Multiplayer ideas

[Brockolicious]

First, thing the maps will need to expand... alot.  For several reasons, but to cover the obvious ones; if you have one large cooping team that is working together to build on large city that in itself will take a large space.  Then if you surround this city with defenses, farms, mines, outposts (also would be nice to include some fog of war), to defend against those pesky raider attacks.  Another, if it is a free for all, then everyone might not want to be right next to eachother when there is definitely no way to have an even playing field except right at the very beginning of the game.

Second streamline the mods (atleast for online use), this would allow the game master to choose what mods would be allowed and since everyone has the same thing there shouldn't be too many bugs to work through. 

Third, this game me an idea with the armory mod and seeing the different factions in the game.  If your people start with current weapons and master using advanced weapons and are able to live a comfortable life in the colony they should have a comfortable appearance.  If they cannot and have to resort to using bows knives, or swords (regress in tech) they might start fancying medieval lore...  if for some reason they are forced to live in a cave, and forsake technology all together then you'll have a tribe of cavemen.

Forth maintenance, this should tie together either your colony lasts into the next era or regresses in age.  Keep up the machines and power, you succeed - open up advanced techs.  Poor maintenance, you loose your lights, have to research candles...  when your candles run out...  torches...  But, however, choosing a no maintenance life, doesn't make it easy - you still have those pesky raiders.  On the flipside with the advanced guys, they might have advanced weapons and armor, they're maintenance is high sure they might have a few androids around to do that, and they need to be worked on too...

Also, a population limit sucks...

I might have other ideas I'll post later, but for now these are my initial ideas.

[kdfsjljklgjfg]

There's no point in discussing how the game needs to change for multiplayer when it's so far down the line.

The only part of multiplayer that's remotely worth mentioning is how it will be done, ie: game mode, since it's not like you can just go "hey, free for all mode!" and that's only to see if there's even a good way to make it worth doing.

[Jamodon]

I think multiplayer would actually be really fun, though I understand it is low on the priority list because of its technical difficulty. Imagine contesting resource drops with another human player, leading raiders to another person's base, or banding together against a 3rd player because he is getting too strong. It would add a lot of user-generated complexity and really good stories to the game. I also personally find competitive/cooperative games offer more replay value than single player ones.

You would barely need to change anything for multiplayer from a gameplay perspective. I don't think you even need fog of war - having complete vision would prevent people from doing unfun "sneak up on you and kill all your colonists before you can react" shenanigans. Eventually, a "negotiate trade deal via com console" would be nice, but that's not at all required.

[longbyte1]

Multiplayer would kind of turn out like an RTS. I'm pretty sure that if Tynan opened the game just a bit further, multiplayer-related gamemodes could be made (with a modding system like Garry's Mod).