Aurora Multiplayer Game

[Panopticon]

What am I, chopped liver? it might be useful to have a multiplayer forum where we could collect advice from our various attempts at playing.

[sublight (OP)]

Is there a box you can tick in the diplomacy menu or do you mean that you regularly "reset" the diplomacy scores?

For others who have tried something like this before, any hints&tips would be appreciated.

I wish. Diplomacy is SM work. During the spring of every year I manually reset the relation score back to whatever it ought to be. So far that's '0'. Some races rolled better on foreign tolerance than others, but with a shared system it currently takes the most intolerant pair a bit less than 18 months to see relations go from '0' to '-100.' If I forget to reset relations two years in a row someone will downgrade someone else to hostile. There might be an easier way, but I haven't found it.

Other advise: read Steve's fiction and Panopticon's community game reports. Panopticon is currently running something similar to your planed game, and Steve's fiction frequently starts out with multi-block conventional earth starts.

Since Steve seems to be playing all the sides of his games, you'll find a lot more specific details behind the resulting hypothetical coexistent situation there than the real players of Panopticon's multiplayer multi-country game have givne out.

[Vynadan]

You could just set the relations to something ridiculously high.

High relations means you can check those treaties - it doesn't mean you have to or that anything is actually different from zero relations to one another unless you specify it.

[Garfunkel]

Problem. While creating all conventional empires on Earth and fiddling with starting resources, I clicked the "No SB survey" button. Later on, I realized my error and used the "Body survey" button. Now my problem is that while all the additional empires can see the minerals on Earth, the default race, ie the first one, cannot. I have SM on and have clicked the "Body survey" button several times, making sure that the default race is selected but no go. Please tell me there's a way to fix this beyond of deleting the empire and re-creating them.

[ardem]

Since I am GMing the Mutliplayer game that panop first created I can pass on some good details to you folks.

1) Diplomacy will only work as a GM option I bumped up all the Diplomacy to 100,000 and left it there. This way as a GM I can choose the tension level, research trades etc etc.

2) Anymore then 5 player blocks in the same system hammers cpu, mainly around sensor contacts. If you want to play with high number choose not to all start on the same planet.

3) Time dedicated as a GM you have to be dedicated to put in 5-8 hours per turn, that could be a week, 1/2 week a day. But you need to sustain it which is the hardest thing.

4) I have gone for a highly detail approach, this in itself has cause issue when you make mistake, miss some note etc etc. My suggestion here with thought on this matter for a while is this.
Set up a dropbox with faction folders, allow the players to drop there beginning changes into the box and pass to the next player, remembering to set it back to the default race (reason if you do not have a default race on entry you do not need a password for the last race exited.) Then you say to the players you will only get involved for the sixth month period if there is combat or an emergency. Orders can be set with delays, production and research can be queued.

This would make the GM work very light and and the responsiblity is on the player and you may be able to get turn around quite quick but need dedicated players or a group of players playing a bloc that makes sure player turns are moved quickly to the next bloc. Also the flow of the game is up to the players as the GM six months would not be harder then an 30min to an hour of pumping over turns. Then uploading with no further details.

[ardem]

Problem. While creating all conventional empires on Earth and fiddling with starting resources, I clicked the "No SB survey" button. Later on, I realized my error and used the "Body survey" button. Now my problem is that while all the additional empires can see the minerals on Earth, the default race, ie the first one, cannot. I have SM on and have clicked the "Body survey" button several times, making sure that the default race is selected but no go. Please tell me there's a way to fix this beyond of deleting the empire and re-creating them.

Yes it is a bug, I could not fix this other then start again. Do not use the body survey sm button if you want to play it with multi races.

[ardem]

Since Steve seems to be playing all the sides of his games, you'll find a lot more specific details behind the resulting hypothetical coexistent situation there than the real players of Panopticon's multiplayer multi-country game have givne out.

I can give details around this without giving spoilers so feel free to ask away, also as a GM the ability to access the database is a must. Some the things I do are not even available as an SM option.

E.G. move componets from one faction to another.

[Garfunkel]

Yes it is a bug, I could not fix this other then start again. Do not use the body survey sm button if you want to play it with multi races.

Damn. Hmm, could I SM a single geosurvey ship for that race, use it to survey Earth and then delete it? Trying that now.

Edit: worked like a charm. I used SM to give the race TN-tech, Geosurvey sensors and conventional E10 engines. Then used Fast OB creator to give them a single Geosurvey Ship. Then used SM to remove the technologies from the race. After the GeoSurvey ship has finished, I'll use SM to delete the ship and none of the players will be any wiser. Perfect.

[Garfunkel]

Another problem. We have a conventional start. Conventional industry is unable to build missiles of any kind, not even the default ICBMs.
My players want to build the default PDCs. They do not come with missiles already equipped. Is there a way in SM to give them missiles or even better, just fill the magazines?

[ardem]

You can build ICBM missiles, I think they are either already designed and obsolete so you need to unobsolete them.

[Garfunkel]

Aye, they are in the missiles menu, you can put them in the build queue but the conventional industry does not act as ordnance factories, so there is no capability to build them.

Edit: Disregard my stupidity. There is an SM command for it that I just found. Empires -> Military Organization -> Ammo Transfer, in case anyone else stumbles upon the same problem.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

IIRC, you can also go to the ship design screen / ordnance management and SM-load all ships of a class from there.  And in the Ship screen / ordnance management you can fast-reload your standard loadout as the SM.

Ships created with the Fast OOB also spawn with full missiles.

[Garfunkel]

Thanks. Another question - is there a way to SM ground units to a race? I'm trying to create "neutrals" on Earth that don't belong into any of the player-run power blocs and since many have quite small populations, the conventional start doesn't give them any Low-Tech Infantry or Armour. I've scoured the various menus but can't seem to find a way to do it. The "Add Unit" button in "GU Training" Tab doesn't work with LTI/LTA as you can't normally build them either.

[sublight (OP)]

I don't think there is any direct way to SM up conventional armies.

You might however be able to SM in a new conventional faction with a large population, transfer the generated units around, and then simply reduce / abandon the population(s) until you have the size and number of desired conventional powers.

[Garfunkel]

Ah, an excellent work-around. I'll try that.

EDIT: And it worked brilliantly, thanks again.