Aurora 4x
VB6 Aurora => Aurora Chat => Topic started by: 3_14159 on May 27, 2013, 12:00:39 PM
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Since the six sectors game seems dead for the moment, I am tempted to start a new community game. Things I though about:
Game mode: All of you vs SM
Conventional start
Starting on earth as two factions
Several unaligned countries
Now, who would be interested? Any comments?
And, would you want earth with nearly infinite resources but at a low rate, or maybe even all solar bodies, meaning that I set all resources not existing to 0.1 access and several billion tons?
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Yeah I can probably declare 6s officially dead, unless there's anyone insane enough to try taking on SM. After it jumped down to two months/hour it wasn't any fun for me anymore.
...I don't know what I was thinking... It's not like that wasn't predictable.
Learned stuff:
The time does in fact go up with the square of involved players. Isolationists help, but more than four real races is a horrible idea.
Lack of selective maint/morale turn off makes precursors and such a real pain in the butt to control manually. Not to mention poor TFT.
If I had been playing, I would have crushed everyone on account of actually building a military in the first two years. You people are pacifistic to a fault.
Never ever EVER agree to control something manually that could be done another way. This includes any more than one fleet reorder unless they're making a full scale attack.
Remember that a game will last months, not weeks.
Civilians are evil. EVIL.
Don't muck with espionage teams and 0.0 worlds you don't want to colonize.
Anyways, my sincere apologies for being unable to finish that game for everyone. Best of luck on the next one.
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I'd be willing to play in a new game.
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Learned stuff:
The time does in fact go up with the square of involved players. Isolationists help, but more than four real races is a horrible idea.
Lack of selective maint/morale turn off makes precursors and such a real pain in the butt to control manually. Not to mention poor TFT.
If I had been playing, I would have crushed everyone on account of actually building a military in the first two years. You people are pacifistic to a fault.
Never ever EVER agree to control something manually that could be done another way. This includes any more than one fleet reorder unless they're making a full scale attack.
Remember that a game will last months, not weeks.
Civilians are evil. EVIL.
Don't muck with espionage teams and 0.0 worlds you don't want to colonize.
Anyways, my sincere apologies for being unable to finish that game for everyone. Best of luck on the next one.
I can understand the time involved, and it probably would've gone up even more with more time.
I would very much like to draw on your experience with running such a game, though.
A question: Why are civilians evil? Expansion, slow-down or generally running around?
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Now, who would be interested? Any comments?
And, would you want earth with nearly infinite resources but at a low rate, or maybe even all solar bodies, meaning that I set all resources not existing to 0.1 access and several billion tons?
Sounds interesting, but unless duranium and sorium are set to at least 0.3 no one is going to ever get off planet.
The everyone against the SM sounds good. I'm starting to suspect that multiplayer Aurora needs scenario setups to work rather than the traditional sandbox approach. It takes a lot of effort to make a game last more than 10 in game years once everyone goes interstellar, so giving everyone an object such as a colonization race, a scenario, or even just making a game an outright dual or arena match might be more exciting.
While most players seem to prefer indulging in the novelty of diplomacy afforded by multiplayer (and thus a Pacifistic tendency) I don't know if most SMs can keep a game running long enough to take advantage of this.
A few other thoughts:
- The interrupt system is not your friend. Sooner or later the auto-turn feature will disappear behind a perpetual stream of 'urgent' reminders.
- Civilians are evil because they can't easily be kept out of places and generate sensor checks. Half the sensor benefit of putting factions in different star systems seems to disappear as soon as their civilians start trading.
- Do not mix NPRs with SM controlled factions. The advantage of having no NPRs is you can safely deactivate sensor checks as you know when and where situations requiring them will come up. The advantage of having no SM factions is you don't have to every stop to think of ship designs or tactics. I'd suggest using one or the other.
- If you spawn a faction onto a body, that body will be flagged as geo-team-surveyed. I'm not aware of any other way to set that flag other than having a geo-team success.
- The two primary advantages of being the SM is 1) the chance to observe, compare, and contrasting different player tactics and 2) the freedom not to think too hard about ship designs or empire policy. Allowing a limited amount of player fleet/faction conditional/timed order requests offers a glimpse inside the minds and logic of the players improving #1 at the expense of #2. Think carefully on balance. Offering too much intervention will destroy both.
- Conventional starts are slower than you remember. The years may fly past in solo games, but in multiplayer community games the time will drag as you wait for the player to -finally- transit their first jump point.
If I had been playing, I would have crushed everyone on account of actually building a military in the first two years. You people are pacifistic to a fault.
Speaking as a member of the Trade Federation Alliance for the domination of Sol this is rather distressing. I mean, knowing the others would have been powerless to protest is a nice vindication of our plan, but since we thought our sectors were in the middle of a massive military buildup getting included in "everyone crushed" is quite scary.
Lastly, one of my own players dropped out of the Return to Sol community game, so I have an open slot (Venusian Faction).
Those brave enough to try or have attempted SMing a community game get first dibs if either of you have the time or interested.
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I would like to play in a new game.
On the game:
- Personally I would prefer a not conventional start. 10k-40k tech points assigned from the players or the SM + Trannewtonian industry would make the first game years a lot more interesting.
- 0.1 mineral access will also make a very slow game. Normal quantities in normal accessibility would be the best for me, giving the chance to each faction to go interstellar.
Anyway i am in for a new multilayer game.
Also what you mean all vs SM?
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Sounds interesting, but unless duranium and sorium are set to at least 0.3 no one is going to ever get off planet.
Hm... maybe set all bodies to 0.1 access once running out or something like that.
The everyone against the SM sounds good. I'm starting to suspect that multiplayer Aurora needs scenario setups to work rather than the traditional sandbox approach. It takes a lot of effort to make a game last more than 10 in game years once everyone goes interstellar, so giving everyone an object such as a colonization race, a scenario, or even just making a game an outright dual or arena match might be more exciting.
While most players seem to prefer indulging in the novelty of diplomacy afforded by multiplayer (and thus a Pacifistic tendency) I don't know if most SMs can keep a game running long enough to take advantage of this.
The idea was something like the Coldest War LP on the somethingawful forums, that is two factions on Earth with one controlled by me and one controlled by all of you. Diplomacy might even still happen both between the factions and between the players, though the latter would be (mainly) inconsequential for the game excepting differing assignments.
- Civilians are evil because they can't easily be kept out of places and generate sensor checks. Half the sensor benefit of putting factions in different star systems seems to disappear as soon as their civilians start trading.
We may not be in trading relationships ;-)
- Do not mix NPRs with SM controlled factions. The advantage of having no NPRs is you can safely deactivate sensor checks as you know when and where situations requiring them will come up. The advantage of having no SM factions is you don't have to every stop to think of ship designs or tactics. I'd suggest using one or the other.
Yeah, I'd probably leave all NPRs off. Just like all spoilers.
- The two primary advantages of being the SM is 1) the chance to observe, compare, and contrasting different player tactics and 2) the freedom not to think too hard about ship designs or empire policy. Allowing a limited amount of player fleet/faction conditional/timed order requests offers a glimpse inside the minds and logic of the players improving #1 at the expense of #2. Think carefully on balance. Offering too much intervention will destroy both.
- Conventional starts are slower than you remember. The years may fly past in solo games, but in multiplayer community games the time will drag as you wait for the player to -finally- transit their first jump point.
A good point. I may start the game similar to 6s, with an inhabitable earth between two systems and both with a higher tech base... or even something like the Resurrection game attempt, with absolutely end game techs and less population.
Speaking as a member of the Trade Federation Alliance for the domination of Sol this is rather distressing. I mean, knowing the others would have been powerless to protest is a nice vindication of our plan, but since we thought our sectors were in the middle of a massive military buildup getting included in "everyone crushed" is quite scary.
Well, for the first year I personally didn't have anything, but I afterwards at least fortified my JPs ;-)
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I would be interested in trying out multiplayer. I might not be very good at aurora yet but i think it sound like fun
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I second the scenario based idea. Even if the SM can keep going, as shown in sublight's games, the players don't.
Speaking as a member of the Trade Federation Alliance for the domination of Sol this is rather distressing. I mean, knowing the others would have been powerless to protest is a nice vindication of our plan, but since we thought our sectors were in the middle of a massive military buildup getting included in "everyone crushed" is quite scary.
Well actually, you'd probably have survived the initial assault on account of having decent missile defense. Most of the people with AMMs didn't build enough.
More generally, I consider a fair military buildup to be running naval shipyards/ordnance/fighters at full. Serious buildup is involving construction factories. This comes from the fact that without abusing civilians, economic growth per year is actually capped at a pretty low number. The fastest way to expand is conquering everybody.
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I'm a bit new to multiplayer, but this scenario mode seems pretty fun. I'd say just start with Trans-Newtonian physics and enough resources on Earth to last for a while, but a slow-ish trickle.
Also, I wouldn't mind playing as a faction too.
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Say, I see a lot of scenario interest.
How many people do we have who would be willing to SM a simple 2-faction game?
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Looks like that. I'd probably be interested in running a two faction game beginning in one, two or maybe three weeks.
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So is there going to be a game I could join? :)
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I've been thinking of running a community version of my Fractured Earth campaign, though involvement would probably be fairly 'high level' (for example, players would direct me with regards to ship building philosophy rather than making actual designs themselves - in return, I would present several alternatives for each desired class to choose from unless the players wanted to relegate that to me entirely).
I've mostly been waiting on 6.30 before doing anything however because it has seem imminent for a while - maybe now that Steve is starting a new campaign with it there is light at the end of the tunnel?
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I would definitely be interested in such campaign. Do I understand it correctly that there would be several races on Earth?
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I would definitely be interested in such campaign. Do I understand it correctly that there would be several races on Earth?
Yes, last time I had 5 initial powers on Earth, with a sixth added 10 years in. I was however, running them myself with some input from a few people regarding overall strategy.
I'd probably do something similar, but ideally have at least 1 person for each of the factions providing strategic direction and in return getting yearly reports. I might consider a more 'developed' situation, whereas there is some established infrastructure in the Sol system (kind of like Steve's NATO vs Soviet Union campaign, but with more factions).
As said though, waiting on 6.30, so much good new stuff that I couldn't bring myself to start something this big when I know theres an update lined up sometime in the next year (hopefully!).