Space Merchant Companion Tutorial

[LotuS]

Space Merchant Companion

Overview
I will start out by explaining what SMC is for anyone who doesent know.
Space Merchant Companion is a tool used by players and alliances to keep track of all the information in the game. It stores locations, ports, and warps. It can do instant intergalactic plot course, find trade routes and even has a complete ship and weapons list built in. It is a very powerful tool, unfortuneatly most people dont know how to make it work to its full potential. So I am making this SMC Guide to help better explain the function and capeability of SMC in a simple manner so anyone can understand it.

This Tutorial Covers
Instilling the program
Instilling pre-made maps
Making SMC maps
Finding Locations
Finding Traderoutes
Finding Potential Traderoutes
Ship & Weapon lists
Changing Sector Colors

Instilling the program
First thing you need to do is Download the Program. Goto http://lotus.smrealms.deto Download the latest version. When you click the link, Select where you want the .zip file to be saved. Your desktop is usually a pretty good choice. After it is downloaded, you have to open it. It is in a .zip folder and you can un-zip it with Winzip or Winrar. After you have done that, Run the installer. It does not matter where you install it. After this, open the directory where you jsut installed SMC, look for Smc.exe or the file with the big blue star for a icon. Double click and welcome to SMC.

Instilling pre-made maps
First thing you need are the map files. The 2 files you need are Game.ini and Sectors.smc . If someone sent you the maps, these files should be there. To install them, go into the directory where SMC is installed. Make sure SMC is closed. Create a new folder inside the directory, I usually name it the name of the game the maps are for. Then put Game.ini and Sectors.smc inside the folder you just made. Then re-open SMC, goto Game, and select open game universe. The maps you just installed should be there. They will not show up if SMC was open while you installed the maps.

Making SMC maps
First thing you have to do before is make the galaxy. Goto Game, and select 'New Game Universe', a screen will come up and you have to fill some information out. First you enter the game name, this is self explanatory. The Game ID is found after the game name on SMR, for example: Milliways(4), the ID is 4. Then you have the hardest part of creating a universe. You have to tell SMC the name of each galaxy, and its width and height. All galaxies to date have been square(same height and width). Make sure you count correctly and get all galaxy names exact. If you ever want to merge maps this is important. After this, click ok and your galaxy should be created. A folder will be created in your SMC directory conatining the Sectors.smc and Game.ini for this new universe.
The next and longest process is SMC mapping. The process of actually making the maps. In a nutshell, you have to click on every sector in the game, tell it if there is a location, and ports, what goods that port buys/sells. what sectors are adjascent to that sector. are there any warps, and where do they lead, any planets. everything. This process is no easy task its quite daunting to someone who has not done it before. You do this by double clicking the sector, or selecting the sector and pressing the pencil button. Pay attention to detail, you will be thankful later.


Finding Locations
For this to work you need to have a game universe open which requires maps. When the game is open, look in upper right for a finger button, click it and a screen pops up. scroll down a little and you will see some drop down menu's. Locations shows you shops, Items shows you individual things sold at shops. click the + and - signs to navigate through the menus for what you are looking for. a cool little feature in SMC is, if you select a certain sector before you click the finger button, all locations in the menu's tell you how far they are away from the sector you selected. This is very helpful in finding the colsest shop.

Finding Traderoutes
Again for this to work you have to have your maps open. goto the menu at the top of the program, select travel, on the pull down menu, select 'Find Traderoutes' a screenw ill appear. Select the galaxy you want to search in. and click find trade rouotes. A list of trade routes will apear below. they should look something like this.
1.39 Exp 80.11 $ - #95 (Machinery) - #96 (Computers) - Dist:7, - 7x6x 7x5x

Now im going to go over how to read this long line of jiberish. the 1.39 Exp is insignificant anymore. It was origionally a representation of the exp gained per turn used in origional SM. but the formula in SMR makes this # obsolete. only good for general quality, bigger = better exp. The 80.11 is the same way. obsolete. but again bigger = more money. #95 is the first port and machinery is the good sold there. #96 is the second port, and computers are sold there. Dist 7 means the ports are 7 sectors apart. 7x6x 7x5x means there is a 7x sell 6x buy 7xbuy and 5x sell. the *x represents the trade multiplier.

There are alot of filters you can apply to finding trade routes. You can specify which race of ports you want to show and not show, this helps when finding neutral routes and not all races have peace. you can also choose to show only certain goods, good if you want evil routes or good routes. you can also sory by best exp routes and best cash routes. very useful.


Finding Potential Traderoutes
This is one of the few things the majority of people do not know how to do. Being able to use smc to find possible trade routes. This is a million dollar secret that the big guys dont want ya to know. Basicly its a series of guesses and checks. going through your maps and finding possible routes, then checking it with your sector information tool. click on a sector with a port. Click the finger button, the sector information screen comes up. lets say your port you selected buy luxury items and sells narcotics. look through the pulldown menu's for ports that sell lux and buy narcotics(the oposite of your port). Look through the list until you find a port that matches for both goods, it tells you how far it is away, and also all ports between. Basicly you need to drop lux/narcs of all ports between those 2 ports by raiding them. This is only acomplished by ships, usually alot of them and is not easy. you have to check the ports from the 2nd port also. The best traderoutes are perfect routes. such as a 3x3x3x3 or 5x5x5x5 means a 5x sell and 5x buy on all goods on 2 ports that are 5 sectors apart. this is how you maximize exp gain, and the farther away ports are from eachother, the more money they will yield.

Ship & Weapon lists
This is a rather useful and simple built in part of SMC. A complete ship and weapons list. to access them, goto the encylopedia tab, and they are on the drop down menu.

Changing Sector Colors
This is a forgoten art that almost everyone has forgotten or never knew. The ability to change individual sectors to a different color. SMC supports 3 color varibles, cyan(default), red, and green. To change the color of a sector. SMC has to be closed. Go into the SMC directory, open up the Game.ini of the map you want to change, you will see a list of the galaxies and their dimensions. Scroll down to the bottom of the file, make a space after the last line, type the following.

[Marks]
1337=0
1338=1

This will change the color of sectors 1337 and 1338 to red and green. You can add as many sectors as you want. change the variable 1 or 2 to change colors to green or red.


The End
Hope this helps some people.

[Imhotep]

The 80.11 is the same way. obsolete. but again bigger = more money

Not necessarily. The best money you can make on 1 good for any route is if you buy it for 1x which is always the cheapest you can buy it for, then sell it for some higher x, say 6x. If you buy it for 6x and sell it for 6x, you have paid more at the buying end and will therefore make less....this is not accounted for in SMC. Also of note, neutral ports or ports where you do not have perfect relations make squat for cash. A 7x neutral narc sell makes you less than like a 4 or 5x racial narc sell.

So to sum up, ignore the money modifier all together.

[Hellman109]

There are two figures most ppl knopw to trade perfect at a neutral port, dont have em on me but something like .89 and 1.14, they goto ~5 decimal places though.

Neutral is infact better then another race wher eyou dont have 500 racial relations

[z-money]

yes immy knows these numbers. he told me once, a very long time ago, but my mind doesnt retain knowledge like it used to