Trader 2 Patch RELEASED!
 

The new Trader 2 patch is out! See the front page for details/links, and click below to see the full list of changes and download the free upgrade patch:

Trader 2 Patch info/download here!

Lots of balance tweaks and gameplay changes to make it a bit tougher. No more having to exit the game to save!

Feel free to sound off here to let me know what you think of the upgrade patch! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[ May 05, 2003, 19:32: Message edited by: StormcloudCreations ]

Re: Trader 2 Patch RELEASED!
 

*bump* for the Front page of the forums http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: Trader 2 Patch RELEASED!
 

The url that you provide for the download is NOT working;

What I am getting as an error message is:

"HTTP Error 401
401.3 Unauthorized: Unauthorized due to ACL on resource

This error indicates that the credentials passed by the client do not have access to the particular resource on the server. This resource could be either the page or file listed in the address line of the client, or it could be another file on the server that is needed to process the file listed on the address line of the client.

Please make a note of the entire address you were trying to access and then contact the Web server's administrator to verify that you have permission to access the requested resource"

Re: Trader 2 Patch RELEASED!
 

*bump* now that its working! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Trader 2 Patch RELEASED!
 

*bump* so people can leave their comments and/or misc. compliments about the patch http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Trader 2 Patch RELEASED!
 

Like what I see so far Derek. The little ship icon was the biggest improvement.

Re: Trader 2 Patch RELEASED!
 

I have several suggestions for the next patch:

I hope that you have at least one more patch. You need to fix what ships are being offered at various times. As I mentioned before, after 20-30 turns, we would easily have over 1000 cargo and decent weapons, yet the ships offered are not much better than the beginning ships. You should probably break down what is offered by time. As a suggestion the first 20 turns gets one Category of ship, turns 21-40 gets a second Category etc. Also, you should absolutely provide special options that are not available by purchase, such as additional weapons, increase resistance to weapons, automatic repair after battle, reduce fuel useage or increased weapon bonuses etc.

As for the investment, something needs to be done. Why put money in tbe galactic account? There needs to be some hints or something to give us a reason to do this. Same would be for the stocks. We need some reason. Perhaps putting in random news on INDIVIDUAL stock hints or galactic account hints would be a good idea. Also, it wold be nice to put in more than 10,000 shares.

Re: Trader 2 Patch RELEASED!
 

Some of your suggestions are good. I will look more closely at the ships and their setup, though like I said, it wasn't always designed to generate uber-ships that can just wallop through the game. You always have to have something to upgrade, even on the purchased ships, otherwise the upgrade ships feature sort of loses its point. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif People will just wait arounf 30-40 turns and then buy a monster ship and that's it. Some of the ship market ships do have special bonus features not available through purchasing on rare occasions (weapon bonuses, money bonuses, better gas mileage, slower durability wear, etc). Adding more different bonuses (there are about 45 of them in the game now) may be an interesting idea.

The mutual funds at this point were designed to be risky and nebulous, and weren't really designed to provide a lot of info as far as when to put money in (this game wasn't ever designed to be a paint-by-numbers, wait-until-the-indicator-says-its-ok type game). You have to follow the trends (and there are trends over a period of time) in your own mind and invest accordingly. Same with stocks (though the stock page does have a news report and a past 7 turns "ticker" to help you out mapping trends). Each stock definately has a "weight" in the game; some will go up and down very erratically, some will stay fairly steady, and some will slowly move up (or down) the whole game, more or less. It's up to you to figure things out. No big flashing signs here. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

As far as the 10,000 shares rule, that was put in place to prevent people from sinking all their money into a low priced stock, then just waiting, and if it goes up enough, they just sell them and win the game. It's a game balance point to make the stock market a factor in a player's success, but not the ONLY factor.