I don't know if ICE9 still does this, but they used to have a bunch of interesting customizations, like where sectors 1-2000 were a lightly regulated federation space were connected to a small 10-sector neutral zone, with the Star Dock sector being the jumping-off point into the wider universe. I loved playing there!
Oh man...TW2002...brings back memories....damn. I remember playing with Cruncher. I played heavily on the Fament BBS...
I was in middle school...so this would have been mid 90's.
I was connected to the Internet using a freenet that was provided by SEFLIN (South East Florida Library Information Network)...text based. People who had real internet ran applications, and using ICQ to chat (since you can scan the in network chat for teams chattering!) I was using plain ol text based Internet...and Pine was my email program. I still use nano very often as my editor of choice :)
One time my local BBS moved to Miami...but the area code was still 305. It was considered long distance, even though the area code was the same. I racked up quite a telephone bill.
Ah yes, I've seen SWATH before. Here's my issue: when I started playing, it was on a BBS where everyone played manually. There were no helpers or scripts. We'd manually keep track of sectors and port pairs and potential bubbles and so on. It was great. I belong to the camp that believes the scripts ruined the game :-/
You don't have to use the helper bits of SWATH! Just turn that stuff off and enjoy it's near-perfect terminal emulation. I've played several games like that (these were old school 5000-sector games with rate limits, like how God intended you to play).
http://swath.net/
My meagre collection of SWATH scripts:
https://github.com/irtnog/swath-scripts/tree/master/src
The ICE9 game server:
http://www.oregonsouth.com/ice9/
I don't know if ICE9 still does this, but they used to have a bunch of interesting customizations, like where sectors 1-2000 were a lightly regulated federation space were connected to a small 10-sector neutral zone, with the Star Dock sector being the jumping-off point into the wider universe. I loved playing there!
Cruncher's Trade Wars server:
http://cruncherstw.blogspot.com/ https://www.facebook.com/CrunchersTW
Cruncher's is small but fun, with a variety of games and regular resets.