Okay, so it doesn't seem like there's a "I wanna see this new feature!" section to this forum, so I hope this is the right place. I also hope none of my suggestions have been hammered into the ground time and time again.
So my first thought concerns escape pods. Maybe for everybody, or as an extra-charge option, escape pods could be equiped with an emergency warp device. This would be a one-time-use transwarp drive with an internal fuel cell. Before you get podded, you program certain sectors you'd like to emwarp to when you get podded, in order of desirability. These could be your home base, Stardock, etc. Then when you get podded, the emwarp kicks in and whisks you off to the first destination on your list that's safe. For instance, let's say you have your home base and Stardock on the list when your main ship goes boom. Normally you'd be sent to your home base. But what if somebody else had invaded and your fighter providing a locater beacon was no more? Well, rather than risking a blind warp, it'd send you to Stardock instead. If, for whatever reason, none of the destination sectors was safe, the standard procedures for warping away from disaster would be used. Clarification: for the purposes of Emergency warp, fedspace including the stardock would be 'safe' for good and evil alike.

This is my opinion only....

I'm not sure they are looking to change the game from a players point of view... Seems like a lot of the changes are for the sysop... and ways to stop aggressive scripting... We all have several suggestions for the game... I made one and was accused of doing a buyout... Keep posting ideas maybe one will be picked up...

Here's a game suggestion....

A mailbox filter.... with all the gridding it might be time....

A Private mailbox...for all private messages....
A Corp Mailbox... for all corp messages
A Game Mailbox... for all attacks on planets, figs, mines, etc...

How many times have you wanted to leave a message for a corpie but you realize it would just get lost in the 9000 alien fighter hits... Seems easy but i just play the game...

I think the separate mailboxes feature is a good idea. Probably Federation messages like "We destroyed the Q cannon..." should go to personal, as those might actually be important.

SWATH already puts different types of messages in different tabs in the comm window. And I don't think it's the only helper that does that.

I'm talking about the messages at login... those arent separated.... not talking fed com, subspace and private message... unless i havent found this swath feature...

I suggested an idea for a sysop/daily message and better contact info based on the way things are done in the modern world, like facebook twitter etc.

After reading the responses here and at that previous thread.

I am convinced that maybe no one really desires to have this game modernized. Is telnet the best way to display a game in todays world? I know alot about alot of things and I am sure telnet is not a perfered protocol. Security alone is a problem.

The game needs alot of changes to make it "modern". With that said, I believe that alot of support comes from the guys who make the helpers. So ANYTHING that would take away from the HELPERS. is considered a no?

The maker of tradewars and the helpers need to gather in a room and determine how to make this game "modern".

If the phone system never recieved an upgrade, we would not be using cell phones right now. Think about it.

The trouble with trying to "modernize" TW2002 is that it could easily be ruined. If the changes are too radical, players might revolt. And if the big changes are optional, the game might become too confusing. It's bad enough that we already have to worry about whether we're playing MBBS mode, whether the classic version bugs that have been enshrined as features are enabled or not, etc.

This might be a weird analogy, but it's what I think of when I think about the future of TW:

In the US, fringe third parties seldom win elections. But they succeed by splitting the vote and forcing the popular parties to adopt planks from the fringe party's platform.

There's an opportunity for someone to create a new TW-style game. Many would-be successors to TW2002 have come and gone, failed and forgotten. Any new game is likely to suffer the same fate. But if it's radical enough, original enough, the features and ideas that prove themselves can be adopted into the classic TW.

That's the cool thing about game design. Names can be trademarked, but how a game is played cannot be patented or copyrighted. It's one of the few creative domains in which artists can freely copy each other's work.

I agree with what you said.

Look at farmville, or mafiawars? Has anyone played these style games? Do they not remind you of the bbs days? The facebook app games are to facebook as BBs door games are to BBs's

Tap into the Mafiawar , farmville, gaming arena with a tradewars style game and you got a new family of players and a successful future.

Too bad... no one has done it yet

I, for one, would hate to see TW turned into a modern graffical 3D visual animated virtual reality audio video mouse joystick game. The simple reason is, I'm blind, and being text-based, TW is one game I can play on a virtually equal footing with my sighted counterparts.
I've thought about writing a similar space game in the MOO programming language, but just don't have the major creativity it needs. So what would I end up writing? Yet another TW clone! I have the very very early stages of such a game done, not near enough to be playable though. I have sectors. They have resources which might or might not ever get used if this game were to ever go anywhere, a nebula name, a beacon, warps, etc.

One thing TW doesn't do that some more fully roleplaying games do is to have basic things like fuel ore, organics, equipment, etc. Then these are put together to make intermediate items, E.G. so many units of equipment and some other stuff go together to make one unit of computers. Then, let's say one unit of computers and one unit of fuel can be put together to make a few fighters. Just a crude example.

Good point. I dont suggest a modern graphical style game. A facebook app style game could keep all the text-based style. Every bit of it. In fact, If I made a facebook app style game of tradewars. It would not change other than work as a facebook app. The text-based part of tradewars is the heart. You do not want to remove the heart of the game.

Someone suggested an idea for a MUD (I forget which one) that instead of a text interface presented over Telnet, it should use an easily-parsed, open custom protocol. That way, people could easily write whatever sort of client they want: text, fancy graphics, even a completely custom audio interface for the blind. You could wrap something like this around TW, but it would just be another opportunity to introduce deadly lag. The familiar text interface should be built on top of the custom protocol, not the other way around.

I'm actually working on my own TW-style game, and this is how it works.

I would use TCP/IP protocol. Between java, php, sql, xml, javascript, xhtml or html, I'm for sure the game could be upgraded.

Here is an example of someone else converting a door game to something more modern.

Does anyone remember Legend of the Red Dragon? Here is the web based clone of it.
Legend of The Green Dragon

I'm not looking to modernize the game or even change the concept at all...just little features that make the game a little cleaner... Mailboxes... separated ship lists (personal/corp).... or how about letting players know they have 10 planets that need to be upgraded...

TW has been modernized many times over. That's not what I'm trying to do here. I'm trying to preserve it. At least this particular implementation. I've worked on and continue to work on new projects to evolve the game. Even prototyped a facebook version not long ago to shop around to potential investors but didn't get any bites, unfortunately.

The game you're playing right now isn't going to change significantly unless that change restores the game to its roots, odd as that sounds.

I am still exploring new features that will probably be rolled into a new version, though, and things like email filtering, integrated automation, a map view, etc, are all possibilities for this version. My goal in that version would be to provide a game that's like the original game, but that can be played "out of the box" without helpers or scripts. But I'm still talking about text.