Laff, restoring backup from even a few hours can make a huge different. Imagine invading a base, then boom... restore. Suddenly it's afew hours earlier and the enemy knows to move.

I'd think that with the exception of basic server files, if a game goes corrupt... just rebang it.

And nobody reads the alien spam. Infact it ruins the msg feature of the game since everyone hits A or double-space to abort msgs. The game could do without alien spam. Alien fighits shouldn't leave messages, plain and simple.

Some of us run auto login scripts, but if I'm in a game I want to win I set the discon/recon events to play sounds too, so I can get on and make sure my corpies relogged. Which is a definite advantage over those that don't... so taking a server down can be pretty intrusive.

Well, I'm told new version, if it ever comes out, won't even require you to take the server down to bang games!  That will be nice.
And I see your point about backups,.. but for now, it's what I got running, and I've recieved few complaints about it,.. so I'll keep it running. 
That's another reason I choose noon, most can be around to relog if they choose.  It's posted plain that it will run at noon, and if you don't run a relog, or you aren't around to relog, then it's your own fault for trying to run afk stuff
I try to be as sensitive to player needs as possible, but this is one thing that keeps things running smoother I feel.  Otherwise, I have to deal with this kind of stuff later in the day, and take the server down when more people are actually playing, and not camping.

You take the server down every day at noon? Guess nobody rides planets there... =)

Hmm, JP did give me the twmail.dat format.  I wasn't too concerned with using it because mail is mail, but it sounds like there might be a lot of demand for a program that'd automatically delete (or perhaps consolodate in some way) alien messages and leave the rest.
Another thing to add to the pile.

Well problem is you have to periodicly delete the file, and you have to take the server down to do so.  Would be nice if you could just parse out the alien sector hits, and leave the rest, and leave the server running while doing so.
That to much to ask?

Well you don't HAVE to delete it, but in a heavy alien game you generally end up needing to.  And anything I access works fine while the server is running.  I'm still surprised simple file copying won't work while the server is running when I can read/write the files at will using C++ file streams.

Yes, if you can find a way to clear the alien fighits from the twmail file in a convenient way... you would have a lot of takers. I don't think you can file copy, but you can clear out the mail in a stream.

Well u can delete the file with out shutting the server down, but there is a catch you can't have anyone logged into that particular game u are delete it for and if you are having troubles with it causing hangups etc it only works part of the time.  Another way i have fixed the problem without taking server down is to rename the file but that doesn't always work either and I haven't played with it much to see when it will work or won't.
River Rat

I can think of some pretty easy ways.  I can't think off the top of my head if alien hits are formatted exactly the same way as player hits (and am at work right now, no TWGS access), but even if so, unless a player named themselves the exact same thing as the singular alien name for one of the aliens, I'd easily be able to zap it.
Could even instead of deleting the data altogether clean it up a bit.  Basically change it to a summary message (or set of messages) that just say: "Your figs in the following sectors were hit by the Ferrengi:" and then a list of space-separated sectors.  It'd be able to condense pages and pages of message spam into a few lines, in case you still wanted to process the alien locations with a script for any reason.  (It'd require writing scripts specifically for the new formating but if it became a standard TWGS mod, players would adapt.

It is somtimes helpful to have the alien hit info if you're hunting aliens in specific ship types. Also it can be useful for finding enemy bases - say the log says Ferrengi Neezeb's ship was destroyed by a quaser cannon at 11:20pm - you search your messages and find Neezeb entered sector 9032 at 11:18pm - now you have place to start your search.

Another thing to consider is that inactive players/corps may have messages clogging up the file - maybe delete any messages over x days old.

Xen, play a subzero. I've had over 10,000 messages before... heck, I've had nearly 100k messages. They don't kill the figs, they just touch them... there's a sector entry, and they move off. That's the problem, usually aliens will cycle between 2 or 3 sectors and hit them 100s of times. If it drives you nuts there are ways to control them, but... it's not really worth doing since it's a constant struggle.

That's what kills the twmail file, any decent sized grid equals thousands and thousands of hits. Now I have a little scripty that will clear the msgs (up for d/l on navhaz) every so-often, but after an unlim gets that old most people just blockade up dock and wait for the rebang. So the file grows and grows... and that's of course what we're talking about w/ the twmail file, unlims. A turns game won't have that large of a grid for a while and rarely has that level of alien activity.

These hits don't usually reveal you an alien location, since if you have it figged... you already know what's in it. They're completely useless bits of information. Player hits are different, of course, but aliens are just useless. Most of the time they hit near the MSLs and class 0s and near their own space, so it's hillariously predictable.

An inactive corp w/ a grid can definately clog stuff up, but most dead corps have no grid to trigger on.

It is useful to have the alien fig hits on your screen, of course, if you're hunting a specific shiptype... as mantis said. But there isn't much reason to have it sent to the twmail file since you need to do that kindof hunting in realtime. I figure if you already have an area gridded you probably already know if there's an enemy base around there .

I have wished, for some time, that this was a new CN setting for alien games. But alas...

Heh, well a simple zapping of all alien hits from the mail data file would be easy.  It'd still display in realtime if you're online (and it'd still go to the mail data file for that matter, to be cleared periodically; hourly, I'd figure, though daily may even be useful enough--it should take less than a second to process each time) but it should be easy enough to do.  It'd leave player hits untouched.  I'll put it on my list as something to do when I finish up my current projects.