Still one of my favorite games of all time was on Coast Games, the dupe chess setting. Chess edit with dupes allowed up to a full 5 person team. Started with lvl 5 planet with 50k figs and 10 mill creds if I remember. If we ever do anything like that again would anyone be interested in playing?

I can put up a Dupe Chess game on my server if you'd like (and allow dupes in that Game). I just need to know if there's a specific "Dupe Chess" TWA, or is it just the regular Chess.TWA?

Great question, it's the normal chess twa. The kicker is each team gets a queen planet that if lost and not recaptured they are eliminated. In the past I think teams started with 50k figs and 10 mill credits. I'll have to go back and look. Anyone up for a dupe chess game?

A quick search reveals this is both my favorite edit and my failure last time and getting the game up and running. I'll try and find the original west coast games setup. Is anyone around who played this edit this way before?

@Ender

I have played the .twa your referencing, way back in the day when it was popular. If I still played I would be up for it, but as it is I don't even have a local twgs/twx/script repo set up. Definitely was one of the more interesting edit, though I remember Megacorping was a huge issue.

I can help you with that! https://www.dropbox.com/s/by9wcjhgd0bix ... 2.zip?dl=0 (huge repository including all the scripts, bots, TWX, ZOC, etc.)

Yeah I was thinking
4/5 man corps
5k sectors
800 turns (3 day regen)

something like that?

When Master Blaster quit I was working on a version of the Chess TWA on his server that would be more like Go.

The idea was to create an extremely small (100 sector) universe, laid out with an 8 x 8 grid common area in the middle (64 sectors) as the public ground that you battle over, plus on each "side" of the board, top, bottom, left, and right, a 9-sector bubble.

The objective of the game is not to invade the bubbles of the other players, and there are no aliens. It's a time-limited (30 day?) tournament mode, where the player who has L3 or higher planets in the most sectors in the 64-sector board (well, 51 when you subtract fedspace and Rylos and Alpha Centauri) at the end of the tournament wins.

There would be no death-delay, so while ship-to-ship combat, pdropping, and ptorping are possible, they would have to be strategic because any resources you use to blow up the other players would be resources you're not using to take control of the common sectors.

Each bubble would be impenetrable to attack - each player is guaranteed those 9-sectors to build and regroup from. A "neutral" sector at each gate would have an arbitrarily high number of sysop or rogue-mercenary owned fighters. In order to access the rest of the "board" you would warp through a one-way out of your bubble into fedspace (or a spot at one of the four corners of the board).

There could only be a maximum of 4 players in the game since there are 4 starting bubbles, they would sign up in advance for the tournament and at start time would have to have their sector tedited to place them inside their bubble to drop figs since twarping in is the only way to access them from outside.

I was thinking unlimited turn, but time-limited (4 hours?) so someone sitting at keys 24 hours a day doesn't win by default. Colonists on Terra and regen would be low so it would take a little while to build up a sector until it was immune from takeover.

Would you be interested in hosting this on your server?

@CNYNot: That's sounds like a very interesting setup. Unfortunately, anything that requires more than a few minutes of tinkering is not possible. I actually go weeks without using my laptop, and I think it's great.

Wouldn't the game be over in less than 4 hours with unlimited turns?

Nah, not with such a small universe, as long as the planet specs and # of colonists weren't too high. Cashing would be very low with each player only having access to a maximum of 62 possible trading ports (100 - 11 for fedspace - 27 for the other 3 players' 9-sector bubbles).

,but there's no where to hide.

That's the reason for the closed off bubble each player gets, can build and regroup in there. And the reason for not having a death delay. The objective really isn't popping the other players (although it can be strategically advantageous some of the time), but to build, and hold, the sectors outside the bubbles.

A good enough player could certainly find a way to blockade all entrances into the common area, but unless they've got all the colonists and the credits it should be possible to break through - especially considering there'll be 3 other players who started at the same time trying to bust the blockade.

are other players allowed to attack/enter your bubble?

Sounds like the bubbles are only have one-way exits warps, hence placing figs for twarp. Would be funny and embarrassing to forget to place a fig...like locking yourself out of your house.

Would you want to order ensure each bubble has a trade pair, or similar port availability?

Exactly.

For the ports I think I'd tedit all of the sectors to have ports ready when the game opens, don't want to make it too hard to cash and build. Of course with so few of them everyone will have to upgrade them, could be a big blow if you move out into the open and up some ports and then someone else captures those sectors and builds them up enough they can't be retaken without spending a lot more than you did to up those ports in the first place.