So where? are there going to be any new functions coming out? any expansions or something? and screw that dark millennium stuff, im talking about our tradewars. when are we going to be able to play as other races and have allied civilizations out there besides the feds? and what about a civil war or worm hole? There should be placable events that can shake up the game. and what about easing up on some of the monotonous stuff... like colonizing a planet or doing a port pair, we shouldn't need our side scripts...

anyway, sorry for the rant but these are some of the directions i'd like to see this game go. its always been a community game, and its future shouldn't be any diffrent! developers! share what your planning, other players tell us what you'd like to see done.


ive got a whole list of ideas, so start sharing and so will i!!

Well I cannot speak for EIS I can only speak for what I would do if I worked at EIS.

The way I see it, before adding any new features the top 20 major bugs need to be fixed. I think I read that here in the forums, and I agree with it. Any more than 20 will take too long to fix, so 20 at a time sounds reasonable.

Another factor is the *nix port, it has to have the same gameplay as the Windows port. Duece is working on that, IIRC. So I wouldn't add any new features until the *nix port gets done and equals TWGS on the Windows platform. IIRC Duece is working on an older version of Tradewars like V2? Someone please verify that.

From what I read of posts of EIS employees, TW has a certain formula to it for the gameplay. The same as the formula used in Kentucky Fried Chicken or Coca Cola, you don't want to change it or risk ruining your product. Take New Coke for example, formula changed, and people hated it. So they brought out Classic Coke which was closer to the old Coke than the New Coke is. Any new feature will have to preserve the TW formula and not change it very much.

I have ideas for the game as well, but I am keeping them to myself right now until V4 comes out or whatever direction EIS takes before they decide to add in new features.

Keep in mind this is what I think would happen, I could be wrong.

One idea, and I can share this with you and the rest, is to build a GUI for Tradewars that takes messages from Telnet and modifies the GUI based on them. This would keep the game the same, only changes that would be made would be on the client end. Your currect sector would be represented in a GUI form, a box showing what is in the sector surrounded by boxes representing adjacent sectors you could move to by clicking on them. Hitting the scan button would update those sectors to a density reading or a holo display in those boxes. All this is theory right now, no code has been written for it. Just an idea I had since 1995 when I was going to write a Tradewars like program from scratch and have a GUI interface to it. I never got around to it, but the idea is still there. The TW server would still send text, but the client would interprit that text into a graphic display. I was going to write it in Java so anyone could use it, but I never learned Java that well. I got busy with things, got married, worked extra hours, etc and never got around to it. It was code-named "Space Pirates" and would be 100% written from scratch using a different formula than TW uses. I would, for one, make ports more profitable and make it so that players could own and operate ports. Also planets would have cities on them that could be developed to earn money from the colonists, etc. The main enemy would be, you guessed it, "Space Pirates". Best vaporware I never wrote. Not sure who would want to play it if I did, it wouldn't have that Tradewars feeling to it the same way the TW2002 or TWGS has.

There are many threads here concerning this topic. You should check them out. Alot of players with alot of good ideas, and some peeks at what EIS would like to do. I can't remember exactly where they are at, if someone could help me out.

Straight down the drain it looks like..
but that's just my point of view ATM..

how would you fix it Dr.Who? what would you do

bug fixes would be a priority, we should try and compile a list...

but hers some ideas i would like to see happen:
-the daily log accessible from the main menu of the game, before you even enter, like the high scores
-to be able to scan after you port while in auto-pilot singe-step mode
-Mars, jupiter, mercury, venus and all the other planets spread throughout sectors 2-10
-being allowed to program what planet you want from a genesis torpedo, and evey planet should have a point
-More options for playing evil like smuggling spice and slaves, and evil only ships bought from somewhere else than the stardock
-cloaking ships, could be tricky to balance, but possible
-more variety in space terrain; nebulae to hide in asteroid fields (that aren't so dangerous) to fly through, and star and planet systems occuring naturally, moons of planets
-diffrent kinds of fighters, and other toughie to balance but again possible
-another civilization besides the feds, another playable empire, like romulans or klingons or even better something original
-worm holes like in DS9, so that it would be near impossible to reach that distance if it werent for the wormhole.
-hell, id like to see trade wars open source so i could make the changes myself, but thats 'nother can of worms...

if eis wants to update trade wars for a modern game screw realm, they should talk to the people who did homeworld, i could easily see the trade wars universe coming to life in that engine.

some of my suggestions are more practical and other are more 'wishlist' items, but id like see most of them implemented

I am developing a clone of Trade Wars in C. It is text-based, like the Trade Wars door game, with ANSI colours and playable via telnet (like a MUD). I have already implemented some of the features that TW2002 has, although since I haven't actually played Trade Wars for at least 7 years, there are some things I couldn't remember and I had to go on the web to look it up. That is actually a good thing though, because my goal is not to make a replica of Trade Wars, but to have other ways of making a living besides Port-Trade. Basically, I am combining what I remember from playing Trade Wars with some other ideas I had that I always wanted to see in Trade Wars.

Some ideas like the ones in the post above, I am definitely going to implement. I am planning on having enough planets in the universe that there will be no need for Genesis torpedos. Players will just find an already existing planet and colonise it. Also I think I will have some kind of bonus for exploring planets, like you get X amount of experience/money for discovering an alien artifact on an unexplored planet, or something similar.

Those kind of features are still a long way off though... I haven't started implementing planets yet. I did not even have ports in the game up until yesterday, and today I hope to get trading working.

My main concern is that no one would be interested in this type of game anymore, and that I am wasting my time by writing it, but at least there are a few people here who would probably try playing it. Also, text-based MUDs are still quite popular, despite being "obsolete" by today's graphical standards, which is reassuring.

Does anyone remember Galactic Warzone???...It was kind of a TW clone...but had many devices you could buy and use on your ships...you could build starbases to protect planets, and open those starbases for trade and make profit off them using the product off the planets, but sold at the starbase...It was a great game...I would love to see some of those features implemented...

I always thought that the Desert Wastelands planets could produce "Spice" aka "Dune" and that the "Spice" could be used to fold space on certain ships to create a temporary wormhole. Figure that the amount of holds of "Spice" to create the wormhole be like #Warps between sectors times turns to activate times 10 holds of "Spice". So a 10 warp wormhole for ten turns would require 1000 holds of "Spice" from the planet to activate the wormhole. If the ship didn't support a "Spice" drive, then it couldn't activate the worm hole.

I also had an idea of an Evil Stardock, one that only reds can get into. One that sells "Used" ships, special "Evil" ships like an Evil ISS, and have a variety of gambling games, bets on who gets blown up next, and "The Snitch" who can tell you more about the Traders than the Grimy Trader ever could. Like how many credits the player has, what ships they own, how many planets they have, info that the aliens have on them (Fig hits), and more.

Id also like to see some bounty hunting enhancement. Like the latest bounty could be broadcast and an alien created to be that bounty. then he would move around until caught and turned in. maybe you could obtain info at ports he passes through.

id also like to see more interaction between characters besides corping and killing.

There could be alliances where the allies can pass through sector figs, but not land on other corp's player's planets. Players are prevented from attacking allies or trying to land on their planets.

There is also diplomancy, but it cannot be programmed into the game. Cannot be scripted either. Learn how to negotiate with other players and corps.

The game is doomed as I see it. The number one priority should be to disable to gains made by using certain cheater programs. For example, anything that attacks or defends for you is cheating. I'm not sure how they could go about fixing that but until then the game is a joke. People like res judicata and lone wolf abuse the game for their own ends.

Create an counter-attack script that can beat the bots. Then sell the registration of that script.

Imagine that it buys a Merf, attacks the stardock with 10 figs, gets a pod, and loads the pod with 1500 carbonite and enters the sector that the bot is running at. The bot attacks, cannot capture the pod, and blows up the ship. Of course a player could just as esily do this in the game without a script. A Colt with no figs and very few shields might work as well here and you can always reload with another one an try it again. I think they call it a fireship, a ship with low defensive odds and very few figs or shields loaded up with carbo.

How about setting a macro to enter and exit a sector. The bot will send a ptorp into the sector which the macro will move out before it detonates. Do this several times and eat up all the ptorps the bot has on the ship. Maybe make the macro move back two sectors so the bot cannot scan your ship anymore. Then move up two sectors and start it all over again.

Another macro would be to enter the sector and lay down some mines and then move back two spaces. By the time the bot enters the sector, it will hit the mines. Do this after draining the ptorps from the bot.

Another trick is to drop a planet on them. This needs two corpmates. One to enter the sector and drop a fig, and the other to twarp a planet in as soon as possible with a high sector setting. Make sure you have lots of ore on the planet. Signal on the coms to your corpmate before moving into the sector and have the corpmate keep trying to warp the planet into the sector. If sucessful, it will blast the bot. Do this after draining the ptorps from the bot with the first macro.

I don't consiter scripts cheating because they were made for the game....In the documentaion of tedit not sure which option i think the max command cycle it talk about helpers...Don't like scripts don't play or don't use them...They are around to stay i can promise you that

Strider

Personally, I consider scripts to be cheating. What is the point of playing the game if you are nothing more than a 'bot?? Since it is a text based game it is very easy to script. It is up to the game's sysop to monitor the game and get rid of scripters (if he wants to).

In the game I am developing I have made it so some types of cheating is impossible (like ztm), but of course there is a lot of it you can do nothing about.

Sinking to their level just makes you as bad as them. I have a few ideas actually. Make delays in certain actions, not so that they are intolerably slow but so that script kiddies like res don't get a major advantage. How? Make it so that you can't enter a new command sooner then say 1 second before another. so when you press A you have to way 1 second before you can enter the number of figs to attack with. That way when a person enters the sector they arn't dead before the sector even displays. And limit the ammount of hours a person can be on.

I have no problem with scrips that minimize boring and tedious aspects of the game, but attacking and defending a sector with one is pure bull****. It's equivalent to using an aim bot in a first person shooter. And saying that oh well it's here to stay, nothing we can do about it besides calling it fair play even though it's obviously cheating.. is a major cop out.