Atlantis_Risen wrote:
this doesn't work in practice. I may get a half hour to play, at a specific time. The chance of some other people having the same half hour available is slim to none.

Again, of your "vast majority" of people playing SP, the chances of them having the same free time schedule as you is "slim to none"? Even if only 1% of them did, by your own reasoning it shouldn't be difficult to find those people.

Atlantis_Risen wrote:
The only aspect of the game that MP can help balance is the battle system. In a good SP game, there's some AI races that tend towards science, some industry, some trading, and some war. THAT'S re-playability. In MP all that matters is build fast, crush fast. You lose the best parts of the game.

Thanks for ignoring everything I said in my post.

Atlantis_Risen wrote:
If anyone truly bought this game for MP, then maybe they chose the wrong genre. MP is never the strongest part of a turn based 4x game.

You're clearly a person who's never played Sins of a Solar Empire or Civilization V - two of the more well-known 4X games in recent times.





EDIT: Another point - this is not an SP 4X game. Something you need to accept. MOO was designed around a single player experience. Sins was designed around the MP experience. ES obviously attempts to embrace the MP experience, but it's caught in a bit of an identity crisis as to which is the focus.

Strudo76 wrote:
Any hints as to the cause then? I only play MP with one other player, and usually 6 AI, and I get sync issues. We haven't really had any issues with drop outs. I'm interested in anything I can do to reduce the chance of sync errors occurring so we can play with confidence. System settings? Network settings? In game settings? Who should host? Mods? (we currently don't use any mods) Anything I can do to make these occur less frequently, or ideally not at all. Even just a way to detect when it's OOS so we can reload then and there and avoid massively OOS games would be a start!

exactly the same here.



please tell us...

ryousei wrote:
I think I'll add my 2 cents to this post.



Being an avid fan of 4x games, I've pretty much played all of them, Civilizations, all Total War, SOTS, Gal Civs, most paradox 4x titles, some asian ones, some online ones and probably some others I've missed.

There's one thing I can say, this game will never even come close to matching the amount of content, graphics or immersion of the bigger studio produced ones (Civ/Total war/EU3[ignoregraphicsforthisone,butactuallygoodexampleoffocus!]).



There is ONE absolutely HUGE aspect that this game has on all of them.

That is, the multiplayer in this game is the shortest and simplest true 4x game that I've played that's still viable. (Unless you count advance wars as 4x, but imo thats more a 2x [expandandexterminate] game when the most important for 4x is exploit.)

This is because this game is has cut many of the 4x ideas to its core without fluff and thus its shorter and often easier to grasp. Civilization V comes second in the multiplayer length aspect with games of maybe 3-12 hours because its more complicated. Endless space games can be 1-4 hours imo.



Singleplayer improvements are essential to the game because that's what most people start with, not multiplayer. However, many of the other suggestions about immersion or content improvement I see as trying to fix the game on its "missing areas" rather than improve on its strength. But for computer games, missing areas aren't really true cons, especially when they aren't completely relevant for this genre. Graphics is not required for a good 4x game.



I just think the devs should focus on improving this game's strength and competitive edge rather than trying to improve things that are missing, because if people want immersion or graphics they would go play civilization or total war.



So I think they should focus on improving:

-multiplayer (region locked servers!!!!!, sync, disconnect, )

-Balance issues that for both SP and MP as well as MP specific ones

-AI choices for single player and for leavers in MP (they should try to ask for community coding or comunnity submissions here imo, it would seriously save their time.)

-More things to reduce micromanagement or otherwise increase turn speed in MP (Smart Queues, more shortcuts).

I agree in every way possible

Naut wrote:
sorry misunderstanding, i meant that i have exactly the same problems as you, and exactly the same setup. i too play with one friend only with 6 AI etc. My post was directed to



so i would like to know what Waylander1982 is doing different in his setup.

I understood you were having the same problem, and was letting you know what we have been trying in order to improve the situation. Hopefully Waylander will post back with some other information on things to try in order to get the same results.



We are playing a second game now, again using the slower PC (with better internet connection) to set up the game. Still haven't encountered any sync issues that we are aware of. We've never had drop out problems, so I can't comment on changes there. At least I can say we haven't started having drop out using this set up.

Strudo76 wrote:
We usually play just the two of us and 6 AI. LAN isn't possible as we don't live together. We just set up the game by selecting the multiplayer option in the set up screen and sending an invite through Steam to the other. Is there a better way?

it would be interesting if a setup in LAN would be more stable. i know that you are redirected through the steam network, but maybe it makes a difference.

Strudo76 wrote:
We did a trial, so this is only based on one game. Usually my brother would host the game as his PC is the better of the two, however my internet connection is better. Last night we tried playing with me hosting. The interface was a bit clunky at times, but we didn't notice any sync issues for the entire game. Originally we thought to use the better PC as it's processing ability would be superior, but now wondering if using the slower PC to set the pace is better, rather than having the slower one struggle to keep up. Will be playing more games using this set up, so hopefully the first result remains consistent.

sorry misunderstanding, i meant that i have exactly the same problems as you, and exactly the same setup. i too play with one friend only with 6 AI etc. My post was directed to

Originally Posted by Waylander1982

I've only seen a few de-sync's or drop outs. :<



And in those cases it is, almost always, as a result of something other than the game.

so i would like to know what Waylander1982 is doing different in his setup.

ryousei wrote:
Were you two playing just the two of you? It's not a dedicated server host, so if either of you host, the other should be connecting directly via LAN. It would definately have better connection that way.

We usually play just the two of us and 6 AI. LAN isn't possible as we don't live together. We just set up the game by selecting the multiplayer option in the set up screen and sending an invite through Steam to the other. Is there a better way?

Were you two playing just the two of you? It's not a dedicated server host, so if either of you host, the other should be connecting directly via LAN. It would definately have better connection that way.

Naut wrote:
exactly the same here.



please tell us...

We did a trial, so this is only based on one game. Usually my brother would host the game as his PC is the better of the two, however my internet connection is better. Last night we tried playing with me hosting. The interface was a bit clunky at times, but we didn't notice any sync issues for the entire game. Originally we thought to use the better PC as it's processing ability would be superior, but now wondering if using the slower PC to set the pace is better, rather than having the slower one struggle to keep up. Will be playing more games using this set up, so hopefully the first result remains consistent.

ryousei wrote:
There is ONE absolutely HUGE aspect that this game has on all of them.

That is, the multiplayer in this game is the shortest and simplest true 4x game that I've played that's still viable.

...

This is because this game is has cut many of the 4x ideas to its core without fluff and thus its shorter and often easier to grasp.

True that!

I think I'll add my 2 cents to this post.



Being an avid fan of 4x games, I've pretty much played all of them, Civilizations, all Total War, SOTS, Gal Civs, most paradox 4x titles, some asian ones, some online ones and probably some others I've missed.

There's one thing I can say, this game will never even come close to matching the amount of content, graphics or immersion of the bigger studio produced ones (Civ/Total war/EU3[ignoregraphicsforthisone,butactuallygoodexampleoffocus!]).



There is ONE absolutely HUGE aspect that this game has on all of them.

That is, the multiplayer in this game is the shortest and simplest true 4x game that I've played that's still viable. (Unless you count advance wars as 4x, but imo thats more a 2x [expandandexterminate] game when the most important for 4x is exploit.)

This is because this game is has cut many of the 4x ideas to its core without fluff and thus its shorter and often easier to grasp. Civilization V comes second in the multiplayer length aspect with games of maybe 3-12 hours because its more complicated. Endless space games can be 1-4 hours imo.



Singleplayer improvements are essential to the game because that's what most people start with, not multiplayer. However, many of the other suggestions about immersion or content improvement I see as trying to fix the game on its "missing areas" rather than improve on its strength. But for computer games, missing areas aren't really true cons, especially when they aren't completely relevant for this genre. Graphics is not required for a good 4x game.



I just think the devs should focus on improving this game's strength and competitive edge rather than trying to improve things that are missing, because if people want immersion or graphics they would go play civilization or total war.



So I think they should focus on improving:

-multiplayer (region locked servers!!!!!, sync, disconnect, )

-Balance issues that for both SP and MP as well as MP specific ones

-AI choices for single player and for leavers in MP (they should try to ask for community coding or comunnity submissions here imo, it would seriously save their time.)

-More things to reduce micromanagement or otherwise increase turn speed in MP (Smart Queues, more shortcuts).

I play MP with two of my friends..On Friday we couldn't even start game due to disconnections and very slow turns (desyncs occur almost from turn one).. On Saturday we could connect and game played pretty fast (almost like single) but were disconnected a lot.

Waylander1982 wrote:
... warp needs to be utterly nerfed ...

Yes. I agree. Would a system improvement do it, like "warp field destabilisator", that prohibits entering the system by Warp Drive?

Waylander1982 wrote:
I've only seen a few de-sync's or drop outs. :<



And in those cases it is, almost always, as a result of something other than the game.

Any hints as to the cause then? I only play MP with one other player, and usually 6 AI, and I get sync issues. We haven't really had any issues with drop outs. I'm interested in anything I can do to reduce the chance of sync errors occurring so we can play with confidence. System settings? Network settings? In game settings? Who should host? Mods? (we currently don't use any mods) Anything I can do to make these occur less frequently, or ideally not at all. Even just a way to detect when it's OOS so we can reload then and there and avoid massively OOS games would be a start!

I've only seen a few de-sync's or drop outs. :<



And in those cases it is, almost always, as a result of something other than the game.

Waylander1982 wrote:
Regardless of connection and connectivity issues the problem with MP is balance.

Well, i really would like to agree. But how can i agree with balance problems, when im unable to play past turn 50? How do i know something about balance?



I think it is more important to make it stable, and after that balance it.

I will like that i can actually play MP first

De-syncs and connectivity issues are really big problem right now..So i think that dev team needs to focus on that..Then other things can be balanced and polished , both in SP and MP..In my opinion MP is very big part of the game , and particular this game must be i will not say flawless but in high quality..

But hey that is just my opinion , but i hope(and know) that more people feels same way about this issue..

Regardless of connection and connectivity issues the problem with MP is balance.



They've gone a ways to solve this with the latest update but there still needs to be more work done, obviously you don't want a situation whereby every game is the same rough scenario with slightly different actions at each major juncture. But the key is to have it so that, within reason, each player is given the opportunity to play and enjoy the game prior to being crushed by the guy who got lucky with a starting system and has spammed colony ships.



Its essentially a math problem. Travel times need to be more balanced, research probably needs a look, some of the faction specific techs are just absurdly overpowered (but justifiably given their exclusivity), more variety is needed in terms of buildings/weapons/affinities, warp needs to be utterly nerfed, the list does go on. But these aren't issues which make MP unplayable, they just make it boring.

Bridger wrote:
What is currently wrong with MP? Connectivity Issues? Desync? I haven't tried it yet myself.

I'm not sure I usually play SP but I believe to have heard many members saying that either there weren't enough people available for MP games or that many players quit as soon as they sensed defeat.



Probably best to visit the MP forum section for this kind of stuff...

What is currently wrong with MP? Connectivity Issues? Desync? I haven't tried it yet myself.

Depends on how you play it, as it stands MP needs some balance fixes but other than that its fine.



It should be noted that the game, and the company, probably need to focus on getting more customers. Which becomes more likely if more people play and enjoy MP, the one in seven rule etc.