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).

[rascal101]

Excellent post and great ideas - fancy that instead of forcing DRM down peoples throats you incorporate this man's ideas to make something useful and serviceable out of the DRM, serve your customers while serving yourselves. How it should have been done!


Would love to see your ideas come to fruition, as a confirmed anti DRM subsim member I for one would be more inclied to accept it with your ideas on board

Sadly unliekly to happen mind you


Regards

Rascal

Originally Posted by Safe-Keeper

So since we'll be forced to be on the Internet all the time, has anyone heard of plans to implement features that takes advantage of this?

• A Demon's Soul-like system where you could have chance encounters between player u-boats (with the game synchronizing the local area's traffic and whatnot for them), who could then go off and hunt enemy ships together or whatnot.
• Join leaderboards and stats tracking that recorded your patrols.
• Radio traffic (messaging/chat) between players.
• A "shared intel" system where you can log onto a server with a friend and report contacts, which then spawns into the world for the other player (if that made sense). For example, let's say you attack a convoy, sinking three ships and damaging a couple others. You radio the position, speed and heading of the convoy to your buddy, and the game automatically transfers all the info about it (ship composition, damage, heading, etc.) to him and places it in-game for him so that he can go hunt it down. This would be a nice compromise, in my eyes, if we can't have multi-player patrols, as it'd give the feeling that you were in the ocean with other players.

Anyone else have ideas on how to utilize the DRM?