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AATrade Thunderdome
http://thunderdome.aatraders.com/
Version 0.41
Start Date: Oct 21, 2009
Total Players: 0
Turns: 10 turns every 5 minutes
Total Sectors: 866
Reset Date: Not Scheduled
Forum and Site Changes (Apr 5, 2012 - 3:49pm)
Due to time constraints and the fact the forum had turned into a game between me and the spammers. I've decided to move all the game discussions over to the [url=http://www.facebook.com/aatrade]aatrade facebook page[/url] the forum will remain open for now, but it will be read only and only admins will be able to post.

I will install a facebook feed at some point so anyone coming to the forum page will see the most recent facebook posts.

I'm also working on a new website for the game. I am hoping we can rekindle some new blood and interest in the game and maybe some interest in some others to help me develop the game.

PJ has moved on to his other interest, so won't be back unless he gets bored with his new endeavors. This means that any new development will fall on my shoulders or with any volunteers that would like to help. Anyone that has an interest feel free to contact me or post on the new facebook page.

Posted By: Tarnus
Winds of Change, AAtrade is in for some changes! (Jan 31, 2011 - 6:27pm)
Winds of Change, AAtrade is in for some changes in the interim future

Hey folks, there is going to be changes coming very soon to the aatrade world. PJ is going to take a hiatus for a while. He is still around but won't be working on aatrade for a while. I will be taking over. Not that that's all good either, as I have a real job, so can't put a ton of time in, but will work on it as I can.

So what this means is, we will need to start working as a team. I will need volunteers to help track down bugs, make template changes, bug test the beta, even help with the forum, website and the games. If you can code php I will need some help there as well.

To start with I will be resetting the Beta to the latest game code PJ had. I don't know what bugs have been fixed so I will be clearing out all the bug reports and starting fresh so everyone can start fresh and we can start a new bug report.

Hope to see some volunteers!!! :)

Posted By: Tarnus
Beta Game Reset with NPC's (Jul 21, 2010 - 7:50pm)
We have added some limited NPC's to the Beta game. These NPC's will roam the galaxy and that is about it right now. If you attack them they CAN attack you back or run away. We will be adding more functionality to them. Such as attacking on their own other players and planets. Upgrading their own ship and planets. Hunting down anyone that has attacked them. And lastly trading between ports. Give them a try.

Posted By: Panama Jack
Midgame Change vote (May 16, 2010 - 3:58pm)
Some players didn't realize we didn't set the commodities where a player could only trade their own. Some teams were using this to quickly move a team mate to the top. This is one reason we limited team cash. But this was a way to do it again. Voting yes to the change would allow us to change it midgame, a no vote means we will wait till the game is reset.

Posted By: Tarnus
April 2nd 2010 Reset (Apr 1, 2010 - 9:52am)
Main Game Server will Reset today April 2nd 2010
Upcoming game changes:
    ==>Everything will mostly be the same as we are making drastic changes to the beta. The only things that may be changing is the ability to pay off fed bounties are going away. If you get a fed bounty, you will immediately get hit, and hit continuously till the bounty is paid by Fed hits. You will however be able to swap ships, do upgrades and repairs. Do not think you can hide, the Fed will hit the biggest ship you own. We are also evaluating whether to hit your largest SD planets if your ships are not of high enough value.

    ==>The second change is still up in the air. We are considering not allowing team mates to trade a team mates commodities. This will happen in some form or the other.


Just thought I would give everyone a heads up on upcoming reset.

Posted By: Tarnus
Main game changes (Feb 1, 2010 - 7:41am)
It's come to our attention that players have been using the new commodities to basically give a team unlimited team cash.

This is going away later this week. It doesn't do us any good to limit team cash when a team can do the same thing by trading commodities among their teams planets. So the fix is you will only be able to transfer commodities to and from planets you own. Teammates will no longer be able to do this or help you.
This should level the playing field as a huge team will no longer have this advantage.

The other fix will be that you will only be able to store ships on planets you own. This is something we thought was done long ago, but apparently we missed it.

Sorry for the in game change we felt it was necessary for balanced play.

Posted By: Tarnus
Public Beta -- Need volunteers ASAP -- Repost (Dec 16, 2009 - 10:52pm)
Update: The Sector Defense Mine Code and Mine Deflector Code has drastically changed in the Beta. Please read this before playing!

The minimum hull size for mines to detect has been changed to 201. This is a combination of the base hull you can't see and the purchased hull. This means all pioneers and stealths will bypass ALL mines. Any other ship will start hitting them. The number of mines a ship will detect is based upon the combination of the hidden basehull and the purchased hull. Larger class ship and/or larger hulls will attract more mines. You will no longer hit a random number of all mines in the sector.

There is no longer a 1-for-1 exchange between mines and deflectors. It takes MANY deflectors to destroy a single mine.

Mines are now directly tied to the Sector Defense Weapons Tech Level on planets just the same as Fighters. You are limited to how many mines you can place based upon all planets tech levels. If you have 1 planet with a tech level that allows 1 million mines then a sector with 5 planets of the same tech can have 5 million mines. You can no longer place as many mines in a sector as you are used to in older versions. To compensate for fewer mines they are now very,very hard to kill and will absorb a large number of deflectors before being destroyed.

Mine Deflectors are now tied directly to the Torpedo Launcher Tech Level on your ship. The higher the tech the more Mine Deflectors you can carry. It now takes MANY deflectors to destroy a single mine.

Mines will no longer hit a ships shields before hitting the armor. Mines will completely bypass shields and hit ship armor if they bypass the mine deflectors.

We have opened the Beta Game for public play. The Beta Game contains new combat code and templates that will be in the Main Game when it resets on October 1st. Every one should join the game and test out the new combat so you are familiar with it when the game resets.

Starting player settings:

Default/Starting Ship: Voyager
Starting Credits: 100,000,000,000
Starting/Max Turns: 1,000


The game starts with only 2,000 sectors for up close and personal combat. Almost EVERY SECTOR has a planet that can be captured..

There are a number of goals we are looking to achieve though this Beta.

1. Testing of Ship to Ship Combat
2. Testing of Ship to Planet Combat
3. Testing of Planet Nova Bomb
4. Testing of Sofa Bombing
5. Testing of Attack & Run
6. Testing of Straight attack of Sector Defense against only Fighters (not A&R)
7. Testing of Straight attack of Sector Defense against only Mines (not A&R)
8. Testing of Straight attack of Sector Defense against Fighters and Mines combined (not A&R)
9. Testing of Sector Nova


All of these attacks have been changed in some way. Some were small and some were big. The Ship to Ship and Ship to planet had the biggest changes in how the attacks work.

During a S2S/S2P combat there will be new combat exchanges and orders. The failure of weapons is now calculated well before each combat exchange. The old combat system would calculate failure for the attacker, then attack and then target would calculate failure and then attack. Both attacker and defender during the defense portion of the attacks would be defending as if there were no failures even if there were. An example is the attacker has a fighter launch failure and only launches 50% of their fighters. With the old combat the target would be attacked by 50% of the enemy fighters but when they attacked the enemy fighters back all 100% of the fighters would defend just as if they had launched instead of failed.

In the old code when you had failures of any weapon you LOST all of the failed items. If 50% of your fighters didn't launch you lost them. Now they stay on your ship.

There have been many other changes to fix odd logic failures so the combat results may be different from what you are expecting. Please test everything so we can see how the changes are working out.

Thanks,
PJ and Tarnus

Posted By: Tarnus
Game Language Translations (Nov 5, 2009 - 4:02pm)
Over the past couple of weeks we have been going through all of the language files and classes updating the translations for each language. Considering how many languages we have and how many classes with their own language system it has been a long process. We have automated most of the translation work by creating programs to use the Google Translator. These programs basically parse our language files noting areas that shouldn't be translated and sending the information to Google for translation and then rebuilding the file and saving it over the original.

There are some words and phrases that Google just won't translate. We also know that many of the translations will probably read like a pre-school language class. There is not much we can do about this since we do not have any real people who can write in these languages to perform translations.

If you notice anything that might need changed let us know and we will TRY to make the changes to the appropriate file. There are no guarantees.

We are still going through ALL of the program files and templates looking for hard coded english. When we find them we remove them from the file, add them to all of the appropriate files for all languages and then run the translation program on them. This is the most time consuming portion of getting the languages updated. We took too many short cuts to get things working at times and it has bitten us in the butt... again.

All of these language changes are going into the Beta Game. You will NOT see them in the main game until it resets at the beginning of next year. By then we should have the bugs worked out of the new combat system. Hey, it gives us a couple more months. :)

We thought everyone might want an update on what we have been doing since we have been pretty quiet in the forums. If you keep up on our twitter feed you can see what we have been working on lately.

Posted By: Panama Jack
Thunderdome is back! (Oct 21, 2009 - 1:09am)
Well after many a nudge... I have brought back a rejuvenated thunderdome game. Most of the rules are similar to what they were before. No bounties, 150 sectors. The one thing that is different is when you lose your ship you go into a 10 min time out and then you can log back in and do battle again. Gone is the time of having to re-register. Note if you want to be in the scoreboard, you have to register your profile.

You can get to it by going to [url]http://thunderdome.aatraders.com[/url]

Good luck... Its crazy addictive!!!

Posted By: Tarnus
Main Game is Reset (Oct 1, 2009 - 8:49am)
The Main Game has been reset and is open for business.

If you would like to see the results of the just completed game then click on the "Completed Games" link on the main web side. You can see all of the information from the ending ranking page to player stats.

Posted By: Panama Jack
Beta Game Now Open for Public Testing (Sep 24, 2009 - 5:07pm)
We have opened the Beta Game for public play. The Beta Game contains new combat code and templates that will be in the Main Game when it resets on October 1st. Every one should join the game and test out the new combat so you are familiar with it when the game resets.

Starting player settings:

    Default/Starting Ship: Voyager
    Starting Credits: 100,000,000,000
    Starting/Max Turns: 1,000


The game starts with only 2,000 sectors for up close and personal combat. Almost EVERY SECTOR has a planet that can be captured..

There are a number of goals we are looking to achieve though this Beta.

    1. Testing of Ship to Ship Combat
    2. Testing of Ship to Planet Combat
    3. Testing of Planet Nova Bomb
    4. Testing of Sofa Bombing
    5. Testing of Attack & Run
    6. Testing of Straight attack of Sector Defense against only Fighters (not A&R)
    7. Testing of Straight attack of Sector Defense against only Mines (not A&R)
    8. Testing of Straight attack of Sector Defense against Fighters and Mines combined (not A&R)
    9. Testing of Sector Nova


All of these attacks have been changed in some way. Some were small and some were big. The Ship to Ship and Ship to planet had the biggest changes in how the attacks work.

During a S2S/S2P combat there will be new combat exchanges and orders. The failure of weapons is now calculated well before each combat exchange. The old combat system would calculate failure for the attacker, then attack and then target would calculate failure and then attack. Both attacker and defender during the defense portion of the attacks would be defending as if there were no failures even if there were. An example is the attacker has a fighter launch failure and only launches 50% of their fighters. With the old combat the target would be attacked by 50% of the enemy fighters but when they attacked the enemy fighters back all 100% of the fighters would defend just as if they had launched instead of failed.

In the old code when you had failures of any weapon you LOST all of the failed items. If 50% of your fighters didn't launch you lost them. Now they stay on your ship.

There have been many other changes to fix odd logic failures so the combat results may be different from what you are expecting. Please test everything so we can see how the changes are working out.

Thanks,
PJ and Tarnus

Posted By: Panama Jack
Alf's Special Tournament (Aug 30, 2009 - 5:13pm)
http://nztraders.jndhost.co.uk/aatt/

[size=150]Special Tournament, signups open.
You must have a profile, single player teams, no bounties, no newbie nice. You will start with an Endeavour and 100 Genesis Torps, they will cost 50 Bill to replace so use wisely. Yes, you could throw a ship hulls planet. If you loose your ship, you will loose your Genesis Torps, so go careful at the start.

[size=150]Admin will always have the final say.
No multi accounts, if players are using the same computer, then they must contact me BEFORE signing up. Multi IP's , all payers will be removed before the game starts.

Genesis Torps will be added to your ship prior to game start.

Check the main page for start and finish times.

Keep the shoutbox clean, this is a 'FUN' Tournament for all.

Good Luck

Posted By: Alf
New Language Support Added to the Game (Aug 24, 2009 - 4:04am)
We have added the following languages to the game:

    Albanian
    Catalan
    Danish
    Dutch
    Finnish
    Indonesian
    Norwegian
    Portuguese
    Swedish


We used Google's Translation System to create the translations for the game. We know they will not be perfect but we hope they are good enough for others to play the game in their native language. We have also updated the other languages that had already been in the game to convert the english text to the correct language.

We are planning to add support for more languages but we need to get the game compatible with UTF8 encoding. Many other languages we would like to include require UTF8 support. The game has some support right now but it is not working as it should. It on the list of things to get working properly. :)

We did have to remove the Russian language support because it hasn't been displaying properly for a long, long time. To really support Russian UTF8 is a must.

It will take a day or two before we can get the languages in the classes (probes, artifacts, etc.) updated.

Posted By: Panama Jack
Template File Reorganization... (Aug 10, 2009 - 3:08pm)
Over the next few days we will be reorganizing the template files in each of the directories. Players shouldn't notice any disruption of the game but just in case something odd happens please report it to either Tarnus or Myself immediately.

Over the past few years the template directory for each template has become a nice, crappy, jumbled mess. At times hard to locate files that we need to change. I can imagine how hard it is for anyone trying to make new templates for the game.

Each group of templates will be stored in a directory for the main PHP program that calls them. An example would be the IGB. The main IGB program is igb.php. There are 15 IGB template files and they will be moved out of the min template directory into their own called igb. We will be doing this to all templates. Grouping files into their own directory based upon the calling program will make things easier for us and any programmer. Especially since some template file names don't quite match the program calling them. ;)

We just wanted to warn people so you have a heads up just in case you see something saying a tpl file can't be found. Be sure to let us know what tpl filename that's missing.

Posted By: Panama Jack
It's our 6th Year Anniversary!!!! (Aug 4, 2009 - 4:32am)






This crept up on us and we almost forgot about it. Today is exactly 6 years since we released Alien Assault Traders Version 0.10 on August 4th, 2003.

It's kind of amazing to think we have been running a server with the game and developing it for over 6 years. I downloaded the 0.10 version yesterday to see what we had released. It has been so long I had forgotten. Man, it was a jumbled mess of coding. :) The entire download is 2.4 meg and the latest release is over 7 times larger. It really is something to see how much work has been put into the game over the last 6 years. If you would like to compare please download 0.10 and check it out. If you are a PHP programmer don't laugh too much. ;)

We would like to thank all of the players who have stuck with us over the years and especially those who have donated to keep things up and running. Some of you have been with us for years and we appreciate it.

Thank you all and we hope to keep giving you more years of enjoyment.

Thanks from Tarnus and Panama!

Posted By: Panama Jack
Alien Assault Traders 0.40 Released (Jul 27, 2009 - 5:50pm)
It has been 10 months since our last release of AATrade. It has been so long I bet some people thought the development of the game had been abandoned. :)

The game has gone though a huge metamorphosis with many core code changes. Most of the things in the game like Probes, Dignitaries, Spies and the new Artifacts have been converted to Classes. This allows us to easily create and add more of those items to the game. We have also been creating many new probes that really enhance the game.

One of the other big changes has been the addition of Artifacts. Artifacts are items created by an Ancient Race not affiliated with the Federation or Alliance. All Artifacts are beneficial to all players as this Ancient Race is trying to help mankind advance. You will never find a bad Artifact. Each artifact is broken into 1 to over 30 pieces depending on the value of the artifact to the players. The Artifact pieces each have their own Cloak Tech and may be hard to detect as they are so small. The more valuable the piece the higher the cloak tech. Artifacts can be found on Planets, Ports or floating in space. The Artifacts range from a simple one that will transport a newbie player to the safety of Sol if they get trapped to the Dreadnought Battle Cruiser.

We have also added 10 new commodities to the game and they can make HUGE profits in the game. Some require large ship hulls to transport but have HUGE credit returns. Some planets might get lucky enough to be able to build Ship Hulls and they can get TRILLIONS in profit for each one built.

One of the big changes Game Admins will like is the game will report all end of game statistics when a game ends to our Profile Server. Player will be able to the ranking and all results for any game as they will be stored on the Main Website and accessible by anyone. Players who link their Main Website Profile to the game they are playing will have completed games stored in their profile and they will be linked to the end of game results.

All AATrade 0.40 games that are shown on our Server List will have a new feature. When any one mouse overs the server information a popup will appear listing the current top 20 players on that server.

There are so many new features and changes to the game to accurately list here. The game has really gone though some massive changes and we are very proud to release it to the public. The wait will have been worth it. :D

We look forward to seeing more AATrade 0.40 servers appearing on the server list.

PS: This is the final release before the long awaited Research & Build. The 0.40 release is FINAL and only major bug fixes, if any, will be released. Look forward to the AATrade 1.00 Beta on our Main Website in about 3 months.

To download the game click on the Downloads link on the Main Website.

Posted By: Panama Jack
New End of Game Information! (Jul 4, 2009 - 5:14pm)
One of the new things in AATraders 0.40 is the addition of sending the end of game Ranking List and Team List to the profile server along with some extra server information. Players can now access any completed game to see who was playing and how well they played.

If a player linked to their profile in the game the ranking list on the Profile Server will also link to their Profile. There is also a link with the completed game in the players profile to the End of Game information.

Instead of just abstract information about the game they finished in their profiles anyone can see how well they did against other players.

We look forward to seeing far more 0.40 servers in the completed games area.

Posted By: Panama Jack
Production System for Special Planet Commodities (Jun 30, 2009 - 9:29pm)
The number of colonists needed to build new commodities on planets is going way, way UP. We noticed that most planets produced the extra commodities at amazing rates. A good example is Ship Hulls. It takes 2 million colonists every 5 minutes to create 1 Ship Hull. There are planets in the last game that had produced over 30,000 Ship Hulls. Then there is the planet building Consumer Electronics with over 100 BILLION.

When you check the settings after the reset you will see the new commodities need massive numbers of colonists to build. You will notice Ship Hulls need 200 million instead of 2 million colonists to build a single Ship Hull. Before you break out the Torches and Pitchforks read on. :)

We have changed how colonists build the new commodities. When a planet builds anything it REQUIRES that you have the exact number of colonists to build 1 item. If a commodity needs 100 colonists to build 1 item then you have to have that many. If you only have 99 colonists building that item then you would NEVER build one. All their work would be for nothing.

We have changed how special commodities are built by colonists. If you need 100 colonist to build an item and only have 99 then those 99 will build 99% of the item. The next time they will build another 99% and you will have 1.98 of that item. Your planet will only show 1 but you will have 1.98. This means even if you don't have enough colonists to build an item what you do have will build as much as they can each tick.

This is based off the code for Research and Build, yes we are working on it still. It's how new items will be researched and built by colonists you assign to the work. We will be making this change in the future to Ore, Organics, Goods and Energy but it will not make it for the game reset.

So don't despair if it looks like a planet commodity needs millions of colonists to build an item. You can build no matter how many you assign to the job. It just might take a long time to build one.

Posted By: Panama Jack
Commodity Price Restructuring for the next game... (Jun 29, 2009 - 4:29pm)
Adding the 11 new commodities to the Main Game was an exciting new addition though it was fraught with problems at the start. We wanted the game to run for a while to see how real world use of the commodities evolved. We figured many of the values would need tweaking and boy were we right. :p Commodities that shouldn't have high prices were going through the roof, commodities that should have had high prices were not advancing or becoming worthless to trade and planet based commodities were building at a rate that was insane. Yep, needed a few tweaks. ;)



The above image shows the current high port prices for buying those commodities and the Cost Per Hull (CPH). Cost Per Hull is KING. The higher the number the more money you make. The order of the commodities is the order of value based on the CPH. To the far right you can see the default values that everything starts from. Consumer Electronics and Entertainment Software were runaways that shouldn't have happened while others like Ship Hulls LOST value. We have finally adjusted all of the values for the upcoming reset.



The above image shows a simulation of the new port pricing values. The first table is what the high port buy prices would be when a game is newly created. Then they are aged 84 days. The second table at the bottom are the high port buy prices after almost 3 months of game play. The CPH has gone UP for everything and the more valuable items STAYED more valuable than the commodities below them. This scales everything as we wanted at the beginning but we needed to see how things worked in a running game. Unfortunately, the Consumer Electronics and Entertainment Software are no where close to what they are in the current game. The planet only build commodities have taken a HUGE increase in the values so those rare planets will be must have and protect. If you get a Ship Hull planet and find a port that has never traded ship hulls you could make 1.4 Trillion per hull sold.

If everything goes well the new game should be restarted a couple of hours after it closes.

Posted By: Panama Jack
Announcing the addition of Artifacts to the game. (Jun 14, 2009 - 9:25pm)
We are proud to announce the addition of Artifacts to the game. At first glance they look like they are debris but they are very different. Artifacts are constructs that were created by an alien race and seeded all across the galaxy. These constructs can be assembled into an Artifact that will give the person that collected them powerful weapons, planets, ships or anything that can be imagined.

The Artifacts are scattered all over the Galaxy. They can be found on planets, ports or just floating in space. Artifacts will never be found in an SG sector. The Artifacts have been broken into many pieces. You have to find each piece and assemble them into the completed Artifact. Artifacts can be broken into 1 or 100 pieces. Each piece of an artifact has its own Cloak Tech level. For some of the more devastating artifacts you will need to have very high Sensor Tech to detect them. You could own a planet and never see an artifact on it if your ships sensors are too low. Some artifacts are score limited so ship captains over certain ranks will never be able to detect them.

Once all pieces of an artifact have been found and the Artifact has been used another one will be broken up scattered around the Galaxy.

All artifact pieces you have collected will be carried on your ship. If you change ships the Artifacts will be moved to your new ship. If your ship is destroyed you will lose ALL Artifact pieces you had collected and they will be reseeded around the galaxy. If your ship is destroyed by another ship then the captain of that ship has a chance of picking up some of your Artifacts.

If you would like to see what Artifacts have been scattered around the Galaxy and how many pieces there are for each artifact just select Artifact List. If you are using any of the drop down menu templates you will see a new category labeled Commands. Artifact List will be located there.

The initial artifacts are as follows...

    Dreadnought Artifact - This Artifact will summon a Stripped-Down Federation Battle Cruiser. The Battle Cruiser has 400 tech levels and can be upgraded to 900. The Battle Cruiser will NOT include fighters, mines, armor, energy, mine deflectors, escape pod or any other device. When summoned the Battle Cruiser will appear in storage on your Home Planet. If you don't have a home planet a based planet will be randomly picked to store the Battle Cruiser. There are a total of 30 pieces that need to be found. Once all pieces are found the Battle Cruiser will be summoned.

    Max Cloak Artifact - This Artifact will allow you to increase the Cloak Tech of any single ship to the maximum allowed for that ship class to a maximum of 400. There are a total of 5 pieces that need to be found. Once all pieces are found you can select the ship to upgrade through the Artifact List command.

    Mega Planet Artifact - This Artifact will create a Mega Planet in a single planet Realspace Sector. The planet will have 400 levels on techs, 60% of the maximum number of supported colonists and 300% energy production. The fourth commodity will be Ship Hulls. There are a total of 30 pieces that need to be found. Once all pieces are found the Mega Planet will be created.

    Sector Nova Artifact - This Artifact will set off a Sector Nova in any Non-Federation sector, Non-SG sector that the player has visited or scanned. The Sector Nova will destroy massive numbers of Sector Defenses, damage all planets and ships in the sector. There are a total of 10 pieces that need to be found. Once all pieces are found you can select the sector to attack through the Artifact List command.


When the game resets on the 1st of July will will have 3-4 more Artifacts added to the game.

Posted By: Panama Jack
Complete Re-Write of Dignitary and Spy Code (Jun 9, 2009 - 1:29am)
One of the projects that has been on our list for a very long time is converting Dignitaries and Spies into Classes so we could easily add more of them to the game. Sadly it was on our list of things to do for a couple of years now.

Dignitaries

Last week we uploaded code to the game that converted all Dignitaries to Classes. This allowed us to change how dignitaries were assigned.

Dignitaries no longer pick their own job. You have to select their jobs from the Dignitary Screen. If you don't select a job for them they will randomly create fighters and torpedoes until you give them a job. Dignitaries can still turn into embezzlers but if they stick with their new job for a couple of days they will NEVER turn into an embezzler. It's only during the first couple of days with their new job they can be tempted.

Changing a Dignitaries job is easy. When you view the Dignitary page you will see a list of all dignitaries on planets. There is a drop down menu for every dignitary. Just select the job you want for each dignitary. Once you have them all selected just click "CHANGE" and all of your dignitaries will be updated with their new jobs. Some dignitaries have limitations as to how many of them can be placed on a planet.

Spies

Today we uploaded all new spy code. This was a major rewrite from the ground up that affected many programs. Spies had become almost completely useless in the last few games. They were easy to detect and the cost of detecting them on planets was so cheap a person could run it every time they accessed the planet and not lose any money. :p

We found that the spy cleaning code had never been updated and was still working as if we had the old 54 tech levels. It meant finding spies was about as easy as asking "Are there any spies on this planet?" and they all raised their hands. The spy cleaning code has been updated to work with the 600 tech level setting. It should be harder to detect spies now.

When a planet is captured the old owners spies will no longer wait to pick a job. They will randomly pick jobs as soon as the planet is captured. You can easily change their jobs and movement type on the Spy page.

If you set your spies to "Move to Ship" or "Move to Planet" they will no longer lose their job. If a spy on a planet had a job of "Capture Planet" and it moved to an enemy ship and then moved to a different enemy planet it will STILL have the "Capture Planet" job.

If you have spies on an enemy planet and click on the planet you will see a new Display Planet screen. It has been reformatted to be more legible and now will include Sector Defense Tech Levels.

Another big change is in spy movement from planet to ship and ship to planet. In the past the only time a spy could move from a ship or planet is during a planet traderoute or transfer and if it hadn't picked a job yet. Now ANY interaction with your planets can cause spies to move around. Displaying the planet, landing, taking off, etc. can cause spies to move.

Future

When the game resets on July 1st we will be adding a number of new dignitaries and spies. This is something we have been wanting to do for a long time. We already have three new spies created but they will not be added until the reset.

    Destroy Sector Defense Fighters
    Destroy Sector Defense Mines
    Sabotage Sector Defense Tech Levels


Since we are using classes we can add new dignitaries and spies at any time during an existing game. We decided to wait until the reset before we sprung the new ones on you. We will be creating new dignitaries and spies between now and the reset. We think you will pleasantly surprised with what we have come up with. Dignitaries and Spies will become more useful now, especially spies. :)

Posted By: Panama Jack
AATrade Twitter (Mar 25, 2009 - 8:07pm)
Tarnus has already announced the addition of a Twitter Group so people can keep track of development of the game and other things.

We will try to keep it updated on what we are doing. If you have a Twitter application or plug in you need to Follow aatrade. This will keep you updated at all times.

There are a number of plugins for different browsers to let you follow twitter groups while using your browser. I have modified the Opera Twitter Widget to allow the addition of Group Tags for cross posting. If you use a group tag like #aatrade in your Tweet then ANYONE, even people not following aatrade, can see the Tweet. This will allow people to see all posts and replies so they can decide if they want to follow the group.

If you use Opera 9/10 you can download the widget from http://junk.aatraders.com/twitter_3.20_groups.zip

Copy the file to Opera's widgets directory. Make sure Opera is running and drag the file into the Opera window. This will install the widget. Enter your user name and password. Make sure you have signed up for Twitter first. Click on the Gear to enter the widgets configuration. In Group Tags enter #aatrade. Now everything you Tweet will also show up in the #aatrade area. You can turn this off at any time in the configuration.

Please, only enable this when you are posting or replying to aatrade.

We will be adding a side bar to the main website that will show all of the #aatrade tweets. This will let you get a quick glance as new tweets without having to load a Twitter application.

Posted By: Panama Jack
Wanted... Guides!!!! (Aug 22, 2008 - 5:15pm)
We are looking for volunteers that will take on the responsibility of being "Guides" in the main game.

What's a guide?
A guide is someone that will always help a new player with questions and information. Many RPGs and large games have them to help the new users. This doesn't mean you give them money, just help with how to do things and questions when they arise. From what some people say we have quite the complicated game with its ever evolving changes.

When a new user logs in an announcement will show them information and tell them to contact guides with their questions. Guides are users with Guide in their names. Only we will be able to add Guide to your username to prevent abuse. Don't let us catch you as a guide giving bad info or you may find yourself podded or kicked from the game. As far as help. Please keep it to questions and or maybe warp links if they are stuck, try not to give them credits. Most players learn better if they have to earn what they get.

Whats in it for the Guide? Absolutely nothing, but the knowledge that you helped a new users that may not quit because it got too hard for them. And maybe a user that you can shoot once they get on their feet.

Being a guide doesn't mean you can't shoot someone, just use good judgment and try to play with a high moral standard.

Step right up and let us know if you want to be a guide or not.

Posted By: Tarnus
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