Aurora Multiplayer Game

[sublight (OP)]

These have been proposed before, but with the exception of games between blood relatives I can't recall ever hearing of one actual played out. Which is a shame, since I've been itching to see how Player vs Player tactics work out. To remedy this curiosity, I'm checking to see if anyone else is interested in putting together a multiplayer game. I'd be willing to act as either the SM or fill a player slot.

How would Multiplayer Aurora work?
1) As standard multi-faction, but SM password not shared and only SM advances time. Races would also be password protected, and players would temporarily change the default race from a dummy to their fraction when they take their turn.
2) The players act as the Senators and/or Fleet Admirals of their factions, and are responsible for long-term planing, development, and writing 'The Book' on Standard Operating Procedures. The SM would handle the little details like ship orders in accordance to The Book. This saves time and keeps the game moving.
3) Turn intervals would be 6-months to a year, game time, with provisions for 'Emergency counsel secessions' in responce to predefined events. Limit of 1 emergency counsel meeting for a faction specific event. If at any point over half the players have had mid-term intervention, the turn would end early and a new 6-12 month increment would start after everyone has a chance to review the situation.
4) The game file would be distributed by DropBox. I've heard people have used DropBox before for multi-machine game access, so I think that would work best for the large files. It also allows people to review there race and post new orders in any order so long as none try to update the database at the same time.
5) Players would be encouraged to write up a running report, for time-delayed publication. After all, others are probably curious how the game goes.
6) If the game enters a stale mate or is foreseen to need an early ending then invaders would get turned on for Sudden Death mode.

What would the objective be?
1) Survive.
2) Become the dominant power in terms of population, colony count, and tribute extracted from your rivals.
3) Possible something else.

Starting SetUp:
I see two possibilities:
A) '10 years later conventional' - multiple players starting on different planets of the same star system (earth/mars/venus) using conventional start plus a free extra comercial shipyard, research lab, and 10 years worth of production and research. '10 years later' seems to put races on the edge of Nuclear Thermal Drive, but not quite enough for complete warship packages.
B) Standard Trans-Newtonian start with each player in a different starting system.
Either way, a short 2-3 jump chain linkage between inhabited words would be made to ensure the game doesn't last forever.

Remaining details to be determined once/if players are found.

Anyone interested?

Example Racial SOP Book:

Hypothetical Empire Response List:

Condition #1: gravsurvey ship completes gravitation survey.
If: ship has at least 55% fuel and 75% remaining maintenance supplies
Then order ship through nearest unexplored jump point in system or adjacent system.
Else: Order ship home for overhaul and refueling.

Condition #2: Neutral ship approaches with 10 million km of home world.
SOP: Order ship to turn back, opening missile fire if it stubbornly approaches within 1 million km.

Condition #3: An opponent issues an ultimatum on any issue.
If ultimatum is an order for a survey ship to turn back
Then: Order survey vessel to new destination.
Else: Call Emergency Council Meeting (send game save for review)

Condition #4: When Sir Bob completes his research project queue
Then have Ema start research on 15cm lasers using Bob's former labs.

Condition #5: Jump Point Missile boat picket detect hostile unit.
If unit is noted as a suspected survey ship in intelligence notes:
Then: SOP: Fire single missile volleys until ship slows less than half missile boat speed. Close to finish off with point defense battery.
Else: SOP: detach one missile boat to follow hostile from 500k km range.

Condition #6: Any hostile unit, no matter how small, opens fire.
Then: Have any units in missile range return fire, and call Emergency Council Meeting (send game save for review)

Condition #7: Missile boats have less than 50% ammunition after engagement.
SOP: Dispatch missile resupply collier to bring ordinance to task group. Order collier to return to home world afterwards.

Conditions #8-#12: none at this time.

[OAM47]

I tried one once (as SM), but one player quickly lost interest.  Real shame x.x

I'd be interested in trying to be a player though.

[Panopticon]

There actually is one currently going, you can read about it in my fiction under Community Game II

[sublight (OP)]

... I can't believe I'd never heard of yours until now.

*skims*

After a quick review of the Community Game I think I'll continue this thread's recruitment drive. Until the day when planetary maps are implemented I'm more interested in how separate-planet starts work than same-planet starts. Still, you can count me in as a new reader of the game fiction.

The original background campaign fiction associated with my current multiplayer theory is as follows:

2020: It was this year when, amidst a faltering world economy and growing nationalist rhetoric, that the third world war finally broke out. Despite the fears of mutually assured destruction, the conflict very nearly avoided weapons of mass destruction entirely, but 'nearly avoided' is small comfort in the aftermath. Perceiving an opportunity, one semi-rogue WMD armed state began launching, and when the first cities died everyone else started launching too. It was the end of an age, and many questioned if it would be the end of humanity as the biosphere shifted and the death toil mounted. For good or ill, that question too is academic, since They came.

None know where they came from, or what they were, but 'Precursor' was the descriptor that took hold. What we do know is why they came, why the intervened, and why they stayed. They came building a Jump-gate transit corridor. The intervened to rescue what they could of Earth's dying biodiversity. And they stayed to ensure stability for what ever traffic was to come.

Like parents annoyed with squabbling children, one of their first steps was to physically and bodily separate the remnants of the still skirmishing factions in the final war. Banished to Venus and Mars, the Precursors displayed impossible powers as they transmogrified the remnants and terraformed the planets to meet each-other half way. Less than a billion human and trans-humans remained, but even so humanity and her molded children both chafed and scheme against both their new emotionless masters and each-other. Once more, the Precursors stepped in.

In 2040, as part of an ultimatum before a regrettable culture destroying mind wiping reeducation, the Precursors opened a dimensional rift to show the heights humanity ought to have achieved. It was then that humanity learned that the Precursors were not all knowing, for the two earths looked across the gulf with horror at the other. On one side humans were recovering from a nuclear winter following the glassing of entire cities. On the other were blighted ghost towns from a biological plague war so thorough that entire regional ecosystems were on the tottering edge of collapse. Both had no trouble recognizing their opposites for what they were: Evil Twins, more monstrous and inherently evil than their own sworn enemies of WW3 had ever been. To make matters worse, rather than forming a temporary window into what could have been, the mirrored realities superimposed themselves onto each other, bringing the doppelgangers into the same universe. Apparently the Precursors had seen a horror of their own, for within the year they had withdrawn completely, taking anything and everything that man could possible reverse engineer. Someday they planned to return, but that day would be distant.

Despite the thoroughness of the withdraw, humans had seen and studied enough to uncover the basics of Trans-Newtonian physics themselves, and within 10 years had built shipyards of their own and discovered the jump-point theory. Amidst an uneasy truce with their formal rivals three priorities, in order of importance, became clear:
1) Survive, ideal as a culture as well as a race.
2) Find and Exterminate the doppelgangers loose in your universe.
3) Become the dominant power in the solar system.

It is now 2050.
So, will you work together, or assimilate the resources of your rivals? Just remember, there are other powers out there.

[Vynadan]

I'm in a bit of a rush, so excuse me if I only skimmed over your posts, but as Panopticon already mentioned, there's been multiplayer games around on these forums. There's one predessor to the two games in Panopticon's fiction forum (though I forgot where exactly it was - it's also somewhere in the fiction) and I've had a slightly different idea that I'm writing a background for in my own fiction subforum - though that's running awfully slow due to my time constraints until later this spring.

Since the community games were all Earth-based, I'd be interested in perhaps taking part in yours (especially as the current one runs quite slow due to resource constraints right now).

[Panopticon]

Likewise, though be warned, whoever is actually playing out the turns needs to be able to devote a ton of time to it, it gets pretty crazy.

[sublight (OP)]

as Panopticon already mentioned, there's been multiplayer games around on these forums.

Probably. I've certainty heard of people doing multi-player, but until Panopticon shouted out I couldn't find any recorded example. Excluding single-faction community games, the only result my google-fu research found is a mult-faction Lets-Play on the Dwarf Fortress forum. The forum searches here haven't turned up much either. 

I was hoping for more interest than just the four of us, but if the SM duties get that crazy, maybe only having three players would be a good thing.

Once I know for sure who's playing I'll see about getting a game topic in the fiction section.

Currently:
SM - sublight (me)
Player1 - OAM47
Player2 - Vynadan
Player3 - Panopticon

If it's just the three, I'm thinking a Terran/Venesian/Martian Sol-start game.
If so, anyone object to the following starting conditions?

• Three starting NPRs, SM added to have lower than usual starting NPR tech. 0% chance of new NPRs.
• 60 max-stars map initially, to be expanded to 240 as soon as all starting races are jump-connected.
• Precursers on. Star Swarm off. Invaders off initially but to be activated if a sudden-death resolution is ever needed.
• All races have ±65% gravitational tolerance, ±50% O2 tolerance, ±21°C temperature tolerance.
- Earthling: 22°C ideal temperature, 0.2 atm ideal oxygen, 3.5 atm max pressure, 1G ideal gravity.
- Martian: 12° ideal temperature, 0.15 atm ideal oxygen, 2.8 atm max pressure, 0.8G ideal gravity.
- Venusian: 32°C ideal temperature, 0.25 atm ideal oxygen, 4.4 atm max pressure, 0.95G ideal gravity.
• Mars/Venus Terraformed to be be cost-0 to the starting inhabitants, cost-2.0 to everyone else.
• 400 million Conventional starting population.
- +1 free extra research lab, starting naval shipyard capacity pre-doubled.
- Starting Tech: Trans-Neutonain Theory, Jump-Point Theory, Geological Sensors, Genetic Engineering, +4,000 RP of choice.
- 8 soon-to-be-obsolete IBM bases
- 8,000 CP for pre-game industrial production/industry conversion.

[OAM47]

I wager SM duties will be pretty heavy.  When I attempted it, I did four players (myself included), and it was pretty busy.

I say the starting conditions seem reasonable.  How should we decide who's who?

[Antagonist]

I'm just concerned that this might speed up the heat death of the universe, which has killed some of my previous games.  (READ: point where it takes 30mins to do a day)

Otherwise I like it, might even want to take part.

I'm curious about how communication and turns would work though, some things like ship design might need more in-depth communication than available through PM, an IRC channel and some daily time period or something?  1 year a day?  Or just run till something interesting happens and then ask players for input?

[Vynadan]

• Three starting NPRs, SM added to have lower than usual starting NPR tech. 0% chance of new NPRs.
• 60 max-stars map initially, to be expanded to 240 as soon as all starting races are jump-connected.
• Precursers on. Star Swarm off. Invaders off initially but to be activated if a sudden-death resolution is ever needed.
• All races have ±65% gravitational tolerance, ±50% O2 tolerance, ±21°C temperature tolerance.
- Earthling: 22°C ideal temperature, 0.2 atm ideal oxygen, 3.5 atm max pressure, 1G ideal gravity.
- Martian: 12° ideal temperature, 0.15 atm ideal oxygen, 2.8 atm max pressure, 0.8G ideal gravity.
- Venusian: 32°C ideal temperature, 0.25 atm ideal oxygen, 4.4 atm max pressure, 0.95G ideal gravity.
• Mars/Venus Terraformed to be be cost-0 to the starting inhabitants, cost-2.0 to everyone else.
• 400 million Conventional starting population.
- +1 free extra research lab, starting naval shipyard capacity pre-doubled.
- Starting Tech: Trans-Neutonain Theory, Jump-Point Theory, Geological Sensors, Genetic Engineering, +4,000 RP of choice.
- 8 soon-to-be-obsolete IBM bases
- 8,000 CP for pre-game industrial production/industry conversion.

- No Swarm?
- Guess we could either draw straws or just go by favourites (if that works out) when it comes to who starts where.
- What about the affinities (militancy, etc.) and governmental forms?
- Considering the backstory, 8000 CP and 4000 RP seem quite low for me, but that's up to the SM's discretion and the whole thing sounds a bit fuzzy to me.

Concerning the communication: It's all abuot paying attention to what the players say. You can easily scribble down all the components in a design, actually. A one-year-a-day schedule is a kind of time consumption I'm not willing to admit to personally, though - Especially with different time zones and three NPRs from the start.

[sublight (OP)]

I'm curious about how communication and turns would work though, some things like ship design might need more in-depth communication than available through PM, an IRC channel and some daily time period or something?  1 year a day?  Or just run till something interesting happens and then ask players for input?

I was going to create a drop box account for digitally passing out a shared save for each player to enter exactly what designs/tech/industrial settings they wanted. More control for the players, less stuff the SM needs to worry about. If it turns out that everyone modifying the same save doesn't work, I'll keep passing out the save for review and let the participants send me PM containing empire management changes.

- No Swarm?
- Guess we could either draw straws or just go by favourites (if that works out) when it comes to who starts where.
- What about the affinities (militancy, etc.) and governmental forms?
- Considering the backstory, 8000 CP and 4000 RP seem quite low for me, but that's up to the SM's discretion and the whole thing sounds a bit fuzzy to me.

Concerning the communication: It's all abuot paying attention to what the players say. You can easily scribble down all the components in a design, actually. A one-year-a-day schedule is a kind of time consumption I'm not willing to admit to personally, though - Especially with different time zones and three NPRs from the start.

I could turn on swarm, but I've heard having multiple monster races creates a faster heat death.
I agree, 1-year a day is too much time commitment. Call it 2-days to buffer against Real Life, a third day to leave a little time for my own solo-campaign...

3-days. I'll try for 2, but I'll tentatively commit to a 3-day turn-around for the SM side of the cycle. Same deal for players. Faster the better, but after 3-days any unresponsive player forfeits that cycle's turn update. That should allow 1-2 cycles per week. Initially cycles will be 1-year (or until a significant event occurs). I'll start scaling back the time increments whenever the pass gets too fast for me or a player.

For faction control, I'll use a random number generator. The straw option.
For affinities/governments: I was originally planing on the players as 'player race.' Most governments seem to be weaker than 'Player Race' to different degrees, and I don't know which ones are balanced against which others. Still, if anyone wants a different government they can have a different government.

I'll write a new back-story.


My random dice generator says:
OAM47 - 3
Vynadan - 1,19
Panopticon - 1,12

Mars = High = OAM47
Earth = Middle = Vynadan
Venus = Low = Panopticon

Antagonist, I'm putting you down as 'backup.' The others have convinced me that 4+ players bogs down too fast.

[Antagonist]

I'll admit my 1 year a day was a little too much.  3 days a year sounds less bad.  Even longer perhaps if roleplay posts happen.  The first month or so will also take disproportionately long due to setup and combat will slow things as well.  If combat between players occurs I suppose it would be best handled realtime through IM or IRC, but will see.

I'm fine with being a backup.

EDIT:  The exception to most governments being weaker than player race is a Meritocracy that seems to have some nice bonuses.  The government type as far as I know affects the starting industry(which you can modify to bring in line with one another), as well as some hidden stats like xenophobia.  I have yet to mess with it much, but I'm sure some scraps of info can be found on forum.

EDIT2: Now that I think about it a little more, perhaps consider the ble emu route of having me available as an administrator or co-leader of an empire?  If one of the other 3 is willing to have me on that is.  I could always 'defect' if I am needed to take over for another one.

[OAM47]

Heh, Mars was the one I wanted 

[Panopticon]

I am actually totally cool (or hot I guess) with Venus.

[sublight (OP)]

Nifty.

Well, when y'all are decided please PM me a list of your chosen unique starting techs, pre-start industrial production, government type, and a racial password I'll get started on the campaign setup. Be warned: I won't raise starting industry to match the 'Player Race' if you chose something non-standard. I'll just assume there is some hidden stat mod that you think is reallly worth it.

Edit: Oh empire themes. If you have a naming theme you want to use include that too. I'm pretty sure names can be changed latter on, but it's so much easier to make those selections on empire creation.