Multiplayer discussion

[Alfapiomega (OP)]

Hello everyone,

with the publishing of 6.3 beta a thought returns to me - we should have a multi-player game. But how to go around it? I think that if we want to have one it will take some time to set it up, create rules and figure out a way in which we could do this..

I know that Aurora is not entirely MP friendly but this was done before by some, correct? It would take a lot of dedication from us, the players and I believe that we would need a central person who would do most of the "playing". A theme should also be discussed and agreed on before we can move any further.

Now take my post as a "fishing for interest" in-between you. Whoever things he would like to try something like this, feel free to say so. If you have any ideas or suggestions, feel free to say so.

I am looking forward to your replies!

[alex_brunius]

One form of "multiplayer" that I've seen ran successfully in Aurora is community games where one plays and others just select a character to roleplay/flesh out lore and story. Sometimes they are also minor involvement like suggestions or even decision councils.

One guy on the Paradox forums tried a multiplayer start with 8 players + 4 NPEs and it spiraled out of control and complexity really quick in just a few "turns" of 1years - 6months each.
So I think it will be very hard to do MP with more then 3-4 players maximum for the sanity of the gamemaster.


Once I get my head around multi faction starts and how I myself can control the big bad aliens I might host something like this and play as "gamemaster" while describing what happens and letting other people that don't actually have to know how to play Aurora decide what to do.

It's probably wiser to have many players sharing the same few factions (different responsible of Industry/Research/Fleet and so on) rather then having too many factions to keep tabs on as a host.

I'm thinking perhaps 2-4 major earth power factions + game mastered Aliens could work well.

[Stardust]

It would be fun to find a time frame or two where each team can be represented by a forum member that can make strategic decisions and participate in battle tactics.  Scheduling sessions would be even better.

[sublight]

I know of at least 6 members on this board who have run either multiplayer or community games.

Panopticon was the first that I know of, with "Community Game", later managed by ardem.

I, Sublight, was next with Children of Sol and the sequel Return to Sol.

7 Dictators by Maharava started next, and was soon succeeded by 6-Stars run by Nightstar.

The community game "The Galaxy Awaits" by Bryan Swartz is the most recent, and the only one I know of still running on these boards.

Let me know if I missed someone.


Nightstar and I ran our games as if they were multiplayer hot-seat. The database was swapped around by drop-box so the players could upload orders and designs directly, with time then advanced by the designated SM.

I believe that Galaxy Awaits is a classic community game, 7-Dictators was run in a chat room, and "Community Game" run through private messages, but since I haven't participated in those I could be wrong.


For what its worth, my second game was 4 player factions + 1 minor non-player power, and that was pushing my limits.

[Erik L]

Bryan probably has the best setup for a multiplayer Aurora game; one person running and doling out reports to the players concerning their demesnes.

[Alfapiomega (OP)]

Thank you all for your replies!

The thing I had in mind was a combination of what you proposed. It would revolve around a general story where 3-4 players would get "slots" to set up general strategy either directly or through a GM. Preferably though directly. When all set their goals, the game would advance by 3, 6 or 12 months. After that another "turn would work".
In case of any critical situation an intervention from the player, through written orders or through game play directly. But each player should role-play and have certain directives for his captains and civilians to obey if they are done or come across a thing. I imagine a word page submitted with each turn that would give everyone an idea about alternative goals or future technologies, targets of colonization etc.

BTW I would be happy to be the GM of such game. I think it would be doable. At least turn or two every week should be fine.

[alex_brunius]

Once I get my head around multi faction starts and how I myself can control the big bad aliens I might host something like this and play as "gamemaster" while describing what happens and letting other people that don't actually have to know how to play Aurora decide what to do.

It's probably wiser to have many players sharing the same few factions (different responsible of Industry/Research/Fleet and so on) rather then having too many factions to keep tabs on as a host.

I'm thinking perhaps 2-4 major earth power factions + game mastered Aliens could work well.

Tested a bit last night and apparently I have been afraid for no reason, multi faction starts seem fairly simple to manage in Aurora now when I have a decent grasp of the rest of the game!

I'll host a Multiplayer game with 12 - 6 or 3 month turns once 6.30 stable is released, but not on these forums since it's more fun to try to introduce the game to new players.


Good work on the Let's plays Alfapiomega, thanks to you I am now also hooked on that airline sim browser game

[Alfapiomega (OP)]

Tested a bit last night and apparently I have been afraid for no reason, multi faction starts seem fairly simple to manage in Aurora now when I have a decent grasp of the rest of the game!

I'll host a Multiplayer game with 12 - 6 or 3 month turns once 6.30 stable is released, but not on these forums since it's more fun to try to introduce the game to new players.


Good work on the Let's plays Alfapiomega, thanks to you I am now also hooked on that airline sim browser game

You are welcome! And I am happy to earn another subscriber

Regarding the hosting - if you do it, please drop me a message. I would be quite interested in joining and maybe even recording such endeavor. But I wanted to organize it here primarily as new players should first play alone before going against other players in my opinion. Plus players here are most dedicated, anywhere else it's a shot into the dark and you may end up with several people dropping out in the matter of days (on that take my word...).

[alex_brunius]

But I wanted to organize it here primarily as new players should first play alone before going against other players in my opinion. Plus players here are most dedicated, anywhere else it's a shot into the dark and you may end up with several people dropping out in the matter of days (on that take my word...).

The Idea is not to play a Versus game, but a dynamic game where diplomacy and cooperation is at least if not more important compared to knowledge of Aurora. In a 4 empire start it will help little you are more knowledgeable if the other 3 gang up on you

Since the turns will be several months aurora time anyway and the complexity won't allow detailed control the host / GM will need to interpret orders anyways.

In my eyes it doesn't matter if the order is "Focus on building Industry for 1 year" or a more specific "build 76 Industrial Complexes since that is what I calculated we can build in one year". With a setup with several players per empire every one will also respond if they are interested in taking over, and the first job of an empire leader player is to decide a second in command to take over in his absence. Hopefully such a setup can lead to swift hand-overs (temporary or permanent) if someone drops out. And it can also be interesting from a pure story perspective with empires changing direction according to leaders changing.

I also have some vague ideas regarding how certain aliens may "encourage" cooperation and an interesting story rather then a FFA death-match or versus game

Edit:

My way of "multiplayer" is closer to community game and also does not include any sharing of database so there would not be anything to record for players other then the roleplaying, communications and the forum thread...

[Alfapiomega (OP)]

The Idea is not to play a Versus game, but a dynamic game where diplomacy and cooperation is at least if not more important compared to knowledge of Aurora. In a 4 empire start it will help little you are more knowledgeable if the other 3 gang up on you

Since the turns will be several months aurora time anyway and the complexity won't allow detailed control the host / GM will need to interpret orders anyways.

In my eyes it doesn't matter if the order is "Focus on building Industry for 1 year" or a more specific "build 76 Industrial Complexes since that is what I calculated we can build in one year". With a setup with several players per empire every one will also respond if they are interested in taking over, and the first job of an empire leader player is to decide a second in command to take over in his absence. Hopefully such a setup can lead to swift hand-overs (temporary or permanent) if someone drops out. And it can also be interesting from a pure story perspective with empires changing direction according to leaders changing.

I also have some vague ideas regarding how certain aliens may "encourage" cooperation and an interesting story rather then a FFA death-match or versus game

As nice as that may sound I still stand by: "They will get lost in the complexity" as we all had that problem + the activity problem stands too.

[Erik L]

Put the less knowledgable players in the higher responsibility positions. I.E. Director of BuShips decides how many ships of type X to order knowing he can build 3 at a time for a cost of Y minerals. Something along those lines. Let the more knowledgable players design the components and ships.

Or form a Senate. Let the Senate vote on appropriations for military ships, etc.

[alex_brunius]

Put the less knowledgable players in the higher responsibility positions. I.E. Director of BuShips decides how many ships of type X to order knowing he can build 3 at a time for a cost of Y minerals. Something along those lines. Let the more knowledgable players design the components and ships.

Yes that is the plan. The only position that actually will require Aurora knowledge is ship design, but that is optional and they are free to leave it to the host (me) instead if they want (or can't find someone interested) and just order rough outlines:

"We order two 10000 ton armored cruisers with rail-guns as main weapons - make it happen" (This that order will have impact on everything from shipyard expansion, component research and so on).


The focus is to use Aurora on what it is best at, generate and support awesome stories.

[Theodidactus]

I've dreamed of playing a 2-player server where each player would play 2 "sides", one of the sides would be a side on earth and the other an alien. Expanding this model, you very quickly get a game where earth is divided and beset by really cool enemies, which is exactly what I'm trying to create in my "United Nations of Earth" campaign...which ran for 2 years, then bugged out and collapsed, and I'm only recently starting up. Technically it's a 4 player game, with my girlfriend playing 2 factions sporadically and honestly quite badly("The China Sphere" and "Brazil") and me playing 2 factions almost every night("NATO-Russo" (which exercise nominal control over corsair fleets) and "The United Nations") but technically almost everything is controlled by the United Nations, with the other three sides just periodically taking some ships rogue and "messing with" the UN or each other. Sometimes my girlfriend will start a small fight with me for funnies. We both have the SM password and I'd say I do 98% of the playing, but the random component actually makes for some fun.

I don't think it's possible to do a multiplayer game of aurora without a lot of real dedication to RPing, but I think we all have that. I would like to participate in one at some point if people are interested, but it'd be weird juggling multiple games...and I like my current game a lot...maybe one where I got to play the villainous alien menace as opposed to the intrepid humans.

Yes that's it, if anyone would like to fight an unknown alien threat, please write me.

[Alfapiomega (OP)]

So I have checked the suggested and past multi-player games (thank you sublight for providing the information) and the best choice in my opinion is the community game version that was ran by Panopticon.

So if I went ahead and tried to organize something as that, would there be any people interested in such game?

Short review of my proposal:
- multiplayer game ran by a neutral GM (possibly me but I will be more than happy to delegate this to somebody else)
- the format would be running through order sheets and reports that are submitted by GM to the players and by players to GM
- number of factions and their statistics to be decided
- backstory to be decided (I love hard games so it would be most likely something that would require players to stay on their legs the whole time = in another words a challenge)

[Elouda]

I am intending to run a multination Earth campaign set from 2030 onwards once the dust has cleared from v6.3's release.

I've considered a variety of formats, and having followed several of the community games that have been run have settled on a slightly less involved system, to avoid the problems that crop up with turn timing, etc. as the game goes on and conflicts and the like become more common. Essentially, the players will run their faction from a very high level (ie. 30000ft view style), with the majority of decisions being more about policy and planning than the specifics of implementation - those things will be left to your staff, which is represented by myself based on the characters (and their traits and history) assigned to various functions in the game itself.

In the normal course of things, the player would get yearly reports based on various aspects of their faction - military, economy, politics & espionage (run through a separate system in lieu of Aurora's built in espionage system, which will be reserved for use against NPR's only), and the like. A lot of this is just information, with significant events or decisions asking for input (for example, there might be two competing design proposals for a new ship design, which the military wants the leaderships opinion on), and these decisions will shape the future overall policy of the faction. A player could choose to receive more detail about specific aspects (ie. representing increased scrutiny/interest in specific functions) but this would come with the tradeoff of less awareness and a more passive approach to other aspects (essentially to discourage wanting extra detail on everything, which is of course likely to lead to slowdowns).

Key events like declarations of war, reports about first contact (not first contact itself - that would be handled by the commander on scene alongside the fleet commander if there is a comms link) and the like would result in 'midturn' interrupts and notifications. For both regular turns and these interrupts, there would be a certain period allowed for responses, after which decisions would be taken by your highest ranking character (typically the Administrator for Earth). If someone does miss the period and sends in something late, then of course I will try to correct the back towards those decisions wherever possible. Note that in this system all communications including diplomacy and trade negotiations would go through me, to allow for things like interception of messages by espionage teams, etc.

I intend to run a scaled down version of this system to test how well it works in a 3-4 faction setup, after which I will be looking to start getting players togeather for my intended larger campaign. That will feature 10 initial factions, with the potential for 2 more to emerge during the course of the game. The target would most likely be 6-8 players, as there are 7 major or intermediate factions.