Hey!

Recently started a multiplayer group to play this wonderful game with mates. We encountered many issues, that discouraged several players and almost made everyone give up. However, we ended up finding a workable system to keep playing, so I'm here to share it, in case that might help anyone.

So if you look around the interwebs, you'll find these instructions for MP stability:

+always clear notifications on the bottom right, even the greyed out ones (very important, do it)

-use a turn timer for the game to forcefully unstuck some situations at the end of the timer (hasn't worked for us)

-when players leave for a rehost, close the game entirely (very counter-productive for the method I will explain below, I advise against it)

-if the game tells you it is out of sync, keep going for a few turns and the problem will solve itself after a while (I must admit we have only tried to keep going for two turns without the game fixing itself, perhaps it would have worked if we had been more patient, but in any case desyncs weren't our main problem)

So the problem that plagued our particular group most was the game getting "stuck", most notably in ground battles but not only. It would sometimes occur once everyone clicked "end turn" even if the turn had gone smoothly previously, in which case the end-turn button at the bottom right of the screen would either say "pending" or "ending turn" but never move on. In that stuck state, the host could not save the game.

The "solution" is the following: (obviously not a perfect solution, but a decent workaround that allowed us to keep playing at a decent pace, without having to restart turns which can be really grating in late-game)

1) All the non-host players leave the game, WITHOUT CLOSING THE APPLICATION, just leave to the main menu. This will usually allow ships that were stuck to move, but will not prompt the turn to end. It will, however, allow the host to save the game, so:

2) The host saves the game, leaves, and rehosts the saved game.

3) Everyone rejoins, the host starts, and bam, you're immediately back in the game, unstuck.

It is very important for no one to close the application. That way, all the assets will remain loaded in (not sure if that's how you're supposed to say it, I'm no expert :D ), and the loading will be instantaneous. One of the factors that discouraged people in our group were the frequent reloadings, caused by the fact that we were listening to the common advice of closing the app entirely when rehosting. If some of the players have slower computers, this can really bog things down. However, as long as no one closes the app entirely, the issue is non-existent.

This solution also works if the host saves the game and realizes the saving process is not working, and is stuck. Have the non-host players leave, and the saving process will then sort itself out.

I hope this will help at least one or two players out there, cheers! :D