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>> THE GAME Trade Wars goes back to the early days of BBSing, and the version everybody plays now, TW2002, is the one Gary Martin built up. If you've never played: you're a trader with a ship in a big universe of numbered sectors connected by warp lanes. You buy cheap, haul it somewhere, sell it dear, and buy a better ship. Then other players start shooting at you and it gets interesting. Like LORD you only get so many turns a day, and every warp costs you turns, so the game rewards planning. The people who win are the ones who sit down with a pencil and map the universe. |
| THE BASICS |
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Ports and trading. Ports buy and sell three things: Fuel Ore, Organics and Equipment. Each port buys some and sells others. Find two ports next door to each other where one sells what the other buys, and the other way around, and you've got a port pair. Run it back and forth and haggle every time. A good pair is the whole early game. Federation space. The first handful of sectors around Terra are FedSpace. The Federation polices them, so a new player can find his feet without getting blown up. Stray out of FedSpace and you're on your own. Turn evil and the Feds won't be so friendly either. The StarDock. Where you buy ships, cargo holds, fighters and gear. Find it early and remember where it is. The Ferrengi. Alien traders who roam the universe and take potshots at you. Early on, stay out of their way. Later, hunt them. They pay. Planets. Fire a Genesis Torpedo into an empty sector and you've made a planet. Haul colonists out from Terra to work it, build a citadel on it, and it becomes your base, your bank and your fort. Big corps have a dozen. Somebody always wants to take yours. Corporations. Players team up into corps, share planets and fighters, and fight other corps. One player can't hold a universe. Four can try. Good and evil. Trade honestly and fight the bad guys and your alignment goes up. Rob ports and blow up honest traders and it goes down. Both are ways to play. Evil is faster and lonelier. |
| THIS GAME'S SETTINGS AND CORP RULES |
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* Started 07/12/99. 1,000 sectors. 250 turns a day. * Corps are four players at most. * One trader per person. Two accounts feeding each other is the fastest way off this board. * Alliances between corps are allowed, but post them in the Trade Wars message base so everybody knows. Secret alliances get both corps dissolved. * No trading game information with players outside your corp through private mail on other boards. I hear about it. Billings is smaller than you think. * The game runs until one corp holds the universe or until the end of February, whichever is first. Then we start over. |
| TOP TRADERS AS OF 09/24/99 | |||
| # | TRADER | CORP | EXP |
| 1 | Rimfire | Big Sky Hauling | 8,412 |
| 2 | Dakota | The Night Shift | 7,960 |
| 3 | Cutbank | Big Sky Hauling | 6,105 |
| 4 | Vandal | (independent) | 5,877 |
| 5 | Magpie | The Night Shift | 5,240 |
| 6 | Crowbar | Rimrock Mining | 4,618 |
| 7 | Jojo | Big Sky Hauling | 3,990 |
| 8 | Hi-Line | Rimrock Mining | 3,204 |
| 9 | Ozone | The Night Shift | 2,766 |
| 10 | Tumbleweed | (independent) | 1,935 |
| Fourteen traders in this game, three corps. Big Sky Hauling has the most planets and the most experience, but The Night Shift has been taking their outlying planets one at a time since Labor Day, and Rimfire knows it. Vandal is evil, independent, and has blown up nine ships, two of them mine. I don't play favorites. I do keep a list. |
| TIPS FOR NEW TRADERS |
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1. Spend your first day finding a port pair close to FedSpace. Don't wander. 2. Haggle. Offer a little under what they ask and see what happens. 3. More cargo holds before anything else. Holds are money. 4. Write everything down. Port, what it buys, what it sells, which sectors connect. A notebook beats your memory. 5. Don't end your turns parked in an open sector with a hold full of Equipment. Somebody will notice. 6. Join a corp. A new trader alone in this universe is a snack. |