Off Topic - breaking scripts will widen the gap between the script writers and the the non script writers. You think it is bad now, break the scripts and see what happens, all games will be dominated by the handful of scripters that still play. The rest will leave, IMO that's why JP is not breaking the scripts in the current version. Get people in and get them playing and then release the new TW. Of this is just my guess since I don't talk to JP about his intentions, just reading what he posts.

These scripts have become so complex that there are only 10-20 Elite players that understand how to fix them. Even learning how to use them can be overwhealming for most.

Hehe.. I remember over-clocking my CPU to try to compensate for the slow dial-up I had then. My 56k modem would on a good day get 24k

So why have a time limit? Yes, I want to sit in game
after my turns are run and watch the action. I want
the ability to set up some active defenses if I choose.

I understand why you want the time limit, but I have a
cable modem that's on 24/7 and I like tidbits muttered
on fedcomm and such... Sorry if I'm derailing your thread
but the game looks attractive to builders, but not so
reds. What is so bad about saying it's a blue edit?

Play as a red doing SDT with 3k turns and rob delay on, toss in busts, furbs, waiting on a corpie to bust. It is mind numbing. The turns would be accomplished regardless of rob delay, but with it off, then we could have got in, made our turns, and got on to other things - like maybe Fedcomm chat.

               / Promethius / Enigma / Wolfen /

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

Considering I started with a TI-99/4A with 16k ram, then went to a C-64, but they were fun......

               / Promethius / Enigma / Wolfen /

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

Ok, help them learn the basics on scripting. I released a tutorial some time back that I wrote to target people who had never wrote an If-Then statement or knew what variables were. I would love to see someone take what I wrote and build on it, improve it, or release a completely new and better version.

               / Promethius / Enigma / Wolfen /

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

If by "active defenses" you mean reactive scripts, then no. That's exactly the kind of thing I'm trying to suppress. As a matter of fact, Crosby... you personally inspired me to create this edit by sitting online 24/7 and hitting me with reactive scripts. You may not remember; I'm sure you were off watching TV or something at the time. (Screenshot attached.)




If it were a blue edit, I'd just turn off the steal from buy ports option.

You still haven't given a single reason why the game is unattractive for red. You've only explained why it's unattractive to players who want to treat it like it's an unlim. If your argument is that all the active red players only want to play unlims, then you might be right. But playing red and sitting online all day are not inextricably linked. There are other ways to play red.

Red's cashing advantage cannot be overstated. I estimated that even with 500 turns and 20K sectors, red still has enough of a cashing advantage that if they are methodical, they can probe the entire universe, have a significant chance (but not guaranteed - there's the balance) of finding blue's planets, and still have enough cash left over to invade them. So, red does not enjoy the total domination of the universe they have in a stock game. If your argument is that active reds are only interested in playing easy mode, I'll buy that, too.

Looks like you were direct pDropped, how did that happen? I thought the effectivness of direct pdrops was long gone except for attacking newbies - I don't think I even have one anymore.

               / Promethius / Enigma / Wolfen /

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

Well, as you can see, that's SWATH. I had it set to automatically kill defensive sector fighters, so what you see here happened pretty fast. I hit several of Crosby's fighters before this, so maybe his pdrop script doesn't always get a lock in time, and I just got a bit of lag or an unfavorable thread scheduling...

Point is, the outcome of games shouldn't come down to lag and thread scheduling. Hence the wonderfulness of game-imposed timings.

Timings and delays would seem to be somewhat different. I see timings as the internal TWGS settings, and delays as things Ops do such as rob delay and the new settings implemented to slow the game down. Delay = "To cause to be later or slower than expected or desired"

               / Promethius / Enigma / Wolfen /

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

I think JP has used the terms "timing" and "delay" interchangeably. Both words refer to the delays imposed on specific actions like movement or stealing, and they're found in tedit under "Game Timing Editor". These delays aren't intended to "slow the game down", per se; they're intended to make it a game of space trading again, instead of the game of script speed, ping time, and server scheduling that it had become. They don't always achieve that purpose, but I think they help.

The options that actually "slow the game down" are the ones found under "Emulation Editor". This is where you can impose a minimum ping time or simulate a 1200-baud modem. I kept those settings at the defaults, but I think Cruncher might have changed the minimum ping to whatever she runs her other games at. Anyway, it's not noticeable.

I think the timing part of what has been done will have a good effect for the most part. The whole key is balancing and that is where I have issues with the delays such as rob and eprobe. The balance of fun vs drudgery gets broken. I know a lot of people like to build, but implementing a move delay would make that painful for colonizing just as rob delay kills a red.

I believe one of the reasons unlims are so popular is because of the faster pace of the game over turns, and you can play at that pace for however long you desire (good and bad).

               / Promethius / Enigma / Wolfen /

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

I would consider removing the rob delay. It's on by default, and honestly, I just left it in out of nostalgia. There was always a delay in the door version.

But the movement delay is essential. Like I said, it prevents a near-instantaneous #SD# from surround scripts. It also gives a meaningful advantage to using a faster ship for charging through grids and things like that.

I can understand if people want to play their turns faster. I like games with low time commitment. But in a balanced game there aren't that many turns to play. With 500 turns, 1/3 s/t, and a 3 TPW ship, we're talking about adding a maximum of 8 minutes, 20 seconds to the time it takes to use your turns. And that's if you spent 100% of your turns moving, which of course is absurd. It's probably not a bad guess to say that movement delays add four minutes for a blue, and two minutes for a red. (There's no delay for transporting.) I just can't accept that this is a major issue.

I can see both sides of this coin. Movement delay is essential for fair game play, but it is very unpopular at the moment. I don't think you need time limits though in a low turn game when delays are set high enough.

IMO you could set every delay to it's maximum setting, and it would still be much faster than any graphical MMORPG that is popular right now.

In addition to the configurable delays, there are internal pacing delays that JP has configured. See the following for more information:

Subject: Timing tweaks