A Tradewars helper is a program that assists humans in playing the game Tradewars 2002. Tradewars is a text game and some of the commands are repetitive. Initially helper programs were written to remove the tedium of the routine tradewars chores, such as paired-port trading, buying down product, and hauling colonists.
Most helper programs wil automate tasks requiring very little user input compared to having to input a sequence of keys over and over again. "P" "T" "250"enter" is a simple example of buying 250 holds of product, not including the haggle for price. If you were buying 30,000 holds, you would have to enter the sequence ["P" "T" "250" "enter"] and then haggle for the cost of the goods, one hundred twenty times. (This does not include the commands necessary to unload product from your ship.) Most helper programs will not only enter the "P" and "T" for you but will also haggle according to user-defined settings. (i.e. best price, worst price, no haggle)
Tradewars Helper programs also keep track of important game information. Warp info, port locations, players info, planets, fighters, etc. This would add up to a lot of post-it notes if not for these types of programs. Game sectors number up to 20,000 currently and there are plans to increase universe size. The player who can manage game data in addition to being swift at keys has the best chance of success in the Tradewars universe. For instance, if there is a port in sector 1268 buying 3280 equipment, and the next day that info is not available, I know that someone has placed a fighter there or destroyed the port.
Helpers are very similar to scripts. It could be said that a helper program is simply a combination of scripts. However because they typically present their own user-interface and have enhanced functions, it is fair to maintain a distinction between helpers and scripts.
TW3003 recommends SWATH if you use only one helper, and believes that Swath running on top of TWXProxy is the best combination. TWXProxy is a proxy server, you will still need a telnet application to play tradewars with it. TW3003 recommends ZOC as the best available telnet application.
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