I just thought I would let everyone know this, but I am a sysop that plays on his own server. You can beleive me or not when I say this, but I don't cheat. As a matter of fact, I play on a completely different machine than the one the sever is attached to. I have a total of 4 computers to choose from. I noticed that today while my ship was guarding our corporate planet, a player came in a tried to destroy me. After failing, he/she released a beacon in the sector that said, "Hey, nice ship. Must be nice to be sysop" or something like that. I don't have any text stats for the ships, but the Vor'Cha Ship has a defense rating of 2.0:1 and also a guardian bonus for planets. Besides, I don't think I could keep a ship if it wasn't active for everybody, or am I wrong about this. But, back to cheating... I do play my server, and I don't have any desire to cheat. If I wanted to cheat, everybody would be in a pod by now...[:)] I just wanted to come on and clarify that... But anyway, have fun and keep TW'in...

Personally, I dont play in active games on my server because there are plenty of places for me to play and I don't want to be accused of cheating. I don't have a problem with sysops that play on their own servers. Currently I am playing on a server where the Sysop plays in his games and I have never had any reason to accuse him of cheating or have I heard any other player accuse this sysop of cheating. Playing at your own server and cheating is pathetic. Thats just my opinion.

Cheating sysops are horrible, but a way to remedy this is to not play in all your games. Also the people who acuse people of cheating either know a lot about the game and are in the right, but the other 99% plus who acuse sysops of cheating know nothing. Unless I saw some outrageous amount of resources in the early stages, I wouldn't bother acusing sysops of cheating. If a sysop wanted to fork out 90 bucks to run a server he should be able to play and to make a game worth playing you don't want to make it unfair. Finally a sysop creates games that reflect his style of play, players just have to learn to cope with these changes, and if you think something fishy is going on just don't play there, your loss and your probably not any good if you can't discern a cheater from a good player.

No matter what you do, no matter how honest you are, if you play on your own server you will be accused of cheating. If it doesnt bother you that these accusations will continue to fly then carry on, if it gets under your skin just know that it will never stop. You can of course choose to run your server how you see fit but I hope you don't think posting here is going to make people stop saying that you cheat because you play on your own server, they won't. See previous threads, many many of them, the most recent one had a good example from cherokee, who now chooses not to play on his own server: http://www.eisonline.com/twforum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=10959

hmmmmm, I REFUSE to play any games on the server I'm co-oping.
I hate being accused of cheating it makes me feel so very bad.
So all I do is set up a observer account and use that.

These are all very good arguments. I just want you to know that. But the the long standing players can tell if a sysop that is playing his or her server is cheating. I have been playing almost since Tradewars come out. I don't like being accused of cheating either, but people are going to do it no matter what. I will just have to get used to it. I know myself that I am not cheating. Like I said before, if I did, most of my players on the server would always be in pods.... [:)]

Ya the way I see it is.....Accuse me of cheating, and find your self off my server VERY VERY VERY fast. but that could just be me.

I dont play anymore but I did not play on my own server as long as I was a sysop.

Aggreed only 1% of the people taht accuse others of cheating are right. I have been playing Tradewars since the 80's (even played one version without auto pilot), I have learned a few tricks. Before I even started my own games, I was being accused of cheating. It's very hard to cheat when your playing on someone elses server and you are not a sysop.

Any way I run 5 games now and am designing more, I have only 1 that I play in, and it is clearly marked on the website and the server, the others have observers just so I can pop in and chat.