When will the game no longer need a internet connection?

I didn't say it was unreasonable. I took it pretty much for granted myself. I was merely exploring the underlying reasoning on why we took it for granted without any confirmation.

It is indeed a reasonable thing to expect though.

As for retail copies, unfortunately these days it isn't something that guarantees 100% offline functionality. Many publishers seem to have taken on the unfortunate habit of selling a game boxed and then still requiring at least a one-off online checkin. (uplay, steam, origin). Personally the first memorable time this happened was HL2. I used my SE S55 via USB as a modem to get it activated. Awww those were the days!

My point was that if PA was ever going to be 100% Offline it needed to happen with the "Gold" version. A one-time connection/download or whatever might be fine for a lot of people but there are still people out there where even that could cause problems.

Then there is the sticking point that it might not even be a feature at release, meaning that players who can't count on a solid connection basically have to endure a delayed release.

Mike

Yep. PA needs to have offline mode by launch in order to satisfy the community. Not including this feature is a critical mistake.

The internet connection is the weakest link in my rig. My beast of a rig, equipped with 16GB of RAM and 2GB of video memory, can play most games at max settings, but PA makes it choke like a dog because of the server lag. (I still get no less than 30 FPS on five planet systems, however.)

In short, if PA does not have offline servers by launch, a myriad of bad things can and will happen. Here is one example:

- If servers crash for whatever reason (high player volume, DDoS attacks, etc) players will not be able to play the game for a certain period of time. This will without a doubt, provoke savage criticism of PA.

Long story short: Offline mode or bust.

I agree with all of you who say that PA should be off-line-playable at launch, just look at the cluster***** called SimCity that EA put out. I was just trying to speculate how soon the devs might do it since we seem to be approaching the much anticipated 1.0 state.

Well yes, but the very big difference is that was never planned to be singleplayer.

If Uber has a big banner saying "offline mode, coming soon" there should be no problem, and if there is- we point to the banner.

Absolutely. If Uber plans to have offline mode, it should have a banner. If not, the banner shouldn't even be there.

Take a look at Amendment 9 of the Gamer's Bill of Rights that Stardock made:

Good Lord!

And I thought Australian Data caps were stingy!

From the Kickstarter page, circa 2012:

"Offline / LAN play support
By popular demand we are happy to announce that we will support LAN play and running your own servers! There will be elements of the game that are online only and will only be available when connected. For example things like player stats, auto-updating, metagame etc. However, we feel it’s important to be able to have an offline experience as well.

DRM-Free
For offline play, the game will be DRM free. For online play that gives you access to the global community and social features, you will need to be logged in. "

I would have never bought into early access if I'd known that two years later I'd be required to be constantly online and suffer critical performance problems due to server lag. My internet connection isn't terrible, and I've even upgraded but it doesn't seem to matter. It's the servers. A long or large game is pretty much pointless unless you want a slideshow.

I could care less about the DRM at this point, and could even accept always online requirements so long as it wasn't the current iteration that makes performance so heavily dependent on factors entirely beyond the player's control.

The game shows promise, but I've basically given up playing it do to performance issues, and getting the line "when it's ready" is just unacceptable at this point. Every time I come back to the game after waiting for more updates, I still experience the same horrific server lag that ruins it for me.

I'm really disappointed there's been no fix for this after all this time, because it's made me stop playing a game I know I'd otherwise really enjoy.

'Tis early access for you.

Early access or not, this is a core, critical, and fundamental issue that has existed since the earliest of access was possible. There is no way this could not have been foreseen, is the most demanded feature from the player base, and is absolutely central to any notion of acceptable gameplay. The TA, SC, and PA games are all predicated on the concept of massive conflicts and intensive macro gameplay. This is simply not feasible in the game currently available.

Multi-planet games are virtually pointless, as is the mechanic of utilizing moons as weapons, since the time required to build up to a point where your economy and strategic situation make such things possible, the simulation has become unbearable to deal with.

At this point, the game would be more aptly advertised as a single planet, small scale RTS. Galactic Warfare and many other additions are fine, but I think the vast majority of players would be gleefully discard all of these just to be able to play out a game to its acceptable conclusion.

I actually don't run into any problems of server lag too often, though admittedly I play when the Aussies do.

The fact is, once the server is released (at or near 1.0 release) you can host your own server, or people can host mega servers for you. You have to remember at the moment all servers are being hosted for free and will continue to be free even after server is released. Many games force you now adays to host your own servers and such, so I find this a little plus to be honest as I don't have the computer to host and play simultaneously. Just be patient and wait for release, you should have expected things such as this from an Early Access title, honestlty.

I agree, but an upgrade on servers will come soon, and an increase of player cap aswell.
But if this game will go gold (1.0) and does not have offline play which was CLEARLY stated on kickstarter this will have a very negative effect in every review that will come either by official media or from players. If they choose that offline play will come after 1.0 they will have to state that VERY CLEARLY in advance to us on this very forum, everywhere else, and especially on the shop box, or else this will be a shitstorm without end.

Not only that, but if either server performance is not increased or a reasonable unit/planet cap is not enforced then this game will get torn apart at the polls regardless of its potential.

Server performance is bad because it's not running to full potential, multiple servers are being hosted from one computer I believe. Also, there will be no forced unit cap- it's a big premise of the game. I'm going to guess there will be optional unit caps in the future however.

While that is certainly good to hear, critics don't care how they do it. They just care about the results.
If there has to be a unit cap to keep the game running smoothly all the time, it should be done.

I'm not speaking about this from my personal perspective. I can handle some slowdowns. I'm trying to speak from the perspective of someone completely new to PA who comes in not giving a flying **** about it and is just here to have fun and rate the fun they have with the intention of explaining why or why not they are having fun.

It seems a much better option to instead have the unit cap optional to turn OFF rather than turn ON.

Where the performance of the game is concerned, it was running much faster in earlier builds.

There are a few things that have caused the recent server lag:
1: Re-balance of dox inflating unit count more quickly
2: New path-finding system still needing work
3: Problems with area patrols.

Essentially what kills the perf is large numbers of units going on area patrols (it's ok for air / orbital but area patrols on the ground take alot of computation to avoid obstacles)- and what do people do when the invade planet with 5k doxes?

Hence the problems- I'm certain Uber are fully aware of the issue and know the level of performance they want for release.

As for offline- they've made it very clear that it is being worked on and will be available soon, and I for one would rather they had the time to ensure it was as stable as possible before releasing it so I'm not overly concerned if this is just after the 1.0 release, on the understanding that the server issues will be resolved by then (whenever then is- there is no officially confirmed date as of yet).

Psst.. you quoted that wrong.

https://forums.uberent.com/threads/server-question.54087/#post-826879

Found via:
https://forums.uberent.com/search/418060/?q=current server&o=date&c[user][0]=1773902&c[user][1]=1956172&c[user][2]=53

I specify this to a LOT of ****-talkers about the game's performance. They want to be correct when they tell people that these system specs will run a game, so they make sure the "test environment" is similar to make sure "these poor specs will still achieve this minimum playability", and honestly it is very playable considering what they are testing it on.

The devs occasionally talk about firing it up in their personal time on their own machines, since -devmode will display a "local play" option at the main menu and that they have the server files for the game to use to launch a local game (but we don't so it doesn't work for us). They say occasionally how it runs on their machines which are more average for a gamer dedicated computer specs.

Honestly, if that was released to us, spec-buffs would probably muscle the game up to great performance. Great, possibly not excellent yet, and they would probably nag it doesn't quite reach 60fps or that it drops late game to 20 even though 5 planets and 8 AI.

But really, they are right. As far as testing, you need to test on single cores, 2g ram just for server, and 2mb data cap, because each or all of these things are what people might try to play on and it should marginally work for them.