Trade Wars: A Multiplayer Game

Although most people wait until a Universe rebangs, often you’ll happen on a game that’s been running a week or two and has five or six players.

Check it out before you pass; if you find theplayers at very low experience levels, or in Cruisers, they probably stopped playing before you came on, hence it may be an empty game or a game with one or two players, you can join.

There is no sense logging on to a game where there are Players in Flagships and ISS unless they’ll ignore you.

There are a lot of Newbies, and a lot of players who might not have played since 1998.

Only real players go to low turn games,and that’s where you want to be.

One of the things you must appreciate is that Real Players have their ‘quirks’.  There are those who play old Tournament rules. If they are killed or podded, they take it as a loss and cease to log on.

Sure the Game may give them three lives,but many don’t accept it.

I can think of one highly touted game where one player decided not to build but attack.

As soon as he saw a Cruiser outside of FedSpace, or found a player’s just created planet he attacked.

In two days, he was alone.

He’d ‘won’ with no planet, no points. Complaining in a Tradewars Message Board about the other players who ’should of kept playing’ he was informed that many players don’t go for the ‘training wheels’,that is, the fact that they have three lives, so being killed only once is not death, doesn’t mean anything to them.   They accept it as a loss, and move on.

Podding another player in his or her Cruiser or Merf in the first week often leads to this ‘loss’…meaning the player might not log back on.

The truth of Tradewars, which needs a post-it on your monitor; This is a Multi-Player Game.You play against mammals, not the machine.

If you annoy other players; i.e. killing them in the first days, they may not reappear.

Once they log off, you are are left to play by yourself.  Meaning, you can never win this game.

Tradewars is NOT Doom. It is not a game in which you kill machine characters and keep killing.  It is a game in which you play against other players.

In low turn player vs player games, the kind you want to play, Time and Turns are key. You can’t get back Time or Turns.

Hence killing a player in a Cruiser or a just purchased Merchant Freighter means that they have to start again.

With no investment in this game, why bother?When a player has two or more ships and you pod him, he can get back on and possibly regain momentum.

In Mid game one can blow an ISS and in 24 hours, that player has another ISS.

Hence, unless you enjoy masturbation I strongly suggest you avoid blowing those who just logged on.