quote:Originally posted by piyath

whats the deal is there a server that has a game that is unlim turn that hasnt ran for years on end or have someone lock it down so no one can start a new player there

I am so glad you asked that question. It so happens that there is at least 1. telnet://bbs.farpointbbs.com Game C is just that one. Only problem is that there is a bad lag. Ender and Bob the Builder were on helping me with some unknowns who caped some of my planets. If you are interested in helping me, I got many planets to work with and everything there is maxed out to the hilt. Vader didn't like the edits though---too extreme with 4 alien races, maxed FSS which is an ISS with IG and 5:1 battle odds. If you are interested. ICQ me or post a private message to me. Otherwise, I usually stay away from the game since I got no help to win the thing. But don't fear anyone else winning since the others haven't even heard of the forum.
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Unlims tend to be either newbie fests where the games run FOREVER, or over very very quickly. There's no real in between. With unlimited turns, you have unlimited cash, so its really very easy to lock a game down quickly unless there are competent players against you.

If you're set on unlims, pay attention to the rebangs forum and get into fresh games as quickly as possible. Otherwise, I'd suggest looking at turn based games. IMHO, they're more fun and either way they certainly last longer and are easier to break into.

psion has it right.
also, unlims tend to have *horrible* edits, such as like you have mentioned.
infinite money, god ships, horribly gay amounts of aliens....
make for no fun.

i think you should find a game with like 40k-65k turns, no aliens, and balanced edits.
it's much more fun.
also less bugs (there are a buncha bugs in unlim turns)
unlims take no skill, and are a big yawn fest.
look for turn games

Well, if you have a problem running out of turns out in space, then you should watch your turns more closely Unlims tend to teach (what I consider to be) bad habits. I STRONGLY recommend that new players not start on unlim games. It seems like they would be easier, but its not true. Sure you don't have to worry about turns, but you will just continually get reamed by the more experienced playes who have unlimited turns and hence unlimited cash. The only way this won't happen is if you are playing against only other newer players, and then bad habits are reinforced ad nauseum. TW is a game of 2 things: math and management. If you can't or won't do the math, you're screwed and will NEVER be a top player. Same goes for management. Data management, turn management, cash management, etc. In an unlim you should basically never have to contend with turn or cash management, so you're hobbled right from the start.

There are a number of good players who are equally skilled at unlims and turn based games, but if you wish to be one of them, I would recommend that you not devote youself exclusively to unlims when you are still new. Unlims dont teach you to conserve turns or cash, which will hugely hinder you in a turns game. But in turn games, you do learn these things and they are helpful in unlims as well. They let you stretch your time and cash to the limit, so you are more efficient than your opponents.

quote:Originally posted by Slim Shady

i think you should find a game with like 40k-65k turns, no aliens, and balanced edits.
65k turns?! May as well be unlim. [;)]

*shrug* IMHO, anywhere between 1000 and 5000 turns seems to work
well. Beyond 5000 and you get lazy, less than 1000 and you spend
forever trying to do the small base-building stuff.

On stardate 08/06/27Psion wrote:
>Unlims tend to be either newbie fests where the games run FOREVER, or over very very quickly.
Yeah, I got Piyath to join that game I posted. It appears to be the former although there is one Ahab that plays there. I don't know if he would be considered a noob or not but everyone else but maybe Piyath is. Ender and Bob came on to help me once but the lag made them give up. I hope to get the game ended with his help. You care to join in? Gotta warn you, Farpoint has a bad lag.
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"65k turns?! May as well be unlim. "
nope, cause with 65k turns, i can photon you and make you lose 65k turns
in an unlim, photons are all but worthless.

heh, 20,000 credits for 65,000 turns, now that is definitely a fair trade. Were do I sign up? [:P]

quote:Originally posted by Slim Shady

"65k turns?! May as well be unlim. "
nope, cause with 65k turns, i can photon you and make you lose 65k turns
in an unlim, photons are all but worthless.
If you photon me, you follow it up with an #SD# anyway, so what's the diff? Even the ways around photon lock in unlims take longer than it'd take you to warp in and destroy me while I can't do anything about it. >shrugs<

Anything over 5k turns or so is getting pretty ridiculous. Though I like the ultra-low turn games where, as Singularity says, it takes forever just to do the basic base-building stuff. [;)] You're not going to learn reasonable turn management in a game with over 2k turns or so.

I'm an unlimited turn player by nature, but a turn player by heart. I've tilted back and forth between both, and I now believe that I have an understanding of both. If you dont have 500 years to play a game out, like a stock game, go with an unlimited, if you have some time to dedicate to building and developing, go with a turn/stock game. Unlimited games are fun for quick death matches were all your really testing is your killing/hunting/hiding skills, but not really good for anyone looking to build any real experince.

Xentropy what is this TWGS Data Access Library? What language did you program it in? And can I have a look-see at the source code?

quote:Originally posted by yeah_that_way

Xentropy what is this TWGS Data Access Library? What language did you program it in? And can I have a look-see at the source code?

It's currently in development, though I've released one program utilizing an alpha version of it so far. I don't plan on releasing the source, though once I've nailed down something release-worthy I'll release it as a lib w/ a Cheshire Cat interface class. Releasing more than that seems unnecessary. It's written in C++.

The next thing I plan to release will just convert all of the game data to XML format. Web programmers could then utilize/transform that data accordingly to make stat webpages and the like.

Read access is pretty much done, just not packaged in a form that's public-release-worthy. It'll show up when I find the time and motivation. Write access will then follow, and from some basic testing should not be too difficult to add. This will allow things like special universe generation (cube galaxy maps and the like) via direct file access instead of through tedit, making these functions virtually instant as opposed to the time-consuming tedit scripts currently available. Things like "instant" placement of fighter clouds will also become possible. (One of my write-test programs added a random 1-5 defensive figs belonging to a random corp from #1-#5 to every sector in the game and ran in under 0.2 seconds; another continually changed fighter counts in random sectors and ran just fine while I flew around the universe trying to get something to corrupt.) Write access will also heavily facilitate testing of game mechanics; e.g. ElderProphet's haggle testing could've been made much easier with a program running that continually reset planet and port product to 100%--people currently use tedit scripts to do this, but these are very slow in comparison and more difficult to do sufficient (thousands of) test iterations with.

There's a little more info about my plans at this thread: http://www.eisonline.com/twforum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=12231 Heh, I'd hoped to have something released by now, but to be fair it hasn't even been two months yet, and I've only really spent 3 or 4 days so far spending any serious time on it. The work I get *paid* for has to take preference over my hobbies, unfortunately. [:)]

RSS feed... If you could export all games on a server an RSS feed
then places like thestardock could be coded to read those feeds
and post them into the search feature.

quote:Originally posted by Singularity

RSS feed... If you could export all games on a server an RSS feed
then places like thestardock could be coded to read those feeds
and post them into the search feature.
Yeah, I could probably have something going like Jumpgate was supposed to be pretty trivially. Only sysops would have to download it separately instead of being included with the TWGS download and all. I could have it install to the TWGS Tools menu. (It's just a registry entry; I've thought about doing that with the game settings exporter already but wanted to OK it with JP first.)

Ah, so much I'd love to do. Now if only I could win the lottery, quit my real job, and spend full time doing this fun stuff. [;)]

What I think would be nice is a way to link more than one server to each other and have cross game play and this would expand the game and universe's exponentially, and open up all kinds of possibilities, but then again it may open up a lot more headaches too. But it is an idea to expand the TW universe as a whole.

It would be like tag team servers people jumping in and out to other servers while making money and hitting different universes too, and on each universe that is linked, the players would have to play their way out to the next one. But I guess that would get too complicated in the long run.