Hi there; your happy moderator/designer here..

[Zandolf]

Regarding the trader game. Do you really think having pirates attacking every 2-3 turns is fun? I was actually attacked my first time leaving a planet in 2 games. There is no way with the credits I had, that I could have bought any thing to counter any of the pirate raids. Fun? not for me.

I had hoped this game would be close to a game put out by Omnitrend in the days of 8 bit computers. It's not. The economics make no sense, Pirates attack every 2 - 3 turns, limited choices and trade centers that dissapear.

Prices rise and fall 100% plus,in a turn. Actually, 2 turns. for instance, I was on a planet where they sold an item for 22 credits, the next planet I went to, they wanted 9 credits for the item. I loaded up, returned to the 1st planet where it was 22 credits 3 turns before, only to find the item is now 8 credits. No worries though, the pirates took them off my hands the next turn.

Another problem, if you leave a trade center on a planet, you can't go back, unless you leave the planet and return. This is a problem if you don't have the credits in your pocket to make purchases. The trade center ignores credits in the bank. Leaving a planet to get the trade center back usually involves pirates and you crash a burn and so on.

Purchasing fuel is another problem, you either don't get any, or fill it up. If you don't have enough credits on you for a full tank of fuel, the entire purchase becomes a loan, again ignoreing credits in the bank and what ever you did have in your pockets.

The game choices are limited, you have 8 total planets to deal with, and each planet only offers 3 items at a time. The items do vary from planet to planet, but with such a small offering of items on each planet, it's hard to gauge what will sell where for what. Although, I get the feeling that it doesn't matter, since prices rise and fall on a random whim.

I was really looking forward to something like that old Omnitrend game. Guess I should go hunt down that old computer. I wonder if the disks are still good after 20 years?

Zandolf