Weekend Pitboss

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[spacetyrantxenu]

Man, I leave the computer for five minutes and a new PB game breaks out. I'm expecting a detailed game report.

Game report: Yeah the big simultaneous pitboss was a spectacular failure. Not a failure in the PB7 sense, more like a failure to launch. We couldn't get everyone connected simultaneously to play the turns, so it was going to be a really slow process of people logging in and out in groups. We tried it with nine people in the first game with no management of how people were logging in and it was understandably a complete charlie foxtrot. We tried again setting up a second game, this time with eleven players (by popular demand!) but with having the players log in and play in smaller groups to try to alleviate the congestion problems. But having to log in and out frequently was a hassle and didn't work out either, the game just didn't work smoothly enough to run.

Analysis: The fun part of a big pitboss game is that there are a lot of players, lots of things happening all over the map. To me a smaller game doesn't capture the same atmosphere as a big game does. I'd really like to get this to work -- has anyone ever played in or (gasp) hosted a successful blitz style pitboss game with a lot of players in it? I have two ideas for things we could try, but I don't know how fun or viable they would be.

Problem: It seems like most of the problem with simultaneous connections in a big group of players is that inevitably a few players can't connect to each other, for whatever reason (firewalls, intermediate routers, you name it). When they start bouncing off each other that kills the simultaneous flow of the game and someone will have to log out so somebody else can log in and play. Then, repeat the same process frequently as the turns go by. That slows the game down a lot for everyone and kinda kills the atmosphere for everyone with the constant pausing as people log in and out.

Proposed Remedy: Everyone who is playing needs to be able to reliably connect to everyone else. I've employed a VPN connection between game participants in the past to connect to otherwise unreachable players (specifically BGN behind a campus firewall that he had no control over). It worked reasonably well for direct IP connection games we've played. So for a game like we tried today maybe if we were all connected into a VPN network together that would alleviate some of the peer to peer network connection problems we experienced.

The problem with this approach is that it requires a bit more effort on the setup end -- it's a lot less spontaneous and a lot more planned (which could be a good thing, but the whole point of a what we tried today was just to jump in and play, IMO). But if it works and if there is demand on this site for more frequent, faster paced pitboss games than we normally play, going through the trouble of setting up a VPN network for occasional pitboss play could be worth the trouble. I'm thinking specifically of something like Hamachi, but that's the only product like it that I've used, there may be something else that works better or more easily. So a private VPN network is one idea.

Alternate remedy: The other idea, and one that admittedly resonates less with me, would be to cut back on the number of players in the game, maybe scale it back to five or six at the most, and then fill other slots with AIs to still get the big game pitboss feel. The obvious downside to that idea is that we would be playing against AIs, which is probably something that doesn't interest a lot of the players here after the game has been out for as long as it has. I still enjoy single player games and the (bad) AI doesn't bother me so much, I can still enjoy the experience. But the trouble in introducing AIs into an RB pitboss game is that it could quickly devolve into a game of who can abuse the AIs the most to gain advantage, and then the human element of the competition becomes much less important.

It can still be fun, which is the whole point, so I'm not discounting the idea completely. I just don't think it's as fun as being able to run a real, big blitz style game. But since we're not all on a LAN I don't know how we'd accomplish it with a full complement of players (unless the VPN idea helps?), so some kind of human/AI game could be a decent backup plan -- it still scratches the Civ itch.

Does anyone have more experience with what we tried today, or any ideas on how to make it work better? I'd love to play more frequent, faster games with a big crowd of the regulars here, and I'm probably not the only player who does judging by the quick and large turnout for today's failure to launch.

Input...go again!

[BRickAstley]

From my limited and out of date experience, I've had OpenVPN work better than Hamachi, though it does require a bit more configuration to get set up.

[Commodore]

Honestly, I think 6 players games could be perfectly fun too, particularly with the whole "I'm out, who wants to take it next?" plan.

[spacetyrantxenu]

I tried to set up an OpenVPN server before but I didn't spend a lot of time on it and never got it working right. At the time I was trying to get BGN's campus Internet connection to work so we could play direct IP games, but Hamachi sorted it out well enough and was easier so I went with that. Brick, when you used it before how was it set up, someone hosted a server you VPN'ed into and the game host was on the same local network as the VPN server, or was it peer to peer VPN connections, or something else?

@Commodore yeah you're right, anything playable is more fun than what we ended up with today. But I think the problem was there was a great demand for playing slots, and meeting that need by hosting multiple games is obviously a less fun way to settle it. (Besides, if we run two games it's possble two people can be proclaimed winner. In one big game there's only one winner, so as a bonus more people go home disappointed! )

[spacetyrantxenu]

And maybe it's possible I'm barking up the wrong tree completely, since direct connection games (outside of pitboss) are probably what is intended for quicker gameplay sessions. But people dropping in and out of those games is just obnoxious, probably worse than in pitboss with the whole voting to continue thing. And I've never tried a game like that with a lot of people before, I'm going to guess it's even more of a mess than what we ended up with today.

[Sullla]

If everyone is online at the same time, you should just play through the normal Gamespy client, not Pitboss. The Pitboss setup is not designed to have a whole bunch of teams logged in at the same time. I fear that this idea is trying to put a square peg into a round hole.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Maybe so. But it seems apparent that there is demand for more quick paced games around here. Maybe some semi-regular scheduled weekend games (gamespy, PB, whatever) would be well received and with good participation.

Edit: Or maybe it's just because all the pitboss games are offline at the moment.

[Krill]

If everyone is online at the same time, you should just play through the normal Gamespy client, not Pitboss. The Pitboss setup is not designed to have a whole bunch of teams logged in at the same time. I fear that this idea is trying to put a square peg into a round hole.

No we couldn't, it's exactly the same problem that it's a bitch to get more than 8 players into the same game at the same time. God damn NAT.

[BRickAstley]

If everyone is online at the same time, you should just play through the normal Gamespy client, not Pitboss. The Pitboss setup is not designed to have a whole bunch of teams logged in at the same time. I fear that this idea is trying to put a square peg into a round hole.

I've never used the gamespy client before, so I don't have any idea to its capabilities for massive amounts of players.

Xenu, with Open VPN, I think how it was setup was to direct connect to a router on the LAN that the game was being hosted on. I don't remember the specifics, but I can ask my friend about it, all I know is that it worked with two separate players being campus-firewall-or-whatever restricted like I was, and that issue disappeared at that point.