HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: tom@soda.berkeley.edu (Tom Holub)
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
Subject: Re: movement of armies
Date: 29 Jul 1992 03:16:22 GMT
Organization: U.C. Berkeley, CS Undergraduate Association
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: soda.berkeley.edu

In article <154m74INN7fu@network.ucsd.edu> earharta@sdsc.edu writes:
)
)As a general rule, how protected/unprotected should planets
)be left?  If you take too many armies away from planets you
)leave them open for taking-over.

No; if you leave too many armies *on* planets you make the planets
easier to take, because if you take the armies off, they will have to 
drop 4 to neutralize it, and if you leave the armies there, they might
bomb it down to 1 or 2.

The best place to put armies is on enemy planets.  Ferrying armies to
the homeworld is useful only in last-planet situations where you're hoping
to gather enough armies to take an AGRI or something.  A base is a better
place to put armies (unless there are a lot of dooshers on the other team)
than any friendly planet.

I was in a game the other day where someone was trying to convince me
that we should pile more armies on our AGRI because then it would 
produce faster.  Sigh.
 -Mojo
From: petonak@chem.psu.edu (Paul Petonak)
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
Subject: Re: Clue Game Stats
Date: 30 Jul 92 17:31:55 GMT

01:05:24 bogosity.chem.psu.edu 200 xmit 198 recv 1% rtt= 69/84/243

I am not an engineering or cs person (MCB and Chem, eeeeekkk!). Could
someone explain what this means in lay mans terms and how I might go
about checking it if I wanted to.


I agree. The lag, for the most part, not that bad. However, I assume this
check (mine seemed to be pretty good) is not an average. At a couple of points
in the night (one during a critical planet defense) I was losing things like
crazy. For three consecutive torp streams I got 4,1,2 out. It was very weird.
Everything seemed smooth but and some points, like i said, I really started
losing stuff I was sending. Torps streams, phasors, warp changes, etc. Could
this be something local? I have been experiencing to on bronco as well. It is
a fairly recent problem; I have never had great lose like this before.

Waiting for opinions.


Paul
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
From: terence@bronco.ece.cmu.edu (Terence Chang)
Subject: Top 10 uses I've found for HunterKiller
Organization: Carnegie Mellon University
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1992 19:38:54 GMT

[ By the way, any one championing the cause of The Lesser Team should
focus on all those non-bronco-based servers that allow 9 on 7 games. ]

10. Pointer to distant enemy ships that are off my galactic map.
 9. Third/fourth space scum hassler.
 8. Free kill.
 7. When wounded, planet defender.
 6. When not wounded, planet clearer.
 5. "Teammate by my home planet shooting at me" remover. ("Shoot
    *this*, bud.")
 4. Pizza scum remover.
 3. Wake up call for the enemy starbase.
 2. Somebody to chase the "useless teammate scout bombing deep space
    planets the enemy hasn't gone near in hours because they can get
    all the armies they want from their own quadrant".

.
. <drumroll>
.

1. Topic for the dominant thread in rec.games.netrek -- one year, two
   months, and six days after its implementation.

Terence
-- 
"People who get nostalgic      |  Terence Chang:
 about childhood were          |    e-mail: terence@bronco.ece.cmu.edu
 obviously never children."    |            or an acceptable facsimile thereof
       -- "Calvin and Hobbes"  |            (subject to change w/o notice)
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
From: jrw27953@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Jon W.)
Subject: Re: Doorstop address
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1992 04:58:49 GMT

As long as we're all guruing (every noun can be verbed), I thought I'd give the
true return address for the poster, which can only be

mlm@tardis.cl.msu.edu

*Server:  garcon.cso.uiuc.edu
*Address:  128.174.5.58
*
*Non-authoritative answer:
*Name:    tardis.cl.msu.edu
*Address:  35.8.1.33

----Jon W.

Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
From: fortony@sonne.cso.uiuc.edu
Subject: Re: Doorstop address
Originator: fortony@murphy
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1992 05:02:53 GMT

amrk@troi.cc.rochester.edu (Andrew Markiel) writes:

>In article <1992Jul22.143908.2673@beach.csulb.edu> kumeda@beach.csulb.edu (ANDY KUMEDA) writes:
>>
>>Whatever happened to name servers and /etc/resolv.conf?!?  

>Darn good question. Gee, I'm learning more about this system stuff everyday.
>For some reason, our resolver doesn't seem to be working right...I'll have to
>look into it.

See?  Who said netrek wasn't educational?  Anyway, if you're running
SUN boxes, ask your school's network admin what some good name servers
are, jam them in /etc/resolv.conf, and remake your hosts ypmap in your
nis server's /var/yp after commenting IN the B=-b in /var/yp/Makefile.

Or just shake some chickens over your keyboard. 

>By the way, I'm using the standard bronco/UDP client, ftp'ed from pittslug.
>I'd assume this was compiled to resolve names properly, but I don't know.

Mine seems to work, so unless I've somehow been graced by the divine glory
of the gods (*again*, don't you hate that), try the above stuff.  Especially
the chickens.

>-Grey Elf

sunscreamer
(theoretically a sun systems administrator, and no, that's not where
I got the name)
-- 
a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
Felix Sebastian Ortony	fortony@murphy.gis.uiuc.edu
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
From: amrk@troi.cc.rochester.edu (Andrew Markiel)
Subject: Re: Doorstop address
Organization: University of Rochester (Rochester, NY)
Date: Tue, 21 Jul 92 22:41:50 GMT

Well spoken, o Angry Man.

may I add that you can also get the IP addresses of netrek servers from
the server-list, which is frequently posted on this very bboard. If you
can't find it, you can get the latest version via anonymous ftp from jch's
netrek archive, which is at
128.2.206.167

Which brings to mind, jch, maybe you should put the IP address of your
netrek archive in your signature, for reference.

-Grey Elf

P.S. If you're wondering why we need the IP numbers, it's because some of
us have systems whose /etc/hosts only include a small number of local machines,
and so names of remote hosts are simply not defined. I suppose I'll install
an improved version of /etc/hosts here someday, but probably not until I get
really fed up with 'unknown host'.
From: josh@cqs.washington.edu (Josh Hayes)
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
Subject: Re: Doorstop address
Date: 21 Jul 92 21:32:07 GMT
Article-I.D.: mowgli.josh.711754327
Organization: University of Washington

mlm@tardis.msu.edu (Michelle L. Morin) writes:

>I must have missed the statement which defined what the numeric address
>of doorstop.design.iastate.edu is.   My version of xtrek.exe will only
>accept the numeric version.

Michelle's and my machine are not on speaking terms, so here's
the results of a quick nslookup:

Non-authoritative answer:
Name:		pv0806.vincent.iastate.edu
Address:	129.186.8.6
Aliases:	doorstop.design.iastate.edu

It has its fun aspects, but the damn DD cooling rate is still
too low. Bleah. I'm already addicted to warp 7 with no etemp.

doctor

--
Josh Hayes, Quantitative Sciences HR-20 U of Washington
josh@mowgli.cqs.washington.edu             206 685-2793
Exclaimer: Hey!           Plan: Birth School Work Death
From: rw2g+@andrew.cmu.edu (Richard Weinstein)
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
Subject: Re: SB vs 6 Captains
Date: 23 Jul 92 05:18:40 GMT
Organization: Freshman, Math/Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA

Words from the victim:

Actually, I didn't feel I was playing that well, but was still surviving
most of their waves. In fact, I survived all of their waves. Twice I
was killed by a lone survivor of the wave who would slow to warp 0 and
snipe me while pulling me off the repair planet. I couln't do much 
about it because you can't kill 6 people in under 10 seconds without
weapon temping. And once I was killed on the way to vega because
they wouldn't wait. I survived the first wave, but couldn't get to the
repair planet in time for the next wave.

In general, they did a pretty good job of ogging. They would uncloak
together mostly, which is the most crutial part of base ogging. You can't
kill two people at once who uncloak together at different angles. So, it 
was a little too good an ogg anyway. I don't think you're going to get
a non-cluefull ogg by asking for it on the newsgroup. You'll get at least
one wise captain who tells his team to uncloak together and go in at 
different angles and organizes them in general.


now, for the whining, excuses, laying the blame, denying the facts, etc...

Excerpts from rec.games.netrek: 22-Jul-92 Re: SB vs 6 Captains 
William Thang Katz@mtaac (1962)

# Second, we iced him consistently in two waves or less.  If it took 2
# waves,
# only 2 of the oggers were needed before he went BOOM.  

I flatly deny this. The second wave killed me ONCE, when I said "wait til
I get to vega" and the first wave went after me anyway. I was halfway to
veg, so was hosed. Had to get all the way there before I could repair.
Other than that, I never died in the middle of a wave. I never got killed
by the first wave ever. As I said, I died twice from a lone straggler from 
the second wave while wtemped.

Also, it pissed me off at the time that the stragglers would kill me,
but looking back I guess it's only fair. I didn't kill them. Also, with
only 7 or 8 people in the game, moriarty was very fast paced. That favors
the oggers. I need to get Bert to slow down the ticks per second.  :)

I'd like to plead lag, but I had none. Despite the ugly rumors of moriarty
being lag central station, I've never had a problem there, except when the
cs gateway was hosed.

Anyway, Rob has thrown down the gauntlet, and he's a much better base 
than me. But actually, he doesn't play a base much anymore so he's not
in top Spaceace form. I wish Craig were around, he'd put you uppity
captains back in your place.  :)

--Rick

Ensign Unkillable SB   (moriarty)
soon-to-be-discovery-Admiral-and-worried-about-the-database-merge-because-
my-ratings-on-bronco-suck-so-I'm-quad-DI-Commodore Videodrome
From: paulsen@stipple.seas.upenn.edu (Brian C. Paulsen)
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
Subject: Re: SB vs 6 Captains
Date: 25 Jul 92 04:52:55 GMT
Organization: University of Pennsylvania

Personally, when I heard this stupid argument, I thought that it originally
meant that 6 oggers wouldn't be able to kill Balton in a REAL game.  This, I
don't think can be done, because the offense wouldn't have the time to
surround him before he figured out what was up.

Now, if the oggers have unlimited time to set up the ogg, then I think ANY
base is going to die on the second ogg.  You would have to find some crummy
oggers in order for this not to happen.  Regardless of who the oggers are,
I think it would still take two waves.

Again, I've seen the best oggers go at not the best bases and still take 2
waves.  These oggs were picture-perfect.  People were popping up right next
to the base, unloading torps, and dying near the base.  I was always stunned
that the base survived.

Brian
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
From: amrk@troi.cc.rochester.edu (Andrew Markiel)
Subject: Re: Golden Bears vs. Lagg U
Summary: Ways to deal with ghostbusting
Organization: University of Rochester (Rochester, NY)
Date: Tue, 21 Jul 92 05:09:40 GMT

What is the capability for the server to determine when a person has been
ghostbusted? If the server could say "gee, I haven't heard from player f in a
while, maybe he's ghostbusted", then you could have the server take automatic
action, freezing play until that player reconnected. You could install a
'timeout' feature, where play stops and both screens black out. Once the
server verified that all clients were properly reconnected, it could restart
play (probably with a ten second countdown, during which the local and galactic
would remap so you could see where you were about to go). I don't really see
how this could be particularly abused, especially if you blocked messages
(except to all) during the timeout. The only benifit you would gain from faking
a ghostbust is some breathing time, and perhaps exerting frustration on the
opposition. Doesn't sound very useful.

If the connection is properly clear, then it seems unlikely that such a feature
would trigger accidently; most people aren't going to sit around for 20 seconds
not doing anything.

Of course, this depends on how easy it is for the server to tell when the
connection to the client has been broken. How easy is it?

-Grey Elf

P.S. There is a high probablility I have no idea what I'm talking about.
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
From: hill@norman.VI.RI.CMU.EDU (Robert Hill)
Subject: Re: Fooling the into thinking you have a clue.
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 92 18:01:30 GMT
Organization: School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon


I'd rather fool poeple into thinking you don't have a clue.  It is much  
easier to pounce on the later :-).

Rob
aka Spaceace!
Organization: Freshman, Math/Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1992 03:12:15 -0400 
From: Richard Weinstein <rw2g+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Subject: Re: Clue Game Stats

Excerpts from rec.games.netrek: 30-Jul-92 Clue Game Stats 
Brick Verser@hobbes.ksu. (6362)

# Name         seconds kills losses planets armies
# 
# Cucumber Boy    3457    55     37       6    139

Wow, who is this guy? There was a guy named Tomato Boy with similarly awesome
stats in the last clue game. Is it the same person? I'd like to meet him.

--Rick

Admiral Cronus   (not Chronus, Rob. get your titans straight)
(next to the next to last Admiral)

Flt. Capt. George Bush     (it's just a joke, I don't support the guy)
From: jrichard@cs.ulowell.edu (John 'MacGyver' Richardson)
Subject: Re: On a lighter note
Organization: /usr/ug/1993/jrichard/.organization
Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1992 15:24:03 GMT

In article <YeRvZgq00aw5I8XVF_@andrew.cmu.edu> gc2n+@andrew.cmu.edu (Greg K Chung) writes:


   -2)  A mobile repair/refueling dock.  This one is probably a more reasonable
   -addition to netrek, something along the lines of the floating repair vessels
   -the navy uses.  Take an AS, reduce its troop capacity down to 6, give it the
   -fuel supply and repair capabilities of an SB, and give it the ability to allow
   -docking.  Also, only allow the ship to carry armies as a regular ship (one 
   -army per 0.5 kills).  A ship like this would add to the strategy, perhaps
   -allowing offensives to be sustained longer and to provide the extra support
   -where needed (possibly in a third space offensive or in a gap where there
   -are no repair or fuel planets).


I'd like to second this idea for a Next Big Server/Client release!  You could
stop 3rd race usage (and maybe make every race hostile to every other) with
this.  Maybe repair could be faster for ships that dock on the beast as well.


John 'MacGyver' Richardson |"sun dogs fire on the horizon        \ \   \
jrichard@cs.ulowell.edu    | meteor rain stars across the night   * *   \   /\
jrichard@duck.ulowell.edu  | ...the spark still flies                /\  * /  \
                           | reflected in another pair of eyes." /\ /  \/\/
                                                           ------  \   / / 


Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
From: fortony@sonne.cso.uiuc.edu
Subject: Re: Bronco and Rwd4
Originator: fortony@murphy
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Distribution: rec
Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1992 17:59:00 GMT

jerryw@cs.umd.edu (Jerry Wieber) writes:

>Yes, but will you get rid of those silly vector torps?  That's my chief
>objection to rwd4 -- the style of play is just too different to practice
>for INL.

Hear, hear.  I made the mistake of playing on rwd4 right before an
INL game and spent the first fifteen minutes trying the rwd4 scout
divebomb move to no avail.

>-Jerry  <Stress> <Dogmeat>  SINL: <Big Bird>


>P.S.  You CMU'ers don't need a server to be arrogant.  A local server
>just functions as a focal point -- like a bloated elephant, swelling in
>the sun, serves to attract jackals....

Oh, that's nice, very nice.

(you hear that, CMUers?  Ogg him instead!)
>-- 
>                                                           __________ 
> UUCP:     uunet!cs.umd.edu!jerryw   SPOKEN: Jerry Wieber  |/ `-.    | U of Md
> INTERNET: jerryw@cs.umd.edu                                     \_|.|-,  
>                                                                    ` - 
-- 
a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
Felix Sebastian Ortony	fortony@murphy.gis.uiuc.edu
From: rang@laputa.ics.uci.edu (Roger P. Ang)
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
Subject: Re: Why Rank at all?
Date: 23 Jul 92 23:49:31 GMT
Reply-To: rang@ics.uci.edu (Roger P. Ang)
Distribution: usa
Organization: Univ. of Calif., Irvine, Info. & Computer Sci. Dept.

In article <205W03jH3cPO00@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com> fadden@uts.amdahl.com (Andy McFadden) writes:
>In article <l691rcINNb0j@exodus.Eng.Sun.COM> bharat@shadow.Eng.Sun.COM writes:
>>What purpose does ranking really serve?

To make your player name sound spiffy ;-)

aka Captain Nemo                        Roger P. Ang (rang@laputa.ics.uci.edu)
Organization: Senior, Chemical Engineering, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1992 17:49:02 -0400 
From: Michael Reed <mr10+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Subject: Re: last night's bronco bonanza
	<Bs63qH.Cut@cs.psu.edu>

The Roms won, at about 4AM.

I played on both sides of this game, from 4PM-10PM, during which we
(the Feds) took Ald and Hyd, the Rom core agris, then decided to take
Orionspace as the alternative way of breaking the game open.  Now, I
hate 3rd-space scumming.  However, there are times, especially when
the opponents have 2 (or more) core agris, when I personally feel this
justified.  I was playing Wesley.

Besides, Stiletto took Lyr in Klispace so we had to reciprocate.  I
left to get dinner ~10 PM.

I rejoined the game as a rom ~11PM as Omnikat.  We *slowly* took
Orionspace back (Duck Dodgers was more than a pain, I'm sorry to say
:-) ), but Shem, in a truly amazing fit of logic,  took the Fed SB to
Orion and guarded the armies in Orionspace.  At which point, Exxon,
Stiletto, and I proceeded to take Fedspace.

Tom should take note that this is the only game in which I have ever
played (over 1000 hours), in which a team has owned both their space
and their opponent's space, while the opponents have owned thirdspace.
Yes, we took the entirety of Fedspace at one point, leaving the Fed
base at Orion, along with most of their planet takers.

Then we started to unwittingly and unwillingly trade Fedspace for
Orionspace, and got the genocide after ~40 hours of the same galaxy.
Omnikat finished with 27 planets in the short time (2 hrs) I played,
and he wasn't the primary planet scum^H^H^H^Htaker-- Stiletto was.
This tells you the hectic pace of the game.

Lestrade	lestrade+@cmu.edu	mr10+@andrew.cmu.edu
	"Perfect paranoia is perfect awareness."
Organization: Sophomore, Math/Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
Date: Sat, 25 Jul 1992 01:24:41 -0400 
From: "Joseph E. Beck" <jb8n+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Subject: Hell's Bagels versus Lagg U


It was an interesting planet setup.  Lagg U was away and got to choose
first so they took klings (which had KLI and POL as it's agris).  We
could choose rom and have SIR and ERI as its agris, or ori which had
POL and ARC as agris.  I wanted to be roms (at the urging of ZZ), but
my teamates all wanted to be orions so the game began and neither the
feds or the roms were involved (actually, ZZnew guy suggested I enter
ROM before the team hosed itself by choosing orion. He made some
comments about "eating their soul" but...).  

The initial bombing went pretty well for us, we had a bunch of
untouched planets and they were mostly flattened.  We weren't able to
use the advantage though as the game was even for the first few
minutes and they caught up on bombing.  Then we took mira and pli.
From this point on I don't think the klings ever held the entire line
again.  Most of the game revolved around trading PLI and LAL back and
forth.  At some point we were up by 4 planets, other times mira was
independant and they owned the rest of their line.  

With 20 minutes left the fight was over LAL and MIR.  They made a
bunch of attempts at MIRA and we traded it back and forth.  Then with
about 10 or 15 minutes left our SB advanced to LAL and guarded it for
the rest of the game.  There were a bunch of ogg pileups on MIR for
the last 10 minutes but we held it and won 12-8.

Lagg U mvp has to be Cookie Monster.  He may not have had the most
planets on their team (I'd be surprised if he didn't), but he was the
one who kept stopping our advance by retaking planets.  

Amusing moment:  One of our players was sitting next to me mentioned
that their base had been ogged.  I asked him, "what base?".  It lasted
less than 2 minutes.  Wow, some people are determined about ogging...
(nice job pizza :) 

	joe
	plain
From: amrk@troi.cc.rochester.edu (Andrew Markiel)
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
Subject: Re: Help - Keyboard Focus...
Date: 21 Jul 92 22:16:16 GMT
Organization: University of Rochester (Rochester, NY)

The problem you describe is the same as the one mentioned in the FAQ for
OpenWindows.
The problem is that netrek is not a "good little X program". From my man 
page for olwm:
FocusLenience " (boolean)"
If this is set to true, olwm
will not enforce the ICCCM requirement that windows must have the input hint
set in order to receive the input focus.  This option is useful if you run
clients that aren't ICCCM-compliant, like many X11R3-based clients.
Default value: false.

Apparently netrek does not comply with this requirement.

The fix is to add

<winmgrname>.FocusLenience: True
to the file .Xdefaults in your home directory, where <winmgrname> is the
name of the window manager you are using (for example, olwm, or OpenWindows).
Little known bug: on some systems if you don't end the file with a return,
then the last line won't be processed, so stick an extra return on the end.
If this doesn't work, try looking at the man page for your window manager and
it should say something about FocusLenience.

Tom, perhaps the FAQ should be updated to mention that there are several
window managers that have this problem, and just give the generic fix.

-Grey Elf
From: botelle@eniac.seas.upenn.edu (Justin Botelle)
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
Subject: Proposal RE requirement for SBs
Date: 29 Jul 92 02:30:54 GMT
Organization: University of Pennsylvania

I really hate not being able to take out an SB at a server, merely because
I haven't put in the 2-4 hours required to make Commander.  OK, I'm lazy,
but I don't feel like investing a few hours in a server that I may hate.

So, why not have any player of, say, Flt. Captain rank or higher, be able
to instantly but temporarily promote any player on his team to the rank
of Commander merely by sending him a message of PROMOTE or something
similar.  The rank would expire upon exit, or upon the same player sending
him a DEMOTE command.  

This would also be very useful if you are too valuable to base (i.e. ogging
in an LPS), but you really need to base, and there are very few candidates.
(The new base would not need to be that clueful).

What do you think?

Justin

(P.S.  Join the Iggy fan club.. it's free :)
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek