Our recent NPC Skilling Order for Imperials guide suggests Roidworm Hordes are ideally placed to take your Hit Accuracy from 42 up to about 55.

Some call them docile and harmless, but I have heard stories that they can explode when angered – causing tremendous damage to any pilots foolish enough to be in the vicinity.

Once dead, Roidworm Hordes take about 6 hours to respawn – within 2 or 3 tiles of the location indicated below.

Have you every wondered why some Player Starbases have a worker population of exactly 50,000 – while others have a population of exactly 50,083? Just what is so special about those numbers?

Every Starbase tick, a payment (marked as tax) is made to the Starbase coffers based upon the current number of Workers living there. For non-Core Starbases, this figure is calculated as 20% of the worker population.

The default setting for a Starbase population is 50,000 workers, requiring 100t of Water and 150t of Food per Starbase tick (every 3 hours) to maintain.

It appears that using the default of 50,000 population delivers nice round numbers (profit per Starbase tick):

50,000 workers + 100t Water + 150t Food = 10,000 credits

Why is it common to see 50,083?

Due to the impact of rounding numbers, the same 100t of Water and 150t of Food, can sustain 50,083 workers! With this slight increase in population comes an increased amount of tax revenue as well.

50,083 workers + 100t Water + 150t Food = 10,017 credits

Instead of 10,000 credits, a Starbase with 50,083 workers is paid 10,017 credits per Starbase tick. While 17 credits can’t buy very much, it equates to over 49,000 credits per year – for zero extra work or cost!

How high can you go?

Doubling the initial numbers that we used earlier allows the same observation…

100,000 workers + 200t Water + 300t Food = 20,000 credits

After some testing, it turns out that you can support a population of 100,083 Workers for the same upkeep costs:

100,083 workers + 200t Water + 300t Food = 20,017 credits

As before, exactly 17 credits extra profit is paid per tick which equates to over 49,000 credits per year.

In Conclusion

For doing nothing but changing a setting… once…

Setting the Worker Population to be 50,083 instead of leaving it at the default of 50,000 leads to an extra 49,000 credits per year.

It’s hard to understand why any Starbase Commander would deliberately overlook such an obvious money making opportunity!

So, we just had an amazing war. You spent the war as a trader watching massive first-wavers getting all the glory while you were stuck watching Skype chat. Now you’re ready to become a first-waver yourself. But, what’s the best way to do it? Should you buy a Dominator? A Hawk? Should you buy huge guns and start blasting?

Nope!

Step 1 to becoming a first waver is to unlock the BBB or Boa. To get to a BBB, you have to kill lots of stuff and should have around 40 maneuver once you’re there.

Ship Setup

Big Brown Box (BBB) with 5x organic armor and NO GUNS. Yes, NO GUNS.

From there you fly to Vaereth or another skilling nook and proceed to engage swarmlings over and over. Within a couple of weeks, you’ll be trading in skills for advanced skills!

The reason you want no lasers is that lasers actually damage the swarmlings while not gaining you any trade ins. So, you’re best off just taking lots of hits.

What to do with your first trade ins

Now that you’ve been fighting Swarmlings for a few weeks or more, you’ve traded in your engineering a couple of times and your manuever once and you can now buy your first advanced skill! Your first advanced skill should be offensive combat 1 (OC).

Why OC1? OC1 will make swarmlings hit you more often which will raise your engineering more quickly in fewer AP. Once you have OC1, you’ll pick up combat efficiency 4 next… From there, you’ll be on to defensive combat, agility boost, time bomb 1, ambush fall back, and weapons mastery…

Once you have most the advanced skills, you can bring your maneuver up to 85 and you’re now in shape to take on Military Outposts! Be warned, to takes most players 2+ years to get to the point of fighting military outposts. Many of us have played for longer and still can’t manage it!

In a recent article about Strip Mining I explained why it was considered such a bad thing to do.

There seems to be a lack of readily accessible detail about this aspect of Pardus, so I did a little research and come up with some information that I’m happy to share.

When Do Tiles Replenish?

Every day at 00:12 GMT, the tiles around the universe spontaneously replenish by an amount based on their current level (with the exception of the Exotic Matter tiles).

The amount they gain per day is roughly calculated as:

Gain = Floor(Current Level * 5.47% + 1.54)

Which can be used to graph the regeneration of a heavily mined tile…

You can also summarise how many days it takes to fully replenish tiles from varying starting levels:

• 10 days to grow from 285 -> 500
• 20 days to grow from 160 -> 500
• 30 days to grow from 87 -> 500
• 40 days to grow from 45 -> 500
• 50 days to grow from 20 -> 500
• 60 days to grow from 3 -> 500

And that pretty much concludes tile regeneration!

The Global News Network supplies regular updates on the events happening around the universe.

After a while the older news entries are replaced by reports of new events. If you have Premium access, you are able to download a limited number of previous news entries in a file. If you are not Premium, then there is no way that you can look back at past news entries in Pardus.

The Global News Network publishes a feed of many of it’s news reports to Twitter – saving them from being lost completely. Twitter provides access for the last 3,200 Twitter posts for each feed – providing you access to a little over 1 month of previous reports.

Snap Bird (link to the Artemis Feed Search) is one of several different tools that allow you to access and search Pardus Twitter feeds.

So now, if you missed it first time, you may still be able to find that elusive message hiding in Twitter.

When you are participating in a military operation (OP) in Pardus, it is very important to follow the directions of the OP Leader (and to remain quiet as you listen for directions or watch for a message etc).

It is also important that you follow precisely any mapped route that is provided to you (usually in the lead up to the OP).

A pilot acting as a “Breaker” will have travelled this exact route moments before you move – ensuring the route is safe and there are no Time Bombs or ambushes waiting to create trouble as you pass over them.

Travelling as a large group is sometimes referred to as “Follow the Leader” and it is very easy skill to learn.

Follow The Leader

If this is your first time travelling in a large group, a little practice and a few simple rules that everyone can understand will help to ensure your safety (and those travelling with you).

Rule One – Once the “Leader/Breaker” is moving, nobody is allowed to click on them. This may hide them from the view of other pilots and lead to confusion.

Rule Two – When travelling a mapped route, everyone should click just one tile ahead of them at a time – not multiple tiles. This will make it less likely that someone will click off the safe route.

Each pilot should aim to maintain a steady pace of clicking that suits their own response times.

Pilots will experience different amounts of “lag” as they travel along a route which will eventually cause some pilots to move ahead and some to fall behind a little (see the image at the top of the page).

A slower pace is much safer than fast “panic clicks” as you try to catch up. It is too easy to stray off the mapped route that way.

Try with using a 1 second delay between each tile that you click to. If you experience “lag” or start to get slow/erratic responses through the browser, increase the delay between each tile click to slow down your pace a little.

Rule Three – When travelling through uncharted territory without a mapped route, each pilot should aim to keep the “Leader/Breaker” on their navigation screen at all times. This may require the “Leader/Breaker” slow down his pace to accommodate the slowest pilot. He may need call out building names as he travels successfully under each one – so you need to be paying attention at all times.

Clear directions and concise communication is required from the “Leader/Breaker” – and each pilot needs to ensure they reciprocate and can understand what is happening at all times.

Rule Four – Remaining calm is the key to success when travelling as a large group (with a mapped route, or not).

If you can keep a regular steady pace as you click tiles (and discipline yourself to travel only 1 tile at a time on a mapped route), you will be less tense, more focussed and less likely to click the wrong tile (and possibly end up dead).

Practice makes perfect

You can practice travelling a mapped route yourself – and you should be comfortable with doing so before your first big OP.

If you can find other pilots willing to practise with you, take turns as the Leader as you follow one another through different sectors. This exercise requires discipline from the Leader as much as those following… and practise makes perfect in this case.

Remember the rules

• Don’t click on the Leader
• Click just one tile ahead of you at a time
• Keep the Leader in view at all times
• The Leader needs to keep you in view too
• Only click the tiles that have been clicked by the Leader

Make sure you steer well clear of any danger zones as you practise… and enjoy being part of a team working to a common goal!

Everyone has their own understanding of the various jargon terms used in Pardus – the Pardus Manual even has a section on Abbreviations used frequently by players.

The term “scrap” is used in Pardus to refer to the removal or destruction of Weapons or Special Equipment currently installed in your ship.

You scrap an item by clicking the “(scrap)” link beside any weapon or special equipment when in the Ship tab of the Overview page. You are prompted with the typical “Are you sure…” message and if you continue the item will be removed from your ship. It will be scrapped.

Note that you do not get any money back if you scrap an item in this fashion.

A Scrap Economy

Another use of the term “scrap” is in reference to a “Scrap Economy” (see the article on 140Mw Particle Laser – A Scrap Economy).

In this instance, it refers to an economy that is set up exclusively to allow buying a item of equipment from a player starbase with the express purpose of selling it right back again to realise an immediate profit.

How Does That Work Then?

A starbase owner can set the price he sells equipment and ships to whatever he likes (including selling them for nothing) but has no control over the price that a pilot can sell something back for – this is set by the Pardus game (and is documented in the Pardus Manual).

This is less of a problem than it may seem… when you sell something back to a player starbase, it is paid for by the Pardus game (not the starbase) and as a consequence it is not available again for sale.

If a starbase owner has a 140Mw Particle Laser available for sale at 695,000 credits, a pilot can buy it and then sell it right away for the game price of 700,000 credits – netting 5,000 credits profit right away. An economy that is set up to support this kind of activity is referred to as a “Scrap Economy”.

As an aside, 140Mw Particle Lasers are not the only item that can be used as the basis for a Scrap Economy. In the Union Faction it is viable to do this with the Key of Sheppard (especially when close to a source of Exotic Matter) as well as some of the specialist faction shields (Q-Huge Shield Generator, L-Huge Shield Generator and LQ-Huge Shield Generator).

One final note, these Scrap Economies all require a high ranked pilot who is able to buy (and then sell) the items being produced.

Since it’s recent introduction, several solutions have been attempted in an effort to reduce the impact that the Credit Hack is having on pilots everywhere.

In summary, you can have your onboard ship computer hacked as part of an ambush set by an enemy pilot. This hacking process results in 5% (or 10% if the attacker has a Hackotron installed) of your turnover being stolen directly from you for each round of combat that is part of the ambush.

The Pardus Manual explains that:

Turnover refers to all credit income, including all earnings and rewards, as well as all payments and transactions made to a person (or their starbase).

A pilot who is skilling (not trading) with a couple of buildings might see their weekly turnover sit at around 300,000. A starbase owner managing a small sector might see their turnover sit at around 1,400,000. An active trader stocking buildings across multiple sectors may see their turnover hover at around 3,000,000 (or more). It really can fluctuate a lot.

How to lose your money quickly

Under normal circumstances, a pilot carrying 1,000,000 credits on their ship and with a 300,000 credit turnover, will lose 15,000 credits per round they are caught in a credit hack ambush.

A typical 20 round ambush could therefore see up to 300,000 credits lost to the attacking pirate in a single ambush! The pirate could even hit back right away and attempt another round of credit hacks – potentially leading to further losses (until eventually you are killed or your ship computer shuts down to prevent further losses).

It can take only moments for you to lose a significant amount of the credits that you spent days trading for!

How can you prevent being credit hacked?

Unless you decide to sit on a Planet or Starbase and never leave – there will always be a risk that some pirate will credit hack you in an ambush.

One suggestion is to maintain a very low turnover – since you will only have 5% of turnover per round stolen from you. It’s very very difficult to manage your turnover and still function as a trader in a regular economy.

The most effective solution is to ensure you travel with very little cash on you at any one time. This used to be easier when you could make an unlimited number of deposits to your Alliance Funds – but this was restricted to once every 7 days shortly after credit hacking was introduced.

Until now, pilots have been utilising the Bounty system to reduce their credits temporarily when they have need of travelling. It works like this:

On a planet or starbase, for a cost of 100 APs, you can queue a bounty on another pilot (a reward for killing them or for destroying a building of theirs). You choose how much you want to place in the bounty, and then this money is immediately taken from you by the bounty system and set aside (to be given to the pilot who successfully collects the bounty).

At this stage you can wander around with the knowledge that the bounty system is looking after your money for you and remains safe. Even if you have a very high turnover and are caught in a credit hack ambush – that money remains safe and out of harms way.

There is a wait of 24 hours until the bounty you queued is then announced and becomes active. Until the bounty becomes active, you can cancel it and nobody would ever know you had queued it in the first place. if you cancel it after it has gone active, there is a GNN news entry announcing you have withdrawn the bounty. Either way, you can cancel the bounty you placed and the money is immediately returned to you again.

So for a cost of 100 APs this has been an effective solution to the credit hack.

While it still works, you will now find that your turnover is increased every time you withdraw a bounty you had placed (since that is considered to be a form of income and is now included in the calculation of turnover). While this is not necessarily a huge problem, it means that you may be targetted by pirates specifically hoping to snag a large amount of credits from you (5% of your turnover per round).

Just something to be aware of if you are watching your turnover.

When you are in negative APs you can’t move your ship, nor do any activity that requires the use of APs. Obviously this is not something that you want to plan on having happen to you – especially when you are not on a planet or starbase!

Hopefully you don’t find yourself with negative Action Points (APs) very often. Most of the time would be when you are killed with less than 1,000 APs (since you immediately lose 1,000 APs when killed). Even then, you are safely logged out at your Homeworld and can recieve no further damage.
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Your local MClass planet is suffering high Food prices (making your upkeep costs spiral out of control). You don’t want to let your worker population drop below 30,000 (since you’ll lose a Pylon and the buildings on them).

What can you do to reduce the burden on the MClass planet while you help to get the planet prices and population back on track?

The short answer is to starve the starbase of Food until it’s population drops to a little over 30,000 and then return to feeding it again until the population is restored.

The long answer (and explaination as to why) follows…
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