@John: Please dont turn TW into Seafarers of Catan.

It's a great game, but it's way too simple for this game. If you can figure a way to get TW's complexity into the hex style of Catan, then I would love that game.

Now THAT would be fun We play Settlers of Catan and the expansion Cities & Knights quite a bit. Would be great to use the hex style of those.

Cheers

I've never played cities and knights.... I may have to check that one out.

[quote="John Pritchett@LoneStar: I was actually looking at the battles as being more of a simulation of fleet combat within a Sector, and not of Sector-to-Sector combat. I think there'd need to be a higher level strategy map where territory is claimed, but then when two or more players are battling for control of a Sector, that's where this kind of tactical combat system would play out. I don't necessarily see that larger map as being anything like 20K Sectors, either, because I think most players would want to play a game more comparable to Risk in terms of scope and time. But definitely, it does bring out more of a boardgame feel, I agree.[/quote]

This reminds me of how Heros of Might and Magic III handles combat. You have a world map your hero travels around on until you encounter hostile units (either player or computer). Then the game switches to a combat screen with a hex layout where the units duke it out until the battle is resolved. Replace castles with planets, heros with commanders, and creatures with ships and it could be an interesting game. The downside is that turn based combat becomes very structured and lacks the realtime adrenaline pumping action many people enjoy in Tradewars. But I'm sure there would be plenty of people who would enjoy the more purely strategic type of game. Taking a look at other popular combat stategy games such as World of Warcraft might reveal some insight into a more realtime battle system.

@Silence: Please dont turn TW into Seafarers of Catan. It's a great game, but it's way too simple for this game. If you can figure a way to get TW's complexity into the hex style of Catan, then I would love that game.

That's kind of what I'm saying here, that there are a lot of different kinds of games that could explore various elements of TradeWars. I'm sure there's a design that would be a natural evolution of the current game. A CCG or a board game isn't going to be that game. But I think it has potential in its own right. And of course anything that is done that is successful increases the possibility of doing TradeWars the right way. I set out to do something more along the lines of what we're talking about here when I joined with Sylien to create TradeWars Tournament. You can see how that turned out. I need to be in a position to say "this will be a great game" and have people trust me. As it was, Sylien did not trust my design decisions, and they opted to go their own way. One thing I've learned is, until you reach that point, it's far easier to pitch a game concept that's similar to another successful game. From a creative standpoint, I hate that. But it doesn't do a lot of good to be creative when nobody takes you seriously. It's a sad reality that creativity=risk in the game industry, and in many other fields as well. So expect to see some things like this. I'm not sure if I'll work with Bandera Games to do a TradeWars-themed BattleDex, but there's a very good chance that one or more other TW crossover games will be coming soon. If/when that happens, don't look at it as "turning TradeWars into" something. I definitely understand what TradeWars is/was and will hopefully have an opportunity down the road to work with you guys to make a game that does it justice.

wow, some great games got name dropped here- but you all missed the granddaddy- master of orion(heroes is a fantasy game- pshaw). hex based ship combat with economy and science... ahhh. incidentally, they revamped star control 2- its called the urquan masters and is vista compatable free to download (plug complete):D

the one thing that tradewars in its current incantation has over the other browser based strategy games is that it allows scripting. on almost every game, scripting=banned. i love the fact that you are allowed to do whatever you are smart enough to do... maybe that eliminates a large portion of the general population... but darn its fun

Nod, both are good games. Master of Orion 1 and 2. Ur Quan Masters is the video game port of starcon, but it's mostly complete. Good game tho, I think TW is a lot like a multi-player version of that.



Yeh, it means people can build a code base over time and have an advantage.

You can still get a good non-scripting game, just choose your games wisely.

I like Ur Quan Masters. That was a great game. It would be cool to do something like that with TW. Have the ability to hyperspace out into another universe. Leads me back to the comment of the Inter-BRE we played for many years.

Cheers

Well, "jumpgate" has a lot of issues. I means participating games are effectively never banged.

But hyperspace is like ewarping. Quasi space is like twarping.

True on the jumpgate.

Another idea is to have a bit more control on creating the universe. It's great that we can specify up to 20k sectors, but I'd really like to see an option to go one step further and specify a configuration of the sectors. For example, and I don't know if many here have played this, but in VGA Planets us hosts can create a universe using a map that is either default or made by us. I can make a rift in the center of the map, giving a "bare" or "neutral zone" theme. Other maps were clusters of planets forming various patterns. What I'm getting at is to be able to create a 20k universe, but perhaps have the ability to modify how it will be shaped. Standard universe is our normal one, cluster one could be two "bubbles" of sectors, if you will. Split the size in half and make it so only a couple of sectors are available to pass from one to the other. Or you could create a pocket of "three or four" groups of sectors, all forming the total size of the specified universe. I realize that V'Ger has done this in his games via scripts, and those of us with scripting skills could make this happen, but it would be nice to have the option in the banging of a universe.

Cheers

Thrawn and I have chatted a bit about ways to improve the hosting experience. One thing we talked about was the idea of having a graphical host so you could watch how a game evolves, almost like a sim-galaxy where you start a game with a set of aliens and watch how they interact with players over time, as well as how certain players do against other players. I think a natural part of that would be a "galaxy construction set" that allows gameops to customize a bang. All of this, as well as a graphical client, does require a change in the galaxy structure to support a flat map. That's a pretty big change. I actually had a beta out like 10 years ago that had a special flat universe design that could be fully mapped on a hex grid.

So much is happening right now, and I can't say what, but keep an eye out. Nothing we've talked about here is on deck for the immediate future (including a BattleDex game), but if things come together, we will have the luxury of taking a serious look at a true update of classic TradeWars. It's a high priority for me.

I have felt ever since I wrote GATH that TW 2002 needed:

* A new protocol which consists of
- ANSI Graphical blocks
- Command blocks
- Data blocks
- Chat blocks

Leave it up to the Helper clients how they want to show this information and how they want to act on it. Currently everything is all intertwined in a mess and a real pain to verify where the player is at real time.

I only had two months to learn and develop everything related to Tradewars which is why GATH only got as far as it did. Once I realized I would have to know intimate details about Tradewars I could not continue development. I don't have years to learn all the nuances of the game so I can act on events. Also there is no public specification for the current protocol (I know what it is I mean the data it contains, where and how and on what event).

A very sweet helper/GUI frontend could be developed if John would simply change the protocol. Offer an option when logging in if you want the old protocol or the new one if there is fear of abandoning helpers.

As far as how to commercialize Tradewars and make money from it... simply make it look and act like Galactic Civilizations (StarDock), encrypt the protocol, and make your own GUI.

Hey John, one quick point that would be simple to institute: Can you include the days the turn bank accumulates in either the *, S, or V screen?

If you want to keep it to the find out the hard way scenario, thats fine. Doesn't really flow with the rest of the game in that way though.

Also, what about trying to turn this game into more of a "bar league" sort of situation? What if you could only play your turns on certain days(with turn bank on), so as to increase the amount of coinciding active time?