Should I buy it? Help me understand

[Argitoth]

Hey, I fell from the stars and crash-landed onto this weird Space Conquest forum-planet. So anyway, apart from being a star child, I'm thinking of indulging myself into this newly crashed-upon planet of space conquest. (Wow, mouthfull)

Anywho, so I was playing the demo and I was totally overwhelmed with the amount of micromanaging. (I do know about the minister feature)

Theres so much I can't begin to even ask questions.

I would like any type of responce, just say something. I'll ask the questions later.

Well, see yeh

--Argitoth, the strange Star Child.

[ December 02, 2003, 04:22: Message edited by: Argitoth ]

[Argitoth]

I do have one question which will almost completely decide if I buy it or not.

-How many players can play on one TCP/IP?
-What are other options for multiplayer games?
-How do multiplayer games work?

[JayBdey]

You'll find multiplayer in this game to be horribly painful to get working. And if you do get it working, playing the game is slow in multiplayer.

But if you do manage to get it working, it can be very fun.

[Cyrien]

Never have played TCP/IP myself so can't answer that one. Most likely the limit would be 20 though. It is everywhere else in the game.

Most people play using PBW.

http://www.pbw.cc

It works great. I have played many games using it. It can take awhile to play through a whole game but it is much easier to get schedules etc to fit so that it works for everyone.

Hrmm... How do mulitplayer games work. Not sure quite what you mean... but for PBW it would work something like this.


Each player downloads/is e-mailed/ one of a few other options their turn file. Each person plays the game on their machine ends their turn and the game creates a .plr file. You send that via whatever method you are using to the host server. Once all players get their turns in or the time limit for that game is reached or whatever other setting for kicking a turn off is reached the PBW server processes the turns and sends out the next turn files to everyone and updates the page and allows for downloading the turn file from their as well. Rinse and Repeat.

As for the actual game. PBW only supports simultanious turn games so each player basicaly issues the orders during their turn.

Tell ship A to move here
Tell ship B to attack ship X
etc

instead of seeing the ships move they accept the orders and when the turn gets executed everyones ships execute their orders in a stepped format of 30 cycles (every turn is 1/10 of a game year or 1 game month, 30 game days in a game month). Ships with more movement points will move first and more often. IE: If you had a ship that had 30 movement it would move once every game day however if you had a ship with 15 movement it would move once every other gameday.

If you so desired during your turn you could playback the movement log and see the ships move if you wanted. You get combat logs and can't directly fight combat. Instead you use the strategies and set them up. This feature is very important for PBW.

Hope that answers some of your questions and gives you a general overview.

[se5a]

Originally posted by JayBdey:
You'll find multiplayer in this game to be horribly painful to get working. And if you do get it working, playing the game is slow in multiplayer.

But if you do manage to get it working, it can be very fun.

I didnt have any problems at all - once I worked out what I was doing.
tcpip is a little confusing to do. but PBW is great.
if your playing by pbw however you need to play similtanios mode (which I think is better anyway)

[JayBdey]

PBW is horribly slow and can take days just to get started.

[Phoenix-D]

Originally posted by JayBdey:
PBW is horribly slow and can take days just to get started.

Or it can not. In TCP games you spend a lot of time waiting for other players to finish their turns anyway. PBW games, you don't exactly have that, and games can go just as fast as TCP assuming everyone stays at their computer and plays.

OTOH, PBW games quite easily can stretch over months, or more. But when you have 20 players involved, that's understandable, and the logistics of getting them all in one place for a TCP game would be..difficult to say the least.

[Argitoth]

in TCP/IP is there an autohost option? e.g. when all players have ended a turn, the turn is generated and the players can then take their next turns.

[Atrocities]

Originally posted by Phoenix-D:
Originally posted by JayBdey:

OTOH, PBW games quite easily can stretch over months, or more. But when you have 20 players involved, that's understandable, and the logistics of getting them all in one place for a TCP game would be..difficult to say the least.

SpaceCon 2004! Space Empire fans from around the glob unite for the worlds largest lan party in world history. Hosted by Malfador, Shrapnel, and many many more.

I vote Portland OR.

[ December 02, 2003, 06:08: Message edited by: Atrocities ]

[Fyron]

Originally posted by JayBdey:
You'll find multiplayer in this game to be horribly painful to get working. And if you do get it working, playing the game is slow in multiplayer.

That is only true for TCP/IP, and only you do not know how to forward ports on a firewall. PBEM, which is how most MP games are played, is rather painless.

Originally posted by JayBdey:
PBW is horribly slow and can take days just to get started.

SE4 is not pretending to be a RTS game where each game is over with in hours, you know. You can very easily get face paced PBW games; just get a group of players willing to sit down all at one time to play them. They even go faster than TCP/IP (much faster in some cases) when you start getting more than 2 or 3 players in a game. This is because TCP/IP only sends the game files to one player at a time. PBEM/PBW allows the game files to be sent to all players at once, and the host only has to do a single upload, rather than one to every player. Check out the PBW Real-time Client if you want even faster retrieval of turns.

Originally posted by Argitoth:
in TCP/IP is there an autohost option? e.g. when all players have ended a turn, the turn is generated and the players can then take their next turns.

No. The turn only processes when the host hits the execute next turn button. This has both its advantages and its disadvantages.

[ December 02, 2003, 06:56: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]