ADVANCED CABAL SCANNING AND REPORTING TIPS Hi, couple tips here.... 1st ill get into proper cabal hunting. then ill talk about how to self destruct with dignity.. By the author of: UUSTART1 UUSTART2 UUSHOOT1 Andrue Carr (the definative player of Ultimate Universe) ------------------------- I am assuming (as i seem to always) that you know at least how to move and survive in Ultimate Universe. If not you should read UUSTART1 and other handy tips that are geared more to your level of play. This is an informative set of hints on locating Cabal and making the most of the information you get. They are by no means the only way to work at Cabal hunting and are not meant to hold you from your own style, however, they have been very effective for me. Needed items: ------------- Basic scanning devices: (meant for safety reasons mostly) device# Reason for need ------- -------------------- 164 or 165 depends on cash flow 165 is cheaper but 164 is better, shows status of mines and fighter programming, also shows some dangerous things that may be in the sectors. If you go with 164 make sure you have some other device that has a blackhole detector in it. a #411 would fulfill that. and your gonna need a 411 anyway so you shouldnt worry. 411 has a couple things not in 164 or 165 and shows last ship in sector trails if your into following people around... watch out with trails, i use them as traps. Thats the basic scanning devices for safety needed.. its handy and safer to get a forward sensor array from sector 10 port and cram as many sensor devices in there as possible like: wire detector packs #170, device bay platform detectors #88 or better still a Nordic warriar pack #179 (and garth thought that was joke pack, hah very useful device), #114 hyperswap trigger detector, #332 navigator negator detector, #419 the space madness pack, dont forget to get an Infected port detector #363 which isnt included in the space maddness pack. There are a bunch others that you may want, depends on the cash you have. Also watch out on pack devices, garth plays games with them, he leave vital detectors out of certain packs like the infected port detector which isnt in the space madness pack. Its very important to read the descriptions of the packs you get, if it isnt listed, then the device isnt in there despite what the name of the pack is. Now onto more of what I'm here for this time: Cabal search & destroy! Devices needed to be effective: Device # What it does for you -------- -------------------- #176 The Fed pack allows you to report the cabal you find directly to the C.E.C.C. without moving from the sector your in currently. also gives you access to banking functions. #276 The gosub. Standard device that gives you quick access to fed strip if you initialize it in fed space you can return there quickly by using it. sometimes needed if you aquire a fine while scouting and need to pay it at port 10. #174 Phantom Warp viewer and scanner. Allows you to view Phantom warps. handy at locating cabal home Worlds. #175 ORM pack. Handy at looking and scanning down ORM links and moving via ORM connections which is btw how cabal do some of their moving. #102 Gate warp detector. Wicked useful for locating gate warps and possible connections to cabal home worlds, use a device #14 to travel through a gatewarp but use a device #113 to view it first! ------------------ MAIN THEORY: ------------ Cabal seal themselves off with plasma warps etc and are hard to locate. The Cabal packs move out via ORM links and leave trails behind them visible by mine clusters, phantom warps and infected ports. With the correct scanning devices and methods you can locate, report, and kill cabal for fun and profit. By using indirect detection or knowlege you can locate their home worlds and work on gaining access to and taking a cabal home world. BASIC STRATEGY: --------------- SCAN AND MOVE! Thats the important thing. Remember here, your on the offensive here and with that you have some risk involved. Always scan before you move, and dont move where your not safe to move. (did i forget to mention that you need some firepower? get a couple heavy particle beams #132 like about: 5 which would kill up to 100,000 cabal) A good scanning plan is what you need to develop as a habit, here is what i use usually: 1. I use the scanning function: SC which shows you directly if any cabal are visible in the connected sectors to you. 2. then i do a phantom warp scan if there are phantom warps. V;174 3. Then i would use my ORM pack to check the orm links... V;175;1 would give you a scan of the adjacent ORM link V;175;3 gives you a full ORM path scan... this is the best scan available really.... and i dont think garth knows how powerful this is or he would charge you a turn for each link scanned. (now that he has read this dont expect this to last into the next versions, exactly why i dont like to give this info out but ive used it long enough) 4. Then i do a full paused scan just to check for any deadly stuff out there with the: SP command. Thats a full blow down on scanning technique... The choices you make are based on the info recieved from the scans above. Info gotton from the scans above are these things: 0. Actual Cabal packs sitting there waiting for action! 1. Infected ports: only visible in the current sector. If you see an infected port signal: (blue flashing) ê (flashing blue nun, hah thats interesting) anyway, that tells you that probably a pack of Cabal have moved through the Current sector. this is a way of knowing basically where they are traveling around. 2. Low Fed mines and large Fed drones, this usually indicates that Cabal have attacked that sector. 3. Fed drones but no mines, sometimes that indicates that there was a fed take over of that sector and cabal were there like yesterday. 4. Cabal mines and no drones, probably a pack went through there or they dumped their mines directly off their planet... look for phantom links and if there are some try to blow the mines out of the sector with an attack drone coordinator #125. then go in there and check the phantom link with your viewer. I think garth has countered this but the home worlds used to dump their mines and no fighters on most of the links that were gated from the main home world... so if you found large mine clumps with no fighters it had a chance of being gated to a home world if you have ever gotten into a home world sector and scanned you would understand what i mean by this. I think he has corrected this. make sure you run a Gate warp detector on the sector when you get in there: device #102 and use a #113 to view the sector. 5. If you see any phantom warps move into the sector if its safe and view the phantom warp with #174 6. If you see any cabal when you do an ORM link scan particularly one with the 3 choice then you can use the ORM pack to move down the ORM links to the sector they are in by using the 1 choice of the ORM pack... always do your normal scanning technique described above as you go cuz you will probably find other things along the way. ---------------- HOW TO REPORT AND DESTROY: ------------------------- V;176;4;1 is a macro you can set to get to the report function then you just plug in the sector. a better function to lock in for a macro would be: V;176;4;1;%1;Q the %1 will then ask you for the sector as that is a "data requested variable" that you can use anywhere for generic input in a macro that asks for specific info when you need to enter it. V;176;4;3 can be used to aid in killing the cabal by having the feds send out an equal amount of drones as what you put up. so you get full credit but at only 1/2 the drone expendature. Of course you can always just do direct killing with your heavy particle beams... they kill about 20,000 although i think its actually a tiny bit less so always allow for some smaller amount of cabal in there.... if there are too many cabal in the sector to kill with your available fire power then use the kill macro above to destroy the amount you need to get it down to... so if there were 240,000 cabal in the sector and you had 5 heavy particle beams you would do something like this: V;176;4;1;%1;3;%1;75000;Q that would report the sector then send 75,000 drones there to wipe out 150,000 of the cabal leaving 90,000 for you to walk in and destroy with your particle beams... then you just use your normal scanning technique again and start over from there. With the above info you can effectivly raise your scan/move/report/kill ratio from what a "Normal player" or someone who hasnt read this file yet. I am sure you will find this useful! As usual i have probably left out a bunch of stuff that i do that i take for granted, however, i use common sense where possible so if you can follow the above info and apply it then im sure you can figure out what to do that i have forgotten to mention. INDIRECT INFO: -------------- There is some indirect info that is inherant with the above scanning that you can use other techniques to figure out. One thing is that for the most part sectors link to the sector above and the sector below. so like you should see this pattern: Sector: 1405 Warps lead to: 78-2401-1404-1406-2637-2700 so you should be able to move one sector up or down from your current spot. Now this changes with Entropy but the chances are greater that a sector that has no downlink or uplink has been sealed off for some reason from the one its not connected to... if there is no phantom warp it is probably one that started from the formation of the universe or else there are all 8 links in there and it wont show them anyway. but its useful to take a look at the unlinked sector so in the above example if you see something like this: Sector: 1405 Warps lead to: 78-2401-1404-1934-2637-2700 you should try to take a look at sector 1406, it may contain a cabal homeworld, another persons home planet, or some other point of interest. one way to do that is to use the Computer scan function... if it comes back and says: No available information, thats a good sign that some drones are in there but whos? well the next thing you can do is remove any fed drones from the sector by going to port 10 and using the request federation removal function and if it says that there wernt any fed drones that leads you to info that something else is in there... then you should get as close to the sector as possible and use an attack drone coordinator on it, send like 1 drone and follow the path to make sure it actually got in there before it was destroyed, if it didnt, move around a bit or scan the path it took to see what destroyed it... it was on its way to the sector but couldnt make it because something destroyed your drone.... if it gets there and is destroyed then it was either cabal or someone elses drones or mines that did it... the next thing to do would be to check the uplink from the sector you want to see. do a computer scan on the sector just above that one or below if its a downlink. so above you would scan sector 1407 and see if it connects to 1406. if you get no report keep trying to look up the chain till you find one that is safe to move to... then plasma or gatewarp to that sector and backtrack down till you get to the sector above it... if it doesnt link to the above sector then its probably sealed off pretty well... send a radio message to yourself to remind you of the sector and the info you have about it and go about your travels until you find some sector that is a phantom link to it or an ormlink to it. (I only suggest this because i was caught by doing the next info) If your feeling on top of the world cuz Warping is a mine setting, then you can plasma warp or gatewarp to the sector and see whats there, sometimes warp shielding will stop you so give up and remember the info as above. TACTICAL CABAL TRAPPING: ------------------------ Well another piece of info about Cabal is that they keep a "Hitlist." This hitlist is usually about 30 peices of info about sectors to keep pounding on. They tell eachother what the sectors are and where to go to start pounding it and the will keep this behavior up till they take the sector... its an ingenius cabal tactic and also an incredibly stupid one! Sure they use it to keep an attack going on you or the feds until they overcome. but in their mindlessness they forget that you can use this to your advantage both as a defense and as an offence against them. Defense purpose: By doing the next strategy you keep their hitlist pointing away from anything you hold dear like a planet or mine field. Offensive purpose: If you use the next strategy in a strip area you can draw the cabal in and know where they will hang out every day you log on. 2 Techniques: Randomity pattern, Strip mining pattern. Randomity pattern: What you want to do is draw the hitlist in on you in as many places as possible. As your moving around and you see cabal spots drop a mine and about 100 fighters and set them to kill cabal or others or whatever its not important... keep doing this in spots where there is port infection or places you found cabal and destroyed them. The Cabal will eventually find your stuff and put you on the hitlist, its a small price to pay to keep thier attention averted from your real stuff. a good macro for this is: D;1;1;Q;F;100;1;Q just keep plunking them down... make sure your moving randomly and not leaving a trail with this though as someone could track you via this way.... its kind of difficult to describe but keep your best tracking senses going while your out there and try to figure out a way to track yourself down by your actions and if you can then your too obvious. This is also good for creating a large spy file on you, the more you do the greater your spy file will be, if anyone can afford to pay for the info then what you do own that you wished didnt get into the spy record will be less discernable then if it was the only thing in the file. i also use it to get people to pay out cash for bad info on me... they will pay it every day to find my stuff but it is usually pretty useless info Strip Mining pattern: Go to a sector you know have cabal in it, plunk your fighters and mines down so they can see it. then you move up or down from the sector in a strip for about 30 sectors or so, if you cant get to the uplink or downlink sector use plasma or gate warps to make a straight path. then as you go up this strip you keep your 1 mine and 100 fighters deploying as you go... the cabal will see this and drop on it like flies to fly bait! all you do is move into the area each day, report and kill any existing cabal and replenish the field with new drones and mines... do this for a couple days and i guarantee that you will build up quite a Cabal following! instant daily money and hazzard pay... another thing you can do if you have lots of cash to burn is seal the strip off from others using plasma warps and isolator devices, and spy wards... the cabal wont care they will find it anyway but others may not see it as easily... this is a blatant thing and very obvious when it gets going cuz it gets reported to the newspaper and anyone moving around will likely find something like this.... its best to keep a randomity pattern going in addition to this if it breaks down. this thing also gets reported to the spy record.... so others reading that info will probably see whats up and take advantage of it. ---------------------- CONCLUSION: ---------- Well that was way more than i really wanted to put into this so im going to do another one on the self destruction with dignity later... Watch for other UUSTART files... ill keep these with the numbering system i have going for now it should be ok... i may change it in the future but ill put the info in the UUSTART9 packet on what i plan on doing. -------------------------------------- You may contact me via these means: Andrue Carr Box 473 West Tisbury, Ma 02575 hay, btw i could use some donations to keep my board going... if you feel inclined please make checks or money orders payable to the above info. Network addresses: Fido: 1:331/201 sl_net: 250:502/1294 ISGnet: 91:5/201 Acmenet: 400:508/201 BBS number: Over Board BBS (508)693-5344 14,400bps 8,n,1 24hrs I monitor these conferences: ISGnet: I_UU or ULTIMATE depending on the naming structure. Fido: TRADEWARS RIME: COMMON, TRADEWARS, SYSOP ACMENET: ACMECHAT SL_NET: SL_CHAT, 30PLUS, SL_SYSOP look for my other helpful Ultimate Universe files: UUSTART1.ARJ (beginning start/day stance to get a good start) UUSTART2.ARJ (Effective Planetary cash farming) UUSTART3.ARJ (This one) UUSHOOT1.ARJ (helpful installation trouble shooting) MAGIC NAMES FOR FREQ'ing: UU current shareware UU version UUAI the current AI package UUSTART all the UUSTART info files UUPACK all the files related to ULTIMATE UNIVERSE i have on my board, this includes 3'rd party utils etc that start with the UU naming convention. This will be rather large so watch out when you use it... i think currently its about 20 minutes at 14.4 I am willing to discuss any strategy as long as i am assured it wont get back to Garth Bigelow, he and i are competative players and i dont want him to find out what i can do. Drop me a line with any questions or comments and i will try to help you out somehow. Thanx Andrue Carr --- Over Board BBS (508)693-5344 Life support for the monkey!