True I did use the CLV a lot to see who was doing things , this too circumvented your intentions , and can be prevented with a CLV blackout like the one in the Tmenu as I had suggested back at the beginning (they should be connected to the same toggle).



A few of these I agree with are underhanded : Subspace Crawling , Backstabbing , info sharing and such ...

But Shield Riding has been around a long time , but I can see how a solo player would see this as a cheat in a corp over 1 member.
Blowing StarDock,- has always been a part of the game ( I find it a waste unless its end of the game) also why I asked for hardening.
Blocking Fedspace - is for those who dont know how to play any other way.
Sentinal (sysop scripts were made to clear these , I was one of the first to work on them)
AFK scripts, Botting, - you mean like Save Me ?
that is probably the most used afk script I know of. Also might be considered a Bot because it controls another when he/she is not at keys.

The tactic of the diagonal move would be available to both players, but the person who isn't as knowledgable about the game is at a huge disadvantage as you say. Knowledge (and the ability to execute) is the difference between the skill levels in a game in most cases.

If I am up against a player who knows a game better than I do, should I expect him not to use his knowledge? No, I expect the other player to play to his/her best, and maybe I will learn something new.

We can't compare players who have been playing a long time in competitive games to casual players in regard to situations seen and adapted to. Rookies are rookies because they lack experience - they may have the physical skill and some knowledge, but putting it to use as effective as a veteran is rare.

The "not fair" seems to be from players who lack game knowledge, and don't want to put the effort forth to learn. It is like a lot of today's society, "I want mine, and I want it now and I am entitled to it without working for it".

               / Promethius / Enigma / Wolfen /

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

Very good analogy and VERY true.

In Chess, everyone knows the moves. What you do with those moves is what sets you apart. Pins, skewers, forks, zugzwang, zwischenzug, etc, these tactics are not obvious to all players. But they do follow naturally from the known moves, and I would contend that there are no secret tactics in Chess. In TW, the tactic of planet dropping, for example, does not follow naturally from an understanding of fighters and planets. And when the game was designed, the tactic wasn't even possible. It came about as a side-effect of changing technology. What player should be expected to consider how changing technology impacts his options in TradeWars? Any reasonable person will tell you that a fighter should not be able to hit you with a Quasar Cannon, simply because the game doesn't provide for such a "move". And there are two kinds of people who play games, the kind that, when discovering this fact, will say "wow, there's so much to learn, I'm hooked", and the kind that will say "are you kidding me? Yeah, whatever", and never look back. If the second group was in the minority, I'd agree with you. But they clearly are not.

To continue your Chess metaphor, the king used to be able to move like a knight once per game. That has changed, just has the technology has for TW. Anyone can pdrop. The tools are out there for it, just as there are tools out there for those who want to analyze chess openings. When I go to tournaments and bust out the Reti, I really throw my opponent for a loop as they are expecting c4, d4, or e4. They aren't prepared for nf3 and it can throw their game off, and I can end up winning unless they play a precise game. TW is the same. Someone develops a tactic, and everyone gets to scratch their heads and wonder how they ended up in a pod until they can put 2 and 2 together and recreate it.

Back in the day I played with Stonewall, and he had come across SDF- Steal, Dump, Flee. The only turns it cost were to steal from the port.
This allowed us a HUGE advantage in the cash/turn ratio. As more and more people caught on to it, the game was changed to make fleeing cost turns. That is how things go. The game changes, tactics change to adapt. This is why Fisher invented the random game. There haven't been any changes to Chess in hundreds of years, and so everything is finite and can be calculated. TW is not. JP changes something, and we get to relearn the game. Is that good or bad? It is what it is.
I personally think that when the game gets changed, the same thing is going to happen all over. Those who adapt first will have a HUGE advantage over those who don't. Remember when TWX came out? Those who had it had a giant advantage. The same will apply when JP is done making changes. Tactics will be adjusted, and those who are rookies will still be in their pod scratching their head, wondering what happened.

Ok, but you understand why a flee turn cost was necessary, right? That tactic was not factored into the design, and it unbalanced the design such that no other tactic could be effective against it. It made the game more one-dimensional. That's not a good thing. Any game has to evolve to maintain balance in the face of newly devised tactics that may be too overwhelming. As you say, chess went through that evolution for thousands of years. For 10 years, TW's rules didn't evolve to keep up with tactics. I'm making up for lost time here. But it's better to restore balance, where possible, than to just let the experts use the short list of unbeatable tactics while everyone else is stuck using the more obvious but less powerful ones (until they commit to learning the "winning" tactics). If I recall, in the flee turn cost, I specifically set the cash/turn ratio so it was slightly higher than less advanced tactics, so there is an advantage to having mastered the game to that level, but it was still necessary to bring it back to a reasonable balance. A player without that knowledge should still have a chance to compete.

I preferred my own variant of Ruy Lopez back when I played chess more seriously ;) Now days I just play a standard Queens Pawn opening, on those rare occasions when I get to play.

I have game knowledge, what I lack is the aggressive scripting knowledge. I've tried some of the public attack scripts, and was not able to pdrop successfully. Then players like Big D tell me, "Well, you have to know what script they're using, so you know which one to counter with." That remark removes me from game play into the realm of learning how to play one script against another.

That's not Trade Wars, that's Script Wars.

I use scripts to trade, colonize and haul. I enjoy figuring out more effective ways to use my turns such as if I need to move org to an H, I'll return with a load of fuel ore, or I've written a little script to colonize red, towing a colt. Not turn efficient - 82 turns per cycle, but it was the challenge I gave myself that afternoon to do.

Some of the more aggressive AFK scripts you could equate with a DoS. I've seen Zep in a game running an adjacent pdrop/photon script. He ping was a little slow, so we bounced him a bit then learned his script also included warping to SD to restock photons. Very clever AFK script to write, but for those unsuspecting players, that's the same as a DoS.

I don't have the time or the desire to play against your automation. Neigher do many others.

Yeah, me too. What the hell is shield riding?

You need to make a corp L5 planet personal, and turn off all offenses. The corpie who "owns" the planet is now the "taxi driver".

Other corp mates in loaded IC's or other such high turn invasion ship attempt to land on this planet. While they are at the prompt telling them this hulk of a ship cannot possibly land, the "taxi driver" warps the planet, with the players in IC's to the point of invasion. By scanning the sector from the citadel you can tell if they're on the shields yet or not.

The riders cannot "see" when they've been moved, so must wait for the player on the planet to signal them to lift.

It's a bug that's been around forever, and that makes it difficult to fix without too much outcry. After enough time, a bug becomes a "feature" by common law. The funny thing is, I accidentally fixed it recently. Ooops. I had to go back in and restore the bug.

ah, but everyone doesn't know the moves involved in the tactics you mention - we may know that how a piece moves, but that is about it. I don't have a clue about the tactics you are talking about, but then I was a very casual player using the game to kill time at the station. It is similar, in my opinion, to playing TW - those that have played for a long time know different tactics and defenses. In both games it is how and when you make your moves that seem to be important.

               / Promethius / Enigma / Wolfen /

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

We could debate scripts vs non-scripts, but the issue is game knowledge regarding what is and isn't a bug. Game knowledge is used by both script writers and non-script users. There is a gap between those that have played consistently over the last several years and those coming back to the game (who have forgot some things) and those new to the game (haven't learned yet). Those without the knowledge that some people have will not be able to compete effectively until they learn.

A chess analogy was used earlier, and I would say chess is a game where a newbie would stand no chance against someone who has been playing competively for years. A player returning to chess would also have some difficulty until they got the "rust" off when they play against a competitive player.

               / Promethius / Enigma / Wolfen /

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

I definitely agree with this. But players of a wide range of skills still manage to enjoy the game. I'm just trying to find ways to allow some players to enjoy the game without having to play as competitively as other players. In chess, you have ratings. At chess sites, you tend to be paired up with players of a similar rating, unless you request a match with a particular player. We don't have that ability in TW. The noobiest of players are thrown in with the sharks. It just doesn't work. There was a time when players could play in TW games and not even know they weren't that good. They just enjoyed it, win or lose. Now they don't have a chance to enjoy it. And that's why they won't ever learn the game enough to play like you guys play. A game can't be a grind. You can't force people to learn a game by telling them that they're lazy and impatient.

There need to be a variety of game modes that support casual players up to cutthroat players. That's all I'm saying.

Exactly, and those who know how to break the modes for casual players have got to step up, man-up, and report where the bugs or flaws are.

And we probably would have at one point.