Hello I've quickly created this account to toss out my thoughts about multi-player after an hour or so of reading. (I'm 7 months late for this thread)
(For the following, consider the 4 players as being male)
Okay, so here's my idea on multi-player.
The option to play multi-player would be shown at the start, once pressed the player chooses how many players to invite (from 2-4), after that's been done, the player that is setting the game up invites friends. (How? I have no idea, use your imagination) After the players have been chosen and everyone is ready to start, the game continues to the Geoscape.
From here, one of the following can happen:
All players choose a base point, once all points have been chosen, the players can then decide to vote on whichever base is the best without being able to vote for their unless someone else has chosen theirs. If in the end of the voting all bases have 1 vote, then a random base is chosen amongst them.
Or
The creator of the multi-player room can choose a base without the decision of the others.
Naming the base comes down to the creator of the room or could be randomly given for laughs.
After the base has been created, the creator of the room can decide what to do without any kind of voting, however the other players can suggest what to do next by say for instance - player 2 wanted to research Alien Alloys, they could click Research and click Alien Alloys and a notification would pop up at the bottom right saying "Player 2 wants Alien Alloys to be researched." This would also be displayed in a chat box which can be expanded by clicking the notification window which displays the events like "Aircraft carries has been sunk with 69 casualties.".
The in-game time still passes normally for everyone while someone is inside the base menus. (I believe that actually already works, as I've had it happen in-game quite frequently, not sure if it's meant to happen though)
Now onto UFO interceptions - When the host decides to attack a UFO, it goes like any normal single-player interception, except that once the fight starts, the host has the decision to give control of any of the aircraft to any given player via a list of player names with drop down lists beside them with aircraft names which are in the fight to decide which player gets which aircraft. This would leave 1 player out of the fight at all times during interceptions, however this could also give each player a roll, as having the host do all the Geoscape work and have the other 1-3 players do the combat.
(worth stating - The players which have control of aircraft can do whatever they wish of them, be it to never to retreat even when facing a foe they could never hope to defeat, or flee at the sight of a fighter. Their choice, but considering these players are invited by the host and not a thrown-together-group, I'd assume that the players wouldn't do things to annoy anyone)
Okay, so now the UFO has been downed, drink down on some victory.
The host then sends the Chinook to the crash site. Once the Chinook lands, a menu pops up and a list of the soldier names with their weapon name included in brackets appear, similar to the aircraft-assigning menu which I've stated at the "UFO interception" section above except, the other way around. Each soldier in the Chinook is included in the list, with a drop down list which show the player names that they'd be assigned to, if no name is chosen, the host is given to control of said soldier.
This could be used like this: Host of a 4 player game brings 12 soldiers in the Chinook, the host gives each player, 1 soldier each, that soldier given to each player could be a soldier which is named after them and they could want to play out their soldier the way they want to and the host would have control over the remaining 9 soldiers and can decide whether or not to escort the other players or let the other 3 players to form their own group within the mission to explore the map to find the aliens.
All players can move simultaneously, once a player has used their time units up (It's called time units in Xenonauts too, right?) they must press end turn to confirm that they're ready to move on and must then wait for the remaining players to press end turn also, in the case of an AFK player, the host can press end turn twice in quick succession to force the next turn or if all 3 other players double click end turn, it will pass as a vote and will force the next turn without the host having to be ready. This allows for a player to go in-active and not hold up the entire game for everyone else. If a player has all of his soldiers killed, he must wait until the battle is finished and a notification will pop up like a "King Arthur has panicked" message, only it'd be "Player 3 has been defeated".
Once you enter another crash site, the previous soldier assignments will be used, as to remove the constant assigning of all soldiers. For the laughs, you could even add a "Random" button in there and it randomizes who each soldier is assigned to, so a player can start with a minimum of 1 and a max of 11, 10 or 9 if the Random button is used. (depending on how many players there are in the room.)
Terror missions perform the same way as crash sites.
The battle has been won, huzzah, too bad, you've drank all your victory.
All the spoils are given to the host, as he is the only one who can do anything with it.
I can't think of much more off the top of my head, recently got my hair cut you see.
My previous idea before the above was to include all the same menus above, except have all players control a part of the map:
Room has 2 players = 50/50 of map is given, if player 2 ends turn, half of the map continues like a turn had ended, while the other half does nothing until player 1 ends turn. If an alien crosses over to the other side of the map, they will reach to their target and then stop and will then only continue once the other side ends turn. If a soldier crossed over he/she will also reach their target and stop and then control of that soldier will be given to the owner of that side of the map to do as they please once the previous controller has used all time units on said soldier. Shooting over the borders of the map that each player is given would make the cost of the shot increase by 10 and place -50% chance to hit target onto the shot., making it less suited to attack from, but still possible, so if it was a snap shot, it'd miss, but if it was an aimed shot while crouched, there would be a slight chance of hitting, the same soldier cannot cross over the control border more than once within 5 rounds, to stop players from peeping in and taking a shot and then retreating back to their control border to make the alien shot have the +10 cost + the -50% chance to hit target debuff.
The problem I have with the "Map divided control" Is that, it would need to include having the soldiers given to each player to be already disembarked from the Chinook and placed at each players side, which would nullify having a Chinook soldier layout or even having the Chinook at all and would also remove the "Alien spawning incredibly close to Chinook that you are unable to see until you disembark a soldier and find out it's too late to do anything about it" moments. The only way it could be included is if HALO'ing was included in Xenonauts, which would give each player the decision of what part of the map they wanted and would click a part of the map they wanted to have their soldiers drop on to and after clicking a position, they would appear either on, or around that area of where the player wanted to land. This would give the risk of plopping down on top of a group of aliens and getting slaughtered the next round.
If the room had 2 players, the map would be split like "|1|2|"
If the room had 3 players, it would be like "|1|2|3|"
and If it had 4 players, it'd be "1|2"
random-text-here-to-allign-34"3|4"
I know that it's quite unlikely that multi-player will ever be added, however I've got a flicker of hope, mainly because of these 2 posts - http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/1008-%C2%BFMultiplayer-Patch?p=12002&viewfull=1#post12002
+ http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/1500-Tactical-Multiplayer-Battles?p=17278&viewfull=1#post17278
So, yeah I've probably missed something, but I can't think of it right now, also, I'm not exactly... "Active" on forums, I tend to post a few times and then forget for a few weeks and then remember it again I'l be sure to bookmark this. "I'll be back!".
+ Do forgive the wall.
Edit + Copy pasted what I was just about to post to stop myself from double-posting.
Argh! I knew I forgot something!
If a player was to leave at any occasion, a message would appear saying "Player 4 has left the game", if a player lost connection, connection would be regained if the player was to click "Multi-player" from the main menu after having regained connection to the internet. If the player had units before hand, he will lose all control over them and control would be given to the host. If the player regained connection and rejoined the game before a battle ended, he would NOT be given control over the units back to him and must wait for the next battle or interception to occur in order to have control over anything. After rejoining, the message "Player 4 has re-connected".
If the player had left with the "Map divided control" kind that I suggested, all soldiers inside of the dis-connecting players borders would be killed instantly with the messages "Soldiername1, soldiername2, soldiername3, have been left in disarray and were wiped out" All aliens would survive and all the aliens would be pushed to the nearest border of the on-line players and that part of the map which the player controlled would be locked down until the player rejoins the game.
Once the host wishes to stop the game and go to sleep or something long-term, he can save the game, which would either force all players to save a multi-player only copy or would only save for the host and when he wishes to resume the game, he starts the game, loads up the save and invites 1-3 other players, once they have been invited, they download the save file from the host and then are registered as being ready once download is complete and can then continue. If a 4 player save was loaded, the game can still be played with just the host and 1 other player, as there are no permanent player specific things given to anyone and it is all chosen with drop down lists so that one save, can last many matches, with many players different players which all want ... Many... Different things.
I don't know how to do anything of the above at all and to me, it sounds like I've took something difficult to implement and made it impossible. I only know of 1 man that can make the impossible, possible. Perhaps you can too? (Ever heard of the term "First's the worst, second's the best, third's the one with the hairy chest"? You wanna be the very best, right ?) Great. I now have Pokémon music in my head now. Why did I have to type "You wanna be the very best" x.x
I actually feel like I've missed something else... x.x
Well, anyway, well done for reading the wall of boredom and sorry for the wall of boredom hehueha.
