Used the forum search this time, but couldn't find anything about this topic.



I'm pretty unsatisfied with a certain multiplayer feature of Endless Space: the ability to play it on LAN. Of course, one could start a private game and play through steam. Yet this has several downsides:

- It doesn't makes sense to send all that data across the internet back to the guy that's just sitting next to you. Not to mention that it doesn't make fun as performance drops, especially if you don't have an internet connection that is too fast. I personally have 2MBit/s and the difference to a singleplayer game is obvious. At the beginning of each turn, the ui is oftenly even hardly responding and the effect that the map 'glues' to the mouse happens by far more oftenly in mp games. Effects like these might still be existant even with LAN, but I'm still optimistic that it would bring improvements on that matter.

- People are able to play Endless Space offline in singleplayer already (just go to offline mode with your steam client or block it via firewall to check), but a multiplayer game is impossible thanks to forced steam. I am visiting my grandparents in Hungary (700km away from me) from time to time and of course, they don't have any internet access as they simply don't need it. Sometimes, I'd like to have a game with my brother in the evening, but that's impossible with ES. Not to mention that that LAN was once a standard feature for a game like that and should be again.

- I don't like to be supervised by steam when I play any game. It's okay for me to register when installing the game (although I don't like that much either) to avoid piracy, but that's it. What I am doing in my freetime is my business and I don't want to share any information about that with steam, thanks!



I hope that some people will support my point of view at least partially, so that the developers finally notice the issue.

I forgot to mention that I sometimes suddenly loose connection to the steam network so that I need to reload games - another issue that could be solved by LAN support.

This thread is the origin of discussions about including a LAN-mode for multiplayer.

Other threads about this have been archived:

/#/endless-space/forum/29-archives/thread/13979-lan-gameplay



Feel free to post here about this topic here and inform yourself about the variations the threads listed above have already discussed, but don't open new suggestion threads for anything alike.



Addendum:

Steph'nie wrote:


6. Like chromodynamics said, Endless Space is a Steamworks title, so it cannot run without Steam. Multiplayer then requires Steam, while Steam requires an internet connection, to play the MP, at least.

Glad to see that there is some support for my suggestion. Don't know if I got your quote in the right context, but let me tell you, that what the quote says is nonsense or at least it doesn't fit here. I already stated in the original thread that we need to make a difference between the steam client and the steam networks. Of course, you need the steam client application to start endless space, thus you'd need 'steam' for Lan mode as well. But you can get to offline mode with your steam client or block it with your firewall and still start Endless Space in singleplayer mode - so in this case, you don't need 'steam' (the steam networks). Even more, you can play Civilization 5 - which is also a steam oriented game - in LAN mode in offline mode very well, at least that was possible in the early days of Civ5 when I stopped playing it. So steam (networks) is no prerequisite for LAN from the technical point of view. This is one reason why I'd like to see LAN: I don't want to share infos about when I play what, don't want to be supervised, and in LAN nobody would have to.



Sorry if my words sound harsh, but I am some kind of allergic to statements like the one above as it sounds like an excuse for enforcing steam. At least, the statement is misleading, so please, don't use it.

You can click on the arrow beside Steph'nie's name in the quote to follow to the full post and thread, so you can see for yourself, where and when she said exactly those words.

Just some recent events that raised importance of the issue of implementing LAN finally. Since yesterday, I and my brother are facing more serious problems regarding the steam networks. We already got used to sudden crashes of mp games thanks connectivity problems with the steam servers, but since yesterday we got troubles that we can't load autosaves from such crashed games anymore - the game will crash again when loading. I start to be really frustrated as we managed to to find a game / map that would have provided fair conditions for both of us and still being challenging after several approaches. These problems are entirely unnecessary as they could be fixed by introducing LAN finally. Hope you guys hear me finally and decide to implement LAN with the next free add-on or at least the one after. Currently, I see no chance at all that I'd pay anything for a non-free add-on till LAN is implemented as I don't see that these problems would be fixed approbriately otherwise - sorry to have to say that.



BTW / offtopic: The amount of graphical glitches (star systems are moved sidewards compared to their positions accoring to the cosmic strings; overview screen for star systems shows empty build lists; fixed population bar to the leftmost planet in star system screen even for uncolonized planets; glued galactic map to mouse still not fixed after all those weeks (!)) seemed to have raised lastly, I'd say it would be more clever not to issue that much G2G polls (even without meaningful explanation...) for now, but address these problems instead...