It will be interesting to see how this plays out when everyone utilizes the same tools (scripts). We do "program" certain things for when we are offline now - cannon settings, military reaction, and fighter settings. What Kav is proposing is a lot more complex system that I believe mimics some AFK scripts currently in use. I don't know anything about the Botlink system, but this might be something to add to the current game - granted, you would be relying on the scripters ability not to get you killed.

               / Promethius / Enigma / Wolfen /

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

I'm looking forward to "re-discovering" the game in a new light. The game it's self is easy to learn, but takes years to master.

That is the question. Currently the people with the better bots tend to win. To even out the game, you have to limit bots to a certain extent.

At the same time you have to allow for different styles of game play, different player objectives, etc.

I have to admit I had the most fun before bots became common. TradeWars was simple enough that anyone could get into a game back then, and survive for a while. Often quite a while. Then the economics got totally skewed, and it messed things up.

I'll do some digging, and see if I can find the spreadsheet with the proposed new ship prices. I tried to update the prices to take into account the high money volumes that players could earn. It worked to a certain extent, i.e. with the prices I choose there weren't any players in Imperial Starships on Day 2.

Which brings up another point. It should be possible to tie prices to turns/day if the GameOp wants, or to vary the prices, again based on turns/day. Games used to last for months. Now they often last less than two weeks, which puts a lot of pressure for a player to be in the game on Day 1, and to totally maximize their time over the first several days. If you miss the first day, you are dead. If you miss the first hour in some games, like BOTE, you are effectively out of the game.

The older, slower game allowed players to come in a week or two late, and survive. There was a lot less pressure, and more fun.

Wayne

Yes, I agree that the economy is tied to certain settings and should be at least giving hints about what would be reasonable costs to maintain some balance when you change turns/day or whatever. But I'm talking about the current game there. For a new game, it's going to be more a single game, with less configuration. So you won't see wild changes from one game to another like you can today.

I really like this idea. Then once the players have, or think they have "mastered" that level of play, then they can come into TWGS to test their "skills and knowledge" and learn how to use the custom scripting tools.

Yeah! When will this beta be ready?

I did'nt propose anything, please explain?

He meant me I think

Wayne

lol, yeah I attributed it to the wrong poster - sorry about that.

               / Promethius / Enigma / Wolfen /

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

Ten USB backup drives later...

Attached is a spreadsheet with recommended Trade Wars Ship Costings. I did try a game using these costings, and it worked a lot like a game would have under TW2002 V1.03D.

There are problems with these costings. The T-Warp Upgrade cost is based on a 2 byte Integer (0 to 65535 - while Tedit limits you to 50000 but anyone with a bit of skill can change this with a Hex Editor), which throws T-Warp upgrade pricing out of line. Back in the old days people actually used Basic T-Warp some times. Now no one uses it, but with the increased costs it might come back into use.

The pricing is based on the amount of money you can earn playing in a Standard Gold Game at 1000 turns/day. (MBBS disabled). If MBBS was turned on the price would have to be recalculated. If you double the turns, double the prices, money earned/day is a direct function of turns/day.

Note that it will indicate an error on Merchant Ship - change the value in that column to Zero. I left that as it was to remind me of what I did.

Wayne

Um, the Gameop setup options are one of the greatest things about the game. I know they are a pain in the backside, but you should keep as many of them as possible. One of the things that made the original Doors version of TW2002 so popular was the many add-ons that were programmed for it, including my Universe Expander. It was really exciting to go into a new game, never being sure as to how it was set.

Of course a lot of today's players are spoiled. They like knowing everything ahead of time, and having the game planned out before they logon for the first time.

Me? Well I like surprises. I'll never forget the first time I lost a planet to the Crystaline Entity (David Proper wrote that one). Brandon Bannerman's AEdit was a great program for moding the ship costs and capabilities. Gary borrowed a lot from AEdit when he updated Tedit.

I wrote a couple of apps for TW2002 V3. Limited ones, and I never did get my Super Editor done - partly that was life, and partly it was the lack of competition from other programmers. If there had have been someone else doing GameOp programs, it might have pushed me into doing a bit more (see, I can blame everything one someone else!)

Wayne

It's apples and oranges. Those configurations are great for a game like classic TW, but for a more mainstream game, they're not appropriate. Just realize that this isn't going to be a public hosted game, so that kind of flexibility isn't as important. What's more important is that people understand what the game is. Classic TW is as much a game system as it is a game. What we're talking about here is a very specific set of rules and balance that will expose more people to what TradeWars is at its core.

Almost... but if the turns per day are in a real "classic" range (250-500), then the turn cost of setting up for cashing becomes significant. A very low number of turns hurts reds more than blues, which brings red and blue back into balance. Just one more example of how the original default settings were very finely tuned and very sensitive to change.

Are there any isolated costs that could be adjusted to restore that startup-cost to balance with larger turns?

One of the best solutions I've seen is to make ether probes more expensive. But other than that, I don't know if there's any good solution for high-turn games. After the first couple hundred turns, red's income scales more or less linearly. And there's not much you can adjust. Maybe tweak the rob/steal factors to make reds spend more money and turns building XP, but that's about it.

Blue is much more interesting. Blue income actually scales better than red's, because once planets are established, they take almost no turns to generate income. If a blue keeps spending all their turns building more planets, their daily income keeps increasing, essentially without limit.

But this is only true if the planets become defensible before red finds them. The chances of that depend on the percentage of the universe red can search in the number of days it takes to build a defensible citadel. With too many turns, blue never gets any citadels. With stock planets and a 5K universe, 1K turns is too many.

Wow some familiar faces in the crowd, hello to all, alot of new faces too.
Just read some older post from like 9 years ago when I played, fun times.
So what is everyone up too? Any good Corps out there? I have been thinking about comming back to play casually. Any servers out there still running?

The Real AeSoo