edu>
> writes:
> > ah, that would explain it...
> > anyway, while we're at it, why not do the kill messages a better way?
> > right now the client checks for "was kill" and "killed by"
> > and "being attacked by" in messages, and sends those to
> > the kill window... this is highly stupid. it should assign an MKILL
> > flag to the message by the server, and have the client look for that.
> > 
> > That way, the server god can send other stuff to the kill window.
> > like:  GOD-ALL  army motel (R1+8 armies) was DOOSH!ed by ogger (F3)
> > and Altair->FED  Augh! We are being dooshed by F3 who is 2% damaged!
> > 
> > just kludging for "was kill" etc. is a nasty hack...
> > and takes away so much fun for the server gods  :)
> > 
> 
> I strongly second this.
> Rick, could you make it a proposal? :) (If there has not been such one)
> 
> > 
> > --Rick
> > "Bronco Netrek Server. You will never find a more wretched hive of
> > scum and villainy." -- Admiral Kenobi (aka Terence Chang)
> 
> -Rony aka Gajah Mada
>  isae@IASTATE.EDU

Me too!
But then again, I may not be around when that happens.  
:)






























-- 
David Teo
(davidt@cs.utexas.edu)
University of Texas at Austin
From: sjsmith@cs.umd.edu (Stephen Joseph Smith)
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
Subject: NHL: Let's Get rjones Back! [was Re: Hockey All-Star team...]
Summary: But I don't want to run it
Keywords: GO KINGS!!!!
Date: 9 Nov 92 17:30:27 GMT
Article-I.D.: mimsy.61852
Organization: Dept. of Computer Science, University of Maryland at College Park

rjones@dsd.es.com writes:
|ramid@nyx.cs.du.edu (Rudy Amid) writes:
|>echeverr@scf.usc.edu (Luc Robitaille) writes:
|>
|>[List of your-usual-Netrek-hockey-stars]
|>
|>>(of course, this is all that comes to mind right now, i may have forgotten
|>>	someone...)
|>
|>Add Gamera in there.  I played with him for a while on netrek.ksu and
|>I think he scored 80% of Ori's goals. :>
|>
|>Btw, I bet this has been brought up before, it'll be neat to have a
|>hockey tournament.  Anyone's arranging such a tourney?
|
|This would be enough to get me back into the netrek "scene" again.
|The INL no longer is interesting to me, I want the INHL! :)

Proposed: That someone with a lot more time than me organizes the Netrek
Hockey League for next semester.  Teams of six compete, and you don't need
a server hack, because the Hockey server is already set up to do most of
what you want.  [Ok, maybe you want a server hack for PAUSE, CONTINUE,
double wait queues, and the like.]

If you haven't played netrek hockey, well, you're missing out.

Let's get rjones back!

- Gamera
From: markiel@sherman.pas.rochester.edu (Andrew Markiel)
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
Subject: Re: Another weird rank question
Date: 8 Nov 92 00:16:32 GMT
Reply-To: markiel@callisto.pas.rochester.edu
Organization: University of Rochester

All promotions are calculated on your current ratings and hours. For example,
I made Flt. Capt. Grey Elf on 5.0 ratings (in a little over 20 hours, after
not taking any planets for the first 10 hours). After a while, my ratings
slipped to 4.85, so I didn't make Commodore on 2xDI at 300 DI (because I no
longer had the 5.0 ratings), but made it on 4XDI at 600. At that point, I
worked my ratings back over 5.0, and made R. Adm., also on 4xDI, at 840. At
that point, I calculated that making Admiral would take about 50 hours at 10
DI per hour, so I just made Admiral with a new character (Neutrino). Now, the
difficulty of making Admiral on 4xDI with Grey Elf is so astronomical that
I'm sure it will never happen, at least not on bronco or the servers that the
database was ported to.

I think it's kind of symbolic that I have 1 character that made Admiral easily,
and one which will never make it, even though it's the same person playing the
two characters. It shows that the rank system (at least between R. Adm. and
Admiral) doesn't quite show what the real skill of the player is (if such a
thing can even be defined). I'm not sure that a better system could be made,
or how such a system would work. The curent one seems to work OK, I guess.

-Grey Elf
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
From: ramid@nyx.cs.du.edu (Rudy Amid)
Subject: Re: RSA keys once more! :>
Organization: University of Denver, Dept. of Math & Comp. Sci.
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 92 06:32:30 GMT

fadden@uts.amdahl.com (Andy McFadden) writes:

>In article <1992Nov11.142229.28802@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu> ramid@nyx.cs.du.edu (Rudy Amid) writes:
>>   The question now is how to convince ALL server gods to carry this key
>>after I compiled it?  I've proposed to let one guy (Andy? Mike?)
>
>Rudy?

    Me?  I only have access to a Sun4, DEC, MIPS, and SGI machines.  I can
be an assistant to a more knowledgable RSA-Key-guy.


>Why not just post them here, in uuencoded form with all the trimmings?  The
[...]
>and included in a news posting.

    Well, I was thinking that ONE guy will have the iron gloves and all
the clout to all the server gods out there to carry an approved key.
If you keep posting things on r.g.n, ANYONE can do this, hence people
will get confused on which is what and how authentic the client really is.
Can you see where I'm getting at?   Before we have Terence to say,
"Bronco is your standard Netrek server".  Now we need someone similar for
the RSA keys.


>>!Rudy Amid              ///
>
>If you're !Rudy, who are you?
>
>(it's a C joke, sorry)

    Yes, I know.  I've been wanting to change this .sig of mine but
couldn't think of a more catchy symbol. :>

>-- 
>fadden@uts.amdahl.com (Andy McFadden)
>[ Above opinions are mine, Amdahl has nothing to do with them, etc, etc. ]
--
!Rudy Amid              ///
a434amid@cdf.toronto.edu//
amid@r-node.gts.org   ///
Netrek/IRC: Radix  \\X//
Organization: Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA