You know, the more you dig into the customizations that you have available to you with TW Gold the more appreciation you have of what you can really do with it. I mean, you can almost create a game of a different genre altogether. I cannot think of any door game (evolved or otherwise) that allows customization to that point. I'll use the Demons Run game as an example of what I am talking about.

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First, let's look at the game elements and objectives and then we will go to implementation.

Design Objectives
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This is a space race where players find as many 'pods' as they can and tow them back to their home sectors in a two hour time period. The objective is to be the last player standing or the last remaining player with the most points at the end of the game. Each pod is worth 1 point with the two class 2 pods being worth 3 points each and the tne class 3 pod being worth 5 points. A pod must be IN the players home sector in order to be counted at the end of the game. Players can engage in combat in order to win and can even do some trading to purchase additional resources such as fighters and mines in order to gain an advantage. Whatever strategy players wish to use to win is acceptable.

There are three kinds of ships that pilots can choose from in this game that have different speed capabilities as well as functionality differences. The ships are optimized for racing therefore they have no need of the extra weight of an escape pod, photons, transporters, gtorps, planetary scanners, etc. The pilot will be using this ship for the duration of the game and no others can be purchased from Stardock.

This is a hostile region of the universe with several 'black holes' surrounded by navhaz - a key to being able to avoid falling into one. Those who go with the slower but higher capability ship must be able to get out of a black hole. The class 2 pods are in very close
proximity to black holes and the class 3 pod is actually in a gravity well. Planets cannot be a function of the game; these are racers not colonizers. No pilot should be able to gain an upper hand by use of planetary defense or ship upgrades. Aliens and Ferrengi are disabled.

To accomplish this here's what I did:

1. Banged a GOLD game at 5000 sectors
2. Set all the standard ship types to Manual deployment
3. Insured that the standard ferrengi and aliens were disabled
3. Created 6 new ship types, three for pilots, three for pods
4. Created one new planet type
5. Set ship move delay to half

Gold Edits
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The gold planet is what I used to fulfil the 'black hole' requirement since if you make what we traditionally call a black hole in TW you've got no way out. The planet type is called a 'neutron star' and is as hostile as hostile can be for colos with no planetary production
available and no storage for orgs, equipment, or fighters. However, it can store 1000 units of fuel, a transporter, and a level 6 citadel with an active Interdictor generator.

The standard and light rails are not atmospheric so they cannot land on the neutron star planet. The limitation on the 1000 ore keeps it from being something those with advanced rails can use to their advantage by pwarping it and setting the quasar cannon or somesuch while at the same time the 1000 units makes it time-consuming for everyone else trying to warp out until the ore runs out. The planet shows up in density and holo scans as well as being surrounded by navhaz so it won't be stumbled on by accident.

The ship types are based mostly on the Merchant Cruiser with some minor modifications. They can have x number of figs, enough holds to do some trading, no photons, no transporter, no transwarp, no g-torps, etc. and, except for the advanced rail, NO ABILITY TO LAND ON A PLANET. The standard ship moves at two turns per warp, the light rail at 1 turn per warp, and the advanced rail at 3 per warp. With the ship delay turned on this gives them a relative speed. The advanced rail has two exceptions that allow it to get out of a black hole; they can land on a planet and have a transport range of 2 hops.

The standard class 1 pods are basically low mass ships that cannot be used by pilots other than tow them around. Class 2 pods have higher mass making it slower going to bring them back and the Class three pod moves at 8 turns per warp, making it considerably slower to move. To tow a pod, you cap it (they have one fig each). The class three pod is also the only one that a pilot can fly and has a transporter with a range of 2 hops. That fact plus the transport ability of both the advanced rail and the neutron star planet is what allows a pilot to cap and tow it. The pilot flies into the sector with the neutron star, caps the pod, then lands on the planet to transport the ship to a sector just outside of the navhaz surrounding the black hole sector. The pilot then transports to the pod, lands on the planet and transports the pod out, then he can tow either his rail or the pod back to his base.

Setting up
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Find several sectors throughout the universe that have 6 two-way warps. I chose 15 to have it match the game I was emulating. FWIW, that game is a space race simulation board game named (long pause) Demon's Run by Yaquinto Printing, inc., now out of print. Anyway, these will be your black hole sectors. You will drop a neutron star planet type in each of them and then manually edit each planet to have 1000 units of ore, set their transport power, set up a level 6 citadel on each of them and then turn on the interdictor.

In each of the two way sectors surrounding each black hole sector add significant navhaz - 50% or so. Navhaz doesn't show up in the sector editor unless it's already there but it is option 'o'.

Each pilot chooses what kind of ship he is going to fly for the game when he signs up. Prior to the game he is given a ship of that type and a home sector buried in a tunnel. I picked three deep for the tunnel size to keep them hidden enough to be less likely to be stumbled across but without burying them so deep that if an opponent found them they'd be effectively blocked out of the game.

Considering the general creativeness of the TW community there are bound to be some very unique strategies developed to gain an edge.

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Now the implementation isn't perfect, such as the fact that you can try to get out of a gravity well enough times to actually escape but by setting the time limit low it helps to overcome some of these shortcomings. The long and the short of it? Whatever you want to say about how buggy this feature or that is, TW Gold is awesome! Happy trading, y'all.

I'd like to comment that each time an IG holds someone, it uses 500 ore. so if you have 1000 ore on a planet, that means that the 3rd attempt will let the player escape.

In my testing it was only expending about 30 ore for each attempt.

With every version from 3.11.39 on at least it's 500. I haven't played longer than that. If you were testing this with the most recent version, you were most likely observing it incorrectly. I'm unsure if it's ever been different on older versions.

About the IG, does a ship with an IG need Fuel Ore to power it? I tried to hold an alien or two but they kept getting out of the IG beam.

Later a corpmate of mine who went Blue and we were all Red went Mega-Blue from attacking alien figs, so our CEO dropped him from the Corp when our Exp went close to 0. Then I passed him by in a sector and his IG held me. I tried to move out of it for maybe 20 tries, sort of like the aliens did, but I could not escape so I ended up XPorting out of that ship. Why do the Aliens end up being like Houdini, great escape artists, and players cannot?

Right the ships do not have to have fuel for the IG to work. We had a conversation her in EIS about a year ago requiring the planets to not use fuel anymore. I believe no fuel ore won the poll. Aliens are weired creatures, but I must admit I have not had your problem. I played in a game where aliens were rampant and both class 0 ports were spawning points. O could hold 10 aliens at a time with no problem. What you need to watch out for is if you xport out of your ship and import back into it your IG will be turned off. You have to turn it back on. This may have been what happened to you.

Another tip. If your corpie makes his ship personal and turns his ig on it will hold you. Even if he is not online. I had a corpie really screw me up doing that. He was offline and had a personal ship in the door with the ig on. Really messed up my game cause I could not get out of the door and the game had just started.

First make sure you have no figs in sector with you and the alien. If you put a fig down, or there is one there already the alien will retreat off the fig and escape the IG.

Also make sure you read closely what the alien is doing. Him escaping might actually be the alien simply porting or landing on a planet making it seem as if he disappeared.

Other then that, I've never had ANY trouble holding an alien as long as the sector was clear of figs.

No I did not lay any figs in the sector, nor did I xport out of my ship. I holoscanned and the alien was in the next sector, had escaped my IG. I moved there and caught him in my IG again, but he escaped yet again. It was on System78 Game S, EPOCH. It was like trying to nail jello to a wall.