How has everyones online games gone so far?

[Slarkon]

i haven't had any yet but i wanted to ask what you all thought? out of all the games you have played has it been difficult to get people to log back in next day/week to continue?
whats the longest game you have had?
whats the most players?
do people rage quit if it looks like they will lose or only ever be a minor power?
do most games end before reaching late game crisis or tech?
any disconnect issues ? are any of you still playing games from earlier patches and annoyed you cant upgrade until they are done? if so how many years/hours are you in?

 

[aea]

I've only had good games that were pre-organized by a community, largest was 32 players (although I think only 30 showed up?). Was pretty stable after kicking the potato (lasted a few weekends).

I wouldn't even bother with the public servers. I once got kicked for "cheating" moments after discovering particle lances and starting to fit my DDs with them. Lots of rage-quitters of course, anything doesn't go their way and they're out.

Disconnections were rare but hot-joining was pretty reliable (although it takes a long time, but, go figure).

The current "meta" is to do a corvette rush which is IMHO incredibly boring. FFAs get decided in the first 20-30 years because of that.

 

[LordVitiate]

After playing 2 games, one with 2 other people and after one with 8 others. Both were pickup with random people. I can say I had a very enjoyable time. No one was cheesing or rage quiting or being annoying. Got on teamspeak for a game or used the chat and although we barely got to midgame it was very fun to play. Also connections were stable.

 

[InF3RNo]

Joined one last night, we had a hotjoiner and game stopped, couldn't play and couldn't enter the rematch because was too late in my country and had to go to bed.

 

[Dalinski]

Had a few 5 players games with friends. Completely stable and very fluid. We were playing on speed 3 and everyone seemed happy with that. We find speed three a bit fast for war though and usually drop to speed two.

We had what we thought might have been a bug but ended up being someone losing a leader, then their energy dropped drastically making their fleet perform badly and lower their fleet strength, the AI nation beside him immediately picked up on it and asked another Human player to join in on a war which they had no chance of winning because of their energy crisis. Was good to find out, this player won't run so low on energy again if they can help it.

Have not got too far into the game but it loaded fine over two sessions and people are happy (and in some cases feel the AI is better than them) to have the AI take over if they are late or absent.

On smaller maps you have have some VERY random starts but on the whole most people in our group can cope.

 

[Malkiot]

Main issue with MP is is that the player starting positions are inherently unfair. Some will get a ton of ressources and colonizable planets in their immediate sphere of influence and surroundings, while others get none and may even be sandwiched between other factions, with no way to expand.

Add to that the RNG of research and leader generation and players can find themselves completely unable to research the necessary techs for expansion (further planet types) if the planets around them are not their preferred type. This dooms some players to being nothing else but minors, through no fault of their own. This is a huge issue in MP.

A way to solve this would be to give far more weighting to "new world" research and to make sure that all factions have similar ressources/planets in their immediate vicinity at the start of a game.

 

[MrMarbles]

I've played 6-7 games. The first few were fun, lasted a long time and people had time to explore the tech tree.

In the last 5 players skipped colonies or tech, just spammed corvettes and rushed the rest. Game over for most players.

Until defensive structures and/or spaceports are buffed/early fleet rushes nerfed/corvette price increased, the meta is not going to be very interesting.

 

[Metaluser]

U will have to build ships first and colonize afterwards or yes u will get rushed.

 

[Jinja]

I play a regular weekly multiplayer game with a friend that's entirely co-op and not competitive, so I guess that makes my situation a serious outlier, and I can only answer one of your questions.

Which is, yes, it's very stable. There has been only one instance where we were unable to get back on multiplayer and that was several weeks ago. Most of the connection problems have really been my internet cutting out. The game recovers gracefully. Could use an easier way to get back on a specific server, though. Like a Steam friend server browse or something. Right now we call out the server number to each other and have to type it in, lol.

Most of our games end before getting to the end. We've never actually finished one. The farthest we've gotten was up until the end game crisis started and then we got too scared and quit for the night. When we came back 2 weeks later Plantoids was out so we restarted to play with plants. We are very fickle like that. Once Heinlein comes out and we get the Federation win condition that will allow us BOTH to win, we will make a concerted effort to actually finish a game. But mostly we play once a week, only play on speed 1 (or whatever Normal is - so it's pretty slow), and then forget what happened so we restart, lol.

 

[GlyphGryph]

I've got one ongoing game that's been running since the game started, and am participating in another that started quite recently. Both have been incredibly fun - Stellaris with real diplomacy is straight up amazing. Scheming, backstabbing, alliances, betrayals, all in service to personalized goals beyond "kill ur neigbours". What's not to love?

 

[Luzineras]

One question: whats the best speed to use when running a mp session and is it stable?
With other paradox games, like ck2, we always have synch erros when using speed more than 2.

 

[Dalinski]

No sync errors with us, we like normal, most play on FAST.

 

[Dalinski]

We recently had a 6 player game over the course of 8 hours.

Played on a small map, 2 Arm galaxy, 6 Human Players, 6 AI, Hyperlanes only. We found a small map was still quite big and there wasn't much reason for us to go to war with each other since there was lots of space we could expand into. So there was only one big war which ended up being pretty anti-climatic even though the result was unexpected. A second war the occurred the defenders forgot to add a war goal so that ended up being frustrating for them. The game should generate random war goals if none are assigned after a while. Or the game should automatically pause for 30 seconds when war is declared.

I made some massive mistakes and spent the whole game attempting to bring two new species to heel which at the end of the day were just holding me back more significantly than I anticipated. I basically had to have two 20+ size planets with a full compliment of Assault troopers the whole game and then another 12 assault troopers if I wanted to go to war. I had a big war with the AI to my North East and FOOLISHLY didn't accept my war demands. They gave me a +100 Merciful opinion bonus so was trying to get them in my alliance but did some more screws up to prevent that. Then I accidentally helped them take over the AI to their North - East and when I made the attempt again to vassalise them they were too big for me to assign that war goal. So I had to try and split them up again and then wait another 10 years where in that war I got totally destroyed. Clawed my way back by slow and steady production of well equipped battleships. OMG what a cluster! I ended up with 5 core planets that were size 20+ (except for my homeworld)

We also found there were too many habital planets and not much incentive to ruthlessly colonize them since it slows your technology. You colonise sparingly so the games needs to give more incentive to grab various planets and have points of interest worth fighting over.

I understand a lot of these issues might actually be address in the come 1.3 patch. Looking forward to trying another game out then.

 

[Pavane]

I would like to add a couple of questions:

Who decides the game speed?
Can a player pause a MP game?

 

[MrMarbles]

I would like to add a couple of questions:

Who decides the game speed?
Can a player pause a MP game?

Only the host can change game speed or pause the game. Unfortunately, the host cannot leave the game or the server will be lost.

 

[Pavane]

Only the host can change game speed or pause the game. Unfortunately, the host cannot leave the game or the server will be lost.

Thanks. I wondered how that worked.

 

[Dnote]

Played quite a few mp games since launch, the issue I've found with them is that you get a lot of drop outs. People rarely come back after the first one or two sessions, especially if they didn't get a great starting location.

Really need balanced starts, evenly spaced and I wouldn't mind an advanced player start either, with three worlds and some tech from the start, to really get over that initial slow pace.

Stellaris is though, infinitely better in multiplayer, with real diplomacy, especially if you get people who are willing to stick to their empire's ethos a little.

 

[nrader]

Played some pre-organized MP matches. 6-8 players usually, communication via voice (Teamspeak), 600-star galaxy.
Worked just fine us, even if some were unlucky with start, it's just diplomatic issue in most cases - you can just secretly pm one of your neighbors to attack another more powerful one meanwhile fixing your economy if you win. There was almost no disconnects, btw.

 

[Ezumiyr]

Played both organized games and pick up, from 3 to 32 players.

Organized games can be fun, especially when people roleplay a bit (not too much, because it's really not as RP-friendly as CK2), and when they try to keep everyone alive.
I gave up on pick up, it's just a min-max fest that plays like a bad, unbalanced RTS where players get eliminated after one battle.

Other things I noticed :
- it frequently causes desyncs to hot join since 1.2
- it causes desyncs to join the game when the AI setting is on "difficult" or "very difficult", so when you play with difficult AIs, you have to be there each session.
- House rules generally include : do not trade with nomad fleets. Do not form federations with more than 4 members
- People tend to have in mind the future limits of their empires and the worlds they want to colonize. Colonizing worlds that were included in such long term plans is the most common casus belli, hence diplomacy is essentially focused on that in early game.
- In late game, just after the end game crisis, federation leaders like to organize big, big wars with big, big battles since it's kinda pointless to make serious wars just to take a few little worlds. Nobody wants to continue until someone fullful victory conditions.