I think you missed my point. You see... in the wild, the antelope are thrown in with the lions, even newbie antelopes. They can't whine for a less hostile environment where they can learn to be more cunning or faster than the lions. And many learn, survive and thrive. It was a metaphor.

Most of my best lessons came in the form of having all my crap taken or getting killed. Learning what not to do is just as important as learning what to do.

Having a place to learn the ropes (a newbie game) is a great concept on paper, but how much can you learn from playing against a bunch of other people that don't know how to play. You need players that can exploit the newbie mistakes. Some things just can't be taught, they have to be experienced. Maybe instead of having a newbie game.. why not have a mentor program. Separate the more experienced players and distribute the newbies amoung them. Just a thought.

Orion...I learned the game also on a local dialup BBS back when MarTech still owned the code and JP was the technical conultant and coder before he bought the code. Also sent the sysops the cash to register the game on 2 servers and tried training a crew to head out into larger areas and kick butt! Then to my surprise ended up with us getting our butts kicked and we had been learning by doing everything by hand with no helpers and it did not take long to start using simple helpers. Back to original topic...German players might well be served by using ZOC as that originated in Germany and has great documentation written in German. It was NOT designed as a game helper but serves that purpose very well. Originally it was written for other reasons such as setting up a 'mini-host' (think BBS) and the REXX script should work very well when scripts are written in German as well. Just a thought! They might even run better written in the original language.

Good Post FC, now add the LINK to REV HELPER
http://thereverend.coastgames.com/tradewars/
REV is the ZOC king
ZOC is KING in TW, for runing multiple MACROs to use Scripts OUTSIDE of ZOC via TWX or SWATH even.
You can map the KEY BOARD nicely in ZOC, for finger tip combat excution.

There are plenty of free scripts even free combat scripts out there.
REV HELPER is the best free scripts TW has ever seen.

Res Judicata

Taking TW by Attrition

The Reverend wins another convert. =)

galaxi

Zoc and it's scripting Language, REXX, are for "Bobby Soxers". Both the Terminal Program and the language would have expired gracefully many years ago were it not for The Rev, whom I hold in great respect.

Without Rev's Zoc efforts, the Darn thing would be dead now and good riddance but hey, good to stay, keeps mediocre players like me capable of semi competing laff.

quote:Originally posted by Kasey

I think you missed my point. You see... in the wild, the antelope are thrown in with the lions, even newbie antelopes. They can't whine for a less hostile environment where they can learn to be more cunning or faster than the lions. And many learn, survive and thrive. It was a metaphor.

Most of my best lessons came in the form of having all my crap taken or getting killed. Learning what not to do is just as important as learning what to do.

Having a place to learn the ropes (a newbie game) is a great concept on paper, but how much can you learn from playing against a bunch of other people that don't know how to play. You need players that can exploit the newbie mistakes. Some things just can't be taught, they have to be experienced. Maybe instead of having a newbie game.. why not have a mentor program. Separate the more experienced players and distribute the newbies amoung them. Just a thought.






I agree on mentoring. Training the newbies with a skilled player.

The newbie game is just to teach them how to play without getting podded every day. Then once they are ready they can get into a real game and start learning how to be competitive and use scripts, etc. They will lose, but at least they will learn from it. The newbie game would build up confidence, the real game would teach them that life isn't fair and that they need to learn from their mistakes really fast.

Orion,

I personally feel that noobs need to be treated with "tough love", I think every noobie should be given a chance to work with a teacher, and if he takes that chance, use that time to 'better' his playing or, lackof playing skills. I met a guy the otherday, no names.. But he was to PPT for us, in a 1 tpw ship, with 100 holds, and 500 turns, he only made 125k- While the rest of us averaged 738k each.. (Ports will still very well balanced.)

If someone would have helped this person, when he first started (or started again) he would have been MUCH better off, and able to cash on his own.. Coincidently, he was podded on his way back to stardock, which also would have been avoided, since he Tpaded into the ship, 5 hops out from sd.. lol

What seperates players from noobs? Scripts? no.. I can PPT by HAND and make more than 138k in 500 turns, even in a 6 TPW ship. Experience? Nope, this guy has been playing for 6 months, and can't do squat. Commen sense? Hell no, we're talking about a game in outer space, there is no common sense here. So what exactly makes the difference?

Game Knowledge- I can spend an hour with most noobs, and they come off with 500% more knowledge than they learned in the prior month- To be honest, any of us could do it.. I don't recommend teaching a noob, when your still considered a noob, but anyone that knows how to play well, can teach well.

What do I teach? Everything from running blue turns, to Red cashing, advanced techniques, combat simulation, ect ect.. I generally spend 2-4 weeks with most people, 1-2 hours a night, sometimes I do groups of up to 9, sometimes it's 1:1, basically depends on who accepts help.

There are several other things I teach, that wouldn't make any difference on this site.. But noobs aren't born, they're created.. You can't toss a player into a game, with "skilled" leadership or not, and expect them to do a thing. That's like throwing a baby into mc donalds, and telling them to make a burger, not gonna happen.

Noobs need to learn, on their own, or from someone else.. If they got someone telling them what to do (Yeah, I've seen some of the ppl that signed up to be CEO, and you jackasses will give an order before you explain it)

That's not going to help anyone. We'll end up with 15 noobs that need Zoloft, thereapy, and probably some sort of family counciling.. I'm totally for the idea of training noobs, but the way you guys have discussed it, and from the rules I read- you'll be making matters worse.

For those of you whom support it, that's fine, you need some direction in your lives, but accually think about it, TW doesn't have rules.. You can't dupe, and that's about it.. I remember some jackass winning a tournament single handedly because he backstabbed his corp, remember that?

Now, imagine teaching these 'noobs' in a game with rules and restrictions, ie "You can't attack for 14 days, and after that you need to give a 72 hour notice" What the hell is that? We got a noob making rules for the noobs?

I'd toss in 2 rules, #1 No Duping, #2 No attacking, invasions by CEO's. (PERIOD). Let the noobs kill eachother off from day 1, why? Cause it's gonna happen.

The way I've always trained noobs, 2 ways accually, First, working with me, showing them how certian things are done, and showing better ways they could be done (turn managment) ect ect..
The second, is working against me, showing different tactics & ways of combat, and believe it or not, that is how I learned the game.. I feel I learned very quickly, I'm the type of person that doesn't feel certian tricks need to be left out, why? Eventually someone is going to find out..

I've said it several times, I am far from being the best player in this game, I get my fair share of pods handed down to me, but I am one of the VERY FEW, that are willing to take time out of my life, and my schedule, to teach someone else how to play the game, or play better.

Kinda like I offered to Orion, and Galaxi.. They both decided not to, suites me just fine.

I teach players how to beat me, not how to play.. Usually beating your teacher, gives you the confidence to go out and try, and when you lose, normally you'd ask your teacher what you did wrong, sometimes you suck it up and try harder.

What I forsee, is the winning corps noobs, will eventually turn into decent players- and the losing teams noobs, will eventually quit.

That's good numbers, what, 1 out of 4, or out of 8 will keep playing the game, with the death rate at what it is, and current noob games.. Wow, TW will be extinct by 2012.

Use your brains people, losing a game is discouraging to almost everyone. "If I'm never going to win, why play? it's not THAT much fun.."

That's my 50 cent worth.

Great post Graz...I agree. If you dont help the noob's to get better then all your doing is helping them quit playing. I have taken many under my wing and they have gotten better, some can even beat me now. A suggestion from a method I use, dont attack noobs and dont invade their bases until they hit at least level 4 cits. At that point they arent beat down and wanting to quit because they got that far somehow. They are also more likely to send you a message and find out how or why and possibly even asking to join you or asking for help to keep it from happening again. I have invaded many people once they hit level 4 or 5 and had them join my corp and learn what they did wrong. Now they are all better players for it and some have passed me up. The whole idea behind it is the noob thinks he was pretty well defended and you must be awesome if you took his planets, so you offer to let him in the corp and teach him where he went wrong and they are usually pretty easy to recruit after that and willing to learn from you. Just a suggestion, it works for me.

I didn't turn you down, I just don't have the time to learn yet. Been busy with college and family.

I am in System 78 Game S, on a different corp than you. Just passed you up in Exp, and almost negative alignment, ranked #2 right under TW55. It seems our two corps are the main powers in the game, other players are just hiding in FedSpace. I got a grid up early and explored a lot. If you want, teach me how to beat you in that game. It is the only game I am currently playing due to time constraints.

Graz,

I never turned down down your offer to teach me; to the contrary, i played a number of games with you before you suddenly just cut off communications between us several weeks ago. I learned some good stuff from you during the time we played together, and am grateful to you for the time you spent to teach me.

But i am getting tired of your "selective memory" when it comes to past events, sigh.. (recent OR otherwise.) I didn't turn down your help; you stopped offering it.

galaxi

Hey Galaxi, I wanna teach you how to wash my ISS
Graz only show you how to get PODDED
See, graz in love with Space Ghost and his POD INSURANCE.

I Just Trade in my ISS for an IDC when we speak of PODS to Give out.


Res Judicata

You seem to do pretty good web design and layout, do you mind posting all the pictures that Graz requested on the other thread? Hehehe, he's going to get more than he bargained for, I didn't even stake my claim to HALF my fame, roflmao. (heh, maybe there's a song lyric in there somewhere.)

galaxi

quote:Originally posted by Grazhoppa

Orion,

Now, imagine teaching these 'noobs' in a game with rules and restrictions, ie "You can't attack for 14 days, and after that you need to give a 72 hour notice" What the hell is that? We got a noob making rules for the noobs?

I'd toss in 2 rules, #1 No Duping, #2 No attacking, invasions by CEO's. (PERIOD). Let the noobs kill eachother off from day 1, why? Cause it's gonna happen.



I'm sure it is a shock to elite players when they see these types of "settings." But I must say that they seem to be working very well. I like the idea of noobs killing eachother but being safe from elite players... but then you get into the problem of the elites cashing all day so their noobs can have 50K figs on their ISS. Once again balance becomes the key and some of them will get discouraged when one corp's elites are better than theirs or are investing more time in the game. For instance, my CEO hasn't been able to get in the game very much -- while other CEOs are on daily.

---

When I first started the server and invited a lot of my tabletop gaming buddies to join (and a few did), I found that the newbies were staying newbies... it wouldn't matter how long they dinked around, they would always be newbies. At that point my skills were so old and outdated that I considered myself a newbie (still do.) After trying this out for a month or so, I invited in some experienced players. The experience players came into the game, switched to red and quickly zipped up the ranks (with little effort), destroyed a bunch of the newbies whenever they found them floating in space and took over some or all of their bases. At this point many of my newbies were ready to give up on the game because they felt unable to compete -- and these are people that play in a lot of other strategy games and do quite well.

Thankfully, Galaxi and a few of the other elites offered to take some of them under their wings and train the newbies how to play correctly. This re-ignited the spark of interest and I don't think I lost a single newbie that was in that first game. Splitting up into teams of 2 newbies and 2 experienced players has been a great help and while most of my newbies are still newbies, they have probably increased their knowledge of the game and it's tactics 10-fold. They are also having a lot more fun (at least that's the feedback I'm hearing.)

Of course they still get discouraged, especially when they are used to making 500-750K a day and elites are pulling anywhere from 5-15mil a day. Since I am the only newbie learning to play red, I think it would be good to have the next game set up so that only the newbies can be red. Have the elites go blue and have their corps survivability be based on how well they teach the newbies... that would be interesting.

All in all though, you can help train the newbies or you can keep playing against the same people over and over. When I played in Louisville in the early 90s, there were several BBSs that all had about 40-50 active players. Now is seems like there aren't hardly that many players in the whole US. The more noobs we can encourage to learn the "modern version" of the game, the better we'll all be.

To be fair, and quite honest to you:

If you want to teach your friends to play, thats fine.. Don't claim it's a game to help noobs, because of the simple fact.. It is not. If you would have quoted my entire post, I pointed at more than just the settings. As to a CEO cashing 50k figs for a 'noob blue', are you running unlimited turns over there?

If your CEO's are accually teaching, they'd start off with the noobs as blue hunters/furbers/colonizers, then in the next game, switch them to red. Several people have the misconception that blue is easier than red, just because a fedsafe blue doesn't get killed at stardock. When you accually think about it, that is not the case-

Furber
Has to grab furbs, tow to reds, take red ships, get cloaks, get gens, dets (sometimes both on furbs), reposistion SDT ships, keep his reds in line, keep his reds safe, tow cloaked red to safety zone, then use the rest of his turns as directed.. gridding/scouting/colonizing/whatever.

Farmer(Colonizer)
Has to get the furber to get the reds to set up bubble, then has to go about colonizing, and getting all planets setup, and keeping the planet<s> safe until team is ready for GSS, which is a task in itself.

Gridder
Has to lay a 'web' of fighters, while waiting for a trader to enter his 'web' he must hunt other online players (while expanding the grid) This alone is a task, add that to the fact that not only is he hunting players, he's also being hunted- This is not a safe job, and should NOT be given to a noob. This is what your 'CEO's should be doing.. As well as directing your reds, furber, and colonizer.

REDS-
Teaching someone to play red, is a long process, a red must know the best way to cash for his team, which isn't always SDT. A red must know how to read the game settings, to determine if SDT, SST, RMR, RTR, or GSS should be used- In the ideal game, we would all GSS on day 1.. But nope, not possible.

Now, with that in mind, why would any self respecting 'elite' give his 50k fighters to a noob? Keep in mind, I did that once.. and the noob blew up my ISS... with the 50k figs on it. Just because you give assets to a noob, does NOT make that noob a better player.

"All in all though, you can help train the newbies or you can keep playing against the same people over and over. When I played in Louisville in the early 90s, there were several BBSs that all had about 40-50 active players. Now is seems like there aren't hardly that many players in the whole US. The more noobs we can encourage to learn the "modern version" of the game, the better we'll all be."

I spend 2-3 hours a night, 5-7 nights a week, teaching noobs. I hold courses on the Notorious TWGS system for that simple reason, to teach players how to play better, smarter, and more efficient, and I feel we have a blast doing so. I've been teaching noobs for almost 6 years, with a 18 month break for war. I do not feel that the method you have come up with is the best, however... You do as you feel, you learn as you wish.. I will not post further on this topic, but if you feel you'd like to learn more- You can always ICQ me to set up dates for a class. (Classes usually run 6 weeks)

Please, refer to my previous post before responding.

Graz

quote:Originally posted by galaxi

Graz,

I never turned down down your offer to teach me; to the contrary, i played a number of games with you before you suddenly just cut off communications between us several weeks ago. I learned some good stuff from you during the time we played together, and am grateful to you for the time you spent to teach me.

But i am getting tired of your "selective memory" when it comes to past events, sigh.. (recent OR otherwise.) I didn't turn down your help; you stopped offering it.

galaxi




I never stop offering help, to anyone that is willing to learn.

What is on YOU is to get ahold of me, to show up for class, if you don't show up, it isn't my problem. There are certian things in life that we all need to take care of, and I understand that.

Graz