Is there a function somewhere in the Sysop editor to clean up the mail files, like, to erase messages older than a given age? Or, what about just deleting the TWMAIL.DAT file if it's getting too big? Would this corrupt or crash the game if I just delete the mail file? The problem I am having is that the 800 Alliens/Ferrengi in my game are generating hundreds, maybe thousands, of mail messages every day as they move around and hit player figs. This is causing the mail file to get HUGE, it's over 50 megs and growing steadily. Every player that has a fig grid is getting massive amounts of these messages that so-and-so Ferrengi has entered a sector, and after a couple of weeks, there are so many messages that it can take several minutes to delete them with the [:] command. In fact, it might be nice if a future game version had the option to turn off the generation of these messages if the Alien didn't do any actual damage to player assets.

thats why alot of players avoid games with aliens like the plague

Slim

You can delete the mail.dat file with no ill effects. Of course, all players will lose all mail. You'll probably have to take down the server to do it. Even if it would let you do it with it running, probably better to make sure it isn't in use.