I am a script writer and have written a few things for the new
up and coming twgs botlink.

Since this is a slow time for me , I would like to take this opportunity
to ask everyone :

What would you like to see in a game ?
As far as in features to spice up the game a bit ?

Let me start off with a few :
A port fixer , to move Star Dock adj to fed , change the type to sell ore.
An option to remove pass words from ships.
A sweeper script to clear fed space and star dock adj of planets and mines.
A wandering planet.


There are a few more that I have already made .
This is only a small list to help others get started.

Please add more , this will help in the development of the botlink.
You give ideas ..
That will help us to figure what more is needed to produce those effects.

I agree 100% with your suggestion to remove the ship p/w. I have several times inadvertently script screwed up resulting in changed pw/s and lost ISS's, without session cap on to readback and get the p/w.

The rest of your suggestions, I think with respect, would just add to the dumbing down of TW that started with unlimited turn games.

One of my "playability" goals is for players to not feel that they have to be on at a particular time of day. The main culprit, of course, is extern. I'd like to use Botlink to completely replace extern with a version that does its work continuously throughout the day. In particular, I'd like to change the way planet overloading works, so it's more like the way cloak fails work.

Another thing I'd like to see is the option to interpret citadel construction times as hours instead of days. This would fill the gap between "instant" citadels and waiting days.

I'd also like to add options to upgrade starter ships, so new players could start out with shields and a scanner.

Ok , let me go through this a little at a time ...

The first paragraph : turning off extern and replace it with a manual (script operation) might take some extra work in source of botlink.
The cloak fail works only at extern based on random number on % set.
So I'm not sure how you want it to work exactly .. but we can get back to this.

The second paragraph : Planet upgrading in minutes verses days .. interesting , but that would break scripts .. but it may be able to be done.

The last thing , I have already done something along those lines , but could easily expand it to only the tera generated ships , coming in from dead or started ship upon arrival into sector.

I did make a Class 0 add on (botlink), so you can buy scanners and twarp
as you enter game but I like your way better .

Good ideas .. keep them coming.

JP has already said that he intends to provide an option to completely disable the normal extern.




I mean... cloak fail chance is always 0% the first time extern runs. Each time after that, the chance increases by the amount set in tedit. I consider sector overloading a cheap tactic, and I'd like for players not to feel they have to be on at extern in case someone overloaded their sectors. The chance of collision should be 0% for the first day (or hour), and increase slightly every day (or hour) after that.

Or, you could simply disallow sector overloading entirely. Gtorps fizzle ("Not enough debris here to aggregate into a planet") and planet twarp wouldn't work ("Can't find a stable orbital solution").




I imagine a lot of scripts would have to be adapted to some of the radical things you could do with Botlink. Not a reason not to explore them, IMO.

Which reminds me... if you can hook gtorp firing... different planet type distributions would be nice. Off the top of my head, I can't think of any existing fields in tedit that could be repurposed for that. But you could just make them all have the same chance, which would be much more intuitive to players. IMO, the difficulty of getting certain planet types is a needless source of frustration that adds nothing to the game.

Sigh. Here we go again.

Who gives a Rat's proverbial if something "breaks scripts". People used play TW, now it is TWX and the CPU. UGH!

I agree with Kav. Break all scripts and helpers. Make everyone type out each keystroke by hand. That should put and end to games with more than 300 turns per day.
Anyone else for a game of 1980's Tradewars? (Laff)

*eagerly raises hand*

Some things that I would like to see, that may or may not already be there...

Ability to remap all system jumps based on provided list of sectors....something like this

int[] sj = { 194,3838,8587,10283,12944 };
Sector s = sector.getSector(32);
s.setJumps(sj);

Ability to set sector beacon text, nebula text and fedspace indicator

Sector s = sector.getSector(32);
s.setBeacon("SectorWarning");
s.setNebula("SectorName")
s.setFedspace(true);

Ability to set the port name

Sector s = sector.getSector(32);
Port p = s.getPort();
p.setName("NewPortName");

The first is definitely there. I fixed the game's map system to be able to handle dynamic changes. Any access of the game map will lock it, read it, then unlock it, so if Botlink changes a sector while a player is in it, there won't be any loss of consistency. Obviously this will be useful for creating extensions to Bigbang, but I think it'll also be interesting to have things like wormhole sectors where a sector link opens up ever 2 hours and lasts for 15 minutes, for example.

The other two may already be in there, probably are, but if not, it's just because I haven't gotten to them yet. They're part of the base data access functionality that was the first stage of Botlink dev.

I'll get you set up on twgs.classictw.com so you can see everything that's in already.

If you would like to look through or test any of the bot link commands
just telnet to twgs.classictw.com on port 2003 use any name you like and password is : sandbox
for game C

Fill free to rebang if you like , that game is for testing anything you like.

Vid Kid/CareTaker

It's down at the moment. I need to finish what I'm working on then I'll get it back up for testing.