At this point, I’d rather not include Delta. Part of the reason Delta was dropped, is to have a higher concentration of players in one zone, as opposed to having us divided among essentially, two servers (3 if you count xmltrek.com). But another, more overarching reason, was to shift gameplay towards a slightly slower- but more tactical type of gameplay. Since the 100-gold cap was removed from the bots, as will be the case in 6.0, gold earning and score advancement will still be considerably faster, compared to the first 9 months of version 5.x.
Another factor, is that I started of the beta with a somewhat conservative number of bots (13) to give everyone a chance to find their bearings with the new setup. I don’t intend for players to sit twiddling their thumbs for 10 minutes between every fight, but I also don’t want anyone to become frustrated because they are frequently being overwhelmed by waves of bots. Delta, which played very similarly to mtrek.pro, had a very fast gameplay which centered around clusters of supply planets. The environment was well-suited for some ship classes and play styles, but others were left out. I suppose the advantage of the classic quadrant layout, coupled with the distribution of the bots, is that players can vary their own “intensity” levels by patrolling different areas of the game. For example, the “strip” (Vulcan & SB 3/4/5) will almost always have some bots to shoot at, as will Delta Vega / Deneva. In Gamma quadrant, the planet cluster a, t, and b- along with praxis/sb28 are good places to hunt.
Another feature re-introduced for 6.0, is the ability to “summon” bots for a fight, provided they are in the same quadrant and full power. To do so, simply send the bot a message with the word “no” in it. If he’s up for it, he’ll reply back that you’re about to suffer some horrible fate, and soon enough he’ll be in your area looking for you. It isn’t 100% guaranteed to get you a fight because, for example, the bot might get attacked on the way to find you.. but I think you get the idea.
And at the end of the day, if the bot population is still too small, I can always increase the number from 13.