quote:Originally posted by Grazhoppa

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?


I am claiming that it is a game to help noobs, because it is. While I don't know exactly how other corps are training their newbies, I can tell you for sure that our corp is learning alot thanks to Maggie. I'm playing red in that game now and making roughly 6mil a game. Cherokee said he could get me to around 15-20 million a day but so far he and I haven't had the chance to work together and improve my skills to that point. Maggie doesn't tell me to do this, move here, then do that. She lets me make mistakes and then tells me how I could have done something better... with explanations and everything. She actually doesn't know the red game that well, so some of the other players have been giving me advice even though I'm on another corp. Yes I could have stuck with SSM or SST as soon as I learned that... but I wanted to learn SDT and I think I finally have that down pretty well. I'm interested in learning new things now... and after a while, I'd be interested in learning the best offensive and defensive tactics. The fact that we have this truce set up allows me to spend more time learning various techniques and less time trying to rebuild after getting podded for a mistake. Yeah I'd probably learn that way too, but I learn equally well when Maggie tells me why I might have just been podded for doing something stupid.

... and 6mil buys 27K figs at 220/fig. So yes two elites can cash for a day and give a noob a full ISS and 50K figs. I don't think that is happening, but all I'm saying is that you can find potential flaws in any set of guidelines/rules. The important thing is to get a group of people who all buy-in to the spirit of the game. In this case, the spirit of the game is teaching us noobs how to play the game correctly.

quote:
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)


I applaud you for that. If I would have noticed that earlier, maybe I would have just pointed my newbies there first. Most of these players know and trust me, however, so they would always be more comfortable starting out on something if they knew I was hosting it. Now that they've gotten their feet wet I'd be happy to post your offer on my forum: http://www.lustersoftware.com/warhammer/


quote:
Please, refer to my previous post before responding.


I was referring to one or two points you had and then split off into a new direction. I'm sorry if I hurt your ego by not posting or addressing every single line in your post. Most of it made sense and I agreed with a lot of it. BTW, I tried to solicit as much advice from experience players as possible before I settled on what set of guidelines/rules for my training game. While you may refer to Galaxi as a noob, she is definitely an elite compared to where we were before starting this project. She has also had a very good influence on the success of the project so far (along with the help from many other friendly faces such as Myth, TW55, Arucard, Cherokee, and Maggie.) Cherokee had a huge influence on the game settings. He explained to me why he thought some of my setting were bad options (even though I got a lot of those from tw-cabal), so I modified them as a result of his input. Now maybe this little project is not the complete success it could have been but it is achieving at least some level of success. I imagine no one will be able to come up with a system that everyone agrees with.

quote:
I am claiming that it is a game to help noobs, because it is. While I don't know exactly how other corps are training their newbies, I can tell you for sure that our corp is learning alot thanks to Maggie. I'm playing red in that game now and making roughly 6mil a game. Cherokee said he could get me to around 15-20 million a day but so far he and I haven't had the chance to work together and improve my skills to that point. Maggie doesn't tell me to do this, move here, then do that. She lets me make mistakes and then tells me how I could have done something better... with explanations and everything. She actually doesn't know the red game that well, so some of the other players have been giving me advice even though I'm on another corp. Yes I could have stuck with SSM or SST as soon as I learned that... but I wanted to learn SDT and I think I finally have that down pretty well. I'm interested in learning new things now... and after a while, I'd be interested in learning the best offensive and defensive tactics. The fact that we have this truce set up allows me to spend more time learning various techniques and less time trying to rebuild after getting podded for a mistake. Yeah I'd probably learn that way too, but I learn equally well when Maggie tells me why I might have just been podded for doing something stupid.

That's fantastic.. I teach players in a learning enviroment, not a real game- We save the real game for graduation


quote:
... and 6mil buys 27K figs at 220/fig. So yes two elites can cash for a day and give a noob a full ISS and 50K figs. I don't think that is happening, but all I'm saying is that you can find potential flaws in any set of guidelines/rules. The important thing is to get a group of people who all buy-in to the spirit of the game. In this case, the spirit of the game is teaching us noobs how to play the game correctly.

There is no incorrect way to play tradewars, against what some might think. There is always a better way to play- but never an incorrect way.. I'm sorry you feel you were doing everything wrong =\

quote:
I applaud you for that. If I would have noticed that earlier, maybe I would have just pointed my newbies there first. Most of these players know and trust me, however, so they would always be more comfortable starting out on something if they knew I was hosting it. Now that they've gotten their feet wet I'd be happy to post your offer on my forum: http://www.lustersoftware.com/warhammer/


Thats fine with me, I really am more concerned with the quality of players than anything else- Along with the fact that the players have fun in the game, not just feeling like slaves.. (That's what MY corp is for, muhahahaha.. Just playin guys...)

quote:
I was referring to one or two points you had and then split off into a new direction. I'm sorry if I hurt your ego by not posting or addressing every single line in your post. Most of it made sense and I agreed with a lot of it. BTW, I tried to solicit as much advice from experience players as possible before I settled on what set of guidelines/rules for my training game. While you may refer to Galaxi as a noob, she is definitely an elite compared to where we were before starting this project. She has also had a very good influence on the success of the project so far (along with the help from many other friendly faces such as Myth, TW55, Arucard, Cherokee, and Maggie.) Cherokee had a huge influence on the game settings. He explained to me why he thought some of my setting were bad options (even though I got a lot of those from tw-cabal), so I modified them as a result of his input. Now maybe this little project is not the complete success it could have been but it is achieving at least some level of success. I imagine no one will be able to come up with a system that everyone agrees with.


To the best of my knowledge, my ego was not implied nor attached to any part of my message. When you asked for help, I was going to respond, however, when I visited the site, rules and guidelines were already laid out (2 days after I recieved the message). In my experience of teaching noobies, I've noticed you generally have to start from scratch- It is easy for a noobie to pick up new ideas, but it is not easy to 'unteach' what they have taught themselves. The advice I offered, and my opinions were based upon such findings, not my ego.

Grazhoppa

Sorry about last post Graz, I had/have a bad headache and probably saw something that wasn't there.

Yeah, the rules/guidelines came up pretty quickly along with most of the settings for the game. I had spent alot of time planning out what I thought would work best for this training game (right or wrong) and posted that as a starting point. The guidelines came from Galaxi and I pulled most of my edits from TW-Cabal. Within that same 2-day period, the settings changed considerably based on feedback from players like Cherokee, Arucard, Vader, and Galaxi (sorry if I'm leaving someone out.) The point is, I tried to leave myself open to suggestions on how to best run this thing and didn't realize others had already successfully done it (like in your training sessions.) Most of the criticism at that time had to do with the settings and not the rules/guidelines so I assumed everything was fine with that. I still think it's not bad... maybe it's not the best, but it isn't horrible at least.

As for me, I have been doing a lot of things correctly and some things wrong or ineffeciently at least. Some things didn't change from when I played a long time ago. Part of the problem is that I think it is difficult to play solo blue and put up much of a defense against 1 or 2 good red players. The defense I was able to create was decent against Galaxi and Lord Talon but in the end I didn't have enough figs to adequately defend my best planets. I was just happy that it took them 85K figs or so to successfully invade two of my L4's. One of them just turned L4 at midnight... so I only got to play with the one L4 for about a day or two. I did manage to finally locate where they had taken the planets and was actually able to launch a minor invasion against two of their planets -- although I admit they hadn't been playing much in the week it took me to locate them and counter-attack.

Anyway, I think I'm starting to bounce from one idea to the other too much -- once again I'll just blame it on the headache and I'll quit posting at least until that's gone...

I don't mind scripts, or playing old school.. the one thing i don't abide is how some players in some games are literally filling the sectors with 20 or more defensive or offensive fighers for no reason other than to interrupt travel through the game. When i get the codes to start the server this will be against any set of rules i ever come up with for the games. There is really no point to this. IMHO the only deployed fighters shoudl be toll, and any defensive or offensive fighers should be in the tunnels are defending planets of the corp. Just throwing offensive or defensive fighters everywhere in the grid, is just Lame.

quote:Originally posted by Tchiak

I don't mind scripts, or playing old school.. the one thing i don't abide is how some players in some games are literally filling the sectors with 20 or more defensive or offensive fighers for no reason other than to interrupt travel through the game. When i get the codes to start the server this will be against any set of rules i ever come up with for the games. There is really no point to this. IMHO the only deployed fighters shoudl be toll, and any defensive or offensive fighers should be in the tunnels are defending planets of the corp. Just throwing offensive or defensive fighters everywhere in the grid, is just Lame.


Then you have no concept of the game as it is. From my point of view a toll fighter is probably the worst kind of fighter that there is in a game. Your rules = no figs to be deoploy'd, that's fine
with it you'll need to make a rule saying that your not allowed to #sd# anyone
"go to stardock, go to the tavern, talk to grimy, type BRIBE, enter 100,000, then type trader, no you dont want the skivvy on little traders, but yes you want a specific trader, pay the fee, he gives you their LATEST port hit"
because they'll be so easy to find when hitting ports..

You'll need to make invading bases against the rules..
All you have to do is probe the universe, no figs means taht probes wont get stopped, means that when the probe hits something BAM it's a base.

You'll need to also make a rule saying NO armids or Limpets to be placed under toll fighters.

You'll also need to make many more strange rules to cover all of the strange rules that you just made to cover the first strange rule that you made..

I take on newbies sometimes (If they dont try to tell me how the game works).. If you want a popular newbie server like a mud, your rules will work. Those players will never be any good at the game and you'll keep that user base for a long time as they can only play on other servers that have 100% newbie rules

If you can't handle someone finding where your base, then you need to beef up your sectors defenses. Using the fact that someone could find your base, as a defense of the act of filling the universe with fighters is ridiculous. no matter what.. fighters or not someone will find your sector.. so you still have to deal with it. If ou know how to properly set up your base it shouldn't matter if they find your base or not.. and even then you should know better than to put all of our forces in a single location. So your defense is only for people who only want to make the game harder for people then it is supposed to be. Learn to setup your base defenses then come back and defend the act of sabotaging the game with fighters

hahaha... Blastar are you playing off that "OB" theme with your port names (System78)? "OB Toothbrushes" ?!?! I Darn near choked to death! Not sure I wanna see what the *next* port will be called.

Update: I stand corrected... looks like there's already a Tampon port. [:D]

Tchiak, you think maybe there is a reason that the game allows you to deploy figs in sectors? Don't assume YOU know what is best for the game based on your obviously VERY limited knowledge of it.

quote:Originally posted by Tchiak

If you can't handle someone finding where your base, then you need to beef up your sectors defenses. Using the fact that someone could find your base, as a defense of the act of filling the universe with fighters is ridiculous. no matter what.. fighters or not someone will find your sector.. so you still have to deal with it. If ou know how to properly set up your base it shouldn't matter if they find your base or not.. and even then you should know better than to put all of our forces in a single location. So your defense is only for people who only want to make the game harder for people then it is supposed to be. Learn to setup your base defenses then come back and defend the act of sabotaging the game with fighters


Laugh, Okay, so how do you defend non sheilded planets?..
Simple answer is that you dont..

You REALLY should look at how the game is played today, and the level of competition that is in a game, The winner of a game will usually be the person who has the best grid, Gridding is also verry important for hunting. If you dont have figs near something to twarp to then you have to start near SD/Terra or Base.
I Bet I could put a base down with figs in game, and you would have to explore about 98% of the universe before you find it. You want to run a newbie server, I am cool with that (you should ban all combat/defensive/offensive scripts also). I am just saying that your idea of the game has a serious flaw, and that flaw is that it doesnt reflect how the game is played.

quote:Originally posted by Tchiak

If you can't handle someone finding where your base, then you need to beef up your sectors defenses. Using the fact that someone could find your base, as a defense of the act of filling the universe with fighters is ridiculous. no matter what.. fighters or not someone will find your sector.. so you still have to deal with it. If ou know how to properly set up your base it shouldn't matter if they find your base or not.. and even then you should know better than to put all of our forces in a single location. So your defense is only for people who only want to make the game harder for people then it is supposed to be. Learn to setup your base defenses then come back and defend the act of sabotaging the game with fighters


Alright, time for my 2 cents. My players and I came up with a solution to griding that works for us. Mind you, in any "real game" (by some people's definition) my players would be slaughtered, but this works for us. I wrote a script that I run randomly about every 2-4 days, it scans all sectors, and anytime it finds less than 100 fighters deployed, it sets them to rouge and toll, and sets some cash into collected tolls. That way those that want to grid need to invest credits into the enterprize, and those that don't can leave a few lying around for t-warping. I also lessens the problem of page after page of "report from deployed fighters alien...". Got a decent wandering planet script too...

I am now perpared to take all kinds of flack about how my game is all wrong, just for newbies, not "real tradewars", and how I'll never attract any skilled players. <grin>

-Prinz of Darkness

quote:Originally posted by rompca

hahaha... Blastar are you playing off that "OB" theme with your port names (System78)? "OB Toothbrushes" ?!?! I Darn near choked to death! Not sure I wanna see what the *next* port will be called.

Update: I stand corrected... looks like there's already a Tampon port. [:D]


I owe it all to Grazhoppa for giving me the ideas in one of his posts here. I just thought it would be funny to name ports after those names.

Too bad Stien is trying to take over my planets where the OB Toothbrushes port is at. I have other sectors as well, but I had hoped to at least build a port there before someone found it.

quote:Originally posted by Tchiak

I don't mind scripts, or playing old school.. the one thing i don't abide is how some players in some games are literally filling the sectors with 20 or more defensive or offensive fighers for no reason other than to interrupt travel through the game. When i get the codes to start the server this will be against any set of rules i ever come up with for the games. There is really no point to this. IMHO the only deployed fighters shoudl be toll, and any defensive or offensive fighers should be in the tunnels are defending planets of the corp. Just throwing offensive or defensive fighters everywhere in the grid, is just Lame.


It is to slow down other players. Some TW Helpers won't attack more than 50 figs in a sector automaitcally. I happen to have one that does kill more than 50 figs, and I sometimes lawnmower figs when I move over them.

Don't forget laying at least 1 mine in each sector, really good players will make enough credits to line a bubble with 99 or more mine per sector. It creates yet another prompt the player must deal with "This sector contains mines, do you want to avoid this sector?" or something like that.

Some players are creative enough to create 100% NavHaz in the MSL or in sectors 2-10 in FedSpace. I've seen that take out the Noobs. Instant 1000 points of damage, say bye-bye to that brand spanking new ship with no sheilds and 50 figs.

Another tatic is to lay down 5000 Offensive figs in a sector, kills anyone in a ship that holds less than that number of a combination of figs and shields. So the CargoTran, Mule, or Colt is toast after it hits one of those sectors. Usually evil players put 5000 off figs near the Stardock.

quote:
Don't forget laying at least 1 mine in each sector, really good players will make enough credits to line a bubble with 99 or more mine per sector. It creates yet another prompt the player must deal with "This sector contains mines, do you want to avoid this sector?" or something like that.


Most people wont use 99, they will use 1,2 or none.. Limpets are usually the same 2,1 or none
The simple reason is that unless your in a unlimited turn game then twarping to SD every 2 sectors is a waste..

quote:
Some players are creative enough to create 100% NavHaz in the MSL or in sectors 2-10 in FedSpace. I've seen that take out the Noobs. Instant 1000 points of damage, say bye-bye to that brand spanking new ship with no sheilds and 50 figs.


Yea, Most times this is targeted at someone specific as you'll end up using about 5k sheilds/figs to get a sector to 100% naz (if pbusting)

quote:
Another tatic is to lay down 5000 Offensive figs in a sector, kills anyone in a ship that holds less than that number of a combination of figs and shields. So the CargoTran, Mule, or Colt is toast after it hits one of those sectors. Usually evil players put 5000 off figs near the Stardock.


It's not down to how much the ship holds, it's down more to the ship odds.. JP made a modification a couple of revisions back and I think that offensive figs attack differntly..

quote:
Alright, time for my 2 cents. My players and I came up with a solution to griding that works for us. Mind you, in any "real game" (by some people's definition) my players would be slaughtered, but this works for us. I wrote a script that I run randomly about every 2-4 days, it scans all sectors, and anytime it finds less than 100 fighters deployed, it sets them to rouge and toll, and sets some cash into collected tolls. That way those that want to grid need to invest credits into the enterprize, and those that don't can leave a few lying around for t-warping. I also lessens the problem of page after page of "report from deployed fighters alien...". Got a decent wandering planet script too...

I am now perpared to take all kinds of flack about how my game is all wrong, just for newbies, not "real tradewars", and how I'll never attract any skilled players. <grin>

-Prinz of Darkness


I think it is wrong..
First it sounds like your playing on your own server, That's a nono..
Second it sound like your using tedit to change peoples resources, Real big nono since your in the game!..
Then I have to say that having the gold figcrunchers going is not a good idea (JP needs to fix them)..

But yes, I think this sounds like a newbie board and like you too have no idea about how this game should be played. Going into TEDIT to make the game feel better for players means that the game itself cant manage to kepe the players happy.

Please feel free to add another .98c

"It's not down to how much the ship holds, it's down more to the ship odds.. JP made a modification a couple of revisions back and I think that offensive figs attack differntly.."

Yeah doc, otherwise rev woulda been dead 2 days ago =\ I am sure it SENDS the amount to attack with, based upon fighters, but doesn't take odds into consideration, I've had 10k figs a few times, and ran into 25-30k offensive fighters, and been able to warp out, with about 800 figs left. Not sure how the math is based.. I'm not a fan of it though.

The grid is the single most important thing in the game, if your not expanding your grid, someone else is tearing it down.. So I do agree there

"I owe it all to Grazhoppa for giving me the ideas in one of his posts here. I just thought it would be funny to name ports after those names.

Too bad Stien is trying to take over my planets where the OB Toothbrushes port is at. I have other sectors as well, but I had hoped to at least build a port there before someone found it."

Kill him Orion

graz