I know JP and I have discussed this before and don't know if it's been implimented yet or not.

Most very server has a rule for no buy-outs and I think JP had come up with a way to help insure buy-outs are a thing of the distant past.

Yes, that definitely is a feature on the waiting list. I think we can fix that without impacting play in any other way.

Will this be also be an option? I would prefer that if I open my server to the public that buyouts are possible.

               / Promethius / Enigma / Wolfen /

"A man who has no skills can be taught, a man who has no honor has nothing."

I'll make it very clear if a setting is ever just a fundamental change to the game, and that would be very rare. Like the Corp scanning change. I never had one request for that to be options, seemed unanimous that it was a bad thing, even by those who used it, so I didn't make it an option. That's an exception to the rule. And if I get requests to bring it back as an option, I will do that. Just why do the work if I don't need to? ;)

While we're actually talking about buyOUTS and not buyDOWNS...

In my mind, this shouldn't be an option. Buyouts are abuse, and not legitimate strategy. Buyouts are a fundamentally broken part of the game. I think they need to go away and never be available again. MHO!

Sure, but as long as there are some who like it as a feature, it's best to make it an option. Then you can avoid playing in games where buyouts are an active feature.

Of course, you could just remove the limits on how many of something someone could buy. No limits, no buyouts.

That would depend of if TW can handle a limitless DB Size. If the answer is no, then Planets and Ships will be limited.

how about adjust the price of them according to how many you've purchased in the past... Eventually the price would get so exponentially high, it would take care of itself...the player wouldn't be able to make money fast enough for the 'strategy' to be useful or even possible.

There are a couble of issues. One, it's very inefficient to have a very large number of ships available to the game. The file will be created with a slot for every possible ship. Also, only 65K ships can be referenced by the game. If all 65K ships are allowed, the ship file would currently be about 10 meg. Also, there is more likely a limit of 32K ships in the engine. But most importantly, the game would not handle a very large number of ships very well, so that even if a player couldn't buy out 65K ships, they might be able to buy enough to bog down the game, just to be a PITA.

Here's what I propose. First, limit the total player count to 200 per game, down from 500. Second, in addition to the maximum 2K ship public pool, provide a guaranteed 25 ship private pool for every player in the game, plus 500 ship private pool for every Corp. If the game maxed out and all 2K public pool ships plus 30K private pool ships were in use, the total number of ships would be 32K, the most likely limit.

What this would mean to the player is, until the 2K public pool is exhausted (the current maximum number of ships in a game), all new ships would come from that pool. After that, you'll have up to 25 more ships per player, 500 more ships per Corp, guaranteed to be available for you to purchase. This means that there will be no advantage to buying all of the ships, so nobody will ever do it.

If a game is set to support 50 players and 10 corps, with a 2K public ship pool and 25/500 private ship pool, the ship file would support 8K ships and would be about 1.2 meg. This seems very reasonable.

SOLD! Package it up, we'll take it!

Yup... that would work

That's a good idea, JP. But why make it that complicated? IMO, just get rid of the global ship limit completely, and give every player and corp their own sysop-configurable limits.

If I was using Sql at this point, I'd just get rid of the limit. But the existing engine doesn't support an open-ended limit, and it would be a mess trying to clear away the 32K (possibly 64K) limit on ship IDs. These kinds of restrictions have always held us back, considering this engine was written to work under Dos 5 originally. Ahh, the days of Desqview!

As long as I can still set a game up where buyouts are possible, sounds good. I believe in limited resources being a valid strategy - kind of like taking all colos from Terra.

               / Promethius / Enigma / Wolfen /

"A man who has no skills can be taught, a man who has no honor has nothing."

Yeah, np, Prom.