Multiplayer

[Arantor]

Confession: I've never played MoO 2 in multiplayer, never found anyone else I knew out here in real life that owned the MoO games, so I have no idea how it works in practice. Not that I ever enjoyed MoO 2 nearly as much as MoO 1 anyway.

So I'm pondering how an MoO 1 in multiplayer would work. What would work best?

Would it be best to run in a sort of hot-seat set-up? Or some kind of 'you have x hours to play your turn'? That seems to me like it would be rather slow; it works for other games, where there are naturally fewer turns and thus naturally a shorter time to complete the game.

[Zeraan]

Beyond Beyaan is aiming to be an exact MoO 1 clone presently. It'd be an interesting experiment to add multiplayer to it and see how it fares. If multiplayer were to be added, there's two options available:

Hot-seat - Each player takes their turn individually, issuing orders and such. When they're done with their turn, they hit end turn, and it gives control to the next player. When all players are done, it handles battles individually, allowing players to control their fleets/bombardment options when it's their turn.

Network - Each player issues orders at the same time, it waits until everyone hits end turn. Then the host syncs up all the data, and updates each player with fleet movement and such. Battles are resolved by players involved. So if you're not in a battle, you don't see battles. But you can chat with other players while you wait for the combat to be resolved. (This is how MoO 2 works as well)

I don't see any other ways of having multiplayer work due to how gameplay is done.

[Arantor]

The problem with waiting until everyone hits end turn - what happens if someone forgets? Do you suspend the entire game indefinitely? Or some kind of maximum turn time?

[Zeraan]

The problem with waiting until everyone hits end turn - what happens if someone forgets? Do you suspend the entire game indefinitely? Or some kind of maximum turn time?

MoO 2 multiplayer don't have a time limit on turns. I guess that can be added as an option that players can add (can have time limit or not, and how much time per turn) to make sure nobody takes too long on a turn.

[Arantor]

What happens if you miss a turn? Does it skip your turn (perhaps kicking in your race's natural AI)? Does it boot you from the game if you skip too many?

[Zeraan]

What happens if you miss a turn? Does it skip your turn (perhaps kicking in your race's natural AI)? Does it boot you from the game if you skip too many?

Hmm, that could be an option - Kick player after X missed turns.

However, with AI kicking in, it could cause potential issues. For example, let's say you're designing a ship, and it took too long, and the time runs out. We have two options at this point:

Force end of turn - No other actions are taken, it's as if the player immediately presses end turn, losing any unsaved ship designs.

AI takes over - AI will immediately make decisions, and submit them, then ends turn. However, if you were in middle of doing something, having AI take over can undo your choices, which can be bad. But if players are OK with this, they can turn this option on, otherwise default to "Force end of turn".

[Arantor]

If the player is aware of the time factor remaining, I don't see that this should be a problem. If there's a countdown that shows them how much left, then it's their fault if they don't submit moves in time.

I won't deny that I have my own thoughts on an MoO style game, but I'm not thinking of the retro look or some of the modding capacity of Beyond Beyaan; I'm actually thinking about going web-based and making multiplayer an integral part of it (but I'm fluid and quite happy to switch over to Unity as a base to build on if that would work better, which it might, it's still in the entirely hypothetical stages right now)

[Catwalk]

I think the MoO 1 system should be scrapped entirely in favour of a new one. And it should be a single system IMO, not multiple systems that you can pick and choose from (for reasons discussed in the other thread). Master of Magic actually had a multiplayer port where the AI controlled the forces of other human players when you attacked them. It was utterly dissatisfying, and made the whole thing pointless. Same thing with the tactical combat option.

The Civ4 model works well for a sequential game, but I have a hard time seeing it "feel" right for space combat. And it would be a shame to have to settle for a sequential combat system, as the simultaneous nature of MoO could be a great asset for MP capability.