Making the most of the forced Internet connection [X-Pack ideas]

[tater]

Originally Posted by CaptainHaplo

While the "sharing of gameplay" has some positives - the idea is not truly applicable to the way SH5 was designed. Remember - its a semi-dynamic campaign. In that revolves the direction of enemy forcese, etc. The game your playing isn't going to have the same order of battle and dispersal of forces as someone else will - so the game cannot notify you of a convoy or TF - because it may not actually BE there in YOUR game - though it is in someone elses.

You misunderstand the "drop in battle" (DIB) paradigm.

It does NOT combine 2 player's games.

You are playing YOUR campaign. Say you just left port. DIB is "on" for you.

Some other player has DIB on, and his watch spots ships. TC drops to 1:1, and his game calls the server. In HIS campaign, there are also nearby AI boats ready to participate in a wolfpack attack. There are a few players currently playing with DIB on who are not doing DIB at the moment. It sends a message out to each player asking if they'd like to join a DIB campaign as either an enemy, or u-boat. A player decides to join as a DE escorting the convoy (he's presented with a choice of escort or wolfpack, and only after he commits to "escort" does he get a choice of which escort ship to take over). Note that the other player would only get the choice of "escort" if the target convoy had already made contact with the player or AI wolfpack sub. If the sub has newly spotted the convoy, the only choice would be "u-boat" to maintain surprise.

Perhaps top allow for vigilant escorts, "escort" might also be made available if any in the group are "elite." Then a player joins knowing there is a sub out there someplace... given allied DF, etc, it also might simply be random. X% of the time a player makes contact, escorts are open to DIB players (assume the allies know a boat is out there from DF and are being extra careful with at least 1 escort).

His local game is saved at the point he accepts, and he is now in the other player's game world as a DE.

Perhaps even multiple players are possible (might be a prefs setting as to how many are hosted based on bandwidth, sys specs, etc).