While there is debate over "Classic" game play, TW used to be a single player at a time game and evolved to multi-player at a time game. The menu, formulas used in the game, and other things remained the same mostly. The player still is in a ship the whole game unless SDed. You cannot build a casino or other upgrade like that on your planet just citidel stuff, you cannot buy a tank and move around and explore your planet and battle rebels, etc. The way of playing the game changed slightly to take into account that other players are online the same as you now. Some other things changed as well, but the game play remained almost the same. Gold Edits make the game more challenging as players have to read edits now to figure out how to best play in the game.

Tradewars has been a challenge for me to learn, I knew it somewhat when I played in the 1980's and 1990's but forgot most of what I knew and have to learn it over again. I never played red back then either, it was mostly a blue game. No game edits to worry about, no custom ships, no worries about getting podded at the Star Dock by another player as it was single player. Having an Starship was a must in that game. There was no scripts, we played by hand. I had a method for paired port trading that got me 1 or 2 exp almost every time I traded, others used calculators before they traded. I figured more like going down a certain amount of credits each time and seeing how the port owner reacted. If I ticked him off I was going too low, and had to decrease the credits I went down by next time. If he accepted right away and I got no exp I went too high and next time I would increase the number of credits I would go down. It was trial and error, but I found the sweet number that earned me credits and exp for each pair of ports, no calculator required. Sometimes, based on number of holds of cargo, that number was 1000 or some easy to remember number. Then I just decreased it several more points each trade as I continued to trade with the ports.

I am sure back then there was terminal scripts to do all kinds of things, but I did not use them. I used DOS based TW Helpers that worked offline that did mapping, found paired ports, etc using captured CIM data. We had to do ALT-200 etc to get into CIM mode and then start the capture file before getting the list of ports and sectors explored. When other players found out I used such a program I was accused of cheating, despite the fact that the program was available for download on the BBS and anyone could have used it.

Ferrengi have changed, I remember I used to use a trick to use the Ferrengi to my advantage. If I found someone's base and wanted to trap them inside, I would trick the Ferrengi into dropping figs on way to that base and use the Ferrengi to moth their planets. First I would drop 1 toll fig per sector leading up to the base from the Ferrengi homeworld, then I would get a ship with a lot of shields on it and a few figs. I would then look for the nearest Ferrengi, they usually hit one of my figs, easy to find. I would hunt the Ferrengi down and hit them with my few figs. Then having 0 figs on me, the Ferrengi would hit me for 0 or 1 damage. So I would move into a sector that had my toll fig in it and the Ferrengi would follow me. The Ferrengi would destroy my toll fig and lay down 50 to 300 of his figs. I would repeat the sector move for each sector leading up to the enemy base. Until at the enemy base I would moth the planets and have the Ferrengi follow me into the planet sector. Then my pod would be destroyed. I lost a ship, some figs, and got SDed, but blocked off the path to the enemy base. If the enemy was not at the base and kept a majority of their figs there on the planet and had no t-warp drive and cloaked in a dead-end somewhere else or hid in FedSpace, they were screwed. Sometimes I would invade their planet sector first and take out the sector figs so if they did have a t-warp drive they could not get back to the planet without destroying Ferrengi figs. Ferrengi do not seem to work that way anymore and I am glad because of it. Others did the same trick as me in many games back then. It was funny to see the Ferrengi curse at me and hit me for 0 to 1 damage each time.