Moved a few posts to the Megathread for housekeeping. Keep it on-topic in here, folks.

BFett wrote:I would also attempt to maintain small miming company which would help supplement my income. If I discover that pirates are using my services they may quickly realize that they have been lured into a trap, and my forces would quickly dismantle them.

I really hope you meant that

Me? I'd just be ecstatic that it was released. Then probably do the whole trade fleet thing. Maybe blow up a few ships too.

You know, I have a feeling that I typed that on a mobile device, and that my finger didn't quite make it to the correct key. The M has been eradicated from the word and changed to a N. Nevertheless, that was funny and quite unexpected. I'm glad someone is proof reading my posts.

Im gonna just make my mobile mercenary mining and manufacturing fleet... mandatory... melodrama...

Catsu wrote:Im gonna just make my mobile mercenary mining and manufacturing fleet... mandatory... melodrama...

A flotilla?

Try and run as many instances of LT simultaneously!

what ill try to achieve when the full game version 1 comes out is mine, mine, and mine and then when I get enough credits buy a ship large enough to have 20 weapon hardpoints and a hardpoint built for a research module I will be making blueprints for weapons and engines and be selling the assembly chips but ill sell them at high price but not too high where no one will buy them.

Multiplayer mod, set over (hopefully) multiple nodes, with a permanent universe, and no AI Management characters. Players will still have AI control the ships they own, but no ship will be owned by a non-player.

Basically, it'll be EVE Online, but with Limit Theory. :V
Take the idea full circle!

Silverware wrote:Multiplayer mod, set over (hopefully) multiple nodes, with a permanent universe, and no AI Management characters. Players will still have AI control the ships they own, but no ship will be owned by a non-player.

Basically, it'll be EVE Online, but with Limit Theory. :V
Take the idea full circle!

So how would you handle pvp?
There will be those of us who aren't so "gung-ho" on annihilating the opposition, but want to play in the sand-pit too

What will happen to the markets if there's only 5 people on?

FormalMoss wrote:

Silverware wrote:Multiplayer mod, set over (hopefully) multiple nodes, with a permanent universe, and no AI Management characters. Players will still have AI control the ships they own, but no ship will be owned by a non-player.

Basically, it'll be EVE Online, but with Limit Theory. :V
Take the idea full circle!

So how would you handle pvp?
There will be those of us who aren't so "gung-ho" on annihilating the opposition, but want to play in the sand-pit too

What will happen to the markets if there's only 5 people on?

Shrug, thats what we shall find out.

Co-op in the standard dynamic universe might still work.

I suppose PvP could also still work, assuming a way can be found to insure that everyone's starting system isn't TOO far from everyone else's.

The old question still remains, though: does every player connect somehow to a single universe existing only on one person's computer? Or does everybody get their own local universe, generated from the same seed value, and sync every event that occurs in every connected player's universe across all connected instances?

Now a multiplayer-mode can have a lot of designs,
and not nessecarity as we see it in a large persistant multiplayer game such as EvE.

Also it would not be realistic to go for a single-world, realtime multiplayer MOD for LimitTheory.
Any game implementing that should be developed with a client server model in mind from the start.
This goes even less for a realtime dogfighting implementation run on a large central server.

But there are many other "shades" of a multi-user implementation, without changing much of the
basically purely single-player gameplay.
Even if its just to make the places a bit more interesting by watching what other people do.

One exaple could be that people can choose to use a common seed (eg having the same world generated),
and then sharing singleplayer-experiences via a simple database server.

For example, a player can choose to record his current activities in a sector, basically just
the position and actions of his ship and any AI ships he interacts with.
Then compressing this into a very handy small record, and uploading it to the server.

Another player, entering the system can have his game-client ask for any recent activities in this part
of space, download the recording and have the game play it back as "ghost / vision" of another
players activities. Without beeing able to directly interact with it, or maybe shoot down the
recoded ship just for fun, making it vanish.

This "chase the ghost" type of gameplay it often seen in racing games.
You dont interact with the ghost but use it as a reference of anothers or your previous actions.

Also players could download a battle configured ship of another player from the server, and then
let the AI take over to fly it.

Or some "gamemaster" just spawns events, like AI fleets or artefacts, like a "wormhole of the week".

Implementing such a system is comparatively (to an actual realtime multiplayer simulation) easy,
on the server and client.

I personally don't like the ghost events that racing games do. I'd rather face off against a real AI that is trying to copy my last race. The same is true with Limit Theory. I want to actually see and interact with other players whether it's through trade, combat, or mining.

For me there are only really two different ways to go about multiplayer. Players join a server which is running a copy of LT using a single universe seed (this is the map that everyone plays on). Either each player gets their own starting system or all players are put into one system and must fight for limited resources. Either way though, the players are actually interacting and seeing the same things everyone else is. The only question is whether or not the multiplayer should be more empire building focused or more PVP/PVE.

Flatfingers wrote:Co-op in the standard dynamic universe might still work.

I suppose PvP could also still work, assuming a way can be found to insure that everyone's starting system isn't TOO far from everyone else's.

The old question still remains, though: does every player connect somehow to a single universe existing only on one person's computer? Or does everybody get their own local universe, generated from the same seed value, and sync every event that occurs in every connected player's universe across all connected instances?

The only correct way, is server-client.
The server spawns a shard universe, with a number of systems equal to its capability to handle player interaction among them.
Bigger servers, or systems with more shards attached get more player capabilities.

I was only thinking of hosting the one primary "official" server for this, so that there was a primary game universe.
And releasing the code so other people can mod it into whatever they want.

Any attempt at peer-peer or "ghosting" as is described by others, would be both a waste of time, and network capabilities.
Having watched the evolution of multiplayer gaming, and having seen the issues with P2P and Server/Client models.
The server/client model wins out in every possible way.

Unfortunately P2P only works for very small scale, very localized games, that have no one who wants to cheat.
P2P dictates high bandwidth and low ping, so relegates you to a LAN.
P2P allows any client to make changes, and you must explicitly trust input from all clients. (Freelancer had this problem, one client sets all guns to infinite refire, zero damage, zero energy usage, he fires beams of power that cost him nothing, and when he gets hit takes no damage, but the other clients take the normal damage per shot. Very, very bad)
P2P scales poorly with multiple clients. The more people the worse it handles.

Look at Factorio, they went from a P2P to a Server/Client model, and went from handling maybe 6 people on a LAN, to handling >100 people spread around the internet.

Now demanding the multiplayer to be able to handle more and more, will make it more likely not to exist at all.

Apart from the technical side (networking code, keeping persistence, balancing, handling lag and dead reckoning, server costs and administration, cheating etc...)
There is one major issue with any "smaller" multiplayer game:

if there are not enough people playing it live, there will never be enough people playing it live.
Games relying on a live audience, simply require a live audience any time a player logs in. Else they are just empty worlds,
making the players who would be a potential audience to leave shortly after.
So you need a critical mass for a real time multiplayer game to work.

Thats why Im making some more realistic suggestions to implement some multi-user interaction to an otherwise
singleplayer oriented game. (single player oriented both in design and technology).