P2P Multiplayer Intigration or P2P LAN Client Suggestions?

A quick question for the community and my first post on the forums, just wondering if there are or were any plans for Peer-To-Peer multiplayer to allow for easy private game hosting over the internet or if anyone knows of a simple to configure software tool that allows local network bridging over the internet. Servers eventually go dark and while I'm savvy enough to configure a VPN to extend my LAN over the internet its too difficult for my friends to keep everything running smoothly on their ends for us to play together. I've been thinking about this recently because I've been bummed out since Gamespy hosting went under, any kind of P2P linking would banish the eventuality when using local multiplayer is the only option; I know there are tools to host a dedicated server myself which is really-really incredibly awesome because that is somehow not an industry standard thing, but P2P requires significantly less effort to use and maintain for my friends and myself. I know this dream sounds like a long shot, it even sounds a little odd even to my own voracious sense of entitlement; so I gotta ask does anyone know of an easy-for-my-friends to use software client that bridges LANs over P2P? I have used to use LogMeIn Hamachi as a means to this end in the past, but it's been limiting and has caused some weird system instabilities for us when running under newer versions of Windows.

You need a server to play on, one of the computers involved has to host that. However it would probably be possible to get some form of setup where your "local" LAN server is visible to others who are in a VPN with you. Dunno what specific software you could use though. Figuring out a working config and making an easy to understand "how to" is work that has not been done by anybody yet I guess.

I'd say Hamachi but it's no longer free. There are a number of free virtual Lan programs though.

The proper terms for simple web search finally occurred to me, dialing up results for Virtual LAN revealed many many users with the same issues. A cursory read through turned up a few clients, all of which require accounts to use the software, something called Evolve and Tundler(?) were some of the products I dredged up. OpenVPN turned out to support a client-2-client connections, but it failed the simplicity requirement of this adventure as I'd have to produce a handful of routing tables and feed it special instructions to sidestep some bugged code just to get it going. Windows has some tools to spin together VPNs included, minimum it'd require some work on my end opening ports on my router but it might also require my friends doing the same. I'm starting to wish the Steam devs at Valve were thinking about integrating VLan into their software instead of adding music support or making Big Picture mode prettier; bet they could get it working without having to install weird pretend network drivers. Perhaps I should just bite the bullet and see how sloppy a complicated install process I can rig to be automated for my friends with a .zip archive stuffed full of batch files and mystery ware.

Why don't you use the server option though? Does it really need to be P2P?

There shouldn't be a need to mess around with virtual VPNs. If you set your router to forward ports TCP9000-9100 and TCP20545 to the computer running the local server, it should be reachable from the Internet. You'll need to get your friends to install the "Connect to LAN IP" mod though, so they can manually type in your IP address to connect.

PA was built to be client-server because it was decided it would be a whole lot less **** than SupComs P2P system which required all players PCs to keep up with demands. In PA only the server needs to not be sweating tears of blood and piss to run correctly.

If you want to play without Uber's servers then you need a beast PC and correctly set up internet connection for the server, there's not really a way around that.

There is no reason to use Hamachi or it's even bastardier alternatives in this instance.

I don't see a reason to try to avoid Uber's servers for <=10 players right now though. You are very unlikely to get a better experience while running your own.

That all said, good luck trying to get stuff working, I wouldn't want to put people off making progress doing interesting things and giving us all in general more options when playing PA

People often use Hamachi so they can avoid the hassle of port forwarding/ they don't have the ability to port forward.

I'm hip to how PA server's do things, its pretty cool actually. I know where you're coming from about needing a beefy machine to keep track of all the movement, I've had plenty of experience with RTSs kicking it during a match's climax from all the unit movement; many a long in the tooth game of Command and Conquer Generals was ended from from several players pressing Q to select every available unit out of a few hundred each on the board and hurling them at their opponents when their armies had reached critical mass. At the time my machine had a pretty good Pentium IV and it could usually handle that kind of thing better than most before giving up, because of this one of the rules discussed in the lobby was always to avoid doing that. CPUs are pretty good nowadays and we've never had issues hosting complex games in the past.

I'm playing using PA server's right now and happy doing that, but just about every old online game to date I used to play the servers have gone dark and local matches are the only way to keep playing them with my friends. We used to use Hamachi for internet games to solve this but its buggy for us since Windows 8 and so we need a better solution. So I was just wondering if the PA devs might try that to solve that because it would be cool in the eventuality of the servers going dark or us just being unlucky to want to play during some downtime and I wanted to know if anyone knew of a better solution than Hamachi. I could of course be underestimating how dedicated Uber is to their fans but I'm used to this kind of thing happening eventually.

Hamachi is or was a lifesaver. Sending everything through Ports 80 and 443 is the best thing ever because those are never blocked; which is also why TeamViewer is also a lifesaver.

AT&T and Mediacom each service a half of my town, AT&T is the only service provider in my half and they are the biggest jerks when it comes to actually using their internet for anything but your AT&T provided eMail account. Apart from the usual nonsense like throttling everything but AT&T and their partner's content they even block eMails and normal content coming from certain websites, if I want to re-download FRAPS or get a change password email from a few websites I literally have to go to the Library because they won't let that pass; their service never play nice with people on other providers. There is always garbage you have to just deal with or pay special money to have the most basic control added. I have spent so much time mucking around in their junky modem/routers combos to try and lose the inane restrictions on their NAT settings so my friends can actually use voice chat on their XBones, only to find out the NAT settings are enforced at the network level so even adding in an additional router in line or forwarding ports doesn't solve the problem. I've only managed to get some control over my internet connection by following a step-by-step guide to trick my modem/router into something that passes as a pass-through mode then hook up my real router and only use really weird ports as the common ones like what XBones use or what a Valve Source Engine game server uses are just forever blocked. Mediacom is better because it only blocks some of the lower 1023 ports, like mail servers because that's smart, that general consumers don't usually use and they actually let you forward ports when you want to; I'd switch to them in a heartbeat if they actually serviced my block.

I kinda apologize for the block of text (I'm leaving it so I'm not that sorry) but losing Hamachi from compatibility problems sucks, so I'm on a kick to find something else.

With that level of a headache you described I'd look into renting a server somewhere close and set up an Open VPN with it for you and your friends and use that, not only to play PA, but also as a general way to access the internet.