Hand Outs to the New Players.

This is a place for Newbies to get help on anything they're not sure about. Don't be afraid to ask!
DarthNihilus
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Hand Outs to the New Players.

Post by DarthNihilus »

I send this to all Newbies when I first see them online.

Links:

MIRC ( Chat Client most players use. It is easy it is bug free it is free )

1) First download mIRC at http://www.mirc.com
2) Install it.
3) Run it
4) enter these 2 addresses in your Internet Browser address bar
irc://irc.VJTD3.com/SMR
irc://irc.VJTD3.com/NHA


MGU ( Merchants Guide to the Universe. Players use this to plot routes for trading. Also to find certain ships and weapons to buy and Special ship items. There is a earlier version called Space Merchants Companion that actually lets you pick and choose routes that MGU doesnt find it can really make a super route easier to find )

http://mgu.smrealms.de/downloads/MGU-v040-Setup.zip

http://lotus.smrealms.de/dl/smc.zip

Guide to using SMC

http://lotus.smrealms.de/index.php?page=smc

SMR Glossary

http://lotus.smrealms.de/index.php?page=glossary

Interactive Manual Written by Snake

http://manual.smrealms.de/
...... cursed be he that keepeth back his sword from blood.
DarthNihilus
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Post by DarthNihilus »

Newbie Help Alliance Banking Lesson

Banking, Lurkers and Alliance Accounts Lesson:

You have just gotten done with your trading for the day and you have a load of money on you. You are getting ready to go back to the safty of Federal Protection but you decide to stop off at the bank first. As soon as you get there you see a RED Attack warning in your upper right corner ( Above Your Name ). Next thing you know you are in a escape pod on your way back to your Racial Galaxies headquarters.

"What happened," you are probally saying to yourself.

On the Current Players List (CPL) when you are making money and getting Experience you get a green arrow going up next to your experience numbers. Other players can see this arrow also. Hunters will "lurk" off the CPL watching for those arrows.

You can check for Lurkers from the CPL easily:

At the above of the Current Players List you can see something like this:

** There are 16 players who have accessed the server in the last 10 minutes. A few of them were moving so your ship computer was able to intercept 12 transmissions. The traders listed in italics are still ranked as Newbie or Beginner. **

The above means that there is 4 lurkers not currently moving about in the game or otherwise known as "LURKING". A check for recent kills ( Read News ) will inform you if a hunter has been online in the last hour. If there was one he or she is most likely still around watching the CPL. Most hunters have a list of where you all park at night ( So switch it up a tad to throw them off), of course a Vet can not see you parked in racial galaxies if you are a newbie or a beginner. Or they also have a general idea of what ports you would be using for your trading.

The hunter then when he sees your experience arrow disappear makes a beeline for the bank you would most likely to be using ( The closest Bank between your most likely route and Fed ). He then waits for you to show up at the bank one sector away from the bank where he can see you on his Local Map. When you show up at the bank he drops down ( or comes up from below ) and starts firing his weapons upon your ship. End result is you are in a pod and he has your hard earned money.

How do I stop this from happening? You may be asking yourself.


It is very simple. When you get done trading and you have that load of cash on you. Get to Fed fast. Make sure you sell your weapons and make sure if you are evil aligned that you have no illegal trade goods on board your ship. You also want to make sure you have a low amount of drones to. Drones can and will put you over the federal limits for safty at FED. To check if you are safe in Fed click your trader link located on your left handed side and read your Protection Message.

ALSO GET SCANNERS AND USE YOUR LOCAL MAP

ALLIANCE BANKING:

At the bottom of your alliance Bank Account Statement is a button that says View Bank Report. Click That. Next you would see a breakdown of your allaince account. Above the Account User Break Down is a button that says Send Report to Alliance. Click That.

What you just did is you sent a updated list of the Alliance Account Balance to the Alliance Message Board. This is very usefull to your team mates. A member of your team before making a run to the bank would check this report from the message Board to see if there was enough in the account to do what he needs to do. ( be it reshiping, buying mines to help secure your teams galaxy, and/or Arming up )
...... cursed be he that keepeth back his sword from blood.
DarthNihilus
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Post by DarthNihilus »

knight had a very good question so I thought I would post the answer also in a Alliance Message:

knight asked me about Federal Protection

Answer:
If you have illegal goods on your ship then you are not protected by FED. Or if your attack rating is higher than the limit then you will not be safe.

The Following is from http://lotus.smrealms.de/?page=protection:

In SMR, there are only 2 types of absolute protection: Newbie protection and Federal protection. Newbie turns (Green Turns) will protect you no matter what. One of the biggest mistakes a new player can make is dropping their 500 turns worth of newbie protection. During newbie protection nothing can harm you so you can trade just about anywhere. But remember that when you use your last newbie turn you are vulnerable. If you die, you get 100 newbie turns, but you also lose your ship, any cash you had on you, and 1/4 to 1/3 of your experience.

The other type of absolute protection is federal protection. Remember those beacons of ultimate protection all around your race's HQ when you started? These indicate that federal protection is available in that sector. However, federal protection is limited. There are 2 conditions where federal forces will refuse to protect you: If you have illegal goods (slaves, weapons, or narcotics) on board you do NOT qualify for federal protection and can be attacked in a sector with a beacon. Also, your attack rating determines whether you qualify. At -149 to 149 alignment you can safely have 3/x as an attack rating. For each +/- 150 alignment above or below 0, you can have +/- 1 attack rating and still qualify (so 2/x for -150, 4/x for 150, etc). You are always protected at 0/x attack rating.

Your attack rating is listed on the right side of your screen under "Rating: ". The first number is your attack rating and is dependant on how much damage your weapons can do in 1 round of combat. The exact formula for attack rating is [ ( total shield damage + total armor damage ) / 40 ] The second number is your defense rating, or the amount of armor and shields you have divided by 100. Federal protection applies ONLY at a beacon of ultimate protection. If you are in doubt about whether you are protected, you can check in your "TRADER" menu under protection. There are always other places you can park, such as planets or in dead-end sectors, but they are never 100% safe.


I think Lotus has written the best explanation for Fed Protection I have read that is why I sent it to you.

To see what your attack rating is you look at your ships stats on your right handed side column ( It'll look like this example )

Trip-Maker
Rating : 0/10
Shields : 400/400
Armor : 550/550
CIJSD : ---*-

SHIPS NAME
Rating: Attack/Defense
Shields: Max/Current
Armor: Max/Current
CIJSD: ---*- (I have a scanner. C: Cloak, I: Illusion Generator, J: Jump Drive, S: Scanner, D: Drone Scrambler)

The Formula for your attack raticking is:

Attack Rating = INT(((armor dmg + shield dmg)/40) + (drones/50)) e.g. Federal Ultimatum Holy Hand Grenade Salvene EM Flux Cannon Salvene EM Flux Cannon Salvene EM Flux Cannon Creonti "Big Daddy" Creonti "Big Daddy" Torpedo Launcher 120 Combat Drones INT(((750+600)/40)+(120/50)) = 36
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DarthNihilus
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Post by DarthNihilus »

Polotics and Relations:
The politics and ruling council are often the most overlooked aspect of SMR. Both play a crucial role though, determining which races you can trade with, and which racial weapons you can use.
Each racial ruling council is made up of the top twenty members of that race, ranked by experience. The President of each race is determined by alignment and experience. To become president, you must have the highest experience out of all the council members with alignment over 150. In the case of two council members having the same experience, the one who has the higher alignment will become president.

You can access your race's ruling council by clicking on the trader link on your current sector screen, then clicking on politics. You will be able to view who is on your ruling council, and if you are a member, you will be able to cast your vote for peace/war with other races. The president of the council is the only one who can put up a vote or take a vote down.

War votes set relations to -300
Peace votes set relations to 300
If relations are above 300 a peace vote will actually degrade relations.
If relations are below -300 a war vote will improve relations.
Council member votes effect relations by -10 or 10.
...... cursed be he that keepeth back his sword from blood.
DarthNihilus
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Post by DarthNihilus »

Ship Management:
The Ship Management options on the right side of the screen let you manage parts of your ship that can't be used any other way. These functions are also available from the Trader screen, under your ship details.

Manage Forces

The "Forces" table lets you drop forces in a sector or pick them up. You can use the pre-entered amounts and simply click the "drop" or take buttons, or you can enter another amount.
Click the "Forces" link on the right panel to get here.
Manage Weapons

Click the "Weapons" link on the right panel to get here. You change the order of your ship's weapons, which determines the order in which they fire during combat. Generally, you want to put your shield weapons in the top positions, because you need to destroy shields first, than your armor damage weapons. It is a good idea to have higher accuracy weapons first, too.
You must put your most valuable weapons in the top positions if you are buying a new ship that has less hardpoints than your old one. This is because the weapons transferred to your new ship are always the ones in the top positions.

Dump Cargo (a.k.a. Jettison)
You can jettison your cargo if necessary by using the "Cargo" link on the right. This should only be used in desperate situations such as when you bought some goods, and can't find a port to sell them, or need to get rid of illegal goods in order to find government protection.
Jettisoning costs 1 turn, you also lose the experience that you gained when you bought the cargo, and of course there is no way to get that cash back you spent on buying it either.
Manage Hardware

You need to use this screen to set your illusion generator to the ship you are pretending to be. You can also turn your cloak on and off.
Click the CIJSD link on the right panel to access this screen ( which stands for Cloak, Illusion, Jump, Scanner, Drone Scrambler).
...... cursed be he that keepeth back his sword from blood.
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Post by N.ator »

in my opinion, dont even bother helping newbies with SMC. it is a complicated took. and hard to upload maps to it.

if i were you i would just focus on MGU.

and also i would discribe mgu a little.

saying it give you trade rotues. locations to stuff

and overall i would try shottening up the paragraphs..

serisously i know that i wouldnt want to spend 30 min. reading crap when im just like testing out the game.

so you should get right to the point and put out all of the "access" information that is not really needed for the bbeginning of the game..
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Post by Baalzamon »

ya, i was thinking the same thing...i understand where you're coming from with SMC, get them using the better tools from the start, but SMC's just too complicated for a new player to use, better off starting them with MGU

Also, (i guess in a contradictory fashion) I think you should just skip the applet with them,...better off getting them in mIRC right off the bat, its a better chat program, and even just that slight difference could be a big change...I made a post on the NHA board with a step by step process on how to get in chat a couple weeks ago, and on my other board, i have a step by step process for people with apples as well. (Thanks to Jasmine for writing that one up) If you want those, just visit the forum, its in the "Help Files" section...pm me for the URL..

also, do you send all that to them at once? Thats a lot to throw on new players right from the start...better to stress use of the alliance message board and have them read the posts in there....i've edited most of them and i'm still working on a few of them, I have them saved on my computer...if you want them, you need only ask.
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DarthNihilus
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Post by DarthNihilus »

no thats like three days worth
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N.ator
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Post by N.ator »

serisously. make it like a short paragraph of stuff. and then say like message me when you have read this message and i will send you more info. and stuff..

idk make it alot shorter. then people might actually read it lol.
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Post by Jester- »

Not everyone has a short attention span, poca. :P
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