Table of contents:
[PREFACE]
1: [So you want to be an evil?]
2: [In the beginning.]
3: [Movin on up.]
4: [The joys of stealing.]
5: [Stayin Alive, Stayin Alive.]
6: [Cruel and Unusual Punishment.]

[PREFACE]
This is a bit of a guide, gives some strategy, and explains some ways to successfully play as an evil in Tradewars 2002. You might disagree, you might have better ideas, hell, you might have a better startup. But then again, so do I ;p. I just decided I’d throw up a basic startup to help out the people who are sick of playing a goodie, or newer players who can’t seem to get an evil character running. It figures you have some knowledge of tradewars, and if you don’t, read something like tradewars for dummy’s or play the game a little while. I’m also not including exact instructions on blocking SD and creating scripts. These are things you can find elsewhere, and can come up with yourself if thats what floats yer boat. In any case good luck with you, and if you can’t handle the pressures of being evil, you can simply read my GOOD guidebook, which I’ll be throwing together soon.

1: [So you want to be an evil?]
Hey, we all know how easy it is to be a little pansy goodie goodie. Hiding in fedspace under 1000 exp, being nice, defending things, colonizing (vomit).

I’ve gotta say I’m glad to hear you want turn to the dark side, just think of all the perks.
1: You get to jettison colonists all you want!
2: You get to fly typically insuperior ships!
3: You get hunted by every goodie, evil guy, and grandmother!
4: You get to refurbish your holds non-stop and feel the joys of busting!
5: You get to blow alot of planets up!
6: You get to enjoy never being completely safe, ever!
7: You get to be red instead of that wimpy looking blue color!
8: You get to sit around instead of colonizing and upgrading planets!
9: You get to steal stuff!
10: Oh yeah, you make lots of credits too!

Still here?
Well, I’m glad to see your not easily scared off, the prospects of being an evil are quite, grim, but the benefits can outweigh that. I must say either your quite brave or very stupid, but I’ll help you out anyway for sticking around.

2: [In the beginning.]
Lets face it, usually the ship you start in deserves to be scrap metal. Always check the specs, but in a stock game it’ll have a 3 turn per warp engine, and only 75 holds max. Even worse, in most games you start out with 300 credits. I mean c’mon, you couldn’t buy toothpaste with 300 credits.
Well, typically theres a simple solution, the Merchant Freighter. At 2 turns per warp with 65 holds max, this ship is a bit more efficent then the cruiser at trading. Plus, at 2 turns per warp it is much less costly moving around actually finding trading ports. If your in early enough, hell with it, trade that piece of crap cruiser in first thing, get yourself a freighter with the cash from the trade. Now you’ll have gained a few holds, and have enough cash for a few fighters or shields, and a density scanner (ahem, IMPORTAINT, always get a density scanner early). This is all banking on you being able to successfully get to the stardock. Easier said then done, but with advanced stardock blocking techniques out there today, most TW sysops are placing the dock next to fedspace to make things easier. There are still potential problems with this, but with any luck you’ll be in a merchant freighter and trading away in no time.
Remember, this ship is just to get you started. Deck her out with holds, fire a few e-probes to find good pair port areas, and make some cash/exp (you have to be haggling here, exp will soon turn into big money, use a script or helper if possible). Also, while trading lay down fighters here and there when you find XXB ports fairly clustered in an area, and put 1 down at every pair port you trade down.
Another thing to know is this is a Passive Startup. It will get you decent cash and exp, but it’s not made to be agressive on day 1. I consider agressive startup’s (stardock blocking, mass killing, hunting, spending early cash on figs) as more advanced tatics that you should dig into yourself.

3: [Movin on up.]
Well, now you have probably played down most or all of day 1, have some decent cash, and somewhere around 1k exp (give or take, depends on turns, port density, and the amount of traders out there). Time to go evil, jettison a load of colonists and if your not -100 yet go post a reward or two in the underground until you are.
This is a critical point. You can do a few different things here.
1: Buy a decent fighting ship, load it up with some figs, and do a little killing. Good ships for this type of play on day 1-2 are typically things like a havoc gunstar, a starmaster, a constellation (check ship specs for a decent attack odds ship with 3 turns per warp or so, transwarp drive is a plus). Alternatively you could buy a missile frigate and try photon rain from SD in a form of SD block strategy.
2: Buy a t-warp capable ship, and get a couple SST ships to tow around. Start SST’ing (steal sell transport for those who don’t know). Obviously this is alot better if you can get your hands on a corporate flagship. In any case check your settings, in some games there are decent t-warp ships available to the non-ceo evil for you to use. If possible get a ship with over 80 holds and a t-warp, if it’s a stock game and your not a ceo, settle with a havoc.

If you picked fighting, well, I think you can handle that on your own. However, if you decided to sst at this point then lets move on 🙂

4: [The joys of stealing.]
Well, now you have a tow-ship (with t-warp type 2 installed, and a load of holds for fuel). Hopefully your carrying 2k+ exp, and have a couple decent SST ships. Typically they are either mules (150 holds max) or colonial transports (typically called colts, which have 250 holds max). It’s time to start sst’ing.
First off, find a decent area with XXB ports. If you laid down figs while trading earlier, this should be no problem at all. T-warp tow in your sst ships into 2 sepperate XXB port sectors. Now, upgrade the ports a little bit. 1 upgrade of equipment units = 10 equipment on dock in the port. Thus, if you are stealing around 100 holds of equipment, upgrade the port 11 or 12 (this way, theres a bit extra in the port so you can keep stealing without having to worry about your equipment amount on dock going down below 100).
Now you decide how much your going to SST. This is fairly easy to calculate, but might take a few tries before you can figure out the best setting for the particular game. Typical calculations are holds*20=exp required, up to holds*30=exp required. Skimp too much and you’ll get busted alot, go too high and you’ll be making alot less then you potentially can.
Now, start the cycle, port, steal X holds of equipment (X being however much you can according to your exp) port, sell equipment, haggle for exp. Transport to other ship, port, steal equipment, port, sell equipment, transport.
Never steal from the same port twice in a row or you will be busted. And once you’ve busted at a port, try not to port or steal there again for a good while. Just move the busted ship to another XXB port, upgrade the port, and start again.
Now your making cash, busting occasionally, and sst’ing. Sounds like the perfect time to go over what you need to do to stay a successful evil.

First off, PLANET BUST. Spend most of your early cash making planets, and blowing em up. This will make you 75 exp for every 35k or so and costs very very few turns. You have to do this alot, but this will help you get your exp up higher and higher, with the intent to get high enough to successfully steal 250 holds regularly.
A second little trick is refurbing with merchant freighters. Basically, you buy a merchant freighter, deck it with holds, and kill it with the colt you busted in. This will fill your holds back up a bit. This is usually best when your dealing with 250 holds, as it is considerably cheaper to spend 45k or so on a decked merchant freighter to fill up the holds you lose when you bust at 250 then to drag the colt back and manually buy them (those 20 some odd holds are VERY expensive). In other words, early on it might be cheaper to fill your colts manually, but once you get up in the 200 hold range, it’s best to get your holds off salvage. Just remember, attack the merchant freighter with 1 fighter, you’ll blow it up for 20 some holds.
Later on you can use advanced moneymaking techniques. These ususally require alot of experience, and include:
Rob transport Rob (a 4 turn cycle used when ports don’t have enough credits to mega-rob, this can make a “lot” of cash using exp*3=credits through exp*10=credits depending on the game, your exp, and how hard the ratio is set).
Steal Dump Transport (a 4 turn cycle where you load a port with equipment, steal, dump it on the planet, transport, steal, dump, transport, it requires 2 planets and some startup cash but is considerably more profitable then sst’ing, when done ya simply sell back the equipment from the planet to the port using a planetary trade).
Buy Dump, MEGAROB (This is where you load a port up to sell alot of equipment, buy it all down using a overprice buy script, IE buying for about 30-35% more then their asking for, filling the port with over 3.4 million credits, then robbing all your cash back with 1 megarob, course then you move your planet to an upgraded equipment buying port and sell it all back, takes VERY few turns and turns HUGE profit with extremely little chance of busting).

5: [Stayin Alive, Stayin Alive.]
Now your doing well, stealing up a storm, probably have 5k+ exp and are stealing a good amount of holds (up to 250 depending on how hard the busts are in your particular game). Your making cash out the ass, and theres only one problem. Just about everyone wants you dead. Their not stupid 🙂 your like an ATM, kill you and they can steal your cash, sell your colts, and in general make a whole lot of credits. Even better, your forced to use a big huge piece of crap ship for sst’ing in. A colt wont last 2 seconds vs just about anything. As if that isn’t bad enough, your typically sitting at the same set of ports for an extended period of time to make cash. This makes you EXTREMELY vournerable to the grimy trader :(.
Your best bet at staying alive early on, is to lay fighters literally everywhere you go. All over the place, 1 fighter here, 1 fighter there. Try to make sure that if anyone tries to come at you, you’ll have plenty of advance warning. At the first sign of a fig hit, jump back into your bigger “fighting ship/tow ship” and either run like hell, or go kick some ass. If you’ve played your cards right you should have a good amount of fighters, and a decent amount of exp. This should put you at least competetive in a fight with pretty much anyone. Of course however corps can put up a good amount of figs for a “designated fighter”. So in any case if you see someone decent coming, you might want to get the hell out of there.
And speaking of corps, you should definately be in one. Either get a few evils together for a corp, or try to get some evils/goods (IE a split or “mega corp”). If you do have goodies as part of your split corp, feed them well. They will typically (unless the game is heavily edited) have FAR superior ships, and the capability to build. In other words, you supply them the cash, and they’ll help kill off the competition, while building up some nice planets. Later on they can give you a few level 4+ planets, and you can use these to start up advanced cash making, like loading ports with cash to megarob, and steal dump transport (although you can do steal dump transport with planets of any level really, it just takes some setup to turn a profit).

6: [Cruel and Unusual Punishment.]
Well, now you know how to be an evil, you’ve got the ships, got the money, got the fighters. Thats all fine and dandy, but hey, have you been killing the competition? Lets face it, the easiest targets for you to kill, and undoubtedly the most profitable for the cost of locating and killing, are other evils. Don’t just sit around and let them make cash to fuel badass goodies of their split corp, be agressive, put those fighters to use. Head over the the grimy, have him start tracing em, get a recent hit (as in, he ported somewhere TODAY) and go slaughter their ass. Try not to trip fighters as you head in, you might have to walk a long route to find a quiet way in. Kick some ass, take some names. If you can manage to nail his pod as well, then look around a bit. Undoubtedly his tow-fight ship will be nearby (typically a corporate flag), and unmanned the fighters defending it will die VERY easily. So hell with it, kill that ship 🙂 it’ll cost you alot less to kill it then it’ll cost him to replace.
Also be constantly on the lookout for early goodie bases, you may be able to take them over yourself early, or just supply a goodie in your split-group and have him do it. With a good iss using friend, you should be able to easily take out most any early game base, even easier if you can get a few evils working with you.