Hey everyone,

I used to run a BBS from 1993 until 1997 and Trade Wars 2002 was always the center peice of my system. Most of my users dialed in just to play it. So, when I heard about TWGS and that we can play over the Internet I was extatic. I purchased the TWGS package last week along with TWXSync from the ATTAC guys, I have an extra server and an extra T1 line so I'm firing up a new TW2002 server. I already have it up and running and I have been testing it with a few friends just goofing around to make sure it performs well. The system I am running it on is a dual 1.4GHz dell server with 2GB of RAM which seems to be more than enough to run it for the amount of users I expect to get.

My question for you guys is, do you have any advice for me as I open the server up to the public? I remember when I ran TW2002 in the earlier versions that there were a number of exploitable bugs out there that cheaters could take advantage of. It looks like most of those have been fixed, but are there any glaring ones out there I should look for to protect my users? Also, are there any programs out there that can report when a user has a sudden jump of money, shields, or fighters? My big concern here is that I get a good solid group of fair-playing members and then some cheater comes along and makes me have to rebang an entire game.

Of course, any other advice is more than welcome.

Thanks a ton,

Don

First go to http://www.blacksuntwgs.com/ and check out the edits on Vader's site. Put up a selection of edits (low, mid, unlim turns - sub zero is popular in the unlims), blue play (Blue Heaven I think is the name of the edit) would be good. If you want to deal with the headaches, a truce game could be added. Aliens should be kept to a minimum for the most part but some people enjoy hunting them.

After getting your TWGS setup with games, post on here of game bangs and advertise on http://www.thestardock.com/ using their TWGS search engine.

That is a start and I'm sure others will add more.

               / Promethius / Enigma / Wolfen /

"A man who has no skills can be taught, a man who has no honor has nothing."

My advice is to talk to someone who runs a server who has been around a while, like River Rat. Those guys know better than anyone what settings players generally don't like and what you should watch for. A good mixed red/blue corp nowdays can make cash that might lead you to believe they are cheating so be careful of thinking someone is cheating.

When I've played on new servers there are a couple things I've seen players ask the sysop to change that I think are fairly common.
1) Xtern run at a time that doesn't require East Coasters to stay up until 3 a.m.
2) Ship delay settings
3) port regen

Get some good advice on those things. I'm sure other people will add more.

maggie
C

Also, NEVER EVER Tedit a game that has already been banged. This will undoubtedly anger someone, and said person will no doubt never play on your server. If you do tedit while a game is open, make sure you have the consent of all players currently active before you do so.

Other than that, good luck buddy

quote:Originally posted by Promethius

First go to http://www.blacksuntwgs.com/ and check out the edits on Vader's site. Put up a selection of edits (low, mid, unlim turns - sub zero is popular in the unlims), blue play (Blue Heaven I think is the name of the edit) would be good. If you want to deal with the headaches, a truce game could be added. Aliens should be kept to a minimum for the most part but some people enjoy hunting them.

After getting your TWGS setup with games, post on here of game bangs and advertise on http://www.thestardock.com/ using their TWGS search engine.

That is a start and I'm sure others will add more.


Except the Aliens in one of my games, they will hunt you down, hehe.

Silence is right, when you have a game that is already started, do not Tedit it any shape or form, cause the players will not appreciate it, and is wrong to do too.

Also another thing that is frowned upon is a sysop playing on his server, unless the game that he is playing in being advertised the sysop plays that game, either for personal or for testing of scripts, playing on your own server is not usually good, the reason it is frowned upon is some sysops couldn't help using the Tedit to work things in the favor of their corp or for personal reasons.

My first response was from work and had to be quick and I really didn't read the last paragraph very well so I missed this part:

"My big concern here is that I get a good solid group of fair-playing members and then some cheater comes along and makes me have to rebang an entire game."

Maggie made a good point on the red/blue corps making cash main in turn limit games. Many unlim solo players will cash fast enough that you might think they are "cheating" somehow. I really don't know of a method to "cheat" when cashing, however I know I can beat 150M per hour in an unlim playing solo red - actually higher than that but ..... Now if you create an unlim game w/o death delay and a max death limit, I can show you how to cash at over 750M per hour easily. Would it be cheating? Not really, but it is in a very gray area that is very close.

               / Promethius / Enigma / Wolfen /

"A man who has no skills can be taught, a man who has no honor has nothing."

quote:Originally posted by Promethius

My first response was from work and had to be quick and I really didn't read the last paragraph very well so I missed this part:

"My big concern here is that I get a good solid group of fair-playing members and then some cheater comes along and makes me have to rebang an entire game."

Maggie made a good point on the red/blue corps making cash main in turn limit games. Many unlim solo players will cash fast enough that you might think they are "cheating" somehow. I really don't know of a method to "cheat" when cashing, however I know I can beat 150M per hour in an unlim playing solo red - actually higher than that but ..... Now if you create an unlim game w/o death delay and a max death limit, I can show you how to cash at over 750M per hour easily. Would it be cheating? Not really, but it is in a very gray area that is very close.




I agree with most of the suggestions. We've run tradewars for many years and then switched to the TWGS, and we found that some members here had really good information and ideas we tried and it worked out for us. I'd like to add to what has been posted based on what I have learned over my years.

One of the things I was told to try was the game variations. In other words, try to mix and match turn games and unlimited games. There are some that like unlimited, some like turn based, allbeit mid, low, etc.

The suggestion of edits is good. There are great ones out there, and it may help you to develop your own in the future for other SysOps to try. Keeping the Aliens low in numbers is definately a good suggestion. Until the next release of the TWGS, too many Aliens will result in corrupt twmail.dat files, an area most of us can atest to.

The final suggestion I have is post on forums. Use EIS to post your games here, or other sites that have a section for other TWGS SysOps (for example- Vulcan's Forge, Darkstarbase to name a couple). And don't be afraid to ask questions.

Thanks for the great replies. I know another question I had was about TWXSync. I was thinking of offering use of my TWXSync server for free to the end users. However, it would have to be on a corp by corp basis as no one will want to share data between corps

However, the TWXSync server only supports 10 games, or 10 corps in one game if we do seperate entries for each corp. So, I am still debating how I will offer that up. Do any of you offer TWXSync to your users, or do you just let them deal with it themselves?

Thanks,

Don

quote:Originally posted by dpezet

Thanks for the great replies. I know another question I had was about TWXSync. I was thinking of offering use of my TWXSync server for free to the end users. However, it would have to be on a corp by corp basis as no one will want to share data between corps

However, the TWXSync server only supports 10 games, or 10 corps in one game if we do seperate entries for each corp. So, I am still debating how I will offer that up. Do any of you offer TWXSync to your users, or do you just let them deal with it themselves?

Thanks,

Don


I too had thought of that, but found it is a hit-and-miss thing with players. Some use it, some do not. What I do for some players is this. They want to use TWXSync for their team, so the CEO will host the TWXSync server. As I am a web host and run a DNS server, I setup a DNS record off our Outpost-4 domain for them. So for example, they will have a DNS record named empire.outpost-4.com and that record points to the IP of the person hosting the TWXSync server. Then when their team want to use it, they have a name to connect to. I currently do this for 5 players. This way they look after the program and all I do is set up a host record. If their IP changes, they just email the new one and the record is updated automatically. It's easier than trying to keep up with so many games and such. Takes the load off of the SysOp.

quote:Originally posted by dpezet

Thanks for the great replies. I know another question I had was about TWXSync. I was thinking of offering use of my TWXSync server for free to the end users. However, it would have to be on a corp by corp basis as no one will want to share data between corps

However, the TWXSync server only supports 10 games, or 10 corps in one game if we do seperate entries for each corp. So, I am still debating how I will offer that up. Do any of you offer TWXSync to your users, or do you just let them deal with it themselves?

Thanks,

Don


Is it registered? Or the free version?

It is registered. The free version only supports 1 connection so you can see how it works. The registered version supports unlimited connections, but you can only synchronize 10 games. I would never run more than 10 games on my server, but the real problem is that corps would be foolish to share TWX information between each other. So, if I had 5 corps in one game, I would have to set it up as 5 different games in TWX. It eats up the game limit pretty fast. I guess I could license more than one copy of TWX. I'll shoot them an e-mail and see if that is possible.

Don