This seems to be an endless thread and I suppose I'm not helping by jumping in here. Still we have three pages of stuff, a lot of it unsubstantiated, about my board, some of it from people who were not even involved. I am the Sysop of Ice9 a small out of the way board and I think I have a few things to say. I have no intention of reopening this flame and I'm not directing this post towards anyone in particular. I really just want to clear up what this board is and is not.

ICE9 is NOT a board that needs to be avoided at all cost, indeed there are many players that play there at all experience levels and enjoy it very much. There are games for all levels of players including one mod done by Vader that has been running for sometime and has no restrictions. Theres also is a stock unrestricted game that is very new. The games are clearly marked as building games or unrestricted games on the main TWGS page and the rules are posted on the server and web site. ICE9 has gone through some growing pains, after all its only been reopen for about 7 months, there was some issues with the clarity of the rules in the building games and that has been rectified. Rules for all games are clearly defined on the board and on the web site. I have not booted any players off the board except for a few people who thought it was ok to make as many accounts as they wanted in a game. I never asked any of the people posting here to leave the board. I did ask Vader and crew to relocate to another game that I banged for him on ICE9. Players who come to the board and try to play in the building games as if they were the unrestricted games are asked to move to the unrestricted games. I really Don't see anything wrong with that, If the makers of this game did not want different styles of games there would not be so many ways to customize it. I answer all my mail and my address is ice9@uci.net. If someone tells you I said something ask me your self. There will be no confusion that way.

KK

if you want to build, get some ****in legos.
its tradewars.
if you hide new people in "building games" and prevent them from ever experiencing what the game is truely about, they will never learn anything and they will never grow as a player.
if you truely think keeping players in games like this for any amount of time is going to teach them anything, you are a fool.
you will see if you ask; every single one of the best players in the game will tell you, they learned by getting whooped relentlessly by the best, not joining backwater "building" games.
you can give a child a pacifier to get it to stop crying... but eventually it has to learn to deal without the pacifier.
you are justifying giving a pacifier to a teenager.
i feel strongly about this.
sorry if people don't like hearing it.
but that's the truth.

Slim

quote:Originally posted by Slim Shady

if you want to build, get some ****in legos.
its tradewars.
if you hide new people in "building games" and prevent them from ever experiencing what the game is truely about, they will never learn anything and they will never grow as a player.
if you truely think keeping players in games like this for any amount of time is going to teach them anything, you are a fool.
you will see if you ask; every single one of the best players in the game will tell you, they learned by getting whooped relentlessly by the best, not joining backwater "building" games.
you can give a child a pacifier to get it to stop crying... but eventually it has to learn to deal without the pacifier.
you are justifying giving a pacifier to a teenager.
i feel strongly about this.
sorry if people don't like hearing it.
but that's the truth.

Slim


Well now, at least theres finally a post in this worn out thread worthy of a response. Please understand I am in no way being sarcastic when I say I recognize you for the great player that you are, however I find your views to be someone narrow minded and bad for Trade Wars in general. As is said in so many places in this form Trade Wars includes the word War but it also includes the word Trade and not everyone wants to play the game with grids and scripts and by calculating every last turn to the advantage of the corp. Theres nothing wrong with that, its just not for everyone. I would defend that style of game as I do the style I'm defending here. There is room for both, and everything in between. Some people just want to play. In your narrow view of what Trade Wars is those people would simply just go away. Not because they can't learn to play what you seem to think is the only way the game should be allowed to be played, but because they have no interest. Hows is that good for Trade Wars as a whole, or the games future? A player named Spooy wrote the following words for the original ICE9 website:

Welcome to ICE9. ICE9 is a community based Tradewars 2002 game server featuring Tradewars ver 3.11.55 Gold. We offer 100% free games for your enjoyment. Established in early 2002, Ice9 attempts to getaway from the cold cutthroat games of tournament boards. It is meant to be a small piece of nostalgia that reminds the user of the Golden Age of Tradewars when you dialed up to a bbs, on a 1200 Baud modem, to play on some Commodore 64.An age when community mattered as much as the game.

It is his vision that the building games at ICE9 represent. I understand that this too is not by itself Trade Wars so I have created a variety of games that will hopefully appeal to everyone. I see nothing wrong with that, and not sure why you would given the number of servers that cater solely to your style of play.

Anyway I know better then to think I'll be changing you opinion on this issue and thats fine. Ill continue to build the little backwater server one brick at a time. In time some new kids will show up with a while new way of doing the whole thing and tell us both where to get off.

kk

i'm not saying learning how to "build" is bad.
i'm saying that sheltering people from all aspects of play is bad.
if you take one of the best players and put them in a game and say "build the most to win" they will beat everyone.
if you say "kill the most to win" they will win.
it's because they understand *all* aspects of the game, not just one or two parts.
making a game for just "building" IMO takes away from what tradewars is, and when you get new people into games like this, the second they venture to another board, they get killed and whine to the sysop, whine on EIS, and try to bad mouth people that were only playing the game as it is.
i remember playing with my friends in 90.
sure, we'd build.
but only so we could establish a base to help us with destroying other people.
it was local boards, so we knew lots of the people we played against, and when we got a kill on invasion on them, it was that much better as we could brag at school the next day.
we didn't just sit and build mindlessly.
IMO if you want to have a "building" (read: learning) game, make it a 5k sector game, no more than 1k turns, stock to stockish edits, MBBS, and state "this is a learning game, if you aren't learning or teaching, please play in games A,B, etc.."
99.99% of players will avoid this game unless they wish to learn or are asked to teach, and those that come in to teach, will not go on newbie killing sprees. if someone does, feel free to ban.
basically, my main problem when people have games like this, is when someone starts whining that someone is *too good* etc..
i once joined a game to teach.
i was helping a few guys, testing and what not.
and i saw a guy ecoloing unfedsafe in like a colt to one sector out of fed.
i tried talking to him on fed and hail to tell him why he shouldn't do that, he wouldn't respond.
so i blew the port inbetween the sectors.
he got podded.
THEN he all of the sudden was at keys.
he started yelling and screaming bloody murder.
i said, here is a ship, he is some cash, learn a lesson, don't do what you did, this is an example of why.
he didn't care, he started with personal attacks on me, so i just killed him.
he came back in, started with the attacks on me again, so i killed him again, and this was a no death limit game, so i ended up killing him like 20 times before he stayed out for a bit.
i went back to helping other folk and in comes the sysop.
he politely (which i have much respect for him for) asked me to leave.
turns out the guy was his friend (aren't they always?)
i asked him politely back, i'll leave, but could i explain myself first? he said ok, i did, a couple others that i was helping had my back, said i was telling truth, etc.. i still left, but it sucked to be the sysop cause he understood where i was coming from, but it was his friend, etc..
i bet you don't see that kid (the guy i killed) on any other server, and i bet he still has no clue how to play tradewars. the trading OR the wars.
if he was playing on a regular server, in a regular game, he would be forced to learn, or leave, instead he is coddled by his friend the sysop and he will be reglated to playing only games on one server for the rest of his twars career.
this might be fine for him.
but it sucks for me.
i prefer people to learn and to bring competition.
i am willing to teach to attain this goal, always have been.
but if people hide on backwater servers in "building" games, then the rest of the community will never get the pleasure of playing with/against these people.
if i stayed on backwater servers in newbie games, i'd be minus quite a few people whom i consider friends. there are some great people out there playing tradewars.
its about trading
its about war
its also about building a community (and with the size as it is, it's a rather personal community) where people can get to know each other and become friends and enjoy playing twars together, and who knows, maybe they'll do other things, like WoW hehe.
but ya, thats probably too long, so i'll stop it now

Slim

p.s. my story of the crying jerk is not a lone story, i have many more just like it.

Well.... There you go again. I'm not really sure what else I can say on this point so I''l just say that to who ever cares, I think there is room for all type of games in the trade wars universe. And thats what I plan to provide.

KK

Hello all,

Anyjoe is absolutely correct here.

I played there, and had no problems. Personally, I believe the scripters have done more harm than good. The game was designed to be played at human speed. The only advantage which should exist in the game is a players typing speed, not which scripts they have access to.

I fully support Ice9, I have played there with no problems, and as a matter of fact was on Vader's team which was asked to relocate. I stayed in the game solo, (by then I knew what type of game I was in) and played for awhile with no incidents.

As far as gualala goes, he did not give me any grief in the game. We played, I caught him at dock once, but it was no big deal and my account was not disabled, nor did he give me any grief.

I see people banging games here on a weekly basis. This tells me right away that something is wrong with the edits, because the game should *not* be winnable in a week, (cepting unlims) unless there is low/no turnout.

If you don't like the rules the sysop has set, play somewhere else. It is scum-based to come here and publicly denigrate anyone's server because you do not like the rules or the edits. There are plenty of servers. If you did not know the rules, and are corrected, stay and play by the rules, or play somewhere else. Anything else is "uncivilized".

Some people don't enjoy or are unable to log in everyday. Addtionally, everyone is not capable of running bots 24/7. SDT'ing everyday is a chore, and very boring. No skill and very little strategy is involved there. The type of game described here is just as much fun, (moreso imo) than the games which are locked down in a week. The difference is that the longer route to gaining credits is used. Planet building/trading. These types of games are more fun to me, cuz you have empires, tons of planets and figs.

When I want to play Tradewars, I'll play Ice9 again, cuz the games there are fun, and that is what they are supposed to be.

quote:Originally posted by casperokc

I am here to give everyone forewarning about this board. The game there is slow paced. which is fine. But, we killed a player who was killing tolls after we gave him about 5-10 warnings to stop killing these figs under a certain chain of ports. After no reply we torped and killed him. Casper

I believe the noob was ME. If you play a trader with a Viking name, I'm almost positive it was me. I killed the fig because I wanted to turn red quickly. That did the trick for sure. Thanks. Sorry you got pounced on. The sysop wouldn't agreee with that guy who pounced on you. In the rules of the game, the sysop CLEARLY says that if you bother a bear expect to get eaten. That was his words. Everyone who visited the site should have read the rules of the game and saw that. I bothered a bear and I expected and still expect to get eaten...if he catchs me

quote:Originally posted by Gualala

the truth is you were specifically asked not to leave, just to leave new players coming into the game alone.

Again, I think it was me who casparokc was talking about. If a player comes in like I did and starts to kill tolls like I did and didn't stop after he was warned like I did, he is asking to be killed. He probably would have the same motive---to get a big red or blue alignment quick.

So, what is the prob with that? If a guy starts punching someone and doesn't stop when asked, why do you get on the guy who is taking up for himself. THE NOOB WAS ASKING FOR IT. I don't know how much more plain I can be on that.

Wow .. nearly 4 pages of threads .. and no one has said :
Update your TWGS

Ice 9 has 6 games: Game A-C are for noobs; and D-F are for experienced players. Only Game E may be considered playable by experienced TW players. Games D and F aren't TW games.
There are only four reasons that an experienced player would want to play in noobs games:
1. To test scripts in a safe environment.
2. To recruit for draft games.
3. To teach.
4. To watch what the noobs do for entertainment purposes.
For those purposes, Ice 9 offers a good connect with just a little lag sometimes.

I don't think that there is much more to say in this thread. So if there isn't any more postings I'll just say good bye and upgrade your TWGS.

The rules of the sysop are clearly posted. It's His board and He has the right to have whatever type of games He want's. Lack of respect for the rules is just that. If you don't like the rules, play somewhere else. There is aways gonna be people that break the rules and they are the ones that whine the most it would seem. I like the server, I never have trouble loggin on and the speed is good. My only complaint is that it looks like there are alot of dupes that are not respecting the sysops rules.

Yes, there are indeed lots of dupes. That's an earmark of a newb server. Lots of players don't know that duping is wrong oftentimes.

who is the sysop at Ice9?

Not sure what his name is. His e-mail is on the main screen ansi though.

quote:Originally posted by Zoso

quote:and im not going to explane how the bug works, so those who want to exploite this bug, ask your buddy with no crouples.
Zilla, I merely mentioned that I had heard of it and that this is not a new issue. I am not interested in knowing how to accomplish it nor would I waste my own personal time spending the countless hours trying to figure it out.

A little story (cause I have time)….

Back in the day when I played D&D, there was a kid name Bob (Not his real name) that we played with regularly. This guy was very intelligent, even for his age. After many months of arguments and discussions regarding his shady interpretations of the rule book, he managed to earn himself the nickname Bob the “Rules Rapist”.
Any possible flaw in the printing of the Players Handbook resulted in an unfair advantage to Bob. “How can you dispute it? It’s written right there!” He would say. The rest of us knew that it wasn’t supposed to be that way, because logically it didn’t make any sense. It had to be a flaw. But for Bob, it was a way to win, because without those misinterpretations, bob was really a ****ty player.
Take what you want from that story, but never forget the only substitute for skill is hard work + skill


Hmmm..anyone got any idea what a complete set of AD&D manuals versions 1 and 2 with about a dozen Character Handbooks...100 Drangonlance, Greyhaven and Forgotten Realms paperback books plus a box or two of Dragonlance Magazines as well as Grimtooth's Traps plus quite a bit more should be worth as a collection? A few years back a friend and I ran a game for 4 Dungeonmasters who wanted to play a game instead of run one...and took 2 of us to keep them honest and had to write our own scenarios as we kept running into them at local Game Store trying to keep ahead of their players...so we had to keep ahead of them... hehehehe....