Some of us have bots that can be called in thru other means or are capable of... *gasp* relogging into a server when it comes back up.

But no matter what you do you'll never get the days of 'yore back. They're gone.

I'm assuming that you want to level the playing field between scripts.  A lot of you don't remember, but not long ago, (Well to us old folks it wasn't long ago), there was a thing called 1/4 ship/eprobe delay.  There was no such thing as 0 delay.  There is also a thing called CPS (commands per cycle).  But guess what.  When someone bangs a game where scripts don't run 300 miles and hour, no one plays.  No sense in going to all the trouble of all the changes you are sugguesting when the ablitly is there already.  Just get a sysop to bang a game with 1/4 ship delay and lower the CPS.  Oh, and you need to actually play the game.
 

No, no you don't. Move delay is broken. Run a move delay game and see. There is a big fat reason why nobody actually bangs a move delay in a game they plan to get players to.

All ships have 250ms move delay already, that's what is meant by a 0 move delay (flat 250, instead of TPW based). But if you add a larger move delay you make it TRIVIAL to torp you. Why?

Lets say my ping is 180ms. That means it takes 180ms for a packet to go from me to the server and back to me again. There is some server processing time, too.

So, you enter a sector. There is a small fighit delay time in twgs, I don't know what it is exactly... but there is one. It goes out, say, at 40ms. The packet is now in route saying "hey, torp this guy!" At 130ms it reaches me, at 140ms I send the reply out. Message reaches server at 230ms. Now if all of these numbers are precise and the server processes it all speedy, it might get stamped before the guy warps out of the sector... meaning they're torped. That is on a 250ms standard delay. The general rule being that 170ms and below give you a pretty good shot, 180ms is a crapshoot and higher is just... well, sorry chucko.

Now what happens if that delay is extended beyond 250ms? Can you see now how suddenly ping becomes irrelevant? That may sound good, but it's really not. The first person to figure this out wins. It means they have all sorts of opportunities to make your life miserable. With a move delay you CANNOT run. The irony is doubled here since tpad incurs no delay at all, meaning a torper can simply tpad adj to you and *smack* well before mobiles come into play.

Funny thing is, if you have a corpie w/ saveme you can also get out of there without ever taking a wave since move delay slows down attack too. In the end what does this mean? Move delay makes scripts more powerful!

Shorten CPC? Let's look at the basic grid macro:
m1234^mza9999^Mf1cdm2345^Myy

Versus:
py4567^Mycpy1234^M^Mq

Pretty obvious once again which has the fewer CPC. Shorten CPC and you make grid defense EASIER.

Sure if all you do is play high turn or unlim games where people run world blah scripts... then yea this slows them down a tad. CPC will slow down world SST too, move delay won't all that much. However a smart scripter can shorten the commands and get more $$$ per hour than his competition. Meaning once again that a smart scripter will always win. Tweaking standard settings just gives scripters MORE power.

Of course the point is moot. Most players will not play in a game w/ move delay because it simply isn't fun. They already know all of the above and don't need it proven to them once again.

I agree with you on the most part of what you said, BUT, what the person wanted, from what I heard was a griddless universe.  That would pretty much stop gridding.  A person COULD grid if there were time limits set on the game and it was somewhat hard to defend a grid.  It all depends on what this person wants.   I mean it would definitely slow the game down.  Terra drained in a few days may never get drained.

Well, depends... while he said a gridless universe, what he implied was a universe w/o grid defense. No delay would stop a gridder, it would just force them to passive grid or 2-ship grid instead. Like I said waaaay back on page 1, it doesn't restrict gridding... it just makes what grid you do have that much stronger.

A time limit and small corp sizes would reduce grid defense, yea. 2 hour TL and a corp max of 3... yea. Definately stop most grid defense.

Easy way to fix the terra problem is to make planets slow to develop and produce poorly. Then it's not worth colonizing en masse. That part is easy to accomplsih.

So yea, I suppose a really small time limit and really small corp size and typical stock edit would definately slow the game down. But you'd also get no serious players there either. Closest people will play these days is a half-planet times stock.

Big D and Singular and all the others. Thank you for  all the good tips. I'll be testing them all in the weeks to come. Since I still have a lot of work to do to translate the texts into the german language  It will be some time before my server goes into the open. I will try to  eliminate 24/7at all costs. Make it hard as I can for players that just rely on grids and limit scripts per dekret to the very bascs, that are in the helpers build in.
Since the game will be running in the german language, I dont expect to see many of you guys there.
I am doing this mostly to give my blind players a chance to play some online game, they cant use all the graphic games and need a fair break in this game.
I wont be playing there, just giving help to them
Also, if you guys have access to any of the old textbased online games, I would be glad to hear about it.
Best on Schreyer@web.de if you please
Glad to know you all
Jschrey

Oh wow, you're going to translate the in-game messages to german? Talk about rewriting scripts... laff. You working w/ JP on that? If not, talk w/ him. Expanded language support would rock. Very ambitious effort there.

Legend of the Red Dragon also comes to mind. There was also another one... uhm, nethack I think it was called, that I used to play as well.

YA, LORD was in my opinion the second greatest text-based game ever made.

Oh here ye' here ye' the oh great sea of negativity hath spoken!


I liked BRE:

http://www.johndaileysoftware.com/products/index.asp

also PimpWars, The Pit, and Piss-o-rama, were fun as well.

All I can say about this post is you really need to keep in mind what part of this forum you are in.  Smack Talk is 2 doors down.

That is an ambitious project and looks like a very good one to take on. I wish you well in this and hope things work out. One thing is that if you have a small player base, then you can pretty much get agreements on script usage and gridding.

If you need T-Edit scripts for this type of setup, hit me up and I will help, and I think others would be willing to help you with whatever scripts you need.

Most of us look at TradeWars as a very competitive game and play it that way. What you are doing is much different in trying to provide a playing field that is a more relaxed game.

               / Promethius / Enigma / Wolfen /

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