I bought down 11 ports, robbed them (not mega, that's turned off), stock Colt - 250 holds.

I use IC's at each of my ports and run Swath's Rob/Transport script.

They are all favorable MCIC rated ports, for buying and selling. I probably sold org to 5-6 ports as well.

Delays were never intended to be used to limit player activities. That's what turns are for. But in an unlimited turn game, there is no other way to balance the effectiveness of some activities over others. So even though a lot of unlim players are fine with the way the game plays without any delays, the delays allow gameops to explore different balances. It's just important to realize that the role of delays changes depending on if it's turn based or unlimited. For turn based games, the turns should control activity, and delays pace player interactions, while for unlimited games, delays are the only way to control activity, since it's assumed that players are active 24/7, and the only question is how much can they achieve during that time.

Delays in an unlim will defiinitely control activity, but then it is a "regulated" unlim. It might appeal to the new/returning players though, and give them more freedom in learning or relearning the game. Once they get the mechanics down without the hunter/killers wiping them out, they can give a turns game a try to figure out turn management, or venture into a true unlim.

               / Promethius / Enigma / Wolfen /

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

Actually turn limited games don't need delays, everyone has the same number of turns. In an unlimited turn game, delays are all you have to put any kind of limitation on the game.

Mongoose already said he likes the movement delays. For the
above reason and to make the difference in ships' size/type be
reflected in their movement speed.

There are two purposes to delays. I think the more important one is enforcing a pace of activity when players are interacting, and that's what Mongoose wants to use them for.

But the rob/steal delay doesn't do that. That was my point here. I think it's perfectly reasonable to drop the rob/steal delay even if you want other delays. Let the turn limits provide the balance for reds and blues, and only use the delays to slow things down during interactions like combat, etc.

My experience with delays are simple,.. turn them on, turn your players away to another server. I discovered this quickly when I turned them on by accident.

That is an unfortunate truth. These delays could really balance the game, but I guess no-one will ever know since we can't use them.

I'm still hopeful that a hybrid delay system will finally allow us to have the best of both worlds. If in fact delays are only useful as a way to pace interactions between players, then the only times they are necessary are the times when players are in the same sector. Using delays when you're out alone in deep space doing port trading is just overkill. Why not allow you to finish your turns as quickly as possible? But when you get into interactive combat, those delays are needed.

With this kind of approach, I think people will be more likely to accept them.

I guess delays in 3D graphical games are accepted more, because you can see that you are walking, running, flying, etc... It can easily take you 15 - 30 minutes or more just to travel to some areas of the game. In TradeWars, you can be anywhere almost instantly, and that just doesn't make much sense from the perspective of other MMORPGs.
I am really looking forward to truce mode, because most of these graphical MMORPGs don't allow players to attack other players, especially in the lower levels. In World of Warcraft, you actually have to choose a PVP server, and there aren’t nearly as many as there are PVE. Even after you choose PVP, there are many areas of the game where you are completely safe.

Man, now I miss ganking in STV. I used to dress up my rogue as a mariachi, with the shirt and pants from tailoring and that sombrero you get from the Don Carlos quest, and equip a couple level 20ish maces that looked like maracas. All the weak gear helped draw out the fight for extra lulz. I took down a couple pretty high levels dressed in that outfit... like around 70 when I was 80.

I remember once I was visiting Gary and looking over his shoulder while he was playing Ultima Online, and some guy knocked him out and stole his clothes, so he was running around naked looking for something to cover himself with. I was laughing my butt off. I don't think he appreciated my amusement ;)

Why has this subject gone so far astray? Oh, probably because I'm involved.

In EVE Online, they've just started something new as well. You can zip through the universe rather quickly, but some battles have taken place with hundreds of ships involved, and each ship having a dozen missiles in flight, and the explosions from that result. It's about shut down the nodes the battles have taken place on. They had started asking players to "give them warning" so they could devote nodes to the systems to be involved, but come on, you really don't know "when" the battle may occur, some lucky bloke manages to trap a ship, their friends come in, the victim calls in help, and before you know it the world is on fire.
They've just started stepping back time. I forget what they call it, but as the load increases, they slow time, giving more cpu cycles in between screen updates. So your missiles are in flight longer, your ship moves slower, but the sytem doesn't crash.
Perhaps we can addapt from this, and use it like JP has I think already explained, that the more players there are in one area, the delays kick in, but otherwise, it's flight as normal.