Multiuser-per-Side

What I would really like to see, the option to play one side/faction with several players together. What i mean is sharing the unit- ,building- as well as the resource control over theses 2-4 players. That would make it much more accessible/fun to fight several giant battels on different planets at the same time.

Yeah, seconded!

Age of Empires was the only game that I recall having this feature, and I never saw it elsewhere later

It would also be beneficial to new players, and all that.

Maybe players could still get a 'commander unit', so that way there would be multiple commanders per side? Or maybe that could be a multiplayer flag that the server could set... "Enable Multiple Commanders" or whatever.

For example Anno 1404 or 2070 give you this option too.

Yes, I think that could be a cool feature too.
Even without having multiple commanders then.
Just a normal set of units but them being controlled by two players.
Allows for playing on two fronts at the same time, or one focuses on Resources the other one on fighting.
Of course this can be unfair, so should be a flag for it to switch on or off.
But it may also be a nice way to show beginners how to play.
But I don't think this is gonna be used a lot and should only be implemented if it is really simple to do so and doesn't take much development time...
A variant, probably even easier to implement, is to just allow players to control their allies' Units as well...
Same result really.

This please! SunAge RTS was meant to have this but Corg the Developer never got around to it, This would make for some fantastic team work.

I think the best, most general way to implement this is to be able to explicitly invoke a share action on a unit to share it with a teammate. In Total Annihilation you could give a unit to another player, but you would lose control over it.

A great way to avoid potential confusion while sharing would be to display an ally's selection highlights over units that they currently have selected so you'll know they're about to give them orders.

But that's not what they are looking for, it's similar, but still quite different, they don't want to share units between players, like in a 2v2, but want Multiple players to control one force(like 2 teams of 2 playing a 1v1).

You could do this in (some) Age of Empires games(and games based on the same engine, like Star Wars Battlegounds) by setting multiple players as the same color.

Mike

Sure, but the example you gave is just sharing all of your units with multiple players. I was going for a general implementation that would be more flexible. If you wanted to save some units for only yourself, unit sharing would allow for that.

You would only have to make sure newly built units would inherit the same sharing properties as the factory they came out of.

There only remains the question of whether a player who has inherited a unit through sharing can redefine the sharing properties of that unit.

Actually it's more like sharing 1 Set of units(1 Commander at start) with Multiple players.

I won't deny it's more flexible, Starcraft2 has the same/similar system, but it's not what they are looking for.

Mike

I think the ability to share less than all of your units is extremely useful if you'd like help from your teammates but want to keep part of your force independent from them.

Why not implement a solution that is the most flexible and handles both requirements?

No offense, but I'm not getting through to you, when I get back from work I'll sit down and try to explain it properly, there just isn't a way to Handle both with the same tool or option, they are very separate ideas that both happen to involve sharing.

Mike

The only other tangible thing you have other than units is an economy, so you could share that as well. This was already implemented in Total Annihilation.

How is the situation you describe different from sharing all of your units and your economy?

If you start off sharing your commander, then anything he builds should inherit his sharing properties. It's the same with factories. In general the child will inherit the sharing of its parent.

Okay, I think I got a good way to explain this.

You know how in a normal game with 4 players you warp in with 4 Commanders, 1 per person?

Well what they want is for 4 players to start a game, but instead of 4 Commanders there is only 2, 1 for every 2 players, with them both controlling everything. It's not so much sharing as dual control.

Mike

Okay so it's effectively the same except you don't get your own commander.

That's going to be pretty boring and obnoxious if there's only one unit to be shared between multiple players until something else is built.

Why not just have one commander for each player so they all have something to do from the very beginning?

Short Term Loss, long term gain. It's a totally different dynamic.

Sure the first minutes are boring, but the second a Tank rolls off the factory both players will have something to do, and once you get the point of multiple bases and multiple huge armies it pays off big.

This idea is something that I think seems a lot cooler in theory than it does in practice. I believe it was also in the original star craft but i digress. The concept that one person would manage an entire sides economy while two other players are micromanaging the battles is very nice and i would love to see it but i think that perhaps it was tried and failed for the reason that it was a game type that didn't really catch on.

Some clever modder (Spliff) made a mod for FA that did this.

Everyone spawned their own commander, where they'd usually spawn. Then, based on pre-established teams (I think the teams were locked), everyone would have 100% sharing of units and resources.

It really required teamwork and communication to not step on each others' toes and screw things up for the entire team, but when it worked... is was awesome.

To hell with the idea of being able to share some of your stuff but not all of it. If you want to hedge your bets, then don't share anything.

This sounds really interesting. It would be a heck of a lot of fun as long as you've got a good buddy to play with. It wouldn't work without good communication though. But heck, I'm all for extra innovative features like this, I think it would help PA stand out even more from the crowd.

Given how many other games and things that have done it before i'm not sure inovative is the best word...

Thats what i meant . If one Commader for one Side or one per player on each side could be an option.

And yes in the first 5 to 10 minutes its may be a bit boring for one of the players but after that you could each focuses on different jobs or places. For example second base for ressource capturing. Or one focuses on fighting and the other one on base building. And later when you got several fight's and bases on different planets and moons it makes it much easier and fun to controll all these POI at the same time.