I am going to a LAN party and there is limited bandwidth just really for drivers, Steam etc. A few of us going have PA and hope to play each other over LAN. I suspect the bandwidth wont be enough but how much is enough? What sort of data download can say a four player game consume. Also can I get my hands on a dedicated server yet that can do local hosting?
The server won't be released until we leave Beta, which will be some time in December at current estimates, I'm afraid. You'll not be able to play by LAN until then - sorry!
Somewhere an internal bandwidth limit was mentioned, 2 or 4 MBit downstream I think. Playing each other over the same inet connection to an outside server will depend heavily on the strength of that connection. If the inet connection is good, nothing stops you from doing this even if it is a bit backwards as long as the server isn't released.
What kind of network will you be playing over LAN on? Should be more than fast enough unless you have a really old network. Even if its old then it probably will support 100mbit which should be fast enough.
Your best bet is to forget about pa you say that not everyone has got it anyway. My advice is to play fa on the 1.53599 with the sorian 2.1.1. All the updates after that patch don't do anything except force you to be on another version. Tell me something why do you have limited bandwidth @ home.
Try XTA - http://springrts.com/wiki/XTA - it's free, and very similar to Planetary Annihilation in many ways. It's basically an original Total Annihilation moved into 3D with some small enhancements here and there.
