Changes in the SST Game Announced in 2002

From:  http://librenix.com/sst/announce.txt

Hello Traders,

For those of you not familiar with the new version, this is a 
brief overview of the differences:

1) Ship types: There are a total of 19 different ship types
   in 4 levels.  The first level of ships includes only 
   the Corvette, the ship everyone starts out with.  A 
   Corvette will hold 60 cargo holds and has 5 equipment bays.
   That is sometimes abreviated as Corvette [60:5].

   The second level of ships are: Schooner [70:15],
   Frigate [80:10], and Transport [90:5]. To upgrade from
   a Corvette to one of these costs 100,000 microbots.

   The third level of ships are: Battleship [100:25],
   Destroyer [110:20], Cruiser [120:15], Liner [130:10],
   and Freighter [140:5].  These upgrades costs 200,000.

   The (10) fourth level ships have the same capacities and
   base names as the third, but add either Stealth or
   Hyper capability -- but not both.  Hyper ships have a
   permanent, rechargeable rocket booster and can warp to 
   other galaxies for 20,000 grams of fuel. Stealth ships
   are not visible to launched scouts (although deployed 
   spies can see them) and, while logged on, are not 
   visible to other players.  They are cloaked --
   but only while awake. Note that you can attack a
   cloaked stealth ship, if you can figure out where it is.
   Use the telnet attack command ( type the letter 'A' )
   while in the same sector as the stealth ship to attack.  

   Either of these upgrades costs 400,000.  You can 
   downgrade from this level to the same type of ship you 
   originally upgraded from.  Then, you can upgrade to a 
   different stealth or hyper ship type.

   The new ships have slightly fewer cargo holds than the
   traditional ships, but are more efficient.  The fuel use
   properties are completely different from before.

   These new ships fight back when attacked, even if they
   have 0 fighters.  Their ability to fight is based
   on their type, their shields, and to a small degree,
   on their combat computers.

2) There are ten new pieces of equipment to add to the
   existing ones (shields, combat computers, homing devices,
   and rocket boosters).  Some only give you access to old
   features (a Statistics Module lets you do Player listings
   and Facts of commerce.  Others in this category are 
   Scout Launcher, Player Pager, and the Tractor Device that
   lets you move planets and ports.) The totally new devices
   are: Planet Scooper (auto trade out planet/port pairs)
 Planet Locator (find planets from anywhere)
 Navigation Module (find BH's, Neutrals, TP's)
 Sector Scanner (see enemy bases, fighter fleets, 
    automatically avoid bases when computrading)
 Homing Device Launcher (leave HD's in sectors)
 Black Hole Orbiter (lets you enter BH sectors)

3) Shields and Combat computers are now five times as
   powerful, four times as expensive, and you are limited to ten
   of each regardless of how many equipment bays your ship has.

4) Bunkers are different.  They no longer store holds, CC's, 
   or shields but will now store fuel.

5) Neutral fighter fleets vary by galaxy.  Some galaxies will
   have very few, very small fleets.  Other galaxies will have
   very many, much larger fleets (up to fleets of about 1800).

6) There are probably 20 minor changes.  The largest of those
   are: there is a small antimatter charge for using the 
   autopilot.  You can no longer attack allied fighters or AA
   bases. Planets productivity goes up with the port prod. bonus,
   ship types show in 'other players', and rankings. Refunds on
   traded in equipment are now down to 50%, and the prices of
   all equipment (except HD's and boosters) is about 10,000.
   Bunkers are limited to smaller sizes (10 in the test game).
   The menu has changed slightly to accomodate the new devices
   and commands. The Jettison leaves a tiny amount of debris
   in the sector.  Homing devices will sometimes stick to your
   hull even if there is an HD already on it.  In that case,
   the old HD on your ship falls off into the sector to stick
   to some other passerby. Several minor bugs have been fixed
   as well, and there are probably a few other new bugs to 
   make up for that.

The test game runs at http://starshiptraders.com:4080/ and
you can telnet into it at port 4023.  Don't bother to log into
the test game to access the new features, however, since the
newest version also runs in the main games at:
   http://starshiptraders.com/
and
   telnet://starshiptraders.com:23/