TFTD Multiplayer Story

[Grossbeer]

Hiya all!

 

Seeing that this forum isnt all that dead yet (reading Full Autos awesome the Quick and the Dead Story ) i kinda want to do something like FA did, only for TFTD. As im sure i cant match his hilarious writing style i suggest something else:

Why dont we team up... lets say 3 ppl and play one campaign?

meaning i play the first mission, pass on the savegame, then the next dude takes over.

 

In CIV IV Forum its quite the common forum-Story- 'mode'.

 

What u guys say? is it worth reading? would any of u join me with that?

 

If so, what game tweaks do we want?

 

greez

[NKF]

To borrow a movie quote "If you make it, they will come."

 

From similar attempts at group games in the past (most never got far), I'd say that you'd need to have a good strong team of players that are willing to play through the game - and not let trivial things like life, the need to sleep and eat and other personal issues get in the way. Or at least perhaps some backup players that can jump in and take over if someone can't continue.

 

More importantly, how do you want to handle it? How do you plan to handle the Geoscape matters? Will one person act as the Dungeon Master and control all Geoscape matters and dole out the missions that each player takes, or do each player take turns at being X-COM commander? Will each player get their own teams to command? Will each player get their own base to command (with global intercept authority) or will it be done from a single base but with expanded living quarters? Does each player get a personal budget they need to stick to? What is an acceptable time frame for a player to take their turn? Plus lots of other little questions.

 

It's a bit of a drag, but I think you've got to iron out all the little details and set some ground rules to make a somewhat seamless game or else the players might end up stepping on each others' toes!

 

- NKF

[The Veteran]

This sounds like a fun idea and I'd totally be up for taking a share of the responsibility once my laptop is all sorted Unfortunately though NKF is right (as bloody always lol)

 

Does need some ground-rules setting down to help things along but seeing as it'll be a few weeks before I restore lappy to it's former self that sounds good to me

 

I think the first decision is how it's played as I see 2 options both with their ups and downs.

 

Option one is the standard and suggested form. We start a game and delegate missions as and when they become available. In this case I'd suggest Grossbeer (as it's his thread and idea) were the games master as NKF says and then as missions are reached they are either addressed by a set person each time (like a fixed rota) or they are posted up as a brief and contributors can bid for them (ie. terror mission on ship - who wants this one? Responses vary from hell no to I guess I'll give it a go then lol)

 

Of course the interesting thing to consider is that we wouldn't need the game to be played in any logical order as it's more important in a scenario like this that it is fun for everyone to play rather than following a strict gameplay and timeline code.

 

By this I mean there's nothing stopping us from having a few people playing the same save-game at the same time. We can even post up pics and results from more than one of them if we want. This would at least avoid people feeling left out of a fun mission when it's not their turn to play it. But in this situation we could decide who is the official player either in advance (only player x's result matters and will be used) or in retard (player x,y and z play the mission and the best reslut is the game which is continued)

 

Now an alternate method of play would pretty much throw away any semblence of chronography but would be a lot of fun and would probably be more believable given the situation involved (alien invasion and all) This would be to have each contributor playing a separate game in parallel to each other. It would limit the number of participants as of course we would only ever need one base per continent but that would be ok. Say Grossbeer has a game with a base in Europe. That means we can have further contributors with bases in South America, Africa, USA, Australia, Russia, Japan, Antarctic, Arctic etc so there is a lot of scope for contributors. (And yes I do realise I named land-masses rather than oceans, my bad!)

 

Anyway the story composed here would treat all base operations and missions as occurring in the same world so the only thing that would really need coordinating to be sensible is research and I believe we could use a Util tool if we wanted so that once one player made an advancement the other players could add that in their game too to simulate the sharing of the new technology throughout the organisation.

 

Having a campaign with many bases right from the get go would in my opinion be much more realistic as lets be honest, establishing one base in a fixed location with 10 men and 3 craft is NOT a good first step to combatting an alien invasion force. Ultimately in a real life situation the UN would essentially requisition military bases across the globe. Take Enemy Unknown into account and you can bet the stereotypes like Area51 would quickly form the heart of the organisation.

 

Let's assume that the UN has allocated each major country with enough funding to establish anti-alien taskforces to operate independently from base to base. This is XCom and although no base has direct control over any other this IS a case of human survival so they would definitely be working together by sharing technology and such.

 

I'm just about to go on holiday though so have a chat while I'm away lol Will be logging in as and when I can anyway so will keep an eye on this! Need to make sure I still know where my copy of TFTD is as I had it on floppy and haven't seen a floppy in my house for years...

[Bomb Bloke]

I'd certainly be up for joining this. The "pass the savegame on" methodology sounds good to me - each turn would start on the Geoscape, then proceed until we've finished a single mission. Yes, this may lead to conflicts of organisation in terms of equipment loadouts and so on, but a little chaos makes for a more interesting read, wouldn't you say?

[Grossbeer]

Wow dint think ill get that much response cool!

 

Well playing the game simutaniously (as The Veteran suggested) would be too much confusion i think. i want to try it out a little simpler.

As i see this, there are 2 options:

1.

As the veteran suggested: one 'dungeon Master' dishing out available missions. Perhaps every squad Leader has his own Triton and equipment (one Triton per base perhaps? This would mean till we got the 2nd base this will only be a 2 man job) or just who wants to do that particular mission (quote 'theVeteran':(ie. terror mission on ship - who wants this one? Responses vary from hell no to I guess I'll give it a go then lol))

 

2.

Bomb Blokes (and my) approach: start in geoscape, play the next mission then pass the save on to the next one. Simple and in civilisation4 a common thing (thou they change 'seats' when some timespan has passed, which wouldnt be so good for xcom , cuz in one week, for example, there isnt any alien activity)

 

any more ideas or alterations on these 2 options?

 

the next thing i wanna talk about (as it seems there IS an interest in that kind of story ( )) is the mode/rules for the game.

 

i want to explain how i did my last playthru and why i coose these alterations.

feel free to criticize as my 'mod' is pretty much insane:

 

1. iron man 'mode' (no loading, except for contineuing or loading from a crash)

2. superhuman

these two are taken for granted

3. no Molecular Control whatsoever for xcom (i hexedited the files so a Psi-rod costs 999 Ion-Beam accelerators)

this one is especially crazy as colonies and atrtefact sites are REALLY hard now. i had a fully equiped squad:

all at least ion armor/ all but 3 MC dummies with drills had 80 90 mc str, and they got owned. makes l8game more interesting imho

4. Ion Beam accelerators are the new zribt(zribt in late game u get too much ull ever need) meaning u need

- 10-20 for one ship

- 1-2 for the Ion Armors

- 4-6 for the later Tanks

5. aqua plastics are 10 times more expensive as are all vital combat equips

 

6. Leviathan costs 100 million and u need 40 ion accels and 50 magnetioc navs... this one just bugs me now in my current playthru, as i still loose lots of men (no mc in late game+lobster man is crazy(fun))

 

for this 'project' i dont know if these alterations are any good. what do u guy sthink?

[Bomb Bloke]

I think it'll extend the amount of time it takes to complete the game by quite a bit (building the Leviathon will be a grind-fest), but the lack of psi is the only thing that'll directly affect difficulty. Most weapons and plastics are harvested from combat missions anyway, and even vanilla Ion armour isn't worth mass producing until you want to hit T'Leth.

[Grossbeer]

Yeah ure right. despite that, the fun in that story lies not so in the challenge but in the fun doin a campaing together... so id say either:

1. vanilla iron man

2. no-psi iron man

 

what u guys think?

 

and more importantly who would be up for this :-)

 

I could just start and play till after(or before) the first mission and then see who wants to join in?

 

greez

[The Veteran]

I'm in but I won't be available until next monday at the very earliest and preferably I'd like to get my lappy back together after which I'll need to find a copy of TFTD as I can't find mine

 

I'm a big fan of psi but that's because it makes the game much more playable while losing less troops so for the sake of this campaign it's debatable whether it would detract from the game. Certainly things like psi scouting would ruin it so it either needs to go or we need to form a kind of rules of war setup so we know what we are and are not allowed to do with psi (requires LOS, no scouting, no chain controlling etc)

Also I think we should stick with standard names for the majority of our soldiers and just use custom characters as squad leaders (ie when I'm playing I use myself and so on) If our character then dies he should be considered hospitalised thus eliminating us from the campaign for say a month until he recovers

[NKF]

I'm out. My head is currently filled to the brim with ideas involving tanks, Space Invaders, ninja-like Chryssalids, manipulator arms and cartoon sectoids that I've not been able to properly concentrate while playing any games recently.

 

Unless you want me to play in this state.

 

- NKF

[silencer_pl]

What about that you are allowed only 1 seaman to have M.C controller ? This way it won't be that hard and not to easy since you can only do 2 operations per turn. ( I myself only prefer to have high enough strength not to be mind controlled).

 

Seconldy I don't think that zerbite isn't that kind of problem here in game. In my normal games I had plenty of zerbite at the end of the game (300+ or something). Each large scout has 50. From colony you can harvest 50-100 (you don't have to kill all there just destroy that part of engine and you have your zerbite).

 

You can controll how many items do player have - just print screen the mission result and send to all, and the master of the game (the one that operates on geo) can keep control of who has what and how many.

 

The problem only remains with money and what happens if someone loses a base (can happen) or a triton.

We can all start with 2 tritons at start and 20 seaman but that leaves us with less scientists and engineers.

 

Also we should have same version with same patches - I have mine from steam.

 

If you find good enough rules you can sign me in.

[Bomb Bloke]

I really do dislike the idea of dividing up equipment/bases/craft. If we do that, then why pass around the save game at all? Why not each just play our own separate campaign? The entire point to pulling a co-op event goes out the window.

[NKF]

Maybe just limit personalisation to personal heroes/avatars and the rest being a communal pool of aquanauts to choose from? Best of both worlds that.

 

Been thinking about it a bit more, and there would be more amusement to be had by everyone in simply handing the reigns over to the next player and see how things go from there - good or bad. It'll keep everyone on their toes.

 

Also everyone should have the freedom deciding how they want to approach the battles. Such as whether or not to use the MC Disrupter. Keeping the ground rules simple would allow more flexibility and keep things fun. Can get quite dull if it's too technical.

 

The main thing needed is good communication (held here for all to see) to keep things on track. Perhaps plan some long term overarching goals, such as where to build outposts, what research paths to hit first, etc.

 

- NKF

[The Veteran]

Agreed, personal heroes and a pool of rookies is exactly what I had in mind. Not sure about MC, it would allow more freedom if we allow each player to use it as they wish but we don't want to end up with boring battle reports reading 'soldier A controlled Alien 1. Alien 1 found Alien 2. Soldier B controlled Alien 2. Alien 2 kills Alien 1. Alien 2 finds Alien 3 etc...'

 

There have to be some kind of ground rules I think. Maybe something just simple like each soldier may only control one creature per turn and aliens may not kill other aliens? I don't know, might remove the usefulness of it completely but we need some guidelines to prevent misuse of MC...

 

I still think it would be interesting to play the game through a few different campaigns but treat them as running simultaneously but that could only work with a handful of players and it would be vital that each player kept upto date. We couldn't have a mission from February suddenly appear when everyone else is posting July's events for example...

[Grossbeer]

i Agree with BB and NKF about the way we should pass around the save... we could just post it here and everybody who isnt part of the team can have it and paly the missions that occur, but the main concept being that only those who are part of the team post in the story post.

 

silencers idea with only bringing one MC disrupter to battlefield is a good idea! it limits the usefulness of PSI just enough not to be unfair and in addition a great help. (and btw Control/panic costs 25 TU no matter how much TUs an aqanaut has, meaning if u got a dude with 75 u can MC 3 times per turn)

 

So i think the rules would be:

1. Vanilla harcore(iron man)

2. when MC Disrupters are researched one is only allowed to bring ONE

3. We all share all bases soldiers and crafts.

4. we pass the save around as soon as one Tactical combat is finished (successful or not)

meaning everbody has a phase of Geoscape and a phase of Battlescape.

5. we use the latest version, and as soon as the campaign begins ill post the save and everybody in the team should check if he can load it.

6. i still vote for (if readers are interested) Forum names for aqanauts :-) FullAutos story is much more fun reading, if ure name occurs in it xD. This can be decided during the campaign tho

7. we chage Command with a round robin, tho if someone doesent has any time other Commanders may be recruited or TeamCommanders take over.

8. we must be aware of the research bugs in the game, cuz we dont use xcomutil!

 

So the current Recruits are:

Grossbeer

Bomb Bloke

The Veteran(whenever hes ready :-))

NKF (ure description of your state sounds perfect for this kind of story xD)

 

I think if all 4 of us agree with the rules we could start this thing

After u guys agree ill start a campaign and a new post.

 

any other ppl wanting to join ranks here shoud post in here.

 

greez

[Bomb Bloke]

Works for me.

[silencer_pl]

Maybe just limit personalisation to personal heroes/avatars and the rest being a communal pool of aquanauts to choose from? Best of both worlds that.

 

 

So if your avatar dies - your out ?

 

5. we use the latest version, and as soon as the campaign begins ill post the save and everybody in the team should check if he can load it.

 

Does steam version counts as latest ? I heard that v2.1 was the latest.

 

8. we must be aware of the research bugs in the game, cuz we dont use xcomutil!

 

Well I guess we all know about the research bugs... but shouldn't we together discuss for the tech tree ? For example some say that resaerching gauss is pointless, some preferr to start with scaners. Should we fast tech to ION Armor - this kind of stuff. Leaving that to personal matter is rather difficult becasue Commander A started researching Meds, but Commander B think - leave meds for later I need <another item>

 

3. We all share all bases soldiers and crafts.

 

What if someone gets uber fail - lost triton - no more cash for new one - and too few seaman - do we commit lose ? Or maybe this player is out of the game and next one tries this mission again ?

 

any other ppl wanting to join ranks here shoud post in here.

 

Sign me in.

 

As for PSI - I just have idea that only avatars (if we use them that is) can have only PSI training that will leave us with one psi-lab and not fighting who gets the training. Also this will cripple the information who can storm the colonies / activities / psi-capable terrors

[Bomb Bloke]

Does steam version counts as latest ? I heard that v2.1 was the latest.

All Windows versions are the "latest". A fully-patched DOS version is equivalent, and the patches are in our files section. Steam should already be up to date, or so I'd expect.

 

 

Leaving that to personal matter is rather difficult becasue Commander A started researching Meds, but Commander B think - leave meds for later I need

I'd much prefer to research whatever the heck I want to research. I'm quite happy to put up with other people derailing my projects when it's their turn, but when it's my turn... it's my turn.

 

What if someone gets uber fail - lost triton - no more cash for new one - and too few seaman - do we commit lose ? Or maybe this player is out of the game and next one tries this mission again ?

Ironman mode would imply the entire campaign to be over, but we'd have to be doing pretty badly to reach the point where we'd need to save-scum just to make it to the next mission. Make the decision if it happens, I suppose.

[Grossbeer]

regarding PSI, i think one per mission is an okay restriction. restricting psi labs on the other hand isnt such an goo didea imo because u really have to gamble at colonies, which are pretty tough at it is. In my expiriance (in iron man mode that is) getting a full squad of high MC str ppl is very hard as it is. i always have to take 8 str ppl with me or ppl i havent yet checked(equipping them without granades and giving em just drills). Aqanauts die like flies so i think we need (l8game that is) laods of PSI labs to check for colonie candidates.

 

regardign research im with BB. I think we all want Sonic fast, new ships/armor etc. the only thing to dicuss would be which one is needed first etc. this we would discuss in the thread...

another thing:

if it turns out that one mission is not enough (cuz its too short) we could extend it to 2 or 3 missions each commander gets. this will be only nescessary in late game i guess, if we survive that long ^^

 

when someone screws up we loose, thats the beaty of iron man heheh

i guess we can agree that we leave one troope ralways back in the triton who would fly the sub back.(or mabe even 2 in case one gets mcd all the time)

 

greez

[The Veteran]

This all sounds good but I have an issue with the way we crew the Tritons. I agree that the way FA uses forum members makes it fun but a lot of people are going to die and we can't keep going with playerx32 and playery45.

 

I'd say we stick with standard names for the fodder and the only way people get their own characters in the game is if they take part in playing it themselves.

 

Each commander can assign their own character to the Triton before launching the mission which will put them right in the thick of the action. If this character 'dies' we simply treat them as severely wounded and replace them next time that specific commander plays again with a new rookie. All that's involved is a simple name change!

[NKF]

Well, I say enough with the chatter and let's get the ball rolling. We go with the pecking order mentioned earlier?

 

I've already got a G. Cannon/Coelcanth on my shopping list.

 

- NKF

[The Veteran]

I'm happy to take last place in the rotation if we're ready to start now as I'll have at least till mid this week before I get the comp together. I need a USB stick for data transfer too as my new xcom lappy won't be on the net

[Grossbeer]

kk then lets start this thing :-)

 

i will post the first 'Chapter' in a day as im in tons of work for today and night ^^

 

the command wheel will be:

 

Grossbeer

Bomb Bloke

NKF

The Veteran

 

 

greez cya tomorrow

[Space Voyager]

Godspeed.

[Sunflash]

A wheel fulla vets! This'll be goooood.

[The Veteran]

Sounds good man! Hey is there any program we could use to capture a video of our missions? Can upload them to Youtube then link from here. If there's a good enough program we can also take some stills from the vid and post them up in the thread for those who don't want to leave the site...