if it were possible i think that the bigger you can make the galaxy and the more players you can add, the more participation you will get. the problem is writing it so that is realistic... not laggy or too resource intensive... i dont know if you can do that, but if you could have 300 people in 100k sectors, the games let you have more time to develop... more space to explore, more people to pod... also if you could add an advanced system to communicate between players... perhaps max figs could be related to owned planet pop- like a fig upkeep fee or something...

Let's talk Jumpgate. My feeling for awhile has been that Jumpgate is really not going to help, because it's going to further fragment the existing high profile games. Right now, you have StarDock which is doing a great job at listing a few high profile games. Then you have the other 300 or so games that are still active, but they tend to be games for smaller private groups, not public games. If I put Jumpgate on TWGS (whether working with Eleq or on my own site), that makes it very easy for games to post to this list, and we probably end up with more games than players, at least for awhile.

Also, there are other reasons why potential new players never try TradeWars. It's a hurdle to get a decent telnet app set up, and even more to get into helpers or script clients. Ideally a player could hit a site on the browser, jump into the game, and have the tools available to compete without needing to take a course at the TW Academy. There are nice flash-based telnet clients now that you can use to play a game from a browser, and that's good enough to let people "sample" the game. But they're not going to let you really play, not the game that's played today. Now, if TW started to internalize some of the more valuable helper and script functionality, like the AI trading I talked about, but other things too, then you could start to reach a point where someone who browses to a TW site on the web could easily get hooked into a game. I mean, it's free after all

If we could get to that point, then yes, I think a Jumpgate-like lobby becomes a huge priority again, because with a centralized site like that, I can start to filter people in from other areas, other TW games, for example, and have some hope of actually capturing them as a player for however long that might last.

Fig upkeep cost... Interesting. Maybe not per fig, but per sector where figs are deployed? That way you can have fewer large groups and cost less than having lots of small ones.

this is yes. maybe planet level in sector could have an effect too...

How about the AI? Any chance on some development so we can possibly have AI that you can have a bit more control on? Would be nice if the AI actually attacked, invaded, and maybe called in reinforcements when they were out-numbered. Instead, they are easy targets and don't really do too much.

Much of what the AI was meant to do does not work, unfortunately. When I put that in there, nobody knew what that stuff was and it was really impossible to test it. Now I would have some hope of actually getting quick feedback on how a change actually works. I could load up data from an aged and active Gold edited game and watch whether aliens are doing what they are meant to do. So yeah, I could definitely make some progress there. I do put it at a lower priority than some other things, though, since Gold aliens aren't critical to making the game fun and playable. So in the short term, whatever I can do to make the game more stable and give ops the ability to create more newb-friendly games, I'll do that first.

We kind of figured as much, so my wife and I took it to the next level. We have our very own "computer player", which is scripted in TWX and have been using it now in our game on our TWGS. It was coded to allow us to specify two "players". It logs in, creates the first player account, and plays the game. After a specified set time, it logs out, then switches and plays the second player. So in essence a two-player team if you will.

We've made a lot of progress with this project. So far it will cash/trade, stock up on items for the ship, even buy a new ship. We have it now finding a random sector to start building a planet, then doing the upkeep for the cit upgrades. Next thing is to code in the expanding of it's base and maintaining it.

So doing something with the AI is not a high importance. I only asked because if you were planning to do something with it, then I would stop our project. If not, then I can further develop it.

That's pretty cool. There's just so much I'd like to do with this kind of expansion, but it's gotta stay on the back burner for now. Still, what's in there is something I
"sold", and I do want to fix it. Just not the first thing on my list.

Wow, I don't have the kind of free time you guys do. It took me all day just to catch the end of this thread. Having said that, I'm sure there are others who would voice their own opinions about what they desire in the game play, but haven't had the time to catch up.

I enjoyed TW before scripts, then I enjoyed writing scripts (but not really playing TW with scripts/bots), and now I do little of either. I find it hard to justify time spent scripting, and a casual game of TW doesn't really exist today. What I would like to see is a return to the time when a player could spend an hour in casual play, and survive or thrive several weeks doing it.

I think a server-side proxy is a viable way to reign in scripts, with a few designated utility scripts built in for all players to use. Then let people connect via telnet, web browser, or a dedicated client, and play the game as they remember it. Implementing work-arounds to the existing tactics is worthwhile, but it won't really recreate the game that you are after.

This is one of the demographics I really want to capture. It's not the style I personally play, but it's the style
I'd like to be able to offer to people. I've tried to do that in "old school" but it's hard given the circumstances.

Other than automated play, what else do you think would help support this style of play? I don't play it
much, so it's hard for me to think of things.

Well, I know now that a huge part of it will just be splitting the global settings out to games, so you can run those low turn and low time limit games that are required for these old-school casual games. Don't you think if I do that you'll be better able to provide these games?

I had another thought, for ops who want to discourage script usage in games as a general rule. Today, all you can do is say "you promise not to use scripts", and it's an honor system. But I wonder if it would be possible to detect script usage in the game. Sure, it would be possible for script writers to make scripts that mimic real players, but that's an improvement itself, because if a script can't be discerned from a player, then what's the problem with it?

I think there are definitely ways to detect that someone is playing with a script rather than at keys. Would you guys agree?

I think this could apply to a number of "exploits", like, for example, cross podding, or mothing. If it's not possible to "fix" something without effecting normal play, it should be possible for the game to detect that kind of play and respond accordingly (alert the gameop, warn the player, suspend the player, etc).

Sure. Still would be nice to have a way to disable mine, fighit and limpet messages tho. =)
A way to disable eprobes would also be nice, since that would slow down exploration. Have
a way to disable player versus player attacks (power up, then it aborts, like it would if you
were to attack a corpie) and a building game would be easy to run.



Any time someone exceeds the CPC and it does whatever it does, you could log that. If
a person exceeds the CPC more than X number of times, then alert the sysop. They can
then use the spy window to confirm their suspicion.

I agree on the CPC being exceeded and the Op checking to see what is going on. I don't think ZTMs would trigger a reaction, but might depending on how low the setting is. I know my product mover and a few others I have would set off alarms because of the bursts that are used. An intense macro would also result in the same notifications.

The ZTM caused an Op to overreact because he didn't know what I was doing - got disconnected, autorestart of the ztm, disconnected, and I aborted and we talked and all was good in the land of Oz.

               / Promethius / Enigma / Wolfen /

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

I agree that notifying the op of "suspicious activity" is better than some mindless automated feature. But this would really make it easier for an op who wants to enforce a true "no script" or even "no automation" game.

There are many examples of server-defined rules for games, and anything that could be done to facilitate those rules, like no-scripts or truce, would be worth doing.

I've been thinking about the old BBS style of play, and preventing PvP attacks... what would it take to make online players invisible to one another, emulating the "one player online at a time" style of play? Online players might have a 1hr time limit, and they are invisible to anyone else playing while online, but as soon as they log off, their ship becomes visible in the normal way. Even if they were visible in the Who's Playing list, and via comms, make them invulnerable to another player while online.

I digress a bit, but...
Speaking of rule enforcement, helping sysops better identify duping would help. While I was sysop'ing a recent tourney, we had questions of duping, and so I wrote an app that parsed the twgs log for player IP addresses, and mapped those to LAT and LONG. If something like this were integrated, or offered as an add-on, it could alert sysops to a significant change in Lat/Long. It isn't an exact science, but usually pretty accurate.