Players have done more to evolve the game over the years than I have. Many of these new options are an attempt to restore the lost spirit of the game. But where Gold is concerned, it's a given that you can do some crazy things with it. That's why it's a bigbang setting and not just a tedit setting. If you bang a Gold game, anything goes. Adding the ability to define planet probabilities for Gold mode isn't that big if a change. The purpose of Gold, in a nutshell, is to make every setting configurable. I still have a long way to go before I get there.

I think this change will help to kill the game.
Take for instance the Moo2 edit .. you only need to by the G-torp
that pops that needed planet instead of a random chance .. will make way better
cash .. again giving scripters a way better chance over the typer player.

But its up to J.P. to continue his TWGS destruction.

<not a smack> just my observations of the way things have been going.

Fixing bugs is one thing .. new features can be nice .. forced options change the game.

But we will see how it all works out in 2 years.

You've known me for years Vid, even though I haven't been around much in ten years or better. I think we have seen eye to eye on many things in the past and the trend continues. I also think too many 'new configuration possibilities' will eventually kill the game.

How can giving GameOps and players OPTIONS kill the game. You still have the OPTION to play it any way you want!

For instance, Pogo Risk has two card settings. The new style (used to be called the fast play option), where you get more armies each time cards are turned in, and an option where you always get 8 armies. Not sure where they got that one as it wasn't part of the board game. I would probably play it a lot more if they had an option to use the original 4,6,8,10 armies option depending on what type of cards you turned in. This is the original way that I played the game and that's what I like.

That's a no brainer. It kills the game because right now, the only people really playing the game are the geeks and heavy scripters. I left the first time because of scripting that just went berzerk and so did many many other players. The first Internet Capable Trade wars came out, (you know, the one that no longer required a bbs to support it), I played once and shut it off.

You only need read through these forums to see the direction it has taken. I am trying to restart in an environment that is completely hostile to me because I won't sit in front of my computer for 10 hours every frikkin day to learn 17 different coding languages that might get me to a level where I can last more than 5 minutes with some of you turkeys.

It's not fun for the average schmuck to play a game against someone who has built script packages that automate almost every task in the game. When I started this game, manually port pair trading was just how it was done. You had a small universe, a small amount of turns and you could literally trade every port in the universe manually in one setting. The idea in THAT game was to make as much money as you can by turn conservation. It really was that simple.

Now, lets remove the randomness of planet building and make it 'configurable' NOW, they (the scripters) can auto build everything right to specification (which means mostly H's and 0's). Oh christ, a whole new level of building that NO REGULAR JOE PLAYER is going to be able to compete with.

What I am talking about is the loss of the ease of playing the game. The randomness gave the new player at least a minimal edge and a chance to get started. AND (I know it's bad form to use and to start a sentence but fricck it) don't give me this crap about the server can config the games anyway they want and it will be ok. The servers will be configured in ways that will attract users. The current crop of users are heavy scripters and by the very nature of their play, they will drive any new player right into oblivion the minute they join or just flat overwhelm them with the amount of things they are going to need to know just to get started.

Now I'm going to stop my tirade here because I've almost talked myself out of even continuing with this nonsense. The games are getting too big, they are getting too complicated and they are getting too predictable. We are fast approaching the point where's there's nothing else to discover. What happens then?

I heard the majority consisted of non scripter’s, just what I heard

I don’t think anyone would become hostile to you for key time (has more to do with expressed opinion). I thought there is only 1 type of coding language. Have you had anyone try teaching you yet or is that just assumption?

I though someone just banged a game like that for you, did any of the scripter’s come?

Almost seems like you guys(supposed non-script users) want to bash people for using scripts, are the script users bashing you for not using them?

Odd that’s not the perception I get for the new people I have taught over the years. Thought there is a server set up just for non script users. Is your complaint that you can’t walk into a game with “heavy script users” and be competitive? Your not willing or wanting to learn to be competitive via scripts? So are you for forcing people to play a certain why via these “new changes with beta” so someone like me would be forced to play with out scripts?

We play the game like a MASSIVE chess game in fast forward with teammates…lol

Wow! A few more pages of that stuff and we'll have a book.

When I first started driving I had a 60 VW Bug - it was slow and boring too. I am glad that technology has improved the cars just as I am glad that TW has advanced beyond what it was. I won't go back to the 60 VW, nor will i go back to TW as it was on my WWIV BBS in 1990.

               / Promethius / Enigma / Wolfen /

"A man who has no skills can be taught, a man who has no honor has nothing."

I've only forced one new feature, and that's the anti-subspace scanning fix. Everything else is optional.

Vid, you ask for port hardening and a special planet classification and you take full advantage of the EXTENSIVE customization that the game already supports, but when it comes to features other people want, that's where you draw the line. I don't get it. I assume you just misunderstood that some of these changes are going to be forced on you. They aren't.

MB, I can't figure you out at all. You seem to want to see the game return to what it was back before TWGS, and I'm actually with you on that in many ways, but how the heck do I get there without making changes? And how do I do that without making OPTIONS so I don't step on the rest of the people in here (not that they appreciate the effort)? You state quite plainly that you don't like how the game is played today. But you don't want to explore ways to fix that situation? I guess I just don't understand what you think went wrong. Something to do with reaching the game directly rather than dialing in through a BBS?

As far as I can tell, there are about 20-30 people who will always have each other to play against, and I don't see why any of you would care if the game evolves to try to appeal to a different group of players. Just ignore everything else that's going on with the game. Just run your favorite edits and you'll be fine. Your settings are locked in. They're not going anywhere.

If my work on TW is killing the game, then why are we here 25 years out?

I disagree, if one were able to harness the power to create a planet, you probably would be able to mold how you want it to turn out, determined by what chemical balance you were to add.

That's the beauty of this game, there's always something new to discover. I just recently learned that I can disrupt my own corp's armid mines. Hehe... I still prefer mostly stock games, MBBS mode with Mega Rob OFF. I feel those are still the most balanced games. Playing those for me is like putting on my favorite jeans or slipping my feet into warm cozy slippers at the end of the day. It just feels "comfortable" to play a familiar game.

Planets need to remain random - but there are some ways to help insure the probability of getting the types you want. In the past I think it was first creating the sector limit (5) then blowing up the ones you don't want and trying again. I think in today's game to increase your likelyhood of getting the planet you want is to over-load the sector with planets. The result is you'll end up with some nav haz you'll have to wait to dispurse, but you'll spend less on g-torps.

One other more obvious method that is available today is to simply use the Gold Editor to deactivate the unwanted planet types. If a sysop wants to run a game with nothing but H's & O's, he can, then to balance this, make the g-torps very expensive.

If memory serves me correctly you need to have 7 types of planets in the listing, so you could have 4 H's and 3 O's but it is not quite as easy as just deleting the the other 5. Result is the same but it is a little more involved.
Could make it so they upgrade at different rates, leave L1 the same so there is no way to tell until you have already invested some time and resources.
Again I could be wrong, if so please correct me.

Most of the options that JP is making are actualy to prevent heavy scripting and "advanced tacktics" that are destroying the game. All of these features are optional, so that people who like this type of game play can continue to play that way. One of the new delay options is a GenTorp Launch delay, which can be used to prevent players from popping hundreds of planets till they get what they want.

Speaking of "advanced tacktics", there seems to be a bug where an overloaded sector has a higher probability of createing certian planet types.

Since Gold games allow you to create new planet types, it's only logical that I should be able to control the probability of these planets. Not allowing this is kinda like not allowing a GameOp to set the price for new ships they create, and this option won't even be available fro non-gold games. If I create a very powerful planet, I might want it to be very hard to get that planet, and I might want it to be very easy to get other planet types. These edits are exchanged between GameOps, and some of them become very popular.

I personally think that custom gtorps is a feature that should be considered for version 4, when the entire game will change. I think there should be a wide variety of custom hardware in version 4. It is my undstanding that JP does not intend to make chanes of this magnitude in version 3, but to maintain the original game and will remain available after version 4 is released.

If you look closer, I think you will find that JP is headed in the direction you are wanting. There are emulation speeds, so you can take the game back to 2400 baud if you wanted to, and 16 delays to slow down heavy scripters. Version 2.08, which should be relased soon, even includes a single player mode so that you can play like an old one-line BBS.

Starting to wonder if anyone remembers all that addon's that were available to the old BBS TW Door

http://www.tmcbbs.com/twmisc.html
and even more...
http://www.tmcbbs.com/twaddons.html

a lot of these addon's were very shakey at best, often written by people who were guessing at how well it worked, and if you applied some add-ons to the wrong version, it usually left you with a need to do a complete re-install of the game, and trying to figure out which add-ons the users of your BBS liked, then trying to convince your users that "Starting over from scratch" was a necessary evil, and hoping your users didn't just give up and go to a competing board.

Several BBS's around the Phoenix area (Where I lived during the height of the BBS era) ran a few different TradeWars variants (Stock Game, Contest Stock, Mod, Contest Mod... and usually a Star Trek or Star Wars theme sometimes both).

I can remember writing entire back stories to my contest doors. It wasn't just "Control the game" or "Get the high score" there was usually a story involved. (in a text based game... ya gotta have a story line to tickle the imagination).

From what I remember, the Stock Game was usually the one that was used least on my board.

It was the variety of the different universes that enticed the players to keep coming back, to see what you had that other boards didn't offer. It was also important in Phoenix to have a SysOp that was actively working on the BBS to keep in fresh (with hundreds of other BBS's out there, you had to work your tail off to be one of the few that stood out).

Every BBS had a stock game, and that became 'no big deal' there was no challenge after you figured it out. Some players considered it boring... they always wanted more.

Look at the game now.. how many people are running 25 Slots of 1000 Sector 250 move games?

The biggest difference I notice between all those addons in the links above, and Gold Edition (Which the Alien, ship and planet editor killed the majority of those add-ons) is that the Gold Edition kept one thing in the game that 3rd party add-ons always removed... stability.

You're probably right, I haven't done it, I've just seen the toggle to make a planet inactive.