So I've been doing a lot of multiplayer on aurora lately with a GM running things and we enter orders on discord. It's fun. Confusing at times and difficult but still fun. I think multiplayer has the capability of producing the best stories in aurora, especially since AI doesn't limit things then and we can make full use of the mechanics of the game against each other, like ground fighters for instance although I know they don't work super well.
So I've been thinking of how to make it better because right now its difficult. Very time consuming for the DMs, and therefore heavily subject to real life disruptions like what happened to Somebody's MP game. It's still going but at a much slower pace due to real life stuff getting in the way. It can also be confusing as things get larger and larger. If the game is confined to one solar system great. If things are more spread out then things get more confusing when you can't see the game yourself. So being able to see the DB is super helpful in these kinds of games. The dream is ofc to not need a GM and just go play, at the same time, against someone like in Hearts of Iron or Stellaris or whatever. I don't expect that to happen though, it doesn't fit the structure of the game and there'd need to be some drastic changes to make it work and I bet Steve doesn't care to make those changes.
However, something simple would be just adding in race specific passwords. With race specific passwords the GM could upload the DB to a file sharing site like github. So my idea would look like this. You check out the DB and boot up the game and it asks for a password, you enter your race-specific password and then you are locked to that race. No switching to another race to peek at their stuff and cheat. Then after youre done entering orders you check the DB back in to github or whatever we'd want to use. A built in system would be cool but I don't expect that. Maybe that could be a mod in the future. There could be a GM mode of GM race that always has access to everything which is again locked behind a password. And these passwords would be set during game creation, there could be a check in the race creation window for having a password. Or there could a multiplayer mode that you enable and that enables the whole password system.
This would in my opinion greatly help multiplayer. The load on GMs would be greatly decreased. With no need to enter orders for everyone they'd be free to manage the game, run time more often, and perhaps do fun things with spacemaster. Add in surprises for the players and whatnot.
One more thing is that the password system should probably lock you out of SM mode although that could lead to issues perhaps. The GM could still have access to it and could maybe be free to mess with every race so that they can manage stuff and correct issues and whatnot, mistakes, that pop up. The idea being to keep players from cheating with SM although that might not be necessary. Since the GM would be able to see every race they could therefore be able to keep track of what's going and so they'd know if someone is cheating.
So yeah, that's my idea for a simple thing Steve could add to the game that could help make MP games easier. Maybe its not so simple, I am not good at programming (yet). So let me know if this is harder than I'm thinking it is. Thanks!
