Ok, I know I will be flamed for this post but I have to do it.

U guys really don’t get it. I am so surprised, but you really don’t.

And keep in mind this applies to the “masses” Not necessarily the people who frequently post here.

The game is not dying/dead because it is a text game. The game is not dying because of truce violators. It is not dying because of failure to teach players or key time or unlims, etc.

It is dying because of scripts and scripting. Period. That’s it.

Now before you all see red and stop listening, allow me to explain.

I am not a “script zombie” (I think that’s what it was called) I am all for scripts. I am especially all for scripts that make up for the tedious, awful tasks such as trading or product moving. In general I like scripts. The problem is the SHARING of scripts. Now, granted that Grimy has a bunch of useful things, more than we have had access too in the past, but it is not cutting it.

Of course there will be exceptions to the following, but exceptions are NOT the norm.
Here are the issues:
A person with better scripts will beat a person with worse scripts.
Trying to win a game against any good/better than good player, with public scripts, is mostly impossible.

People need to have the same or similar tools to enable them to compete.

For example. I am in 2 games right now. One turns, one unlim. In both games I am playing with at least one well know, very good player. Here is the situation.

Turns game: The universe is gridded. Anyone who ventures out get photoned or pdropped almost immediately. Our team has over 9K turns each in a 3K daily turn game each. No way to use them cept to eat a photon. There are 2 teams left, each with 3 players. 1 player on each team has already quit. Woohoo. Now thats a fun game. Cant imagine why more people are not really into that game. Only way to win is to hope the other team drops from the server! Now a few “elites” might know how to combat this, but not normal peeps. Hence they cant overcome the scripts. Hence the game is boring. Hence no-one plays.

Unlimited Game: Our team has more collies, planets, and figs. Other team has a better gridder (thanks zark) and a pdrop on limpet trigger script.

I have neither. I cant grid. I cant stop them from gridding. I have the superior tactical advantage and I will be gridded out of the game. Sweet. Now that has fun written all over it. The only saving grace is that my teammates have a gridder that kinda works….but they wont share it with me. So I cant do anything but watch and get bot’d around. Maybe if I kiss enough booty, they might give me the gridding script….but most likely no, cause I have teamed with them a bunch of times and they always tell me “no”. So I sit and watch the game go by……as the few good/elite players battle it out to see who wins.

So that is what happens to most folks in most games. How long can we expect the game to succeed under those situations? How can you expect to stop Zark’s gridder with Ck’s pdrop or the mom p-drop? It is simple. You cant. Have fun sitting on “plock” for 3 hours hoping that sector gets hit. Yeah….that makes for an awesome game.

Now look. I understand the work that goes into the scripts. I understand that people don’t want to give them to “just anyone”. But if that’s the deal, then don’t sit here and hypothesize about why the game isn’t more popular. Who wants to play a game that you are guaranteed to lose every time, or if you win, you cant/wont contribute to the win…..at least after truce…. And no, I don’t consider stripping planets to be just as valuable or kewl as gridding and pdropping peeps.

So you want TW to stay alive? Share more. You don’t have to give Zarks to every newbie, but there are a lot of middle of the road players who lose interest because they are sure to lose. One can only take just so much……oh, and yes, I am sure there are some people out there who think they can beat Lone or Kewl with public scripts because they are “better players”. To them I say…..go ahead and try. Report the results back and prove me wrong.

The game is supposed to be about “strategy”, not “he who has the better scripts wins”.

This is my opinion. And before you bash me about how wrong I am, think about it. I am a middle of the road TW player. I am stating what I believe. I am losing interest. If its happening to me (and I have been playing since the BBS days) whose to say its not the same for others?

Ya know, one of you guys wrote that “players used to play to win, not play for a game”. I agree. I play to win. But my tools are inferior and antiquated. Try digging a swimming pool with a shovel. I bet the guy with the backhoe gets it done faster.

Whatever dude...



This is a fair criticism, and it is a growing problem, but you don't need to be a scripter to beat the problems you've brought up. The biggest detail is simply choosing the right games at the start until you learn how to drain photons and grid, unfortunately no script on the planet can teach you those things... you have to learn them yourself. Even if you had a better script, someone with a better sense of the game could just code around it again. The imbalance centers around a steep learning curve it seems.



You can't stop a limpet gridder with a direct or adj pdrop, but zark's script is predictable in the sectors it hits... you can reduce the time it takes for a plock to hit. It also has a few other weaknesses (all scripts of this nature do), but all are minor and tactical compared to counter gridding. But you have to learn to do all of that first, which means getting into turns games and playing from the start where you have an equal chance to get going.

The thing about turns games, they aren't really supposed to go into long planet turtles. If you have a large base and they have a large base and nobody can move, then that's a stalemate. Game should just be declared a stalemate and closed. There isn't a huge advantage to colonizing more than the edit needs.

Oh, have you ever considered learning to script?

If I understand the last post correctly, you are wanting a game-in-a-box where everyone's tools are the same. The major drawback to this the inability to come up with new methods of attacking/defending or doing the tedious things that the game requires.

The script you are having problems hitting is launching to limpeted sectors so you have no chance of adjacent pdropping, but there are methods to counter the script other than sitting on plock. Zark's gridder is very good and your ping will at least have to equal that of the gridder. The same goes for the gridder I use and a corpie uses a different gridder yet, but still almost impossible to hit - key is "almost impossible."

Edit [Sing beat me to the reply so my reply isn't to his but the one prior to that]

               / Promethius / Enigma / Wolfen /

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

ok. well first, thanks for not bashing me

but i am not sure that we have addressed the concerns/issues. I think was topic was supposed to attempt to figure out if the game is dying and if so, why?
To address the 2 comments:

1. A turns game turns into a stalemate. ok. but why is that fun? how is that going to keep someone from leaving or having them have a renewed interest? I may not choose WOW over it, but Texas Hold Em sure sounds tempting......

2. I have been playing for a long time. How exactly does one "learn to grid" ? Is this done by hand or by macro? if its done by a script we are back to square one. We had 1/2 the grid.....not anymore....Are you saying to grid the high warp sectors or search the dead ends or take all the equipt buying ports or the highly upgraded ones? not sure what to make of that.....

3. If I can learn the inner workings of the gridder and plock more intelligently, then that is a valid idea. I will work on that. Do i need to have the gridder to learn the pattern?

4. Learn scripting. Does one need to be a scripter to compete at TW nowadays? ? If so, then it really may die

2nd reply.

1. yeah i understand a "game in a box" is kinda silly. But more peeps can share with the players that invest the time and energy. Not everything needs to be equal, but more of a level playing field = more fun, IMO

2. My ping. Yeah it would need to be the same. If it was, what script would i use? I dont think i have that, do I ? Hence my original issue

If i am reading into things right, you guys are kinda saying that A) I am not experienced enough in the true inner workings of the game, and B) even if I had the tools, I prolly couldnt use them well enough.

Well both of those things may be true. But i can tell you this. I am at least an average player. If thats the case, then 50% of the TW world is worse than me (surprising really! Laff) and i have been playing for a looong time. Like I said BBS days, battles with Diddy and Prestone, etc.

So here are the questions now.
How can we entice people to learn the very complex inner workings of tw, which we have just stated that we need to know to compete?
And how can we learn to use the more complex scripts, if I dont have them?

I didnt know how to use MOM, but picked up on that once after a short while.....

Oh, and thanks for the thoughts so far!!

IMO a stalemate isn't fun. The answer is to grid more and be aggressive, hunt for their base and never stop. If all you do is sit by and let the enemy have it's way you'll either lose or stale, but you'll never win. Most people don't use private gridders in turn games, I've won major turnies with ram's twarp gridder running single fast hops. The trick there is turn management, run down your turns to a smaller percentage doing stuff like colo, buydowns, etc. Have a corpie run saveme and then grid... if you get torped you don't lose much and you get a saveme, have them drop a personal limpet, scrub and go home. If you don't get torped then you've had a good run for your risk.



What I mean is a combination of things. Learning how to hunt (what sectors to hit) is definately important, but there's more to it than that. There's the game techs to learn, how ping works, how CPC works, how photons work, how the system clock functions, how to macro to reduce the odds of getting hit, how to pgrid, how to hit-retreat, how to single hop, how to test and how to time your enemy, how to use their torping scripts to your advantage, how to invade planets that aren't properly protected during a torp shoot, how to drain planet fuel, how to take advantage of people twarp/bwarp torping, how to anticipate and predict hitsec patterns, the list is long.



No, just think about it some. If a person pdrops adjacent to a limpet hit, then the answer is never go adjacent to any sector that could have a limpet in it. Atleast for unlims, turn games work differently. This means you need to keep track of limpets and armids and treat the sectors that have your's differently than the ones that don't. The rest is randomizing the grid list and getting involved in the specific technical details. As you develop your own technique you'll learn a lot of little "gotchas" that creep up along the way, but that's just part of the learning curve.



No but in order to be a competitor on the higher levels you need access to a scripter. Like anything it's an advantage, and the most efficient way to combat that advantage is to meet it.



Nod, but how do you level the playing field when it's based on a broader skillset and more work? Only way is to acquire said skillset and put in the effort. I can teach skillset, I can't teach desire.



Based on what I said about the limpet gridder above, you'll know that someone needs to clear limpets from a sector before they can continue. Likewise it means that sectors they hit will be adjacent to a smaller subset of sectors, sectors they once cleared. This limits the number of sectors they can hit, and does so in a particular pattern. Depending upon the game settings you can then use a sector trap approach, among others.

The only problem with that is the time required to do this, which makes it less efficient than counter-gridding in most respects.



Things have advanced a lot in the last few years, despite the whole "nobody's still playing" argument. This is especially true in gridding. Have you read my returnee tutorial? It's on my site, it addresses some of these issues.



The answer is for someone that wants to catch up to start on quieter games and get used to things, then progress up. Become a part of a corp, learn, ask lots of questions. If you ask good questions of good players they'll answer, it's rare that people ask good questions and it's always a pleasant surprise. Today's more complex scripts all have roots in older public scripts, they're merely refinements of older technology. The techniques are basically the same, they haven't changed much, it's just their application that has evolved.

See here for my replies (oddly enough they have been considered to be smack talk): viewtopic.php?f=28&t=20591

Considering that we're aiming for a civil, intelligent and level-headed conversation I'm thinking your contributions are less than desired.

I'm surprised the kind of gridder you're speaking of isn't widely available. I put together something this afternoon that fits the basic criteria you described.
Hit me up at icq 315642012 if you'd like to be a guinea pig .

I'm getting ready to head out of town for a couple minutes, so I might be unreachable until later this weekend.

2. I have been playing for a long time. How exactly does one "learn to grid" ? Is this done by hand or by macro? if its done by a script we are back to square one. We had 1/2 the grid.....not anymore....Are you saying to grid the high warp sectors or search the dead ends or take all the equipt buying ports or the highly upgraded ones? not sure what to make of that.

I can't answer the question per se but I can say this.

SCRIPTS ARE NOTHING BUT MACROS!!!!!!!

Sure some can argue with that statement but I can also say that the script's know when to send that particular macro.

For example if you had the speed at keys and the knowledge of the universe at the speed a computer does you could grid just as fast as a script, just by keystrokes.
It all boils down to who can get the keystrokes/commands to the server faster.

Flame me if you want but I want to hear the arguments against my proposition.

I do not here anyone bitching about not allowing macros just bitching about scripts....

I've said basically the same thing for years. The best scripts are nothing but intelligent macros. Scripts can build macros faster and respond to incoming text faster than your average human being, but that's basically all a script really is.

No flame, but there is a major difference between a script and macro. A macro is generally a preset series of keystrokes that can be controlled by a script (or hotkey). Some scripts build macros based on the criteria set by the scripter. When I scan a sector, I can see if mines are present or not - if not then why waste time sending an "n" when I could send an "f". Granted the time is extremely small, but I still don't want to spend a millisecond longer in a sector than necessary when someone is shooting at me. My script will build the fastest possible macro (at least to my knowledge level) to meet the situation.

To state it differently, macros are generally "dumb" and do only what they are set to do, where a script should be somewhat intelligent and adapt/respond to certain situations. A script or hotkey controls a macro burst. Macros do have to be written to take into account unexpected issues, but by themselves they do not respond to a situation.

So I would have to disagree with the statement "Scripts are nothing but macros". Scripts contain macros and executes them based on the design of the scripter.

               / Promethius / Enigma / Wolfen /

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

On a conceptual level, whether or not the script makes a set of limited decisions is irrelevant. The end result is still a type-ahead macro being spit out.

Kudos on the attention you pay to your scripts, btw.

I agree with both of you.
But this is really all academic, isn't it?

Well, depends. Obviously you aren't going to be able to type as fast, macro or not, as a script can generate it's commands. But many scripts have macro-related vulnerabilities, so it can be used to your advantage. Clearly gridding the entire universe w/ a macro won't work, but a good knowledge of macros can help you make a gridder.

Eh. This game was designed for macros and scripts in a way it makes the game more enjoyable. The only bad thing about scripts is the non scripters are kinda at the mercy of the ones who write their own to a point.

What it was for me, was that a lot of the friends and corpies I met/made left the game because they got board.

In my opinion the basic strategy of the game is always the same. You play red or you play blue and do the red/blue things that go along with how you play the game. When you think about it as for minute tactics like all of you are talking about most all of it has been done in one-way or another. I have yet to see someone post something I have not seen, heard about from someone else, or done myself. Gets boring.

As for a lot of the new comers they probably get scared off by the scripts or get frustrated because of scripts and quit. But like I said I think the game was designed for macros/scripts to a point.

It’s kinda true to say game in its self might just be responsible for its own demise.

Cheers