Starting a new game, looking for 7 players

[paranoiatron]

Hello, pleased to find this place. I've been playing this game solo for... Well, I don't think I've gone more than a year without playing it since it was first released, and I'd love to finally play through a full game with 7 human players. I'm thinking we could meet via Hamachi to play once or twice per week for a couple of hours each weekend. These are my preferred rules, though of course I'm willing to make adjustments if needed to attract sufficient interest:

-No unit restrictions
-Random map, large
-blind research OFF
-classic SMAC
-7 original SMAC factions only
-unofficial patch applied

... And, that's it, really. With the exception of the stickied rules for this forum, anything in classic SMAC goes, including copters and crawlers. I want a big, brutal, messy game that takes a long time, and some patient players to play it with. It would be cool to get one player for each faction, but whatever, duplicates aren't that big a deal really. I'd like to start within the next couple of weeks, say on the 7th or 14th, if possible. Post here if you're interested, maybe include some relevant info like time zone and available times, preferred faction, skill level, and any particular requests.

Edit: Wow, getting IP play to work really is nearly impossible. Alright, I'm shifting this to PBEM, everything else still applies though. I really want this game to move along relatively quickly though, so when we have enough players I want to set up a chat so that we can one day a week when we can get through a bunch of turns.

[Buster's Uncle]

Welcome to AC2!  How did you find us?

I advise you to hang around and be patient.  We get people looking for IP action from time to time, and they never seem to stay around long enough to meet each other.  You might want to root around and look for other 'looking for IP' threads, and check the MP Welcome thread - maybe PM some likely-looking candidates...

And of course, while you're waiting, there's worthwhile content and conversations worth being involved in all over the forum...

[mustang19]

I can vouch for paranoiatron. Join us. 

[paranoiatron]

Thanks for the welcome BUncle! I just came across this place while trying to set up an IP game with mustang, to get directions for setting up Hamachi. I'll definitely stick around, get in touch with some members here, and maybe try to pull some people in from elsewhere to round out the numbers. I posted a link on the Facebook group too. I'm so glad there are still active players of this game!

[t_ras]

I think trying to get 7 players to play together even PBEM is too many.
For IP I would suggest to play 2 players. Also most of the players prefer PBEM instead of IP.

[paranoiatron]

Thanks, t_ras, but we'll see how it goes. If it doesn't work out, so be it. PBEM is definitely an option if no one wants to try IP. I've done IP with 4 players though and it was a good time, so I think (hope) it can be done with 7. I wouldn't mind switching to PBEM in the mid- to late game, when turns start to take a very long time, but IP would be ideal to get started, get everyone introduced to each other and chatting a bit while we all get started... I'm optimistic. 

[JarlWolf]

And while your waiting for that big messy multiplayer game, don't be afraid to dabble in Custom Factions me and others have created. You may be surprised how much life they can breathe into this game. I also recommend reading the various AAR's to pass the time, Green1, Dio, Ete and myself all have some AAR's. Check the Planet Tales and Theory of Everything subforums for them: You'll find them.

And welcome to AC2. Glad to have a fellow SMAC/X playing comrade!

[mustang19]

Thanks, Jarlwolf.   

[paranoiatron]

Thanks indeed, Jarlwolf! Anyway, I figure I should post the information I suggested others post... My timezone (and mustang19's I think) is EST, although we both have pretty flexible hours. I'm an expert level player, at least against the CPU, but haven't done multiplayer much. My favorite factions are Gaians and Spartans but I'll choose a different faction if someone else prefers those.

[Earthmichael]

I suggest you think about using Yitzi's patch.  It fixed tons more bugs, and has an option to disable the rising water, which bugs the heck of me, and fixes ecodamage facilities to work correctly.

If you don't use the patch, then there is an exploit where you can create and destroy ecodamage facilities (such as Centauri Preserves), multiple times, each time, getting a boost to free mineral production, and not having to maintenance cost for the destroyed facility.

In addition, without the patch, when you do trigger mindworms, ecodamage facilities act to greatly INCREASE the number of mindworks encountered, when is great if you are trying the harvest alien lifeforms energy exploit, but not so great otherwise.

It also fixes Echelon Mirror bugs (which I always seem to run into) which crash the game, and some other bugs.  I also think it fixes everything fixed by everyone else's patches, so I can't praise Yitzi's patch enough.  Read up about it, and decide for yourself!

[paranoiatron]

Hmm, I did consider Yitzi's patch (especially after I saw in the poll that most players are using it), but then I saw it only has a SMAX executable, and I was planning to run this in regular SMAC. So, yeah, I would definitely like to use it, but is there any way to apply it to SMAC?

[Earthmichael]

No, but why would you want to downgrade to SMAC from SMAX?  If you don't have SMAX, spend $3 at gog.com and get it!

Almost all of our games are run SMAX.  If there is some SMAX feature you don't want, then ban it in the game starting parameters.  I recently saw a game start which used SMAX but banned Cloudbase Academy.  Yitzi's patch is reason enough to run SMAX.  Just do it.

[paranoiatron]

I just never liked SMAX as much as vanilla SMAC. If I can disable absolutely all SMAX features, including native life, all facilities and technologies, then sure, I'll run the game in SMAX with Yitzi's patch. Otherwise it should be fine. Everyone here has a working terran.exe, and I can't imagine running SMAC vs. SMAX would be a dealbreaker for someone interested in this game. Thanks for the advice.

[paranoiatron]

OK, I was overly optimistic about setting up IP—I can't even get my own to work.  Okay, so, I'm switching this to PBEM. Please sign up if you can play at least one turn per day, and I'd really like to set up one day a week when we can all get together in a chat room and go through a bunch of turns at once, or else this will take forever.

Edit: After trying to play like 2 turns via PBEM I am sure I can't possibly get through a whole game like this. Never mind, y'all. Thread's over, game's not starting, maybe it's time to move on to a 4X game that isn't more than a decade old. Too bad they didn't write it with some decent network code. Good luck with your custom factions and fanfiction everyone.

[Buster's Uncle]

This is not what I had in mind when I mentioned patience, nor what I expected from someone who told me to chillax.  These problems can be solved, but not instantly nor without people willing to make it work.