V1.25 Has anyone been able to setup a LAN or TCP/IP game yet That is playable?

Not yet, but we plan to this coming weekend. Unfortunately I'm not overly hopeful that the big isssues still outstanding (long file send times to remote players, AI taking over a player empire due to turn file not being received) were fixed since the patch notes didn't have any updates in that area. If they are still present, let's hope they start moving up the priority list and get fixed in the next patch

My friend and I got one running with Hamachi, however, there are a lot of problems even if you can connect. This is the bug report I sent in:

1. Players could not connect to me (I was HOST) unless we used Hamachi to simulate a TCP/IP LAN.

2. I was the host. When my friend connected and we got the game started his Empire name and flag were switched to MY empire name and flag, but the game continued to treat my friend as a separate player.

3. Once play was started my friend (the client) lost control of his research and build queue. Even if he overrode the computer's choices it was changed back to computer choices at the start of every turn. However, as host I did not experience the same problem.

4. Once you have aborted a multiplayer game it is impossible to re-establish connections unless you completely leave the game and start it up again.

5. The exchange of turns should be automatic once all the human players have completed their orders i.e.. the process turn button should be optional not required.

6. My new ship designs appear to be duplicating themselves in multiplayer mode.

Also, the whole process of starting a multiplayer game in TCP/IP is a bit confusing. I think some extra prompts to lead the host and client through the process would be very helpful.

I hate to say this, but the current state of TCP/IP multiplayer is so buggy that it really isn't feasible to play a game this way.

-- My friends and I have been able to start a TCP/IP game on a "real" LAN as well. We haven't tried in a non-LAN setting.

- We ran into this problem one time as well, but it was back around 1.13 or so and hadn't seen it since. Did this happen every time for you guys or just periodically? We have had a 1.17 game running for some time that doesn't experience this behavior.

- We again used to see this problem but found 2 ways to work around it. (1) ALWAYS have the host finish their turn first so they are back to the MP "main" screen (the screen where you hit process turn). It seems the host only accepts the remote player files in this screen. (2) Host the game on a seperate PC, thus it is always sitting at the main screen and always properly handles the incoming player files.

- Yup, we noticed the exact same problem.... seems to have been there since release.

- Totally agreed!!

- This was present in early releases but there were patch notes (i forget which release now) that reported this problem as fixed. It appears to be fixed in our v 1.17 game, but we haven't checked on 1.25 yet.

I'm beginning to wonder if the fact that I have a Steam version of the game is a potential problem. Maybe it's not updating itself correctly? It says it's up to 1.25 on the front screen, but there could be an underlying problem. My friend is non-Steam. Hmmm...

I would love to get in a tcp-ip game once its working. I hate pbem and pbw because I usually like having a set night a day or more during the week with people where we can play for a few hours straight like I did with MOO2... I did 100 turns during a weekend on that game at times.

Problem with TCP games though is that you usually have less people since everyone needs to be able to set aside time for many turns instead of just getting on and submitting one or whatever is required. You have to rely everyone having the same schedule at all times, i knew people IRL so that didn't matter though. With PBW I usualy just got on for an hour, submitted a turn then finished. That is not a satisfying game experiance for me.

Usually with TCP games I liked getting everyone on my Ventrilo server, pointless to do with PBEM. Better to talk to people with voice then just text.

Could never finish a PBEM/PBW game as well.

If anyone wants to try a TCP game i'm up for trying but I dont want to deal with ridiculous bugs if its really horrible.

email me if you get any bites...
for now, I'm going to get off and stay off this site-
now that that is posted

Having played MOO2 online for the past 8 years, and being new to SE, I can relate to how you feel. Personally, now that I've played a few PBW games, I have somewhat changed my opinions. I could see TCP/IP being a good way to get a game started, perhaps the first 20-25 turns.

After that, though, there's just too much detail in SE5 to really get an advantage out of being directly connected during play; turns simply take too long for the player. In MOO2, past turn 100, you can reasonably expect most turns to take 5-10 minutes for players to take, unless there's combat afoot and a player is designing ships. You can really crank things out, and depending on the setup, you can even finish a game in one sitting. In SE5, though, once past turn 40 or so, 20 minutes is a very quick turn, at least for me. Being directly connected has diminishing returns.

I'd certainly be willing to play an entire game TCP/IP, and indeed I look forward to it. However there would be a lot of instances where players would still end up waiting an awful long time for the next turn. I'm not saying it would be bad, but it's an orange to MOO2's apple.

I guess to sum it up, I'm suggesting that PBW is not as bad as you might think. I'd normally keep my mouth shut, however I had almost the exact same outlook you expressed: the MOO2 paradigm is the ideal way to play SE5. Now that I've got a little experience, I no longer think so.

Not sure why you were unable to finish a PBW game...I've completed 2, and am about to finish my third (though in a bad way...).

In any event, good luck. If you still feel the same way by the time it's working OK, maybe we'll get an opportunity to play one another TCP/IP.

Good news! We got TCP/IP working! We used Hamachi to connect and DID NOT load our empires from file! That seems to have solved all my problems. So, I can say that TCP/IP does work in patch 1.25. The only downside is very long turns resolutions. As long as 20 minutes on a small map!

That´s great... a bit too slow perhaps. What´s your connection speed?

If anyone out there is interested in setting up a TCP/IP game, mail me i would love to try at least once I´m eager to play a MP game =)

It's not our line speed we are on DSL and Cable, the problem is the time it takes to process the turns on the host. The actual transmission of the turn files only takes about 30 - 60 seconds. Processing the turn is taking 20 minutes occasionally.

just checking:

am i correct in my understanding that tcp/ip only allows for simultaneous turns;
AND that simultaneous does not allow for tactical comabt?

You are correct as far as I can tell. You do get to see a tactical replay of combat, but you don't get to intervene in the battles.

Are you guys hosting the game on a seperate computer by any chance? We changed the game speed modifier in the settings.txt file (I forget the exact name...I can look it up later and let you know) to speed up the actual turn processing speed. It reduced the time per turn from 20-25 mins down to at most a couple minutes. However, this only seems to work if you are hosting on a computer you are not actually trying to play on since that setting seems to make a turn 'unplayable' on that PC.

The problem we ran into on the transmission of turn files is that it does it serially so for each remote player it takes ~1-2 mins. Our game has 3 remote players so just the transmission time suddenly grows to 5+ minutes each turn. If the files could be sent in parallel that would help tremendously

I was hosting the game on the machine I was playing on.

Does anyone else think that allowing humans to take over tactical combat in tcp/ip games would be a great addition? A real-time combat engine is just asking to be used for this very purpose, and direct connection games should be able to allow for it...

Once the problems are fixed, of course.

-----
Space for rent - please contact owner

The idea of TCP/IP to start the game and pbw later on is a good one and i'd be willing to do that since turns later on take a long while anyways.

This is a topic I've become interested in.

Recently my son & I aquired two copies of SE V and updated to patch # 1.35. We attempted to create a LAN game between the two of us and ran into a hitch...with my PC as the Host I was unable to join in as a Player.

I've performed a quick search of web with little success in regards to a two-player LAN game. So, has anyone been successful in creating a two-player game using only two PC's?

The only other option I've come up with would be to add a third PC to the LAN to act as the Host. That of course is something I'd rather not do since the game is supposed to be LAN friendly.

Thanks for any assistance.