Well... I just got told I have tomorrow off. So I'm free in the afternoon (morning I'm going to be "drafted" to help make lunch, alas...).

So I can probably start as early as 4 PM EST. Maybe if you guys get it going early in the morning (9 AM EST?) I could do that, but I'd have to know in advance to set my alarm.

i have to run lights from 6-1 est, so early dun work for me

4 pm est works fine for me. Only reason I said the earlier the better is because Hellgate London servers are coming up at 1-ish eastern after a major update patch and I'm greedy and wanted to play both games But Hellgate is nothing I can't skip, so it's not a problem at all. It's a little later for the Euro crowd, but Multi doesn't seem to have a problem with staying up late, and it may not be too late for Shadowhal if he's interested.



If you come, then for once you have to finish a game. I've never, ever, seen you finish

i gotta say this as well, if you wanna join this time, you gotta stay until you finish

i resent that

hm, 4 pm est today? sounds good. I ll let you know if I cant, but for now I m in.

Im in , but I cant do past midnight. Im GMT

Also I have hosting powers

well you've been warned. when multi swings, go for her hind legs.

hehe, I'm GMT + 1 so even more of a strain you might say. I think I finished one game at about 4:15 am. time goes by mighty fast if you're doing something nice.

like gutting multi

hey guys; sorry I the one who suggested Saturday at 3 couldn't make it lol

Sigh, and whats worse I can't do today at 4 either... rabble.

At least I can check internet now... nice to hear the half/argument half/replay stuff

Gaaaah, looks like I may not make 1 oclock today guys -- sorry! Don't wait up for me unless you want to, hopefully it won't be more than a half hour delay or so.

Edit: Gaaah, for every advantage a family gives ya (free lodging, internet access, food... I gotta pay for college myself, but nothings perfect) theres always a horrible, horrible string (eating lunch or dinner with them unless I'm doing something Important like work, games don't count...).

Lunch is falling further and further behind, don't know how long this is gonna take, hopefully my half-hour off estimate was accurate.

phew, that was really an awesome game, I'd say the most interesting I had to date.

it did show me however that - in the absence of reliable multistar map placement algorithms - a dedicated 6 - 8 player single star map is needed. something along the lines of 35 planets. ah, wait, after the beta the better generator is reactivated. well, still ... the problem was that phase lanes kept intersecting, so while the actual game layout was cool, it was sometimes a bit hard to discern which line leads where.

Yeah, the phase lanes were so messed up on that map it wasn't funny in the slightest. I had a direct route to my homeworld from a quarter a cross the map, meanwhile some planets nearby too 3-4 jumps when a normal map probably would've been 1-2

Still, that was also an amazingly fun game. We didn't get to finish though, 3 of us got mini dumps at the same time, leaving only Multi and Ron playing

Yeah, well, it was a fun game. And use of non-random maps would probably be smart in the future.

Edit:

And by personal preference, only two teams!

Hahaha, post stuff when you can about it! I tried finding people online but there seems to never be anyone online...

Maybe we should have a beta SN list for everyone so we can IM/msg each other to see when everyone's up for a game. It'd be easier than doing it over the forums :/

well, in defense of the map generation mechanism, as we said in the game, it was probably the result of playing a 4 player map with 9 players which inspite of the extra planets generated resulted in said phaselane chaos.



there is a replay of the whole game posted by multianna.

if you dont know already, you can hop on the irc channel for sins, my experience was that most of the time some people were there, so its a fairly convenient way to organise games.

Ditto. Whenever we schedule a game we always hang out on IRC, several of us can and do hop between ICO and IRC, to make sure we catch everyone. Usually people don't sit idle in ICO waiting for games to start, though we have picked up a few that way also.



I agree, but the only problem is there's no good 1 star map for a large number of players. Areolian Sector, last time I played it, messed up team placement and gave different teams an advantage in each of the two systems, and that's the only non-random map that can accommodate more than 6 players

I'd really love to join a big (or small) game if it was organized in late afternoon-midnight timeframe (GMT+1h).

yeah, it would be really cool to finally play such a big map. would take ages, but it would rock.

hmm, maybe we could try a big european game. a few are from gmt-close time zones, but finding a date where all those few people could be a bit hard. afternoon est times arent bad, even though it risks getting very late. its not optimum, but good enough.

besides, its often not as long as one might think. so have I haven't heard of a game much longer than max 4 hours, most of them are more in the range of 2 - 3 hours. of course that will be widely different in a map like arolean sector or random huge ones with multiple stars, but then I guess those will be played in multiple sections. few people can play 10 hours+ straight.

I'm in if I can get this damned patch working.

I'm all for playing a game in parts if people want to. It would be also good for save/load MP testing.

yeah, we should also test that.

I merely doubt that with 8 players it will be easy to coordinate a second sitting with the exact same people at the same time. thats the real problem here.

Well, if it happens I'll try to attend. But once the fair closes down I don't see myself as having too many more days off.

When we tried 5v5 on Areolian Sector, we only used 2 systems. One system had 3 team 1 vs 2 team 2, and the second had 2 team 1 vs 3 team 2. Unfair positioning to each team in the different systems. The other 3 weren't touched, except one of our players managed to sneak an Akkan somewhere when we were close to his homeworld. If positioning was better, the other systems could actually be used. As it is, people get aggressive early on and there's rarely time/resources to try colonizing other stars..



How about weekend? We can all adjust times better then than during the week, since most of us work and stuff. Name a time, and we can see who can make it and go from there