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!

A recent update allowed pilots to be able to restrict access to services and facilities of their Faction by declaring Faction Outlaws. Pilots become outlawed in a Faction if enough players in the Faction’s command structure (rank 10 or above) hold a grudge against them (and keep them on their foe-lists while remaining active themselves).

Hopefully this recent feature is not something you will experience first-hand!

Should you become an Outlaw – it is much like the experience of having reputation of less than -7500.

When Outlawed at a Faction Planet or Starbase:

• you can’t use the repair facilities
• you have no protection there
• you are not able to trade

You can however pick up and complete Faction missions as well as buy and sell equipment.

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.
Read the rest of this entry…

The Pardus Manual describes faction smelters as being heavily defended, and having huge production and capacity.

Using the information from the welcome message when you enter the building, and the formula from the Reference section in the Pardus Manual, they are in fact level 20 buildings.

Xbl Cod Champ presents some very well written advice on how Traders can maximise their profits while managing a sector with others…

The Prisoner’s Dilemma

This is a classic game theory example that I think applies pretty well to some of the issues our traders have mentioned to me. Some of it has nothing to do with our alliance – but occasionally it does and I would just like to mention it for reference.

In the prisoner’s dilemma you have two people both accused of a crime in which they were accomplices (two traders working the same area). There is not enough proof to convict them without a confession from one or both. If the first one gives up information on the other guy, and the second keeps his mouth shut the first one gets to go free while completely screwing his friend (if you trade mass amounts of high ends to a planet – you get a really nice temporary gain while screwing over everyone else). If both of the prisoners offer information on the other they get to split the total jail time (marginal profits for both people – basically breaking even). But if both prisoners keep quiet the police cannot give them more than a minor sentence and they both get out in no time at all (if you only stock the planet with exactly what it uses each tick – and no more everyone wins).

For pardus the total profit we get to make from the planets and NPC starbases we are around is much higher if we only give it exactly what it wants and nothing more of the high ends. It means at that exact moment you do not get the most profit possible – but it is not that much less really and means you do not screw over your fellow traders.

Let’s be the kind of traders (prisoners) who work together and ensure everyone wins. This is surely a better practice than being known as a group of people looking only for the maximum benefit to themselves. It admittedly makes it easier for outsiders to come in and screw up our profits – and this will happen occasionally. But that does not mean we should do the same and ensure the others in our alliance besides the offender get consistently screwed out on profits from selling to the planet.

Thanks for reading through this and I hope it makes sense what I am attempting to say!

Xbl Cod Champ

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…
Read the rest of this entry…

Commanding a Starbase doesn’t end once you have upgraded from a Trading Outpost. Failure to keep the worker population supplied with Food and Water will cause them to leave.

The Pardus Manual explains that:

If the population ever drops below 500 workers, the Starbase downgrades back to a Trade Outpost, losing all structures and stored commodities in the process.

The loss of a Starbase can equate to a significant amount of credits – not to mention all the APs that you spent building it up in the first place!

It takes about 26 days to nurse a starbase to 50,000 workers… yet it takes only 11 days for it to revert back to a Trading Outpost if no upkeep is met!

Starbase Population Milestones

A newly constructed Starbase begins at Stage 1 with 1,000 workers, and as the population increases, various milestones are triggered:
Read the rest of this entry…

The main issue I had with the economy articles is the fact it seems to be based on a large sector with asteroid fields and plenty of space. Nothing wrong with that, but I’ve been looking primarily at pass sectors, and to me those tend to have a hard time staying at 30k (for the black market) and don’t have any asteroid fields nearby. Maybe I’m looking at the wrong sectors, but if the SB isn’t populated at 30K, you can’t have 16 building slots. Also if the ore isn’t nearby, your forced to import the stuff. That just raises the cost of building the scrap parts.

Also, those SB should have a more natural defense posture. If they rely on the MO’s defense before they build their HDAs, they won’t have but maybe a SDA if they are lucky, and could quite possibly be hit before they get any additional defenses up.

Most of them are two sectors away from a planet. Some are one, but those planets tend to be Class I. Thus they are still short of a good food supply.

I haven’t found a good solution to this ‘problem’. And to be honest I’m starting to question the purpose of those SBs. If they don’t have a good economy around them, they tend to fight to stay alive (or at least mine did).

At the same time, isn’t the front lines where you want your weapons? That way they are readily accessible for combat.

Anyways, enough rambling.

Thanks,
Camper

Rylar’s Response:
This post by Camper is exactly why you should never develop any system that is not connected to a Class M planet, within 3 sectors of Exotic Matter, and near a player starbase.