31-03-2002 13:11									#1
	Who's interested in a re-bang of WotW? Got spare money?

Trying to see who's up for a rebang of the WotW server. Marko, MarkG, Wittlich, Urban, Teedo, Hutak, and everyone else that's played - want in?

Trying to get an idea of how many folks would play.

Aeturneus, how's the semester coming?

	01-04-2002 09:49									#2
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

Sure, I'll throw my hat into the ring.

	04-04-2002 01:45									#3
	Browse Apolyton AD-FREE

Hey guys, nice to see some of you still playing

I've got a couple of weeks left in a *gruelling* semester, which has made it difficult for me to maintain WotW the way it should be maintained.

Ultimately, I'd prefer to rebang at the end of the semester, in two or three weeks, in order to keep an eye on it and make sure it runs all the time, and fairly.

I'm expanding my home network here again, adding two new servers to accomodate some big web development projects that I have in hand, which means I'm going to be switching ISP's - hopefully, it will pay off, since I have a lot of business lined up for the summer. Unfortunately, there could be some downtime during the changeover, and although I will try to keep it as small as possible, it could run up to seven days - another reason to wait on the rebang for a few weeks, until everything is running smoothly.

When that time comes, I'll probably throw up a little website that lets you post messages, and report dupes, directly to me, and I might even co-ordinate registration at the page to registration in the game - eg. you would have to make an account on the website to be able to login to the WotW server.

Regardless, you can look forward to more WotW in the months to come. Thanks for your support! (especially the emails letting me know when it is down)

=Aeturneus=

	04-04-2002 08:39									#4
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization 2

Two or Three weeks from now sounds good to me Aeturneus....actually, it only looks like Burbel and I are the only ones interested in a rebang (so far)

	06-04-2002 08:16									#5
	Support Apolyton, pre-order Civilization IV

Boy, I can tell that this game is going to be crowded!!

	06-04-2002 08:29									#6
	Support Apolyton, buy Call to Power 2

I've got this extra free system my work gave me sitting around doing nothing... It's a P4-1.5G so I figure it should do alright as a server LOL.. I'm considering paying the $80 to get the server and register gold and setting a game up myself...

I'd probably edit some things, though, which I consider imbalanced in base TradeWars... I'd give Orions holoscanners, for example (they're a worthless ship right now; they'd be useful if it was merely a matter of trading 5 holds for double the combat capability, but you're also dropping to density scanners), and other minor tweaks like that... As it is now, play any game, and you can tell who the newbies are by what ships they're flying, since experienced players only ever use the same 4 or 5 ships.. I'd like to balance the ships to give every one a use...

I'd also like to give good players a reason to gain experience, instead of trying to stay under 1k so their 50k fig ISS's are even more powerful w/ Fed protection and all; I'd probably drop ISS's a bit in power (not much, goods still need these to help counter the evil's advantages early game), and then add a midrange (basically the same as the current ISS) and a high range (even more powerful) Fed ship requiring ever higher experience levels... If you become a good aligned grand admiral, you deserve the ship to match...

Might tweak the planet stats a bit as well to give the planets people currently destroy outright some use.. Gaseous will always be crap, sure, but I might make glacials the equipment farming planets of the universe (cold temps make superconductivity easier? could be explained away somehow hehe; basically glacials would be tweaked to give you the most money per pop point, but still have a low max pop so you'd need a lot of glacials to match an oceanic organic farm)..

Anyway, you get the picture... Would these sorts of changes be welcomed to the crowd around here? Would people play my game? I don't want to spend $80 and then end up with 2-3 players... I'm on a cable modem, btw, with a 128k max upstream, but that should handle 3 or 4 simultaneous players without any difficulty at all, and even as many as 10 if they can handle a little bit of slowdown... Thinking of DSL in my future if Verizon will pull their heads out of their asses and price more competitively...

	06-04-2002 11:57									#7
	Increase Your PM Length

Well, I've been running WotW for a few months now, and it hasn't exactly been crowded...

In order to drum up some additional traffic, I've thought of setting up a little website with a forum, and advertising it on a few gaming forums I frequent. Perhaps you might do the same, or advertise this forum, if more people is what you want.

I think people would be interested in playing with mods, so long as they were well done and balanced. The games around here have all served 1000 or less turns, so it doesn't exactly take all day to play.

If you can run a server, and have the interest in doing so, go for it! I think there will always be people who want to play tradewars, though it gets a bit thin at some times of the year.

	07-04-2002 04:28									#8
	Inflate your Upload Space

Wow, Orions now HAVE holoscanners, since v3.05, I see. Sweet. Most of the other balance issues I mentioned and/or know of aren't taken care of in the defaults though, so I'm now editing a bunch of stuff to try to make a good nonstock game...

The Firaxis game seems to have quite a few players (even if a lot of them are now inactive), WotW doesn't; I don't know how many players I really want.. I want a cozy game with none of the attack-script-kiddies that flood most of the large public games, but certainly more than 3 or 4 active players...

I'm going to start a new thread with the changes I've made so far and see if I can drum up any players...

	10-04-2002 07:09									#9
	Put an end to popups!

The reason Firaxis has more players than WoTW is because it is easier to run multi's there.

I'd be interested in playing your game, in a month, when I have some spare time so please let me know when you've got it up and running with all the balance issues sorted out.

=Aeturneus=

	10-04-2002 07:12									#10
	Put an end to popups!

If you're serious about getting some more fun players, you might try pm'ing some of the guys that used to play on the firaxis server. The active ones posted to this message board frequently in the past, so you can look up their names by scrolling backwards in time...

I don't think they would mind being told a new server is going up, with mods and all - might spark some renewed interest in what used to be a much more active forum.

	18-04-2002 08:25									#11
	Full PM-box? Change here!

OK, I've got a date - for the rebang of WotW

My new ISP is scheduled to install sometime on the 25th or the 26th, so I will rebang at 5:00 PM sharp, Mountain Standard Time on the 27th of April, provided everything goes as planned.

This will be a standard game, no modifications, like all WotW games. The guiding principle behind WotW game design is to create an environment suitable for building large planetary empires, with a heavy endgame and little initial combat. This time I'm thinking of making it more convoluted than usual, with more 1 ways, longer max course length, and hence more bubbles and a larger "feel" to the 5k sectors that I usually bang with.

Any opinions on settings? I'd especially invite Wittlich and Burbel, the two longest playing WotW traders, to kick in with their opinions on how to balance this game.

	18-04-2002 08:41									#12
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization III: Complete

2 ideas - one calls for customization, though. First, since both Wittlich and I use helpers, more colos and more turns, so that we can develop a number of planets simultaneously (easier than last game).

2nd - what about the thought of an evil terra? Somewhere we could grab lots of colos with a twarp as an evil player? Maybe an evil ISS that can twarp to fedspace, but with few figs?

Just a thought - I think it would be more fun if Wittlich could be the goody-goody, and I could be the Scourge of the Universe! (A title normally taken by Aeturneus, I know... )

Just brainstorming. But the last settings were pretty good.

2 things I would like to see changed from last game - can you fix the date on the server (twice it changed dramatically, and it often changed by hours). Once it warped ahead 30 days, if I hadn't logged in that day I would have been removed from the game!

2nd, is it possible to increase the uptime of the game, and maybe decrease the lag? A lot of time it was down, and a lot of time the lag was so much that launching eprobes would put me to sleep.

Just thoughts, I'm very happy with the last 2 WotW games, and would be glad to play (win another!

	18-04-2002 09:11									#13
	Support Apolyton, buy Alpha Centauri

More Colos / Turns sounds good. How about 7k turns?

I don't have TW Gold, so I can't do any modifications without getting that first - and I'm not sure it's possible to create an "evil terra" although I think an evil ISS is possible, and a good idea for an altered game - maybe a weaker ship that imitates an ISS with advanced holo/radio masquerading technology, requires substantial exp, but couldn't be used for combat, to keep evil balanced. I'll think about it.

The date on the server is something I think has been corrected, and I'm hoping the ISP switch will take care of most of the lag, although I can't gaurauntee my hardware won't lag from time to time, since the server runs on my personal box, the only windows box in the house - I sure would love a Linux version of this server, since I could then run it on some much nicer hardware.

As regards downtime, I think that issue will be mainly resolved by vast reductions in my workload over the summer, which will allow me to keep a closer eye on the game. This is one of the reasons I'm waiting till the 27th to rebang.

=Aeturneus=

	18-04-2002 09:30									#14
	Tired of ads?

Sounds good to me - as a thought, could you create an "evil fedspace", say sector 5000 and 9 sectors around it? If you can't make another terra, make 5 oceanic planets with max colos, and refill them as needed...

Just trying to think of a way to juice it up, so all the players in the game aren't flying good ISSs and there is someone red in the rankings...

Making that wouldn't take TWGold, would it? Just a simple editor...

BTW : Will you be playing in this game?

	18-04-2002 11:01									#15
	Support Apolyton

Sorry to disappoint you guys, but as someone who has Gold (duh, my game is tweaked all over the place hehe), I can say that just about nothing you mentioned is possible, and the parts that are aren't in the way you'd like.

An "evil ISS" is possible so far as the stats go, but not when it comes to twarp to Fed beacons. ANY twarp ship can twarp to Fed beacons (CorpFlag, Gunstar included), but only commissioned (>= 1000 align) traders can attach to those beacons. With all the customizable things in the editors, that isn't one of them.

Evil Terra, again not possible, although the "main" Terra can be moved to a neutral sector and therefore direct-twarpable (by whomever can keep a fig there). The function of Terra is performed by whatever planet is in slot #1, it isn't a flag you can set on just any planet. Only way to even simulate this would be a simple planet somewhere (of a custom Gold type that cannot build citadels and has maximum population growth) with a bunch of colos dumped on it, but the growth wouldn't even come close to the way Terra works.

Evil Fedspace. Nope. I mean, you could throw beacons in it and call it that, but it wouldn't actually protect evil players or tow anyone at extern or any of that stuff. There's no way to flag that kind of thing.. Fedspace is pretty much hardcoded.

And now, why all of the above wouldn't be such a hot idea even if the editor would allow it . . .

The basis of the game: goods get to colonize far more effectively, and evils get to make far more money without planets starting pretty much day one.

You guys realize with 7k turns I would, barring some bad luck or a brain fart on my part, have at least 100k fighters by the end of the first day, evil? And another 200k a day after that.. But yeah, the game favors goods too much

Give me the same speed colonization TOO? Wow, can I also have a Death Star with 400k figs max and a turns/warp of 2? Long as you're rolling out the red carpet...!

Maybe I should hop into the next WotW game and play evil just to show you how the balance with standard settings really is Especially with so many turns. Higher turns = more evil advantage, because goods make their money based on daily planetary production. # of turns don't change that. 7x the turns means 7x the money as an evil, 7x the turns means 7x the colos as a good, assuming Terran regen is basically infinite, but even with that the moneymaking doesn't really kick in for goods for a few weeks while citadels grow. So just as your citadels kick in, I attack with the 3 million fighters I bought while you were spending all your turns colonizing and, sweet, now I have these cool planets of yours, complete with all those colonists you helped me move ;> And just try to take out a million figs at 3:1 odds with BLUE income to get em back! Ha!

I'm exaggerating, of course, but only a little. A skilled evil player could probably make my statements not an exaggeration at all. Me, I've barely played evil before, so I'd blunder at it a lot and be lucky to do a quarter that well.

Still, I think you guys' opinions of reds are colored (pun slightly intended ;>) by your experience with those first Firaxis games, where the Apolyton Corp would rise to domination early, and anyone who tried to be evil was missing at least the first week or two of play, making it hard to begin that first bit of entrenchment it takes to finally completely burrow your way into the economy and dominate.

Evils have a more difficult game, as far as more skill is necessary to play evil, but not as far as the game being balanced anti-evil. With the proper skill, I find the game balanced overall anti-good. But if any skilled blue corp survives the first three weeks, they win. The reds haven't done their jobs hehe.

	18-04-2002 11:15									#16
	Support Apolyton, buy Alpha Centauri

OK, in quick defense for my post - the way we play, we don't attack each other early, and we don't fight much. Given a game like that, last game I was able to get 20 planets with around 400k colos and a level 4 citadel and lots of level 3s pretty quickly.

Towards the end I was making around 6million a day in interest, plus 40million every three days from port-pair trading.

We tend to play long drawn out and mostly non-violent building games on WotW (except when Aeturneus is playing 8P), so the main thing I was thinking of is at least let it be the goods vs. the evils. However, with the current evil settings, my strat would go around beating the oponents early, which really isn't fun (for me at least).

Yeah, when I play Civ, I don't go military until either I am ahead in tech (like tanks/mechs vs. musketeers) or until the end of the game, when all bets are off.

I just have fun developing the cities/planets. But to each their own...

	18-04-2002 13:25									#17
	Put an end to popups!

BTW - both Burbel and I have played evil, making multiple millions per day... just so you don't mistake us for the same players that squawked about 80k ships a year ago

	18-04-2002 13:29									#18
	Suffering from ads?

I'm the same way, I enjoy development, but that's just how TW is balanced... ya either play evil and smack down the good players early and often, or you go good and try to hide until you've got a colonial base for your economy to take off... With the "requirement" of no fighting for X days or whatever, evil pretty much loses all purpose...

Not that evils don't have their fair share of ways to use a lvl 4 planet, but without supportive farming income, you just can't keep up once a good has been left alone for 15-20 solid days in a row..

I may still try it anyway, just because I haven't played evil in so long, it'd be kinda fun My incompetance alone should keep the game from getting too bloody too early

	23-04-2002 14:16									#19
	Inflate your Upload Space

I suppose it depends on the settings whether evils have the advantage or not. Things like steal/rob ratios, planetary trade agreement ratios, population growth (I am not sure if that's adjustable but should be) and a whole bunch of other parameters.

	28-04-2002 21:52									#20
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations: Deluxe Edition

quote: Originally posted by aeturneus OK, I've got a date - for the rebang of WotW My new ISP is scheduled to install sometime on the 25th or the 26th, so I will rebang at 5:00 PM sharp, Mountain Standard Time on the 27th of April, provided everything goes as planned. This will be a standard game, no modifications, like all WotW games. The guiding principle behind WotW game design is to create an environment suitable for building large planetary empires, with a heavy endgame and little initial combat. This time I'm thinking of making it more convoluted than usual, with more 1 ways, longer max course length, and hence more bubbles and a larger "feel" to the 5k sectors that I usually bang with. Any opinions on settings? I'd especially invite Wittlich and Burbel, the two longest playing WotW traders, to kick in with their opinions on how to balance this game.

Since Aeturneus has not been in my game since sometime on the 24th, I'm assuming the ISP thing has been keeping him busy and is even now still not done, so I'm guessing this rebang didn't get done on time?

I'm sure when Aeturneus has access back, he'll be posting here.

	30-04-2002 05:01									#21
	Enter the AD-FREE zone

Actually, Aeturneus posted his status concerning his ISP on a new thread titled: "What's Up" ... but you are right Xentropy, there has been a slight delay on his rebang date due to his new ISP service.

	30-04-2002 11:08									#22
	Inflate your Upload Space

Yeah, I'm aware of that... My previous post on this thread is dated before he started that new thread ;>