On another thread I asked a theoretical question about a front-end alien script. I got a couple of interesting answers...

From: Harley Nuss (teamEIS)
It's not an impossible script to make, just most people who are any good at scripting view any sort of alien as pointless.

From: Cherokee-TLTT
aliens, or simulated aliens, are pointless.

IMHO: The players don't exist in a vacuum. Aliens add texture to the game. For example you can have' a big badd**ss alien race with few aliens in fast powerfull ships. They remain a threat 'till the end of the game. Your avarage bule in an ISS has to think twice. You can have a weak but numerous alien race, in worthless, but fast ships, annoy the hell out of your players and wear the out simply by attrition. I'm sure there are other good combinations out there. Aliens can rape ports by trading, or robbing. They can enrich them for theiving players. If your game has a plot then aliens are almost essential.

The downside to the current alien model is thery are so limited in the behaviors available to them.


So I'm asking the question
What's so bad about aliens?

-Prinz of Darkness

It is my humble opinion that aliens are just usless. nothing I hate more than comming in a game I have not played in a couple of days and seeing all the killed fig messeges that takes forever to get through. They can't think and adjust to your finding there home, and they havnt got a clue how to hunt you or your home, if they were intellegent, and could photon you, and play on some level plain with real players, that would be different. I want to play against real people not computer generated idiots that are just wasting my time. so whats the point?
Like I said, just my opinion.

Aliens are considered "pointless" by the top players because they prefer to play against EACH OTHER, not against rather uninspired AI's. Also, aliens can be extremely annoying, with the hundreds of fake "Alien Chickens entered sector 1234" reports, when in fact they failed to enter. Although I guess it would be fair to say that aliens might have a place in novice games where the players would rather not confront each other (because the aliens give them something to attack), in most serious games with good competition they are just a grid-killing nuisance that add nothing of value to the game.

As far as aliens "enriching" a game by trading down the ports and "annoying the hell out of players", I don't think you'll find too many players who ENJOY games where every pair they find has been raped, and where being "annoyed" by aliens is a positive experience.

Just my 2 credz worth,

galaxi

[size=5][green]quote:Originally posted by galaxi

Aliens are considered "pointless" by the top players because they prefer to play against EACH OTHER, not against rather uninspired AI's. Also, aliens can be extremely annoying, with the hundreds of fake "Alien Chickens entered sector 1234" reports, when in fact they failed to enter. Although I guess it would be fair to say that aliens might have a place in novice games where the players would rather not confront each other (because the aliens give them something to attack), in most serious games with good competition they are just a grid-killing nuisance that add nothing of value to the game.
As far as aliens "enriching" a game by trading down the ports and "annoying the hell out of players", I don't think you'll find too many players who ENJOY games where every pair they find has been raped, and where being "annoyed" by aliens is a positive experience.

Just my 2 credz worth,

galaxi


Wasn't there a thread about Limiting the utility of "super scripts"? Worthless "annoying" aliens going around randomly destroying fighter grids would serve part of that function. As for raped port pairs, I would guess that means the players would have to burn turns finding new ones, Encouraging exploration. I think that was mentioned on a thread way back.

There is no doubt that hunting other traders is the core of the game. Aliens destroying fighter grids and trading out port pairs makes this more difficult, is this good? or bad? I guess it depends on the style of game you like to play. I do know that page after page of reports about this or that is annoying, and there ought to be an option to just ignore alien activity.

The current alien model isn't very good, granted, but are aliens pointless, serve no function, and the game would be better off without them. Or, would be they be usefull and entertaining with a better AI?

-Prinz of Darkness

i think aliens could serve a purpose, but currently they dont. If they had to subscribe to the turns per day rules as we do, they might become less annoying, and if thier AI was enhanced maybe they would leave port pairs alone and trade on the go. Also, they could be programmed to leave sectors with fighters alone. the bottom line is that no one wants to waste weeks of playing to get blown up by a computer player, so they shouldnt be too powerful or annoying.

If they could make the game interesting and serve a purpose to human players besides destroying them then maybe they would become used more often.

Actually I beleive the only reason most people think they are pointless is most of them arent worth attacking even for killing a stupid toll fighter. Most of the "Good" players dont like them because they get in the way of their preferred mode of play which is to dump fighters in every sector of the universe and run 24/7 attack scripts...how lame assed and boring is that. They also dont like them because its one more thing taking away from their profits at the ports in the game. And they really hate it when an alien screws up thier scripts. In my opinion, all of this is a good thing. Its part of the game. I will agree that the alien AI is pretty lame and in that respect, yes, they are pointless. They do serve a purpose in many games and the people that are always crying about aliens are the ones that dont like them messing up their style of play.

I beg to differ, aliens can be useful. The Reverse Tradewars edits I am designing has the players buy Ferrengi ships, and the Federation aliens have the stock ships. Players can capture a Federal Alien Merf or spend 129K to buy a Ferrengi Seeker which is like a Merf but with more holds and figs and shields. If figs are cheap, cap a Merf and PPT in that. Much better than an Assault Trader in profitability.

Also some of th Fed aliens have a StarShip class, which cannot be bought and can only be captured. Needs 15K exp and a Fed Commision to pilot it, but it is a heck of a ship, best ship in the edits.

I am also working on a Traveller gold edits, got a Vargr alien class that has Vargr ships that the players will want to capture. Vargrs are the wolves of outer space, very nastly, and most of them are pirates. Vargr Corsair is a very good ship to capture in that game.

O_B, I think you're a little too passionate about your edit . J/k. I still think it sounds like a good time. One thing though- why would ferrengi get a federal commission? Shouldn't it be a merchant marine enlistment or something of that nature? Of course I don't know if you can change that part of Star Dock with the police station being the merchant marine office, etc...

As for useless aliens, I think something between O_B's idea of good ships that can't be bought and a game I saw on Fament (familyentertainment) is the answer: He had several sectors surrounding the alien homeworld designated at alien space and those sectors were constantly guarded with figs and mines. The aliens protected their space and the ferrengi in the game were constantly trying to get into my sectors. Not sure what all he changed in the settings but it made for the best setup of aliens and ferrengi I have seen to date.

The reason that I dislike aliens is that no matter what you do, you can't ever defeat them. Secondary to that, there are only two basic modes for aliens... so aggressive that they're impossible to ever outproduce or less aggressive and nothing more than a minor annoyance.

quote:Originally posted by Harley Nuss (teamEIS)

The reason that I dislike aliens is that no matter what you do, you can't ever defeat them. Secondary to that, there are only two basic modes for aliens... so aggressive that they're impossible to ever outproduce or less aggressive and nothing more than a minor annoyance.


So, here's an idea.
Is the Tradewars community willing to come together and make a better alien?

I'm thinkg about a automated player, logging in and playing its turns. Subject to most, if not all, of the rules everyone else has to follow.

You could have it come in through the admin port for certain functions, we all know sometimes AI's have to cheat, and through the normal front-end for everything else.

Could, this be done in VB, C, or Rexx? I think you would almost have to make it a seperate exe. The decision trees would be a stone b***h but a lot of the code for such an alien has already been written, just look at some of the "super scripts" out there.

I don't think it's that big a leap.

How about the rest of you? What do you think?

-Prinz of Darkness

Well the Reverse Tradewars is hard to implement, each Bigbang renames the planet in sector 1 to Terra, and brings back a Ferrenginal in a random sector. So Planet 1 needs to be renamed to Ferringinal and planet 2 needs to be removed or renamed.

I made the Federals too powerful, and they start out too quick. I need to figure out the type of settings to use to make them not too weak and not too strong. Anyone got any documentation on changing alien settings? It is holding up the edits.

The story is this, the Federation enslaved the Ferrengi and made them part of their system. The Ferrengi can choose to join the Federation, or fight back and try to take over Terra or colonize new planets to progress the Ferrengi race. Only Ferrengi ships are available for use at the Stardock and the really good ones are really expensive. I had to create a few new Ferrengi ships. Players can capture Federal ships, like a Merf. Ferrengi can capture a StarShip, but only experienced and Federal Commisioned Ferrengi can pilot it.

Good Alien AI is a missing feature of TW, it creates B*tthead Aliens who trip over your grid figs. Some of them Seagull at my base tunnel and won't go away. I had fun with planets and qcannons blasting at them, and all it did was drain the ore and the aliens kept coming back with new aliens. I have what I call an Alien Trap, as so many of them warp into that tunnel and stay there. We found a one-way warp that led to the tunnel, and closed it off with sector figs, but they destroyed them and kept coming back. In the logs you keep seeing "Alien Trader Grinkoll was destroyed by a Quasar Cannon" and about 20 or so aliens got killed that way a day. Epoch edits, and there are Ferrengi that do the same thing. Enough to get me to laugh over it, buydown ore for the planets and reload for the next B*tthead alien to Seagull into my base.

i wanna corp w/ aliens

Whats the point of playing against computer run players? there are enough people using 24/7 scripts that are not at the keys. I think alliens had a use at one time many years ago when there was only one node, (only one person could be logged into the game at a time), its the only way you came in contact with another live player while you were playing, albiet a computer generated one. Trade wars is not a video game and should not try to be one. It's all about beating the other guy and if alliens give one player an advantage over another its just not right. red players dont have to worry about alliens running down ports, it just doesnt affect them. Myself I would like to see the helpers get better.
It would sure be nice to have a helper that has macro's as well as trigger's, right now I run swath and zmud through twx so I can. also it would be nice if a helper had a script recorder like swath does for the macro's. In my opinion alliens will never level the playing field but helpers will.

Yeah you guys just want something even more automated than whats out there so you can in a sense have a completely hands off game experience, which in my opinion is not even and experience, thats kind of like sex in the movie Demolition Man, whats the point.

quote:Originally posted by lewdpotato

Whats the point of playing against computer run players? there are enough people using 24/7 scripts that are not at the keys. I think alliens had a use at one time many years ago when there was only one node, (only one person could be logged into the game at a time), its the only way you came in contact with another live player while you were playing, albiet a computer generated one. Trade wars is not a video game and should not try to be one. It's all about beating the other guy and if alliens give one player an advantage over another its just not right. red players dont have to worry about alliens running down ports, it just doesnt affect them. Myself I would like to see the helpers get better.
It would sure be nice to have a helper that has macro's as well as trigger's, right now I run swath and zmud through twx so I can. also it would be nice if a helper had a script recorder like swath does for the macro's. In my opinion alliens will never level the playing field but helpers will.



The idea is to create different kinds of game scenarios, games with a plot for instance. Maybe, us-against-them games. How 'bout a more detailed capture-the-flag, heck the capture-the-flag concept is built into the game, its just could be better. One of the great things about Trade Wars is that there is more than one way to play the game.

-Prinz of Darkness