My Minmus base mission made me change my mind about multiplayer

[ShadowZone]

you know... ever since the discussion about KSP multiplayer began, I was against it. For me, KSP is very much a solo game and didn't see any benefit to it.

However... building my Minmus refueling and refinery station took quite a toll on my time budget. Two lifter spacecraft, one utility rover and basically three bases (two on the surface, one in orbit) maybe me juggle between craft all the time. And then I realized: This would be really fun to do with a bunch of friends and would feel less of a chore.

So yeah... there you have it. I converted to being a pro-multiplayer guy. Would you look at that.

[Scotius]

Yeah. Same thing happened to me while i was juggling two refuelling operations on Mun and Minmus simultaneously. Both involved a refinery lander, fuel carrier, orbital refuelling station, and another tanker hauling fuel into LKO. And yes - i know it was excessive and redundant. But i wanted to check which option was easier and more economical. After third mine-refine-lift-deliver cycle, i was wishing for a friend i could share the workload with.

[Bloody_looser]

Mission complexity can't justify need for multiplayer. In multiplayer all these structures would get shattered in half an hour, all kerbals would be dead, KSC would be smoking ruins, and maybe entire Universe would fall.

Edited August 7, 2015 by Vanamonde

[maceemiller]

I've thought about multiplayer before and also couldn't see the point of it however this post has made me rethink.....shame none of my friends are remotely interested in KSP.....time for me to recruit some new pilots I think! Great idea though OP

[godarklight]

I want stock KSP multiplayer too, Squad are the only people likely crazy enough to tackle the multiplayer problem (besides tehgimp666 and me), DMP kinda doesn't cut it in my opinion...

I'd also enjoy just playing for once too

[Aladran]

The good thing about multiplayer is that you will not be forced to use it

Those how likes it will be able to play with friends.

Those how don't will be able to play with themselves

[Geschosskopf]

And then I realized: This would be really fun to do with a bunch of friends and would feel less of a chore.

Except then you'd all argue about the design and location of the base, and which Kerbals to send there for how long, and all that. So what you really need are just some serfs to do all your drudge work with out any say in the matter. Hmmmm, maybe an autopilot mod instead of MP .

I don't see co-op KSP being much of a success for the above reasons. In the end, you'll just have a bunch of people all doing their own things pretty much in isolation, interacting only to argue over whatever they have to come into conflict over. Ownership of various assets and Ore deposits, the geosynchronous satellite network, etc. This will naturally lead to war. So I see PvP as the inevitable and logical conclusion of MP KSP.

But regardless, I see no need to be for or against MP. Squad's determined to do it so it's going to happen whether we like it or not. I'd rather they prioritize fixing bugs instead, and can't play MP anyway due to the lag of my satellite internet, but am neither for nor against it as a concept.

[Edax]

you know... ever since the discussion about KSP multiplayer began, I was against it. For me, KSP is very much a solo game and didn't see any benefit to it.

However... building my Minmus refueling and refinery station took quite a toll on my time budget. Two lifter spacecraft, one utility rover and basically three bases (two on the surface, one in orbit) maybe me juggle between craft all the time. And then I realized: This would be really fun to do with a bunch of friends and would feel less of a chore.

So yeah... there you have it. I converted to being a pro-multiplayer guy. Would you look at that.

When in doubt: Simplify.

[magico13]

I don't see co-op KSP being much of a success for the above reasons. In the end, you'll just have a bunch of people all doing their own things pretty much in isolation, interacting only to argue over whatever they have to come into conflict over. Ownership of various assets and Ore deposits, the geosynchronous satellite network, etc. This will naturally lead to war. So I see PvP as the inevitable and logical conclusion of MP KSP.

I think it could work great with a small group of friends. Take minecraft for example. I pretty much can no longer play it alone because it bores the crap out of me, and I really dislike multiplayer games because of people like you describe so I never join any big servers (plus, I like a lot of freedom and customizability). So what I did was set up a server for my friends and I. We all did our own things, but were near each other and helped each other out. We also had a guy who only played in creative mode and would build giant cities that we could hang out in. My fiance and I would typically work together, she'd build things because she liked that aspect while I'd set up the infrastructure (I always play with industrial-themed mods like IC2, RedPower, BuildCraft, etc).

The ability to go over to someone else's creation and admire it, and ask for help when a project is too big, can make a really boring game incredibly fun. Just being in the same universe is all that it takes. And with the setup I use I never have to worry about griefers because only the people I invite are able to join, and I like and trust my friends.

When I first discovered KSP I kept wanting to be able to have that same experience, but couldn't. Building a station together, or a base, or having rover races on the Mun all sound like awesome things, but so does sending a probe to visit my friend's base on Eeloo that he spends all his time on that I haven't seen yet.

[Glaran K'erman]

Except then you'd all argue about the design and location of the base, and which Kerbals to send there for how long, and all that. So what you really need are just some serfs to do all your drudge work with out any say in the matter. Hmmmm, maybe an autopilot mod instead of MP .

I don't see co-op KSP being much of a success for the above reasons. In the end, you'll just have a bunch of people all doing their own things pretty much in isolation, interacting only to argue over whatever they have to come into conflict over. Ownership of various assets and Ore deposits, the geosynchronous satellite network, etc. This will naturally lead to war. So I see PvP as the inevitable and logical conclusion of MP KSP.

But regardless, I see no need to be for or against MP. Squad's determined to do it so it's going to happen whether we like it or not. I'd rather they prioritize fixing bugs instead, and can't play MP anyway due to the lag of my satellite internet, but am neither for nor against it as a concept.

Sorry to hear about the satellite connection, one day telecoms will get their act together. But to your PvP point I actually think this is a SELLING point to MP, not in the traditional "war" sense but in the fact that it will add some element of competition for more competitive players. The developers reference to being obsessed with Rocket League (which is super fun by the way) tends to suggest they are the competitive type . I see MP as finding a balance between those who want a Co-op experience like ShadowZone and PvP. PvP won't have to devolve for a fight for Ore sites or parking orbits (space is quite big by the way ) but I hope will end up more of a "Science Race" with elements of trading and diplomacy (access to data from other programs probes, etc).

[Pecan]

Not sure I'll play MP very much (broadband capacity limits) but what I'm looking forward to is space-station traffic control.

"Kerbin station: All vessels clear station normal, service tug launching for crew-shuttle rv"

"Minmus Heavy to Kerbin station: PTA and dock?"

"Kerbin station: Minmus Heavy CTA retrograde and hold 1 km. Docking will be on Radial 3 retrograde. Contact again In Position"

etc.

[maceemiller]

I think it could work great with a small group of friends. Take minecraft for example. I pretty much can no longer play it alone because it bores the crap out of me, and I really dislike multiplayer games because of people like you describe so I never join any big servers (plus, I like a lot of freedom and customizability). So what I did was set up a server for my friends and I. We all did our own things, but were near each other and helped each other out. We also had a guy who only played in creative mode and would build giant cities that we could hang out in. My fiance and I would typically work together, she'd build thing3ds because she liked that aspect while I'd set up the infrastructure (I always play with industrial-themed mods like IC2, RedPower, BuildCraft, etc).

The ability to go over to someone else's creation and admire it, and ask for help when a project is too big, can make a really boring game incredibly fun. Just being in the same universe is all that it takes. And with the setup I use I never have to worry about griefers because only the people I invite are able to join, and I like and trust my friends.

When I first discovered KSP I kept wanting to be able to have that same experience, but couldn't. Building a station together, or a base, or having rover races on the Mun all sound like awesome things, but so does sending a probe to visit my friend's base on Eeloo that he spends all his time on that I haven't seen yet.

Nicely put your reply makes me want MP more!

[Hotblack Desiato]

I think, multiplayer would allow something else too:

imagine, you have one PC with 4 cores and >8gb ram. currently, KSP uses one core, and 3.5 gb ram maximum. so there is enough power to run a second ksp-client. install your favorite mods and mechjeb, and connect them.

this way, mechjeb handles the boring background-stuff for you.

and since minecraft was mentioned: for those, who play modded minecraft, this system would act like a railcraft-train with worldanchor-cart, doing things in the background.

[Varsi]

Except then you'd all argue about the design and location of the base, and which Kerbals to send there for how long, and all that. So what you really need are just some serfs to do all your drudge work with out any say in the matter. Hmmmm, maybe an autopilot mod instead of MP .

I don't see co-op KSP being much of a success for the above reasons. In the end, you'll just have a bunch of people all doing their own things pretty much in isolation, interacting only to argue over whatever they have to come into conflict over. Ownership of various assets and Ore deposits, the geosynchronous satellite network, etc. This will naturally lead to war. So I see PvP as the inevitable and logical conclusion of MP KSP.

But regardless, I see no need to be for or against MP. Squad's determined to do it so it's going to happen whether we like it or not. I'd rather they prioritize fixing bugs instead, and can't play MP anyway due to the lag of my satellite internet, but am neither for nor against it as a concept.

You have very different friends than I do. I've been playing EVE online, Minecraft and various war games with my friends and we've always managed to work together for great things.

DMP also showed us how much fun KSP can be until two of the Duna mission crafts suddenly exploded while docking.

I'm very much waiting how the stock multiplayer turns out.

Edited August 8, 2015 by Varsi

[pincushionman]

I think part of the multiplayer discussion is a problem with half the people talking about one thing…and half of them talking about something completely different.

There are really two different concepts to multiplayer: nowadays, most multiplayer is "served," where you find an internet server and join it - and get the whole people-do-their-own-thing-multiplayer-only-in-name thing or internet trolls and griefers problem. Servers with hundreds of random players, that kind of stuff. I think this would be a terrible mistake.

But back in MY day (you whippersnappers! Get off my lawn!), everything was HOSTED, and you played with your friends, because that was the ONLY people you can play with. You had a maximum of four to eight people (sixteen if you were particularly ambitious and your parents were willing to pay for good Internet and computers), so if you had PKers and griefers it was your own damn fault.

The second type of game seems much more suitable to me. Not that it must be hosted; you could serve such a game no problem, even over the internet. But the limited scale would encourage the types of games where collaberation can actually happen. You don't want the only interactions between players to be their ships passing in the night.

[klesh]

Do we know if KSPMP will be hosted or served?

[boxman]

Mission complexity can't justify need for multiplayer. In multiplayer all these structures would get shattered in half an hour, all kerbals would be dead, KSC would be smoking ruins, and maybe entire Universe would fall.

All you need to prevent that is allow servers to have a toggle to set your sihps/creations to be indestructable.

And if you have a private server with trusted friends then this would be a no issue.

[LordFerret]

I'm waiting to see how they'll handle time-warping in multiplayer. That's going to be a tough nut to crack.

[godarklight]

pincushionman: I can see what you're saying, but programs don't care who connects to them - there's nothing stopping you from running a server locally only for your friends, many DMP players do this. The only difference between a public and a private server is where people list the connection details.

LAN and internet support have different problems, but if you can handle internet support you can handle LAN, the only further step needed with lan support is you need to make some type of broadcast so other computers can find your game. Sending a UDP packet on 255.255.255.255 will do the trick. LAN only games just remove the ability to connect to specific addresses.

boxman: Or you can teach your friends how to build competent rockets, something that you can do together in a co-op way

lordferret: I'm unsure if they're going the KMP/DMP subspace style warp (it brings up paradoxes like driving through a player in the past but allows warp at will), or master controlled warp / lowest common denominator style (avoids all paradoxes but removes the flexibility of warping at will). I'm interested to see how they pull it off as well . Seriously though, there are problems *far* harder than time warp - A fairly big issue that plauges DMP is the terrain, it's not the same across all clients which causes... issues.

[Guest]

Ownership of various assets and Ore deposits, the geosynchronous satellite network, etc. This will naturally lead to war. So I see PvP as the inevitable and logical conclusion of MP KSP.

If you plant a flag on it, you own it.

[Geschosskopf]

...But to your PvP point I actually think this is a SELLING point to MP' date=' not in the traditional "war" sense but in the fact that it will add some element of competition for more competitive players. The developers reference to being obsessed with Rocket League (which is super fun by the way) tends to suggest they are the competitive type . I see MP as finding a balance between those who want a Co-op experience like ShadowZone and PvP. PvP won't have to devolve for a fight for Ore sites or parking orbits (space is quite big by the way ) but I hope will end up more of a "Science Race" with elements of trading and

diplomacy (access to data from other programs probes, etc).[/quote']

I was thinking it would happen more along these lines:

"Hey, we agreed that if you sucked the fuel depot dry, you had to refill it. So stop messing around and get on it. I can't get on with my mission until my ship can refuel."

"Dammit, when you changed the target of that RemoteTech antenna, you killed 3 of my probes."

"Great, just great! I spent hours building that station and then you had to try docking your 500-part ship to it, and Krakened it into the void."

Irritations like these are inevitable and will eventually cause somebody to seek revenge by being intentionally destructive to whichever player he perceives as owing him one. And from there on, it will be war .

...But back in MY day (you whippersnappers! Get off my lawn!), everything was HOSTED, and you played with your friends, because that was the ONLY people you can play with.....

Actually, get off MY lawn . MP games started in the 1980s and were all on servers, and you had to pay exhorbitant per-hour fees to play them. And they were all PvP (including flightsims) until things like "Islands of Kesmai" came out (the forefather of EQ, WoW, etc.). Back in those days, owning a (pre-)PC was rather rare and the cost of it, having internet service at all, and then playing MP games was such that there were no children on the internet. Everybody was an adult, sociopathic geek with a good enough job to pay for all this, and the programming skills to make it all work on your computer (plus hack the game).

So into the mid-90s, there were no terms of service, no censorship, it was totally the Wild West days of the internet. "Personal attacks" of the most imaginatively obscene sort were daily fair and you retaliated in kinda and challenged folks to duels in the games. That was just normal forum conversation. And EVERYBODY was a griefer, proudly so, and you gained respect by thinking of new ways to grief people, and posting up the details of how you'd done it. Instead of getting banned, everybody sang your praises. It wasn't even called "griefing", it was just how you normally played games. It was a glorious time and those of us who came of age back then still have trouble adapting to the kinder, gentler internet of today.

[Homusubi]

Yeah. Same thing happened to me while i was juggling two refuelling operations on Mun and Minmus simultaneously. Both involved a refinery lander, fuel carrier, orbital refuelling station, and another tanker hauling fuel into LKO. And yes - i know it was excessive and redundant. But i wanted to check which option was easier and more economical. After third mine-refine-lift-deliver cycle, i was wishing for a friend i could share the workload with.

I'll save you the trouble of doing the maths. It's Minmus. Minmus is easier.