3 This is part of the YARRG website. YARRG is a tool and website
4 for assisting players of Yohoho Puzzle Pirates.
6 Copyright (C) 2009 Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk>
7 Copyright (C) 2009 Clare Boothby
9 YARRG's client code etc. is covered by the ordinary GNU GPL (v3 or later).
10 The YARRG website is covered by the GNU Affero GPL v3 or later, which
11 basically means that every installation of the website will let you
14 This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
15 it under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License as
16 published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the
17 License, or (at your option) any later version.
19 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
20 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
21 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
22 GNU Affero General Public License for more details.
24 You should have received a copy of the GNU Affero General Public License
25 along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
27 Yohoho and Puzzle Pirates are probably trademarks of Three Rings and
28 are used without permission. This program is not endorsed or
29 sponsored by Three Rings.
32 This Mason component generates the introduction.
37 <h1>Introduction to YARRG</h1>
39 YARRG (Yet Another Revenue Research Gatherer) is a third-party tool
40 for helping find profitable trades and trade routes in Yohoho Puzzle
41 Pirates. It was inspired by
42 <a href="http://pctb.crabdance.com/">PCTB</a>.
46 Information about commodity prices is collected by pirates like you
47 and uploaded to the YARRG server, using the special yarrg upload
48 client. You can then query and search on this website for commodity
49 prices and good trade routes.
56 <h2>Quick start for experts</h2>
58 <h3>Straight to the commodity prices database</h3>
60 If you already know about trading on Puzzle Pirates, understand what
61 the YARRG website is for, and just want to get down to playing with
62 it right away, simply select your ocean:
66 % my @oceans= ocean_list();
68 % foreach my $ocean (@oceans) {
69 % my $uri= URI->new('lookup');
70 % $uri->query_form('ocean', $ocean) if $ocean ne 'Midnight';
71 <% $delim %><a href="<% $uri->path_query() |h %>"><% $ocean |h %></a>
76 <h3>But before you start ...</h3>
78 If you are going to use YARRG seriously you will almost certainly want
79 to upload your own data. See <a href="upload">Uploading to YARRG</a>
84 You will also probably at some point want to read the
85 <a href="docs">Documentation</a> which covers some features of the
86 website which you might not guess just from using it.
91 <h2>How to use the YARRG website</h2>
93 YARRG is designed to help pirates make profitable trades. It is not
94 designed as a trading tutorial and some familiarity with trading in
96 href="http://yppedia.puzzlepirates.com/Trading">yppedia.puzzlepirates.com/Trading</a>
97 contains some advice on trading basics.
99 <h3>So how do I use it then?</h3>
101 <p> First look at the top of the page. You need to select your Ocean,
102 the sort of Interface you would like and the type of Query you wish to
107 <h3>Selecting your Ocean</h3>
111 Which ocean do you want to trade on?
112 Just click on that ocean's name.
116 <h3>Selecting your Interface</h3>
118 <p> You can choose to enter commodity and island names by typing them
119 into a text entry field or by selecting them from a drop down menu.
120 The "select from menu" option allows only a restricted number of
121 options to be entered into each field.
125 <h3>Type of Query</h3>
129 There are currently four types of query available which answer
130 slightly different questions.
134 <h4>Trades for route</h4>
138 <b>For pirates who know where they are going.</b> Trades for route allows
139 you to enter a route that you are planning to sail and find out if
140 there are any profitable trades you can make along the way. This is
141 for pirates who already have a definite sailing plan for some reason.
142 Under "Enter Route" you need to type (or select from menus) the names
143 of the islands or Archipelagoes that you plan to visit. If you wish
144 to know about arbitrage opportunities at an island you can enter just
145 that island name. If you enter only one Archipelago then you will get
146 arbitrage opportunities in that archipelago; if you enter the same
147 archipelago twice you'll get trades within that archipelago.
151 <h4>Prices for commodity</h4>
155 <b>For pirates wanting to sell or buy a specific comodity</b> prices for
156 commodity returns the best buy and sell prices for the selected
157 commodity at each island where trades are available. Type (or select
158 from a menu) the name of one commodity at a time. This is useful for
159 pirates wishing to purchase or sell a specific commodity and wanting
164 <h4>Offers at location</h4>
168 <b>For pirates wanting more details about comodity prices at specified
169 locations.</b> Offers at location returns all the offers to buy and sell
170 wood at the selected location(s). Type (or select) a commodity and the
171 islands (or achipelagos) you are interested in. This is useful when
172 the best buy or sell offer is for only a small quantity: you can check
173 what the others offers are like.
177 <h4>Find Profitable route</h4>
181 <b>For pirates just wanting to make some poe moving comodities about.</b> Find
182 Profitable Route finds you a profitable trading route: first select
183 either "open-ended" (which might take you anywhere) or "circular"
184 (which takes you back to where you started) then type (or select) your
185 starting point (or points - you may for instance have two ships in
186 different locations either of which you could use).
194 Data age tells you how long ago data was uploaded from each island in
195 your ocean. Data changes very quickly and trusting old data to be
196 accurate is unlikely to be rewarding.
200 <h3>What do the results mean</h3>
204 Prices for commodity and offers at location give very similar results;
205 there will be two tables: the first titled Offers to BUY your
206 commodity, the second offers to SELL it. The tables can be resorted
207 by your prefered heading by clicking on the arrows.
211 Trades for route and Find profitable route both return voyage plans.
212 Find profitable route has an additional step to get at your results -
213 when you enter your query you are given a list of 15 good routes for
214 total profit and 15 good routes for profit per league which visit
215 different islands. Select your prefered route: perhaps you will choose
216 to take the best profit or perhaps you need to miss out one island
217 because it is blockaded or another because you don't have the charts
218 to get to or from it. If you have asked for a trade for route or
219 after selecting the profitable route you prefer you will get a Voyage
220 trading plan - this provides you with instructions for what to do (buy
221 this, sell that, sail there).
225 Sometimes no useful trades are available. In this case the results
226 section says simply "No profitable trading opportunities were found".
230 After this there is a table reporting the age of the data used. And
231 then a table of Relevant trades which lists just about everything you
232 could want to know about each trade the plan suggests you make (yes,
233 this table is fairly complicated). The ticky boxes down the side of
234 this table allow you to choose which trades you like the look of -
235 untick any that you are not interested in (for instance you may be
236 uninterested in trades with a low profit margin).
240 <h3>What are the Advanced options</h3>
244 These options are very useful, and not very advanced, but not needed
245 for searching the data.
253 You can't trade more than fits in your hold. If you don't say
254 anything YARRG assumes that you have infinite hold space (perhaps you
255 will go over the route many times). You can enter a ship-type, a mass
256 or a volume; additionally you can subtract quantities of comodities
257 from a ship-type (for instance 'sloop - 10 grog' gives the capacity of
258 a sloop that has 10 grog already on board); click the ? by this field
259 to get a full description of permitted entries here.
267 How much poe do you have? If you don't say anything YARRG assumes you
268 have infinite poe to spend, but you probably don't. Enter the amount
269 you are willing to spend on commodities for trading with.
273 <h4>Expected losses</h4>
277 How much do you expect to lose to the dasterdly brigands? enter either
278 a % (as eg - 1%) or a fracition (as eg - 1/100) of the goods you
279 expect to loose to Brigands. Brigands take 10% if they defeat you,
280 but only you know how often you are defeated. Note that this doesn't
281 include rum-consumed so you will need to account for that
286 <h4>Max distance</h4>
290 How far are you willing to sail today? The default is 20 leagues, the
291 maximum supported is 35. Are you willing to sail all the way accross
292 the ocean for a profit? or would you prefer to go only a short way?
296 <h3>Other fairly useful information</h3>
300 The search information is encoded in the URL - you can bookmark pages
301 for searches you want to perform a lot and go straight to them without
302 re-entering you data (or you can copy the URL and tell your hearties
303 and crew mates if you want to). There's no need to come back to the
304 introductory page each time.
308 Javascript magic: when you type things into the text entry fields
309 YARRG will try to guess what you meant. If you pause for a moment then
310 beneath the text entry field you'll see what YARRG thinks you meant.
311 If it's got it correct you don't have to type any more of that
312 comodity/island name: just go on to the next one.
316 You'll probably want to upload data to ensure you have fresh data
317 available. Unfortunately YARRG only has a Linux upload client at
318 present (a windows one is in the works). You should <a
319 href="upload">read about how to upload</a>: particularly the linked
320 README page for information about the client which contain
321 easy-to-follow instructions to download, install and run it in the
322 form of a few comand line instructions that you can copy and paste.
326 It's all free, both free-as-in-beer or free-as-in-speach. If you're
327 interested, read the <a href="devel">Development pages</a> for more
328 info about how to contribute or how to run your own website using
329 YARRG data (perhaps you don't like our colour choices)
333 <h2>Contacting the YARRG developers</h2>
335 Email Ian Jackson ijackson (at) chiark.greenend.org.uk. Or talk to
336 any Fleet Officer or above of the crew Special Circumstances on the