Good afternoon all,

Senson, I appreciate you posting and asking. I am more than happy to address
your questions.
There were several reasons that I decided to remove the existing NPC ship
content from the game for the time being.

A. A lot of the ship-related code is some ~15-20 years old (if not older) and
now takes up a good half million lines of code. Due to the increasing level of
popularity of this content and our game in the last year, a number of back-end
systems that manage the content are in need of re-working and optimizing to
reduce the impact that they have on our overall game systems. Some of these
projects may take 1, 2, 3 or even a month of dedicated weekends to re-write,
test, and re-implement. Several challenges were laid out before me to address
by those that oversee and maintain the overall game systems in terms of
optimization.
B. While undertaking A) I am integrating the last installment of some new
combat features that were partially added by Melemkor, Dralith, and Aydjen in
the early 2000's and years that started with a '1', with my own personal
additions and flair as well.
C. Other aspects of this area of the game were/are vastly out of tune. I have
been collecting data for most of the last 8-10 years and I am working to
analyze them to provide solutions that ensure that content remains both
challenging and rewarding for those that choose to participate.
D. While A, B, and C are going on... ship systems are being moved internally
(very slowly) to a new central location.
Not really. I am hoping by the end of 2020.
Yes, I have been actively working on this content and things are moving
forward. I am hoping to start rolling out some early changes and content by the
end of Quarter 3.

All in all, now is a good time to put some extra work in things. As my life
outside of the gaming world continues to add new challenges, BatMUD has been a
part of my community and life for nearly 16 years. I'm not going anywhere, but
I am giving what time I can to the community that I love.

I apologize if it has taken longer than expected. I just moved halfway across
the state this weekend and cut 15-18 hours of commuting out of the picture, so
I'm hoping a lot more of my free time will be returning. My hopes is that when
things return, they do so in a matter that provides continued enjoyment from
years to come with relatively little maintenance and that I can move on to work
on other projects.

Respectfully,

-- Lord Tarken Aurelius, the Sage