I guess I should start off with my concept of a good balanced game in this particular context. I mean a game where the blues stand at least a decent chance of keeping up with the reds in the game.

I've never played red or been on a corp with skilled red players, but from what I have gathered by reading here and the other sites talking about the game itself, a corp with skilled reds seems to have mad cashing opportunities with cashing scripts and the knowledge of how to use them for best effect. Can just blast out ahead of blues on money and figs.

Do the default settings in TWGS make for a good balanced general game? How about with gold planets and ships? What settings would be better to be tweaked? Any way to tweak the settings so reds can't make quite so much money, yet not enough to make it where a corp won't play there because the settings just make it almost impossible to play red at all?

Or, is it just kind of an assumption by everyone in the game that a game needs to be set up so the reds can make big cash, and if you don't have reds on your corp you better find some? I wouldn't want to set up a game where nobody would be interested in playing on the server because they can't make any quick money.

I've never played in unlimited games other than my local game for script testing, I only played a few public games and they were all turn limited. I could be wrong, but it's my impression that the majority of players today are into the unlimited games and turn limited has a smaller following. Is that a mistaken assumption? Thanks

If you use twx proxy , please look on this site for my SysOp pack , it has a bunch of scripts that will make game setups a breeze.

As for balanced games , that is up to you and your understanding of the balance.

My server settings will help to make games more interesting and playable so as to help draw players in to play.
If you leave the stock settings as they are when you first bang a game , that will insure that you get people to come look and leave.

But with the mentioned packages , you can have games and setting set that make games playable for just about anyone.

Hope this helps & I look forward to another new server to come check and play someday.

Vid Kid/CareTaker

The biggest factor is turns. Reds make money on a per-turn basis, but blues make money on a per-day basis. With stock ships and planets, the default 250 turns is probably about right... but I think I'm the only player around who would ever be interested in playing such a low turn game.

There are a lot of other things you can tweak to give blue a chance in a higher turn game, but you can only do so much without players protesting. For example, I doubt anyone (again, except me) would play a game where reds can't acquire ships with a large number of holds, or where the bust rate is much higher than average. Probably the best thing you can do is buff the planets so they produce more, and make them a little bit more expensive for the reds to find by maxing out the price of probes and maybe tweaking the warp density.

Which is better of a blue, more warps or less warps?

IMO: An Edit is either Red -OR- Blue. A good team adapts either way.

Lest we forget that people only go Red because they've attacked a Blue player/figs, or to cash. Otherwise everyone stays Fed-Safe and hangs out at Dock.

Whatever causes it to take more probes to cover the whole universe. I haven't done the math, but my gut says lower warp density would make it take more probes to cover an empty universe. It might also make partial grids or scattered picket fighters more effective at cutting off sections of the universe, making reds (or their furbers) waste precious turns hunting by ship.

Not true. I hate being blue... Always start with the intent of being red....

If the bust rate is set high, or port density is low, or the edit doesn't have the right ships for SST/SDT, or there isn't a good furb ship.... a red is gonna get his pod polished...