Trade War Vets: Evil, When and How

On standard games where it takes forever to planet build, playing evil is a challenge. You don’t want to gain the Fed Com then have to lose it, for on low turn games losing even a half day’s worth of turns might be fatal.

‘Switching’ from Good to Evil is an Art. Most Players don’t transition well. There’s a window…it’s small, and a lot of players wind up podded by someone they could have swallowed last week.

Gaining a Fed Com makes no sense if one intends to go evil as planet building on a standard game is not the way to go.

It takes too long to get an (L) to Shielded Level, too many cols, too many days, too much alignment.

Wiser to amass fighters and cloaks and capture a planet as it is going from Level Two to a Level Three. Before it reaches Three it’s pretty weak. Even after that Q cannon is online, there just isn’t that much fuel. You can take a hit or two in a well shielded ship. Further, you’re evil, so planet stealing is what you do.

Even if you’re not going evil or are unsure, when you hit Star Dock the first time, after the ‘domestic’ chores of ship trading, buying a density, etc. hit ‘U’.

If you are the first one to reach the Underground the Password is ‘Beware of Kal Durak’.

If you are not first, you’ll have to go to the Tavern, bribe the ‘grimey trader’ to get the password, and come back.

Always change the password. Be cute. For example ‘ca11 me’ might be read as ‘call me’ causing the player to waste time.

Even if you don’t go evil, it’s nice to have the option from start.

To go evil is fairly simple; spend turns trading to amass credit so as to get a full complement of holds. Assuming you’re on a Merf of T’kasi, you want 65; if you have to stop at 50 for cash or time, okay, because your final turns must be taking a ship load of colonists from Earth, flying out of Fed Space, jettisoning them, then getting another holdful, just before midnight.

Log off, log back on, making sure that you jettisoned at 11:?? and it is now 00:??.

Take your next batch and jettison them, so you have at least 100 evil points.

Now you can start to steal.

Do some plain trading, a little stealing getting a few points here and there.

You can’t play evil with a good mind. It’s as simple as that. You can’t be the busy little planet builder when there are ports to rob and players to pod.

You’re safe nowhere so being cloaked in some forsaken sector is the only way you survive.

Sure, you’ll ferry cols when no one else is on, or invade a planet and steal the cols, but when you’re evil, having something to ‘defend’ is kind of a contradiction.

Sure, at end game when you attack, invade and capture a Sector, you can take advantage of the other’s hard work.

But your work as Evil, is…Evil.