> including one with bots, so you can always play.

Is this going to be implemented on continuum?  Would be nice to have pre-t 
bots on continuum to see if it helps keep new players in the game.  Gives 
new players something to do, something to practice against.  Having to orbit 
your home planet waiting for a game to start minutes after downloading the 
game I feel sends the wrong message and can be confusing for new players. 
New players downloading the game shouldn't be pushing Netrek aside due to 
boredom.

>>   d) Promotional efforts. Joe is basically the only who has done much
>>      on this and I appreciate his efforts.
>
> This should be first on the list!

So far, for the month of November:
--  Bills client has been downloaded 992 times from playnetrek.org and 101 
times from download.com.
--  The Tedturner client has been downloaded 37 times from playnetrek.org.
--  96 people clicked on the MacTrek link and 63 people have clicked on the 
Linux client link.

We have a steady flow of traffic, we need to focus on keeping it.  I think 
doing what we are doing now, having a civil discussion on the issue, is a 
key start to getting the game built back up.  The petty bickering seems to 
be dying down a lot on pickup games, which is very good, this seemed to be 
having a negative impact on the game and new players starting out.  The hate 
spam being spewed by certain people to the all board, I feel, is a definite 
turn off for new players.

> Do we have any ways to find more former players and get them back?

An announcement, or several, on rgn could help pull some of the older 
players back in.  I wouldn't make it sound negative, it should be a 
proactive and unbiased message talking about experimental improvements being 
put into place to help build the playerbase back up for ALL server types.  A 
lot of the older players still read rgn, they come out of the woodwork when 
certain announcements are made.

My opinion on the warped server...I have never seen it misreporting bots as 
players and there is a group of dedicated sturgeon players that have formed 
in the past several months that love playing on warped.  The server operates 
cleanly.  I like playing on it every once in a while just to mix things up 
and I get better ping times on warped then on any other server.  I think it 
is good to have such a great variety of options available to the community, 
as well as new players, and I feel it makes the game more interesting when 
people want a break from bronco and don't want to play hockey.  Bill has 
done a great job with warped and his client, the stats clearly show this.

Unfortunatley warped has had a negative impact on some of the older bronco 
players that have less time to sit on servers waiting for a game to start 
and refuse to play anything other than bronco.  While they are not a huge 
percentage of our playerbase, they are enough to make a difference in 
getting games going on a bronco server from time-to-time.  If only for a 
couple hours a day.

It doesn't seem right to shun either group from t-mode games but there 
currently doesn't seem to be enough players to support bronco if a sturgeon 
server is up 24x7.  The problem child here is bronco so I can understand why 
the priority is being placed on bronco servers on the metaserver.  As long 
as Bill keeps warped up there will always be a dedicated group of sturgeon 
players, I don't think this change will kill sturgeon.  Seems like what 
James is implementing with this metaserver change is a middle ground for all 
server types.  This will allow bronco games to build back up while at the 
same time giving visibility to other servers.  Will be interesting to watch 
things unfold.

I am hoping everyone can work through this change together over the next 
couple months to see how it effects the current playerbase.  If it has a 
positive impact and helps draw enough people into the game to satisfy all 
server types then the wait is worth it.  If it has a negative impact then at 
least we can say this is something that was tried and hopefully move on.  I 
do feel if something like this is in place, the limit to list spare servers 
should be set to 10 players instead of 12 until we can get more people in 
the game.  If a bronco game has 10 people in it before other servers show up 
on the metaserver list that is a pretty good jump.  Just my opinion.


-Joe