Are there still plans to bring multiplayer to the game at some point?

It seems like local hotseat multiplayer or PBEM could be quickly patched in, just based on developer mode with cheats disabled, but a more polished multiplayer mode with netcode and simultaneous turns would be a bigger endeavor.

http://stars-in-shadow.com/forum/viewto ... 1070#p1070

sven wrote:The core engine is designed to eventually allow multiplayer -- in fact, the hooks that I've built up for the purposes of AI development would make enabling a hot-seat multiplayer mode pretty straightforward. The bigger challenges I see in multiplayer have to do with pacing and balance. We'd need to think carefully about issues like whether or not to enforce a time-limit on player's turns, and how, exactly, to manage the complexities of simultaneous turns.

Multiplayer is still on our list of things we'd like to do, but currently it's pretty deep in the list. I think it presents some significant challenges in terms both of coding and game design, since turn-based 4X games are inherently multiplayer-unfriendly due to the length of games, and I'm concerned about making changes that might negatively impact the single-player experience. That said, they would be interesting challenges.

Arioch wrote:Multiplayer is still on our list of things we'd like to do, but currently it's pretty deep in the list. I think it presents some significant challenges in terms both of coding and game design, since turn-based 4X games are inherently multiplayer-unfriendly due to the length of games, and I'm concerned about making changes that might negatively impact the single-player experience. That said, they would be interesting challenges.

This sounds great , however I'd prefer the original pacing of the game to be preserved in a chess-like, slow multiplayer. The length would indeed be unfriendly for regular multiplayer matches but I've already had the game run on my laptop for many days, while I sit to play a turn every once in a while... I guess what I'm trying to say is - there is a great, old-school charm to the game and it shouldn't be lost for the sake of a faster pace in multiplayer.

There are game types where multiplayer is not ideal for: Endless Legend and space titles have tried simultanious movement turns to elavate some of these restrictions, but it ended up hurting the single player games in my opinion. If these titles would play like any other classical 4X they would have been much better I think. This and the terrible strategic map of ES2 is what mainly make SiS a clear winner for me

Its a shame really for their SP experience but I would be interested to see their statistics of how many players do engage with this style of games in multiplayer

Age of Wonders has a simultaneous turn option where the moves happen in real time, which I really don't like and in particular it hurts the single-player experience (as the AI is always faster than you); I don't want to have to race to move units in a turn based game. Fortunately, it's an option that can be turned off.

However, simultaneous turns work fine for giving movement orders as long as the execution doesn't happen until everyone hits "end turn", but SiS isn't currently structured that way, as so a lot would have to change.

Again, it's not something we're planning to work on real soon, and if and when we do, we will be careful not to let multiplayer capability diminish single-player capability.

Multiplayer with such a small playerbase seems a waste of time better put to A.I and features.

Anyhow in this DLC gonna be next year?

Don't have a target release date at present.

Arioch wrote:Don't have a target release date at present.

Have you decided if a defense rebalance would take place together or prior to the DLC?

I mean the one regarding reducing the number of defensive weapons for bases and planetary defense slost but giving them longer range (and ideally unique art to set them apart and make sieges more interesting)

I think the damagee output would not even need to be altered at all, just that PD range can cover at least the defending fleet and bases and maybe even reach the attackers right off the bat to really put them on the offensive and stack defense bonuses properly (this is already somewhat the case when defennding with rockets and bombers but even rockets would greatly benefit from a massive rokcet launcher sile art where their numbers per salvo are properly represented )

Would just nneed to make sure smaller ships can evade these cannons on the long-range so the planet cannot snipee out all the small craft before they can get into range

Currently, when I snipe-siege a planet it takes too long (and occurs too often) so it is faster to switch to the other player and demolish their defenses (the whole approach feels unfair though in general).

zolobolo wrote:Have you decided if a defense rebalance would take place together or prior to the DLC?

I mean the one regarding reducing the number of defensive weapons for bases and planetary defense slost but giving them longer range (and ideally unique art to set them apart and make sieges more interesting)

I'm not aware of any such planned rebalance of the defense bases.

Arioch wrote: I'm not aware of any such planned rebalance of the defense bases.

Sorry my bad: This topic was discussed abouth a year ago across a couple of threads and thought you guys like it

Here is the recap in case you are interested:
The Problem:
1. Heavy Weapons (especially with mod LR) enable sniping of any defense (bases and PD alike) practically nullyfing AI defenses but also making sieges boring as it takes many-many turns to do this
2. AI often chooses medium weapons as PD on top of this making them even less successfull against other AI
3. Bases have no fire coverage from PD which is very strange and means there is little synergy between the two layers to play around with
4. Same for Defending fleets where this is even worse as AI defense fleets will rush forward even leaving cover fire of their bases
5. AI movement logic cannot be altered (according to discussions around AI logic improvement) to address these both on defending and attacking sde meaning that the AI will not use the sniping exploit

Proposed solution:
1. Reduce available weapons to PD to only heavy, rocket and small crafts. Medium and PD are out due to lore (no range) and since only these have synergy with other elements (bases and defending fleets). If new art is done improve this segment, fever weapons also mean less work
2. Increase range of PD heavy weapons dramatically (hence the unique art needed to convey this) so that they can fire upon attackers from turn 1. This puts the attacker on the clock as they need to rush forwards and eliminate the guns on the planet ASAP. Important is that small and medium vessels should have a high evasion agaisnt these weapons at extreme range so that they cannnot be sniped off by the PD and thereby making autoresolve a non-option for hte player and cripple other AIs by constantyl decimating the smallest ships
3. Starbases suddenly make a lot of sense from hereon as they serve as a buffer before the PD can be taken down. These can remain as they are now and maybe a sigle race given the option to also mount these same extreme-long range heavy weapons here making them very strong in defense overall (lore wise this can be justified with only planets and bases having enough space and energy to host guns with such a range)

Thus movement of AI does not need to be adressed, exploit is eliminated, small ship survivability is increased during siege, and player has a multi-layered defense to tacke which can lead to interesting engagements and require varried fleets to tackle

Another bonus would be if Asteroid bases are given the option to mount one of these heavy guns as well making the overall package much more potent and giving them a good function (n to their armor)

I remember people asking for double the range on the weapons placed as planet defenses. Think I asked for an added shield slot.

Think there was also a discussion about having heavy weapons on the defense stations. But some problem due to them rotating.

nathanebht wrote:I remember people asking for double the range on the weapons placed as planet defenses. Think I asked for an added shield slot.

Think there was also a discussion about having heavy weapons on the defense stations. But some problem due to them rotating.

Ah yes, the rotating sation topic It was mentioned this was a thing in MoO2: it would be an interesting mechanic if each turn the base would show another side to the player and enraging unprepared players to no end

Yes, there are a lot of things that can be done to eliminate the exploits and make the siege more engaging.
Maybe just giving bases (inclduing asteroid bases) a heavy hardpoint would laready resolve most of the issues around sniping and range/overlapping defenses at least as far as defensive fleets and bases are concerned

Havent looked at thsi images for a while now

Are those even-horizont kind of bubbles aroudn the drives generated by their engine and are moving somewhat?
It would be a very nice visual touch and cool to see ships with a differnt kind of proportion system and vidually also starkly different

The terrforming concept is still cool as all h*ll: I am interested to see how the decision to terraform in one direction or the other can take form
If the command and decision depiction could fit into the UI and art style that would be just awesome but I understand it might be very difficult to figure out and display such icons that fit wand fucntion within existing build queue brackets - maybe it wold help if each planet and its converison options get a dedivated build selection bracket: this would give enough space to display the art and also not necessitate new embedded button functions

Most importantly, please include art for the terraforming research techs: there are lots of cool way to dispaly the cool techs and make them more engaging (such as a melting icecube would work wonderfully with the existing coulor palette for melting the ice-caps ) These could also be reused in an overview of what tech leads to what planet types or even in the planet terraforming building order brackets

zolobolo wrote:Are those even-horizont kind of bubbles aroudn the drives generated by their engine and are moving somewhat?
It would be a very nice visual touch and cool to see ships with a differnt kind of proportion system and vidually also starkly different

Yes, the idea is that the spike is some sort of gravitational drive, and so there is a gravitational lensing effect around it.

zolobolo wrote:The terrforming concept is still cool as all h*ll: I am interested to see how the decision to terraform in one direction or the other can take form
If the command and decision depiction could fit into the UI and art style that would be just awesome but I understand it might be very difficult to figure out and display such icons that fit wand fucntion within existing build queue brackets - maybe it wold help if each planet and its converison options get a dedivated build selection bracket: this would give enough space to display the art and also not necessitate new embedded button functions

I think that normally for your race only one direction is going to be beneficial, and you should be able to see from the UI what the benefit will be (numbers highlighted in green). The only reason you might want to go in the other direction is if you have a minority species with unusual requirements (like the Spicemongers) that you want to make a specialty planet for.

We're still figuring out how special cases like the Hive world work, so it may be that there are different requirements for changing the ecology of a planet vs. building a giant anthill.