[Shade]

Wouldn't have been room for any more players anyway. Insane turnout today. If this keeps up, we won't be playing anything but dogfights and Black Omega

[CP5670]

That was quite interesting. I think that was the first time we consistently had a "problem" of too many people. It pretty much limited us to dogfights, apart from that crappy Black Omega mission. We could of course just split into multiple games but it's more fun to have everyone together.

I think I'll start working on that mission I mentioned, although it could be a while before it's done as I don't have a whole lot of time these days. For the moment, I think the best way to deal with this is to modify the missions that already have a gamma wing and make those player ships. I can think of at least two missions like this. This would have no impact on the balance with less than eight players, but would allow them to be playable in the few situations when we get more. They would obviously become a little easier in such situations but would be miles better than Black Omega.

[Mura]

great play run, too bad i kept crashing or kept doing dumb mistakes (in the last one i selected return to bridge or whatever instead of respawn  ).
Probably having more 12 people missions would be cool, i don't see a serious treat on balance for some missions since already some of them seem impossible to complete successfully in hard and insane 

[FUBAR-BDHR]

Had fun but everyone took off just as I was getting into it.  Had the 12 player TvT ready to try but FRED kept giving me a bogus error message. 

Modifying a few coop missions for 12 player should be too hard.  Toss in a few more enemy fighters, up the AI on some enemy turrets, maybe throw in an extra cruiser or 2 loaded with anti-fighter weapons.... 

[Shade]

For the moment, I think the best way to deal with this is to modify the missions that already have a gamma wing and make those player ships.

Yeah. It's a stopgap measure, but that's better than nothing

So anyway, to speed it along, I've made a very quick and probably very dirty 12 player conversion of R & B Allover. Only changes are that the reinforcement wing (Delta) has been replaced with a 3rd player wing (Gamma), the addition of a small extra wing of hostile ships that only appears when there are 9+ players, and small changes to the filename and description to tell it from the original. It's untested and possibly quite unbalanced with the higher player numbers, but here it is.

[attachment deleted by ninja]

[colecampbell666]

What we need is missions with 16+ player support. That is, if this keeps up.

[captain-custard]

what can i say  except excellent,
or alternatively.................

if you build it they will come

[CP5670]

Yeah. It's a stopgap measure, but that's better than nothing

So anyway, to speed it along, I've made a very quick and probably very dirty 12 player conversion of R & B Allover. Only changes are that the reinforcement wing (Delta) has been replaced with a 3rd player wing (Gamma), the addition of a small extra wing of hostile ships that only appears when there are 9+ players, and small changes to the filename and description to tell it from the original. It's untested and possibly quite unbalanced with the higher player numbers, but here it is.

I'll take a look at it. Just in the interests of changing the mission as little as possible, maybe you could keep the third wing from appearing at all unless there are more than 8 people. If the game calculates arrival cues before the mission starts (which I think it does), this should be easy to do.

Dragon's Teeth (fighteer-m01) and Vega's War (lone_m01) have an existing gamma wing, which just needs to be made into player ships.

Do you know who runs the FS2Net server? We would need to contact them to validate anything. We could perhaps also tell them to remove Black Omega while they're at it, since I'm almost certain that mission was never validated on PXO.

What we need is missions with 16+ player support. That is, if this keeps up.

I think 12 players is an actual limit with the netcode. The game code only supports 12 players in co-op anyway, if for no other reason than that you can't fit more than 12 ships on the selection screen.

A 16 player TvT should be possible in theory, but I have no idea if it would work.

[FUBAR-BDHR]

Actually delta wing shows up on the selections screen if I remember correctly.  I don't remember if you can change load outs or not.  Pretty sure you can't assign players to that wing.  Might have to try just to be sure. 

I put the word out to the Drunks that still stop by to see if they can get in touch with Cet to modify a few of his missions. 

BTW is this an every Saturday event?  If so what time frame?

[CP5670]

Yeah, pretty much. We play from 9:00 PM GMT to about 1:15 AM or so. That allows people from both North America and Europe to come. I would keep playing beyond that but I generally sleep around that time (my sleep times are weird ), although if people want to keep going and a host is available, they are more than welcome to do so.

Delta wing can be made to appear there but it doesn't by default, and it needs to replace another wing. If you look at the "starting wings" section of FRED2, you will notice that there are only three wings available, which makes sense since there is no more space on the selection screen.

[Shade]

Another one, this time The Die is Cast. Added a 3rd player wing, rebalanced by completely removing trebs from the loadout, which I suspect might almost make up for the extra players in this particular mission. Also removed the medal since it's one of the uniques and that shouldn't be changed by anything but a brand new mission.

Just in the interests of changing the mission as little as possible, maybe you could keep the third wing from appearing at all unless there are more than 8 people

Good idea, I'll take a look and see if that's possible. Not now though, too tired for real sexp wrangling, I can only do simple-minded slave labour like changing wing names and such

Do you know who runs the FS2Net server? We would need to contact them to validate anything. We could perhaps also tell them to remove Black Omega while they're at it, since I'm almost certain that mission was never validated on PXO.

That would be taylor. But really, none of these conversions should be validated until we've given them several thorough playthroughs and have gotten the balance right. Once that's done though, a couple of PMs is probably all it will take, as the multi log for the host will show the needed validation checksums. Black Omega definitely has to go though, or at least change dramatically. Right now it's a disgrace

BTW is this an every Saturday event?  If so what time frame?

Yes. 9pm to 1am GMT, give or take a bit.

[attachment deleted by ninja]

[CP5670]

Another one, this time The Die is Cast. Added a 3rd player wing, rebalanced by completely removing trebs from the loadout, which I suspect might almost make up for the extra players in this particular mission. Also removed the medal since it's one of the uniques and that shouldn't be changed by anything but a brand new mission.

I think the lack of trebuchets might make it impossible even with 12. Those are really essential in that one.

That would be taylor. But really, none of these conversions should be validated until we've given them several thorough playthroughs and have gotten the balance right. Once that's done though, a couple of PMs is probably all it will take, as the multi log for the host will show the needed validation checksums. Black Omega definitely has to go though, or at least change dramatically. Right now it's a disgrace

I would like to keep the changes to an absolute minimum for just this reason. It greatly reduces how much time we need to spend testing them. It's always best if we work with a mission that already has a third wing taken into account, since that basically needs no additional testing at all.

[FUBAR-BDHR]

Well next week if we can get 2 more players a second server will be necessary anyways.  Hopefully the number will keep increasing.  One of the reasons I've been wanting to toss a couple of standalones up was for people to see that the game is actually working and have a place to join. 

Aren't stats being wiped anyways?  So whats the point of not testing missions?

[CP5670]

The stats work fine as long as you don't use media VPs and rehost after every mission. It seems that the latter is needed anyway to avoid some other glitches.

I just went through the list of missions, looked for anything with a gamma wing (with a "true" arrival target), made those player ships and added a brief comment in the descriptions:
http://cp.nukelol.com/12player.zip

There were three missions like this, although only one has the full four fighters in gamma. I made no additional changes, as I think adding extra enemy wings and so on would have a much bigger impact on the mission and would require a fair bit of testing. As it stands, they shouldn't really need any testing at all. We could try them as well as the two posted earlier next time.

[FUBAR-BDHR]

I meant the stats getting reset when the new code comes out. 

[CP5670]

I haven't heard about anything like that. The new code will bring back the PXO lobby but I think it's supposed to keep running on the FS2Net system (which works pretty well at this point), and it's a long ways off in any case.

[FUBAR-BDHR]

I thought it was new pilot code, old style PXO, FS2net stats gone since they won't be compatible.  Maybe it's changed since then I don't know.  I've just been waiting for 3.6.10 to come out.  Not even worried about 3.6.7 or stats.

[CP5670]

FS2Net uses exactly the same stat format that PXO used to (which arguably has room for improvement, but that's how it is right now). The pilot changes are being made to address various bugs in SP campaigns related to red alert missions and pilot file corruption. I don't think they're supposed to affect online play at all.

[colecampbell666]

What we need is missions with 16+ player support. That is, if this keeps up.

I think 12 players is an actual limit with the netcode. The game code only supports 12 players in co-op anyway, if for no other reason than that you can't fit more than 12 ships on the selection screen.
A 16 player TvT should be possible in theory, but I have no idea if it would work.

I meant to code it in.

* Cole looks at kara.

[Shade]

I think the lack of trebuchets might make it impossible even with 12.

You might well be right. With maxims available and an ample supply of tempests though, I'm guessing that it's doable. Maybe