Lobby Decisions - How to start a game?

The thing about 'holding the lobby hostage' was that was whoever it was who took longest to load the system. They weren't always AFK.

Ok, so a bunch of the stuff discussed here has been first pass implemented and I'm in the game now. We will push this live real soon here (hopefully in next hour or so).

Usually we avoid Friday builds so if it's totally messed up we may just revert to the previous build. There are definitely still bugs in it but it has a better feature set than yesterdays build for lobbys, a big crash fix and some other fixes to pathfinding.

Ok the build is now set live for everyone.

No build notes until later other than my post above until some later time.

Until the official notes come out: https://forums.uberent.com/threads/build-62519-unofficial-notes.57638/

I've had a chance to do a few games and I'm loving the new lobby.

All we need now are 3 things:

-- The ability to move people around. ATM we can just set the game to private and add an extra slot so people can move themselves around.

-- A system layout preview for random systems. (Basically the system editor minus the ability to edit anything. ) Because some of the auto generated systems are just bad juju.

-- The ability to preset a range of how many random planets are in an auto generated system. (This can be expanded to other settings as well)

Good feedback. Do you have a suggested interface for moving people around?

The system preview stuff is planned to be better already, including more info in the server browser.

And yes I would like a way to pick which template you are using for the planets. Keep in mind you can load whatever system you want already.

For moving people around, it could be a simple drag and drop system, where the host can hold onto a player's bar (the bar that includes name, commander, color, and kick) and then drag it to another slot in the list. Extensions of this could be while dragging a player, transparent player slots could appear under the teams that they can be moved to. This allows for new slots to be made in teams during the drag and drop without the host having to create a new slot. This feature is mainly to simplify the experience and only removes a few button click, but would greatly help with convenience.

Also what are the types of ideas that are floating around for the lobby system customization. I can see a great need for this feature especially when wanting to throw a quick game together and want a random system that still conforms to a desired style of play. Two ways you could acheive this in the lobby:

-Having a simple to part system in the current lobby that allows the player to manually pick how many planets they want (probably in a drop down selection). And then a tooltip system that allows them to hover over a planet and look at the stats that random planets having. Additional features of this could be sliders within the tool tip to adjust specific stats, but not being able to preview them, or move them around this system. Very Similar to: https://forums.uberent.com/threads/rel-advanced-planet-details-61694.54290/

-The other option would a the introduction of a tab system to the lobby, where players can explore additional options and features by remaining in the lobby but switching away from the player listing display. Here a host could have a simplified version of the system editor that could create planets, adjust them through sliders, and play around with placement and orbits. This would not have the render/generate or simulate options. It would also allow you to hit a randomize button. The planet display in the player list lobby would remain how it is now

The other benefit of a tab system is to allow mods to exploit it for additional options they can use for the their specific programs. Maybe even allow hosts to enable or disable the use of certain mods in a game, or make players have no mods at all.

Drag and drop one player on top of another player - it will then swap their places.

The current default system is also adding way too many planets for new players. Plus there needs to be a way to differentiate between a planet and a moon.

I'd prefer each slot be a drop-down box with available players in it.
If it's an already occupied slot then that player needs to be put in an unassigned list.
An option to lock them in place might be useful too.

Swapping starts to feel like a Towers of Hanoi problem once you need to do more complex moves and you end up chasing players across the UI if they're moving around by themselves.

yuck I prefer drag and drop.

I noticed that the lobby creates a lot of planets when there are numerous players, yet makes planets really small. This should be changed to generate fewer planets which are larger the more players join. Will we be seeing planet generation while in the lobby again?

To me, a drag and drop interface seems intuitive. IE: (as suggested above) Drag one name to another and they switch when you let go of the mouse button.

A drop-down box would not fit with the current layout and would just be messy. Think about it, try to setup a 30 man 15 team game in the fist sup.com. Even in smaller games I get cross eyed looking at that:

+1 just so long as you don't hide the chat panel.

About the kick with ban:
I only have seen players being kicked because they were afk when all slots were filled and the players wanted to start. I don't see why they should be banned, if they rejoin it means they are back and can play ...

this. put kickban up and you end up with a community full of people unable to play with each other.

Next things I'd hope to see:

* When everyone is ready, the host gets a sound played. If you can somehow make this play even when he's alt-tabbed out, that would be great.
* The host can ping people to make a noise on their computer. (Limit once every 30 seconds.)

It sometimes takes long enough to join games that people go AFK (alt-tab out?) and don't check back when it's ready.

You have not yet begun to see the depth of trolling people will engage in, especially once they are bored with the game.

$60+ Kickstarters troll waaaaay less than the general population.

One day this game will have a $10 Steam sale and you will rue the day you ever opposed a permanent ban function.

Exactly,

look at Supreme Commander 2, very limited community at the moment. Trolls everywhere.

I am so happy the host can add people to his ban list or simply kick people in the lobby.

Nobody says having a ban function is bad. But don't combine it with the kick function you would use to get rid of an afk player.

If someone annoys you so much you want to ban them, just add them to your blocked user list afterwards. I don't think combining kicking and banning is a good idea.