Offline Mode In the Wild (We'll get it soon!)

But doesn't the benefit out way the cost? Only legit players get to play.

(also I did mean to say "most pirates will always wait". muh bad)

As i said, there was never even a single case which could believably proof what kind of loss piracy creates. That's why it's even impossible to talk about 'benefit and cost'.

And i think you're underestimating the implications these systems create. Imagine SC: Forged Alliance would have needed this kind of verification. You wouldn't be able to play the game anymore.

Last but not least, that's all under the expectation that you cannot crack DRM. Which you can. Either you go for something very restrictive, like SimCity. The current system with Planetary Annihilation probably also protects from piracy.
But something like a simple - or even complex - check will be cracked in no time. It's almost like a sport for cracker. That's how it always went in the past, and customer always have been the ones to suffers. And that's just sick.

Regardless of how one rates the importance offline play, I'm generally more curious about the performance. Playing offline would be great as an option, but to put it simply, PA is not exactly light on system requirements, I can't imagine running the server alongside the game on the same machine is going help matters on that front.

Shouldn't be much of an issue, the current servers pretty much run each game with the processing power of a potato. And considering, the results are actually rather impressive. I've read somewhere that this is also done to check how PA runs on weak systems.

Devs also commented on server:

Your internet dies
Uber's internet dies
You're travelling

Three very possible scenarios where a legit customer will not be able to play while someone who didn't pay gets to play all they like.

Oh and if you're extremely right-wing or something: DRM is presumes you're guilty, so you have to prove innocence. IT'S UNCONSTITUTIONAL!

Actually we've been told the server isn't as resource intensive as youd think, in fact they host six(?) Or so matches per server computer. One server per CPU and one player per thread or something like that.

At a show like PAX, internet, even hard wired, is slow and expensive. This means, we often hack our client/servers to suit our purposes there. Since this particular PAX is a no hand-on streaming event, we didn't do some of the normal cleanup we would.

You're literally seeing our development environment at play here. Which we then use to connect to a locally hosted server on the closed network we run on.

Of course local server is coming, but you're seeing the environment we develop in. That's all.

As was said earlier in this thread. It's 8 games to a server, 8 cores, 16 gig ram.

Looks like Zaphod spoke out of turn then.

That's... annoying.

CURSE YOU ZAPHOD FOR BRINGING MY HOPES UP.

Sorry numbers were a bit of, but that helps the case even more if a 16gb RAM machine can run eight games simultaneously. A quad core should run one fine.

Well mostly what he said was that server is coming soon, and might be in 1.0. Basically ehat we've known for a while now...

There will always be pirates. Pirates are MORE likely to pirate a game however for having DRM, such as games from Ubisoft basically as a whole, SimCity 2013, and others. Games WITHOUT DRM are much more likely to NOT be pirated, surprisingly enough. Putting DRM into the game isn't going to stop anyone from pirating the game, it will only encourage more people to pirate it because they don't want to put money down on playing a game that DRM inhibits them from even legitimately owning anyway.

Yeah. I'm pretty excited. Really can't wait to start hosting servers and give y'all some epic, large system gameplay. Gonna be AWESOME.

The question is... has (or will) Uber make it so the server can use multiple cores? If that's the case, imagine how large, EPIC, and AWESOME games will be with a dual core, let alone quad core or 8 core. Muahahahaha!

Thanks for the update on this situation I just prey and hope that offline mode manages to reach us by release, with the video you linked I kind of feel like it might just make it, or shortly after.

Yeah I'm not sure saying that PA is a focused MP only experience but it is definitely a skirmish heavy focused game I think and I for one actually loved the Online experience that came with Sim City, it was actually one of the main reasons why I bought that game, I was able to be part of the beta and the online stuff worked amazingly well, the whole sharing regions with other players could have been something damn awesome but something happened between the month before release in the beta build and the release build where the simulation itself just completely broke down and because the simulation is in such a state, that game can never be fixed it will always break down at some point and basically end the game. The sharing abilities still don't work so working with other players is near impossible. Sim City is a whole different situation then what PA is, but PA absolutely needs offline mode, its an RTS not a city building game.

Isn't that only for pure multi-player? I seem to recall someone saying that AI players are far more resource intensive and, as has been said earlier, a lot of people want offline mode for single player games.

Hi there Garat, i haf a little sugestion.
Wy dont you make a sticky forum post on Steam and ubernet forums, about the features that they are still comming.
Like most of us know its comming.
But on steam like Brian said its all about no offlineplay and no unit cannon, people think its not comming.
So meaby its a change for you guys to clear it up and let people know that dont use search.

Again sorry for my terrible english !
And i love the game you guys made !

Even better, have some sort of notification on the main menu of the game saying "these things are coming, please don't panic!" There are lots of people who will boot up the game, see no offline and go "rubbish, give me refund", without looking into things.

Not really. Inconveniencing your own paying customers just to make sure again and again that they paid for your product generates a lot of negative feelings and a bad rep in general. It's not acting in good faith.

A good example is the xbox one in general and how the original concept treated people.