Actually, no I am not. Though I answer a lot of game mechanic questions when asked. Mostly that is just pointing to TW-Cabal and navhaz.com or Grimy's. Trying to get them to play in corps is the hardest part of the intermediate game at MTWA. The sad part is the way that many of them take to the game play denial strategies to try to win instead of the game play strategies to win. That, I think, is the result of a lack of role models to show them how to play.

When I say support the training games, I mean watch for the bang, go in and collect a corp and show that corp how to win. There is a lot of chatter about 'whatever', but I have yet to see a single poster in this thread something like that, least ways do it under a name I recognize. If you want to help teach the n00bs, then you probably ought to get off your bums and go where they play. lol Or you can continue to sit at the tavern on Star Dock lamenting the sad state of the game while crying in your Andorian Nebula Lite beer.

Cerne

I was reading the Wikipedia article on Tradewars and actually contributed a little on it. What struck me funny was an edit that stated "using scripts that others don't have could be considered cheating". I thought this as funny as one server that says "no advanced scripts allowed".

Sites such as Wiki need to be edited so people can accidentally run across this archaic game we play and hopefully remember their early BBS days playing it. I ran into an old TW player on a software development site when I was investigating a compiler and asked some questions - gave him this site's addy as well as a couple of others. TW players are out in the woodwork, just flushing them out and getting them interested again is the challenge.

The training games are good for those who have came out of hiding and are getting their feet wet. I think Sing is creating a corp for low turns games and those players joining him should become good players - depends on if they listen and learn. I can't train people in corp mechanics because I am not a true corp player, just a solo and part-time corpie who can follow a good CEO's lead. CEO's are something that we need more of. Jhereg was one of those that was very good at least from what I saw.

               / Promethius / Enigma / Wolfen /

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

Thats actually how I came back to the game, looking it up in Wikipedia...

Prome, I've tried to make mods to the wiki page and someone keeps reverting them. I went thru a little revert war (which is against wiki rules, altho they never police them) with some guy before saying "screw it" ... sadly the wiki article is so far behind the times and backwards, and policed by a cluebie, that it's more or less a waste of time. The moron wouldn't even let me quote tw-cabal as a source... citing a series of arcane wikipedia rules, then violating them whenever it suited his purpose.

We can work on a community rewrite if you want, but I suspect another wikinazi will interfere. It's very hard to get things changed there.

Sing,

I ran into that guy as well. He admitted that he was an old BBS sysop who ran a tradewars door, but he was never a player.

Cerne

Nod. We could always start a page about modern play I guess, if it's specific enough maybe he'd go away.

He kept telling me its about the game, not about the play. Maybe a tradewars strategy page or a page about the evolution of the game since the 90s

Cerne

Nod, and to be sure the "about TW" page is not supposed to be an in-depth reference to tactics, but changes to the phrasing, the way edits are referred to as in the minority, etc, are all without reference or citation... and are completely inaccurate. But trying to change them (even while including a reference) still got them reverted back to a no reference version of inaccurate information. Some people are unable to see the forest for the trees, and then other people are just too stupid to realize they've become yet another tree... sigh.

A TW tactics page would prolly be against the "encyclopedic style" rule of wikipedia, but a modern play section that puts more emphasis on edits and modern resources might work very well. I don't really have the time to create it, and I'm quite sure that getting it referenced from the main page would be very difficult... and odds are the same person would start in on it too. I was pretty close to filing a complaint with wikipedia about the experience, but then I realized it wasn't worth the hassle and just went back to PLAYING the game instead of just talking about it.

I coined the term "wikinazi" for these people. I even called him that on the comments page... don't know if it's still there or not, but if he ever does read this thread... "hey buddy, you can be king of a very small hill all you want... but it won't earn you a dime's worth of respect from the people you bully. Grow up."

I think the key to gaining interest and thereby keeping current interest is to successfully advertise to the personality types most interested in the game.

Namely... programmers.

Actual programmers or people who wish to consider themselves programmers are the most interested types in this game.

The GUI version should eventually be designed to support both interests I feel but until then if you want classic TW to not be forgotten keep it alive in the hearts of people who always cared anyway.

The original group who played TW and who where not programmers did so because that is all there was at the time.

Not to my recollection. I played from 1988 to '91 and the BBs with TW had several other games. I restarted in '97 and continued to early '07. At least 90% of those I played with/against were not programmers and most of the rest were not script writers.

Kavanagh

Idea I had in mine for my site prior to it going down, was to have two sets of rules, one for basic games, and one for veteran games. Mark the games as either a veteran game or a basic game. Then when a noob comes in, not only does he have the option of various academy sites that have come up, but he can then venture into the basic games, where maybe some of the more agressive stratagies are not allowed. Vets can have their games where the advanced stratagies are allowed. This way we have places for all to play. Vets don't like to always go to games where there's truces, and you have to hold some other players hand or be afraid of running them off. And noobs can expect to get blown up if they enter advanced games.

I'm assuming he meant SD blocks, plock, pdrop, etc. Most of these can be cured by the game set up tho. SD blocks can be cured by running a sweeper script and turning off fedsafe photons. The sysop can also put the dock next to fed space if he knows what he's doing. Plocks can be cured by turning off sub prompt messages. Pdrops can even be hindered by making planets that hold a lot of ore take a long time to go level 6. If a sysop really wants to make it a noob friendly game, just turn off photons completely and move the dock next to fed space along with high starting assets. Give them 10k figs at start up and high defensive odds and they'll live long enough to learn a couple of things.

As a SysOp hosting TradeWars (and other online games/servers) for many years, trying to "enforce" rules results in more stress for us as hosts. IMO, if a SysOp is going to have a set of rules to be "enforced", they will need to act on a violation based on the framework they create by these rules. There can't be any "grey" areas, and yet we hosts can't spend time babysitting or chasing down those wanting to "test the boundaries" of said rules.

Each board is unique to the point of how they run their server, how they deal with issues, and what they will permit or not permit. Each board may feel the need to post rules and expectations that fit their goal. In the end, it's a game, not the "Law of the Universe". It is by our choosing to "respect" the host and their rules that make us all who we are. The "spirit" of the game has been lost in the competition and constant comments back and forth between players and hosts. New players want a leg up, experienced players don't always have the time or patience to teach new players.

I'm not disagreeing with your idea, but here's some fuel for thought. Let's say you manage to establish your two set of rules. Let's say you get 10 out of 20+ TWGS to participate. What happens if a SysOp does not enforce a rule that had been violated? What if the SysOp was unaware or unable to deal with said violation? Now we've just created a bigger rift between hosts and players.

The only way to mellow the game is let the players play. They can be accountable for their actions. There will always be good players that are willing to play, have fun, learn, teach. There will be those that come in causing havoc. Regardless, we all are accountable for our actions. All of us that have played for a long time follow certain "ethics", such as not exploiting bugs in the game, etc. If I "poke the bear", then I have no one to blame when the bear chomps my backside and wipes me out.

For our site, we turned our focus more to learning- both directed to players (new and current) and hosts (new and current). We don't have a set of rules any longer. We have "guidelines". They are not enforceable. They tell the player exactly how the TWGS runs, and what to expect. Again, it was our choice to take this direction. Placing rules on our site only made it hard to enforce, and we found some players tried to "exploit grey areas", which caused more stress for us.

IMO, it may be easier to have a set of "guidelines", or a "code of ethics" if you will. By this I mean some expectations that all SysOp's agree to as a whole. If you have less aggressive games for newer players, then we need to direct the new players there. Perhaps by forming these "guidelines", it would help to bridge the relations between us hosts. After all, we all enjoy hosting, we all enjoy the game. If we can help the other hosts out, perhaps by our lead and example we would see more hosts and players come on board.

My first encounter with a ptorp script was on Bethel's old server in a pirates game. Someone was running a twarp torper, I didn't mow and got hit a few sectors from base. His script autoattacked me, but my def odds were huge (cutter has 8:1) and he blew most of his figs and went red in the process. Found him on the hour sitting at dock there waiting for another fighit, he wasn't fedsafe... was my first afk script kill. Didn't take much except "oh hey, maybe I should get revenge on this guy."

Plocks can't be cured by turning off sub prompt msgs because of the fig decay msg, if someone is moving fast enough to avoid the fig decay drop then they're smart enough to avoid a plock all together.

But no matter what you do to the game... it's not the game that matters, it's the ppl. You get ppl that want to be aggressive and they'll find a way around it, you find ppl that are scared little rabbits and they're going to get eaten by the wolves. The problem isn't new players, I've seen new players kick serious a&&... the problem is all the scared turtle types that can't think their way out of a paper bag. There is no cure for stupid.