Multiplayer discussion

[alex_brunius]

It looks like many of us are aiming for fairly similar things.

One problem however with the setup is that I need a good way to allow an efficient way to communicate and post orders/updates that would only be visible to a select amount of people (those in an alliance or those in control of various positions in the same nation).

This probably means everyone registering on a forum with several restricted sub-forums that provide means of communication for players within alliances/nations as well as a good place to post updates and orders.

Since I'm not very good at setting up my own forum perhaps someone here knows of a forum this would be possible?
You would have to be allowed to get your own sub-forum including enough moderation rights to also set up restricted sub-subforums and control access to them.

[Erik L]

It looks like many of us are aiming for fairly similar things.

One problem however with the setup is that I need a good way to allow an efficient way to communicate and post orders/updates that would only be visible to a select amount of people (those in an alliance or those in control of various positions in the same nation).

This probably means everyone registering on a forum with several restricted sub-forums that provide means of communication for players within alliances/nations as well as a good place to post updates and orders.

Since I'm not very good at setting up my own forum perhaps someone here knows of a forum this would be possible?
You would have to be allowed to get your own sub-forum including enough moderation rights to also set up restricted sub-subforums and control access to them.

I could be talked into setting such a thing up here... The only caveat would be that global moderators would still see the forums. At the moment, I think there 1 besides myself and Steve still active.

[sublight]

It sounds like quite a few of us have been contemplating running a new multiplayer/comunity game. 

My own idea was to organize a series of 2 or 3 player scenarios run in parallel by several System Masters each acting as players in other games. This would keep each game small enough to run quickly while providing a pointed objective to ensure interesting completion occurs before the game ends.

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.

...

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.

 
I like this idea and suspect it will work well. From the System Master's perspective this would play out as a personal AAR reported multi-faction game, only with faction divergence driven by other people rather than ones own creativity. However, I would caution against 7+ factions for anything other than a Sol-only conventional start. Games with multiple trading Interstellar factions always run slower than we think at first. Partially from increased sensor detection complexity, but also from the rapid increase in event-reporting shipyards/planets/ships all crying for new orders. Still, if you are good at making snap decisions and quick designs you might have a chance with 6-8 players provided you avoid micromanaging and keep the players to a 30000ft view.

One problem however with the setup is that I need a good way to allow an efficient way to communicate and post orders/updates that would only be visible to a select amount of people (those in an alliance or those in control of various positions in the same nation).

Personal messages usually work pretty well and can be sent to multiple individuals.

[Elouda]

I like this idea and suspect it will work well. From the System Master's perspective this would play out as a personal AAR reported multi-faction game, only with faction divergence driven by other people rather than ones own creativity. However, I would caution against 7+ factions for anything other than a Sol-only conventional start. Games with multiple trading Interstellar factions always run slower than we think at first. Partially from increased sensor detection complexity, but also from the rapid increase in event-reporting shipyards/planets/ships all crying for new orders. Still, if you are good at making snap decisions and quick designs you might have a chance with 6-8 players provided you avoid micromanaging and keep the players to a 30000ft view.

Yes, this is an Earth based conventional start, with Jump Theory requiring specific events to be available for research, so Sol will be important, at least to begin with. I expect a couple of the minor factions will not survive in their current form to the interstellar phase, either getting gobbled up or consolidating into something larger.

One of the players is actually not familiar with Aurora at all, so thats my benchmark for the kind of information I need to provide (obviously I've explained the basic principle to him). I expect more experienced players will want more involvement, and the important thing is finding the balance between allowing interaction and 'ownership' of a faction, and keeping things running.

I look forward to seeing a lot of these ideas running in the future. 

[alex_brunius]

I could be talked into setting such a thing up here... The only caveat would be that global moderators would still see the forums. At the moment, I think there 1 besides myself and Steve still active.

I'd love that!

However I aim to bring in many new players so I'm not sure this forum is well suited for all of the fiction (seeing how new members are forbidden to post images and links, as well as have problems with dots and spacing in edits and quotes).

If it was aimed only for people already registered on this forum it would work perfectly.

Currently I'm planning, testing and writing background story, as well as waiting for bug fixing patch for 6.30.
So if that is still OK I'll PM you with more details once we get closer to a start.

Personal messages usually work pretty well and can be sent to multiple individuals.

I have tried to use it previously for other forum/community games but found it fairly cumbersome. Especially on the Paradox forums where you are limited to 25 messages (in both in and outbox).

1.) They are hard to edit if you miss something.
2.) Most forums don't support sending PMs to pre setup "groups" or has limited amount of recipients, so for larger mass messages it can be some work.
3.) Normally also limited in some way how many PMs you can save.
4.) A forum format invites to much more discussion then PMs possibly can (replies to PMs are private)
5.) It's also a shame to lock away so much RP and story as well as critical information about the campaign in private in-boxes instead of collecting it in a form that can be opened up and shown to everyone after the game is over.

[Erik L]

I'd love that!
However I aim to bring in many new players so I'm not sure this forum is well suited for all of the fiction (seeing how new members are forbidden to post images and links, as well as have problems with dots and spacing in edits and quotes).

That only applies to people with less than 10 posts. After that, things act as normal.

[Jorgen_CAB]

I was thinking about running a game as sort of a "Game Master" where I would upload the database to a share and send the link to the players so they can observe their faction and then send policy updates to me as I play the game for them.

The game would not have any AI NPRs, each player would play a faction based on Earth all roughly equal from the start of the game. Precursors and Swarm should be active but the GM would take the role of any NPR that appear as a means to steer the story or present an external threat/opportunity.

The players would mainly influence the game in a strategic fashion as well as developing naval organization & engagement doctrines (not absolutes). The player would also have some influence over their ships design, but only superficial. They would mainly be playing the political power and sometimes get pressure from the people. People might request the development of certain planets or systems, demand certain autonomy and so forth, all depends on how the game would develop.
Players should obviously feel that they have enough influence over their faction, but their power would not be absolute. They should be allowed to write relatively detailed plans for military operations and fleet compositions, but they must still be on a strategic scale.

The game should be more about the story than somebody actually winning the game. It would be more about the survival of the human race as well as being the strongest faction with the highest prestige.

Combat would probably be presented to the players with screenshots and a short "After Action Report" as written to the civilian government by the military leaders.

Each player would have its own thread to post their policy changes and guidelines as the game progress. Or it would be conducted by E-mail and I the GM would paste world news in the form of bulletins and headlines compiling all "official" events during the year. This information would obviously be open to everyone, even none players.

Would such an idea work with about five players perhaps?

[exdeathbr]

One weird idea that came into my mind. 
One awsome thing would be to have a web interface of the game, where players select what they will do and then the amount of time that the game will pass. 
Then at the end of X days, the website bot do the ingame changes needed and advance some time (average of what users selected of smallest time). 

Of course this is problably a super hard thing to do.
If you want to allow players to play the same team, you could do a even more complex thing, make a thing that allow players from the same team only see some screens or just edit some screens.  So you could have a team where one guy fly ships, another one do research and build ships and a third one do the rest (and also do research and build ships)

[Elouda]

One weird idea that came into my mind.  
One awsome thing would be to have a web interface of the game, where players select what they will do and then the amount of time that the game will pass.  
Then at the end of X days, the website bot do the ingame changes needed and advance some time (average of what users selected of smallest time).  

Of course this is problably a super hard thing to do.
If you want to allow players to play the same team, you could do a even more complex thing, make a thing that allow players from the same team only see some screens or just edit some screens.  So you could have a team where one guy fly ships, another one do research and build ships and a third one do the rest (and also do research and build ships)

Thats actually a very interesting idea, even if its only as a method to present reports to players in a game format like mine...

[exdeathbr]

Thats actually a very interesting idea, if only as a method to present reports to players in a format like mine. . .

what???
Anyway, on my idea the web thing would just be a interface, the game woudlnt be ported to java, flash o something like that. .
The game would be on the server. 
Players use the website interface to control the game.  This interface would show everything the game show.
After X amount of days, the game will auto-pass Y amount of time. 
This Y value is average amount of time players selected to pass, using the web interface, or the smallest value (this time not counting the guys that didnt passed).  Didnt decided what is the best choice between those 2.


Yes this is problably a complex thing to do.
The point of it is. . .
1-The game doenst need to be recoded to include internet multiplayer.
2-You will not need to send saves to other places, like with play by email stuff.
3-Players play at the same time and not based on turns

[Garfunkel]

I've twice tried to run a community game where the players don't need to actually play Aurora, just give their orders to me. Some things I learned:

(1) The more players you have, the slower and more cumbersome it gets. Just making the annual reports takes some time if you have to make twelve of them.

(2) The sensor sweeps can very quickly bog the game down, though 6.3 is now supposed to help with this. Alternatively, it's wise to decree that turning active sensors on at Earth (or the common starting planet) is an act of war.

(3) If a player doesn't send their orders in time, don't wait for them, it could be weeks. Just rely on what their earlier orders were and act along the same vein, call it their second-in-command.

(4) SM cannot fix all problems, you need designer password for that.

(5) Beware of any additional systems that you add on top - I added diplomacy, to annex neutral countries, and a home-brewn espionage system that was more complicated than the in-game one: both added quite a bit of work for me, for very little gain.

But the players did seem to have fun and the fiction/propaganda/etc that they came up with was both funny and highly entertaining.

[Bgreman]

I found it absolutely necessary to develop my own set of tools to provide the community players of my LP with information.  Providing it manually on-demand just took up too much of my time.

So I created my Coldest War Viewer to assist.  It replicates the views of a lot of the in-game stuff.  I've thus rewritten a large portion of the Aurora front-end and if I knew every single game mechanic, I could probably rewrite the game itself at this point.  I have no real desire to do so, though.

Note: The System Map and Officers viewer are currently broken due to some data format changes I made.  They were written by a collaborator who doesn't have time to fix them, so don't be surprised if they look or behave strangely.

[Garfunkel]

That's fantastic Bgreman!

But how would it work? You copy the database to your own server and the players have specific links they use or passwords? Or something else? Basically, what would I need to get something like that working for my own game?

[Theodidactus]

I think if I ever teach Young Adults again, Aurora might be a good teaching tool. I'll divide the class into two groups and make fleets for both with different advantages and disadvantages, and then say the fleets will fight. The teams will need to decide how configure the fleets and when to order the fighters to launch and stuff. It will be a good exercise in concrete skills like mathematics and more abstract ones like attention and focus and creativity, because the more closely they study their spaceships, the more aware they'll be of their capabilities.

Wouldn't really require knowing super particular details like "this weapon fires 5 times a second and requires 95 power" or whatever. Just "the destroyer has a longer range than the battleship, and is faster, but it has less armor and missile defense." and basic principles like "ships with no missile defense need ships with missile defense, or need to avoid being seen"

[Bgreman]

That's fantastic Bgreman!

But how would it work? You copy the database to your own server and the players have specific links they use or passwords? Or something else? Basically, what would I need to get something like that working for my own game?

The viewer is read-only; it's not meant for use in playing the game.  Basically the way it works is that the tool runs through the DB and generates a bunch of json "report" files.  I upload those to my website, where the front-end PHP pages that have been created can read the json and present it in a tabular format.

I may go back and clean it up for public consumption.  Right now it has a few things hardcoded that are particular to my game.