Gary Martin speaks! New interview with TradeWars 2002 creator reddit / bbs ---------------------------------------------------------------------- the_dove · 2019-07-19 18:21 Thanks for posting this. It was a fun read! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Kirkman14 · 2019-07-19 18:27 Thanks so much! I hope oldschoolers will share their stories and memories in the comments on the blog post. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- bbs-user-2 · 2019-07-19 18:56 I won't post there, but two memories stand out... First: playing a game circa 1993, the big cheese player found one of my bases, got blasted, and then the log shows that one minute later a second player comes in and cleans me up. In those days it was 1000 turn limit per day, so the log showed me clearly that this guy was cheating with two different BBS logins. I'm ticked. A couple weeks later I've rebuilt and discover his base: it has two sectors at the end of a tunnel, with the outer sector containing 2-3 planets with cannons and the inner sector having more planets and his money. I time my invasion carefully: around 11:30pm I come in to the defensive sector with ~5 freighters and let his cannons pop each one, which drains all of his cannons. Get into my fully-loaded ISS, take the planets I can, and then twarp in more planets to defend the sector, and add mines and fighters. Then I photon blast his home sector, clear out his fighters, but find I can't take any of the planets. Oh well, I've put more than the max planets in his defensive sector so they will eventually start colliding which would destroy the ones I couldn't take anyway. Since I was close to midnight, I leave TW and come back in right after 12:00am, getting me 2000 turns to set everything up. The next day I see in the logs that he had come out of his home sector to the defensive planets, got popped, and then tried to come in with his other cheating player but got popped again. Based on his desperate message begging me to remove the planets for a billion credits, I can tell that he didn't set up any new fighters in his home sector when he had the chance, and he did not set up a backup base with any money. So despite the fact he had a million fighters and billions of credits on his home planets, he couldn't reach any of it! He would need months of buildup to get through my fighters and cannons. Second story (and a lot shorter): circa 2014 I play in a stale game where the big cheese had abandoned it about 3-4 years before. This one is unlimited turns, 10000+ sectors, lots out there. Over the course of the next few months, I wipe out the Ferrengi, find the old dead player's base, and eventually get into one of his citadels where there is about _30 billion_ credits or so. With that haul I get into the rest of his planets, and after I collect all of the money it's around 200 billion credits. Two months later that has quadrupled, and I discover that it is in fact possible to have over a trillion credits in a TW game. But short of a helper script, there is no way to _spend_ that much money: it's growing something like 1-2 million per second, and you would have to be nearly constantly going to one of the fighter sales ports and loading up a full interdictor and dumping the fighters just to barely beat the interest gaining on the money. I left that game shortly after, with a message in the bathroom pointing the next person to a level 2 citadel containing a billion credits and some fighters ready for the taking. ...fun times when one is testing a BBS terminal... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Kirkman14 · 2019-07-19 19:17 I love these anecdotes!! Would you be willing to copy-and-paste into the blog's comments? https://breakintochat.com/blog/2019/07/19/gary- martin-creator-tradewars-2002/#respond ---------------------------------------------------------------------- rykker · 2019-07-19 20:45 God, I remember mapping out routes/stations with a friend by hand on graph paper and figuring the best chokepoints to play toll fighters, where to have citadels... good times. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- CMack1978 · 2019-07-19 23:51 Thanks so much for the great memories! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Kirkman14 · 2019-07-20 00:29 Thanks for reading! I hope you'll consider sharing your own memories by adding a comment to the interview. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- samalex01 · 2019-07-20 01:48 This was and still is my BBS game of choice... Thanks for posting this, I never new how the game came to be. I do remember Trade Wars 2001, and i often wondered how or why it turned into 2002... Now I know. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Galileo228 · 2019-07-20 01:49 "Back then they allowed beer in the dorms." Uhhh... wha? Was there a time that wasn't allowed? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] · 2019-07-20 14:40 [removed] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Kirkman14 · 2019-07-20 16:40 Enjoyed the Gary Martin interview? Hankering for more BBS door game deep-dives? Check out my previous interviews: * [Shooter Jennings](https://breakintochat.com/blog/2015/09/18/shooter-jennings- creator-of-from-here-to-eternity/) (From Here to Eternity) * [Jon Radoff](https://breakintochat.com/blog/2016/02/02/jon-radoff- creator-of-space-empire-elite-and-final-frontier/) (Space Empire Elite, Final Frontier) * [Amit Patel](https://breakintochat.com/blog/2013/02/18/amit-patel- creator-of-solar-realms-elite/) (Solar Realms Elite, SRGames) * [Austin Seraphin](https://breakintochat.com/blog/2013/05/08/austin- seraphin-creator-of-barneysplat/) (BarneySplat!) * [Joel Bergen](https://breakintochat.com/blog/2013/03/21/joel-bergen- creator-of-global-war/) (Global War, Global Backgammon) * [Kevin MacFarland](https://breakintochat.com/blog/2013/09/05/kevin- macfarland-creator-of-assassin/) (Assassin) * [Hollie Satterfield](https://breakintochat.com/blog/2013/11/06/hollie- satterfield-creator-of-space-dynasty/) (Space Dynasty)