PlanetsCentral

Xhumeka in Re: Thost hosts?:

Can you explain that in more detail please? "Fix Tow"?

Since I received several posts regarding this matter I think it's time to play my cards.

[...]

The towing distance is 4 lys (The ship is a beaty Biocide )? Drop all your fuel from the tower (except 1 kt - doesn't matter the rest of the cargo) and tow the Biocide 4 lys (exactly 4 lys) to the South (180 degrees), North (0 degrees), East (90 degrees) or West (270 degrees). Don't try other angles. Now, your client will probably tell you that the ship has not enough fuel to get there by towing the Biocide. Forget this! You WILL get there, I assure you.

Maybe describe the objective in other words: you want to tow a ship, but run out of fuel in the process, such that the victim cannot fight you. Problem is, the victim ship can change its mass, so you cannot always predict exactly how far you get.

It happens that Tim-Host has a formula error (bug) when dealing with running-out-of-fuel: when it sees that you cannot reach your waypoint, it will start computing:

• hmmm, they have too little fuel to reach their 20 ly waypoint.
• hmmm, their fuel will suffice for 50% of that distance.
• so, how much is that distance? 50% x 81 ly = 40 ly, so we allow them to move 40 ly.

The problem is that it is using the engine's maximum distance, not the waypoint distance, to determine the allowed distance.

Now, if you do that when towing, a victim's mass will affect the relative distance you get: if they're heavier than anticipated, the percentage will drop; if they're lighter, it will raise.

Therefore, with Tim-Host, you can run out-of-fuel at a precise location even if your victim changes mass, and you can await them with a cloaked wolfpack.

However, given that this feature cannot be explained by anything other than a bug, I'd rate its implementation in PHost pretty unlikely, given that its mission was fixing bugs. I mean, we don't reproduce the "stuck fighter bay" bug as well...

Here's a description of this (and one other) bug in Tim-Host fuel computations: http://phost.de/~stefan/fuelusage.html

--Stefan