**The Tale of 2000** **planets*** * Start Dramatic Music **Intro:** (Make sure to read the Snake Saga Introduction on the stories page first.) This was probably the first full game Snake and I played together as teammates. It took place with Wide Beta 2 I believe, (Before everyone found out about the bug) and took place on our local TW BBS, Stardock. While we had our fights with other people, the main player we were woried about this entire game was Hemlock, THE best TW player in our area. Not even Me and Snake combined could probably beat him. :) **The Players:** Snake and I. (Corped) Octavian (The Sysop) and Xerces, and Hemlock. **End Intro:** As the game started off, Our Corp got into our ISSs by day two. Knowing that Hemlock would probably be searching for us once we no longer had Fedspace protection, We begain looking for a nice place to set up a planet. Snake quickly found one, there was a 4-way dead-end braching off from sector 0 in fedspace. We thought it was great, we could get our colony started faster since we didn't need to spend as money on fuel ore to start off. (This was a 400 turn game, mind you.) However, we knew that it would probably be only a mater of time until someone would find it. We needed to keep it defended until we got a level 4. Unfortunatelly, Octavian and Xerces found out our little hiding place. They busted through our defences and took the planet one day before the level 2 went on‑line. ## DOH! We need to take the planet back! We gathered our resources for a few days, and lead the attack on the planets. They had a level 3 now, but photons quickly took care of it. I went back to sector 1 to buy more fighters, but when I sent in the Transwarp command, I was one sector off of where I was planning to go and lost my ship! ## DOH!!! I lost our entire attack force, about 15k fighters. Snake was pretty pissed. :) Now that we had no fighters, it looked like Octavian and Xerces would be able to hold the planet until they got a level 4. Hemlock was no where to be seen, probably cultavating his own planets and letting us duke it out. But Wait! I had a GREAT idea.... since v2 of Tradewars allowed colliding planets, why not just use THEM to destroy the planet? Snake loved the idea. Since no one in our area had ever attemped this stunt before, we didn't know how it worked, nor did we have time to experiment since their Level 4 would go online the next day. This is where the fun begins. Since we didn't know how the CP worked, we just bombared the sector with genesis torpedos. We must have had at LEAST 80‑90 planets in that sector when we were done! The Display screen listing the planets practically took 5 minutes to scroll down. :) We logged on the next day, and our evil plan indeed worked! The planet was destroyed with Xerces on it! Victory was ours! Or was it? Here's the sticky part, Octavian was the sysop, and used the goddly powers of TEDIT to remake his planet, (And Xerces) claiming that it was an illegal tactic. I knew we should have never played with a sysop! Needless to say, this killed the current game. Me and Snake no longer had an urge to play until the game reset, and Madman and his corp agreed to not play until the next game since they didn't like Octavian's Decision either. After this Incident, Octavian disapeared. His mailbox eventually became full, and he never even logged on. People still kept calling the board about 1 month after the game officially "died" in hopes that Octavian would at least reset the game. But alas, Octavian never again logged on, and the board quietly died one day. # Notes: While it may seem a bit harsh against Octavian, I have a lot of credit and Honor for him. He set up THE PLACE for Tradewars veterans to play, maintained it through several games, and this story is probably the only time he cheated. What most likely happened is that Octavian felt a lot of regret about the planet, and no longer had an urge to run his board. It's really a shame that Stardock went down. Many of us would have still played there, even after this incident. :( In case your reading this Octavian, Both me and Snake forgave you a long time ago. :) Thanks for at least giving us TW players some memories and great times. If you like this story, [Mail me](mailto:Joel1@Cris.com) and tell me what you think. I'll write more stories if people give me some feedback.

Pir8.net has once again resurfaced, now as a part of family entertainment. It can still be reached at it's old address of [Pir8.net](telnet://pir8.net). As for Fament, it's not down, it's address has just moved. It's new domain name is [bbs.fament.com](telnet://bbs.fament.com). **Martech's site moved** Martech's main page has been moved to [www.martech.net](https://web.archive.org/web/19970000000000*/https://www.martech.net/). The v3 page will still be at John's page. (Listed below w/ the User manual. I fixed the link.)

Martech's Offical site now has a [HTMLized TW user manual](https://web.archive.org/web/19970000000000*/https://cypress.idir.net/%7Ejpritch/Version3.html). It's gazillions of times better than the old text one. The links help to get you where you want to go a lot easier. ** ** **Slow week** In case you haven't noticed, news this week has been pretty slow. I`m working on the stories section whenever i have free time. Hopefully it`ll be up soon.

Some of us TW insiders have known about this page for a while, but Martech's page is finally ready to open! The graphic will lead you to their page. **Eleq's page updated** Silly me, when Eleq moved his page, I forgot to give the new address. [The Home Sector](/) now has it's proper URL. Do I know how to treat my friends or what? :>

In case your wondering why there haven't been any updates for about 5 days, it's because I severly lacerated my index finger making dinner Wedsday night. It was a pretty messy too. > I had to go to the ER, but fortunatelly no stiches. Anyway, I've been kinda busy lately because of it, and it also makes it a bit harder to type. **FEN's game begins** For those of you that forgot, [FEN's](telnet://fament.com) game was rebanged today.

If you notice, the links icon is now operational. Eleq is having fun messing around with it. I had something totally diffrent planed for it, but we'll let Eleq have his fun for now. ;) **FEN's new game** Yes, you heard it right, [FEN](telnet://fament.com) is starting a new game one month after it's old one started. Either there were too many turns, or someone really did a blitzkreig. Rebang date for the game is Saturday, the 13th. **Pir8.net down** If your wondering about why Pir8.net is down, it`s currently moving. JFK wasn`t making any money with the system, (Who can blame him? He gave unlimited time. :) family entertainment has been nice enough to pick up his board. It'll only have access via telnet, throught FEN when it goes back up, or so I hear. It's sceduled to be up next week, but we all know how scedules work. :)

Since Stardock is now defuct, it was probably only a matter of time until someone came to take it's place. [Azi.com](telnet://azi.com) is the newest telnet only board and looks like it has some potential. Even better, it's hosted by Gypsy. (Of [Gypsy's War room](https://web.archive.org/web/19970000000000*/https://www.azi.com/Gypsy/) fame) As a special opening treat, Free access is being given to all verified telnet accounts until october. The place looks promising. **Marching Band and Updates** Sorry about the lack of new info about what's currently going on. Marching Band is currently eating up all my time. :)

[Keynet's](telnet://bbs.keynetcorp.net) game started today. Cool Prize with it! If you win the game, you and your corpies get 2 months of Pro-Member Class FREE! Is that a deal or what? **South Park** I have nothing better to write about now, so if you've heard the blitzkreig of Ads about Comedy Central's South Park, this is where it all started. it's a 40 meg avi file, but it's DEFINATELLY worth the download! It was so funny, I watched it again right after It stopped. There's also a real audio version for you lamers who don't want to wait for the full thing. [Go get it!](https://web.archive.org/web/19970000000000*/https://incognito.caltech.edu/soxmas/download.htm) **Power Outage and College** I would have updated more yesterday, but the power went off for about 12 hours. Anyway, here's the deal with college: I'll still be able to update the page from the computer lab, but I have to walk halfway accross campus to use it which means updates will be a little more irregular. (Not that they already aren't irregular. :) There is good news. In two weeks the comp lab in my dorm will be active, and i'll be able to update better. The bad news? I'm still going to have to use Vi to edit, so the pages may look a little screwed up until I master vi.

Hanzo Hattori, creator of TWNetBot, sent me this about a week ago: Yeah I know EleqTrizi'T and I have pretty much decided to just canTWNetBot - it has been over a year in the making and I just flat don't have time to make it and play the games i love to play (not to mention have time for work) so you guys can just take me of your links list if you want. I know EleqTrizi'T will be sad to hear this, but I just don't have time to figure out the geometry for the map and the algorithms for shortest warp path from X to Y. While I can't talk for everyone else, I know how hard those algorithms actually are. :) I just want to say thanks for helping out the tradewars community Hanzo. We appreciate your efforts.

A few misc changes with the graphic sizes were made. The most notable is the new logo we have from John Pritchett on the title page