Armed with the knowledge of the data formats TradeWars uses, I have dire news for us all.

TradeWars will come to an end on Saturday, June 6th, 2167.

Dates are stored as a short integer (0-65535) as "days since December 31, 1987." I have no idea what will happen when this variable rolls over from 65535 back to 0 again. I suspect total carnage as havok is wreaked by every q-cannon and fighter in the universe simultaneously malfunctioning. Imagine the terror as planets fire UPON EACH OTHER and even THEMSELVES!

Get your affairs in order now, before it's too late!

[:D]

Unless I am turned into a Cyborg a hundreds years prior - I won't have to worry about too much.

As the light slowly fades to black in a dying universe, the dedicated keepers of the secret shall not even notice as they go about their sacred duties. Their eyes on the screen as their scripts run on
and on, ad infinitum.

June 6th, 2167? What about Captain Kirk? I understand he wont be born until the latter half of 2200s or the first half of the 2300s. And Picard a century later. Since the full name is "Trade Wars 2002" then there already is a FedSpace intact that NASA hasn't told us about. Not much, 13 sectors worth including the two Class 0 ports and Stardock. I hope we expand. The universe has.

I am saddened to report that I have overestimated the time we have left.

Some time fields are handled in seconds since midnight, Jan 1, 1988. Those fields are 4-bytes long instead of 2-bytes, but that still results in an earlier armageddon than previously expected.

The world is now expected to end on Monday, February 7, 2124 at 6:28:16 AM. In fact, if the game has trouble comprehending the value as an unsigned number, we could be looking at an end to everything as soon as Friday, July 7, 2073 at 3:14:08 AM! Be prepared! [:D]

Won't it just flip like the Y2k bug did? Ya know, boot up an old copy of DOS and how
everything reports the wrong date. It's fine as long as you don't import date-based
info into the system or if you convert it first.

Will the dreaded Y2.124k or Y2.073k bug really kill us all?

Is this just another evil ploy by conglomerate companies and monopolies to get us to stock-up on crap we really dont need or to just get us to get loiter around the Tavern drinking all day cause, "Hey man, what's the point its all coming to an end anyways!!" [xx(]