Waaalllaaaaahhh. It's been said a thousand times in many different ways. You hit the nail on the head and drove it home.

That is exactly why v1.03 players are pissed off and left this game, because J.P. didn't give us what we wanted. In a nutshell, a version of v1.03 without bugs before he moved on to all of Cruncher's rediculous crap.

Before JP implemented any of the delay toggles he and Sing worked together for months on the timing issues. Needless to say, they didn't see eye-to-eye, Sing made some rather rude comments directed at JP and left.

The biggest thing that I believe got the v1 panties in a bunch was the minimum timing of 10ms. And I think JP changed a few other things that scripts looked for, but like you said, those are easy enough to work around. You've done it, Xanos has done it, Vid Kid has done it. Those who relied on Sing's scripts to play are pretty much gone, can't fix those compiled scripts.

Now, I'm seeing what I had hopped to see on my server. Some kick-butt old school players are coming back. These are the folks with real skill who write their own macro's on the fly.

Today what we have left are a very few script writers, and like Micro said each permacorp has at least one.

We have skilled players who can play solo and kick-butt.

We have bots, players who may know how to play, but only login to offer their turns to be botted. What cracks me up is those who join Flying Aces just to be a bot and say they are on the winning team.

The majority are average players who may have a few scripts they've downloaded or have been given that are OK. (I'm in this bunch)

Then we have a bunch of noobs or returning players who's only experience with the game was local dial-ups that played mostly manually, or maybe with Twar or Swath.

Low turn, time limit games with certain delays that I requested levels the playing field. More players are having fun now that never could of had in the past.

V1.X, V2.Y, HVS, etc

I'm puzzled about the controversy. I asked a few times over the last several years, and again a week or so ago - whats the problem? Unlike "If you like your Health Insurance, you can keep it", in THIS game, you can CONTINUE to play whatever version you like.

A proponent of V1 posted that V1 players had quitted in the last couple three years because it had not been properly debugged, at the same time saying that V1 players had held the game together for a decade.

Why quit when V1 is still avaiable? No baby seals left? All your scripts do not work anymore? Are you script kiddies as Mongoose queried?

As for taking on Cruncher alone in the matter of scripting:

I have been as vociferous as she for more than a decade against reactive attack scripts which smoke newbies.

I've said it before: What the game needed was a v1.5.

True, there are bugs in v1 and v2; however the bugs in v2, in my opinion, make the game unplayable. I can say this now because I spent 3months in a v2 game, writing and rewriting many of my scripts beating my head against the wall looking for some stability in *any* one of the Bugs. As I encountered a Bug, I'd counter that Bug with a solution, and another bug would arise as a result of that effort.. and on it went..

In a but shell. As buggy as TWGS was/is, TWGSv2 -in my experience- is not consistent. Or probably more fair to say that I'm not willing to invest the time and effort to explore & exploit a whole new batch of Bugs. ESPECIALLY, ESPECIALLY!! when the bugs from TWGSv1 were not fixed.. I've tested this and so have others.. so, I spit in the general direction of TWGSv2

OK, so just play v1. No brainer? Or (shudder) play whatever does not work by hand, if you cant code a fix.

I would be less skeptical of the complaints about the timing in v2 if they were expressed as follows. Note that I don't know if any of this is true, this is just an example of the form the complaints would have to take to be valid.

Say that the delays were such that, if player A moved into a sector with player B, then player B would always receive a message (assuming reasonable ping times) and have an opportunity to move before player A could attack.

That would indeed make PvP "impossible," or at least severely restrict it. But I have yet to see any of v2's detractors break it down this way.

Because so many, if not all of the more advanced scripts rely on "abort display on space" option, even in v2 games you don't see the attacker entering the sector. Things are scrolling by so quickly, once you see yourself at the game prompt, you know you've been killed. Scrolling back to see the details is often futile.

players will play the way they want. even if it means taking out their competition through bullying and personal attacks. make a server where their competition can feel at home and lock them out they will respond with DOS attacks on the port that the host has opened up to the public on your home network. they will even go as far as insult you on other websites and link to your blog giving you unwanted traffic to both you and your personal blogs.

heck i have even noticed that they will attack you directly if they ever hear you insult their mode of transportation through the cosmos.

when are they going to grow up and see the world all around them is falling apart, instead of bickering with a select few about unwanted changes to a game that has lost popularity because of ALL THE BICKERING that the game obviously is causing.

it's a no wonder that no one wants to play, and it has nothing to do with the termites AKA bugs the game has. it has to do with the termites that exist outside the game that you have to deal with if you do play/host.

What would have been a "no brainer" would have been for J.P. to fix the bugs in v1.03 (Which were spelled out for him) before he created 1000 more bugs in a version (v2) that is official known as a piece of shiit. We should have gotten a bug free version of TWGS since most of us HAVE PAID for EIS's beta software and expected a final, somewhat bug free, non-beta version.

The idea that "bug free" software even exists is ludicrous, let alone the idea that anyone is entitled to it.

The idea that a software developer who charges money and continues to release beta versions for the entire lifetime of that program is what is ludicrous. Most of us would have been happy to get JUST the reported bugs fixed before EIS created 1000 more bugs.