TradeWars 2002

TW2002 title screen.

TradeWars 2002, also known as Trade Wars 2002 or TW2002, is a space game developed in the 1990s by Gary Martin for play as a BBS door game. Players seek to control the galaxy by trading, developing planets, and destroying their rivals. TW2002 is now played mostly on Telnet BBSs.

TW2002 takes a large investment of time compared to most door games. Some TW2002 tournaments allow an infinite number of turns, and the most dedicated players forsake other activities for days or weeks in a race to achieve insurmountable galactic dominance. A few Telnet tournaments even award cash prizes to the winner.

TradeWars 2002's combination of Star Wars and Star Trek themes, as well as its many subtleties and the potential to endlessly refine macros, scripts, and utilities in an effort to gain wealth, launch attacks, and counter the opposition, have made the game a cult classic.

Scripts, macros, and utilities

A TW2002 galaxy consists of at least 1,000 interconnected sectors. Even casual participation requires some notetaking in order to keep track of the locations of important planets, ports, and dead ends. Several "helpers," computer programs to collect and process TradeWars data, have been created to automate this task. For instance, a player can launch space probes and automatically map the TradeWars galaxy using a custom-designed database. Some serious players put their programming skills to work developing macros and scripts to quickly perform functions such as warping into FedSpace or attacking other ships.

Gameplay

Good vs. evil

Players can be aligned on the side of either good or evil. A player's alignment is represented as an integer; a positive (good) alignment is earned by doing good deeds, such as posting bounties on space pirates and destroying evildoers. A negative (evil) alignment is the result of evil deeds such as destroying planets and dumping colonists into space.

Good: Being a good-aligned player has three advantages:

Protection in FedSpace (under certain conditions).
The ability to enter the FedPolice HQ at Stardock.
The chance to obtain a Federal Commission.

A player with an alignment of +500 can apply for a Federal Commission. This is essentially a permit granted by the Federation to buy an Imperial StarShip.

If a player subsequently becomes evil, the Commission is revoked; he is then required by FedLaw to return the StarShip to the Stardock or risk destruction by Federals such as Captain Zyrain.

Evil: When a player becomes evil enough, he can begin robbing ports, a major source of income. Because of this, evils have far greater opportunities to raise money quickly. However, they must keep track of ports they have been busted at, because going there again without waiting awhile can lead to another bust.

Corporations

Players can form corporations to share planets, ships, and other resources. The founder of the corporation is the CEO, who can own a Corporate Flagship and control the membership of the corp. Sometimes good and evil players team up on the same corp, with the Goods towing the Evils to various destination in order to save them valuable turns.

Planets

Planets are the big moneymakers, since they generate tradeable products and can support Citadels, which allow credits to be invested at 2% per day. There are several different types of planets:

Class M (Earth type)
Class K (Desert wasteland)
Class O (Oceanic)
Class L (Mountainous)
Class C (Glacial)
Class H (Volcanic)
Class U (Vaporous/Gaseous)

Ships

Ships allow traders to travel from sector to sector, transporting products and fighters. The ship types that can be purchased at StarDock include the:

Trading efficiency, or TE, is a factor for comparing the overall ability of different ship types to use turns effectively. The Merchant Freighter is the most efficient, having a TE of 100.

Trading efficiency takes into consideration:

"Gross trading capacity," the number of holds divided by the number of turns it takes to move to the next sector.
Turns used at the beginning of each session, traveling to the first trading port.
Turns used to move to a new trading pair, once a particular pair of ports has been drained. Ships with many holds lose some of their efficiency because they trade out the ports in only a few round trips and must move on to another pair much more often, thereby wasting a greater percentage of their total turns.
Turns used to travel back home from the last trading pair of the day. T-warp ships gain a small advantage here.

A ship's Safety Rating represents its ability to withstand attack. It is calculated using the total fighters plus shields, multiplied by the ship's odds. This rating is equal to the number of fighters it will take to destroy a fully loaded ship of this type, assuming an attacking ship with 1:1 odds. The Imperial StarShip, for instance, has 50,000 fighters, 2,000 shields, and combat odds of 1.5:1, giving it a Safety Rating of 78,000. This makes it a much safer ship than its closest competitor, the Corporate Flagship (Safety Rating: 25,800).

References