How is this game not coop yet?

[Gilgamesh]

Literally a turn based game. How is there not coop yet? You don't even need to modify the campaign. Just have a gamemode that's like the campaign without the main storyline. Where you and your friend/friends can fly around space picking up jobs for different houses and then fielding 2-3-4 lances of mechs.

[wesnef]

What does turn-based have to do with co-op? (Chess is literally a turn based game. Why does it not have co-op yet?)

And it isn't co-op "yet", because it was never intended to be co-op.

Originally posted by Ysil69:

Just have a gamemode that's like the campaign without the main storyline. Where you and your friend/friends can fly around space picking up jobs for different houses and then fielding 2-3-4 lances of mechs.

And this is like "literally" an entirely new game. Certainly not a "just" to toss in, in a patch.

[Gilgamesh]

Chess is a game against 2 people. If you were playing 4 person chess, you could do it coop.

[Chaon]

The simple answer as to why it isn't co-op yet is because the developers didn't plan on making it co-op. They wanted a computer version of the original Battletech table top game where two players each controlling a lance played against each other or a player was fighting a campaign using a lance of mechs.

Maybe the next game will have co-op built in from the start. But that will be a while because they are only in the very beginning of planning for a new game and it has not been confirmed if they will or not. Hell they still need to get out the next DLC.

[ᛁᚢᚱᛃᛗᛖ]

my favorite part about this post is that its acting as if there were a few buttons on the computer to click would add co-op.

[Wantoomany]

Considering that multiplayer matches are so few and underused that to have any hope of finding a match you need to pre-arrange for one. It just seems a waste of dev resources to further expand multiplayer into co-op.

[L37]

Also with turn-based games there is always hotseat.
Choose 2 mechs for yourself and 2 for your friend and you've got yourself coop. How fun such coop would be? That's another question and probably the reason why it is not worth implementing as separate game mode.

[DasaKamov]

Originally posted by Ysil69:

Chess is a game against 2 people. If you were playing 4 person chess, you could do it coop.

Er...and who plays 4-person-co-op chess?

[Gilgamesh]

Originally posted by L37:

Also with turn-based games there is always hotseat.
Choose 2 mechs for yourself and 2 for your friend and you've got yourself coop. How fun such coop would be? That's another question and probably the reason why it is not worth implementing as separate game mode.

I mean, that would be fine if your friends come over to your house on a regular basis. For anyone that lives apart it doesn't work.

Multiplayer is already enabled. You can already end up with 2 players controlling mechs against each other. The reason it isn't used is because just fighting lance vs lance is boring. Thats not the battletech game. Its the contracts, the building, the purchasing, and the choosing who you work for that's fun.

Since multiplayer is already available the net code is there. They have the ability to have two PC controlled lances on the same map. The only extra coding to be done is adding the AI back in for each mission, and to have a mech/barracks bay for player 2. Obviously it'd be a lot of work, and I'm not asking for it for free. Just something that should be been implemented. If you want to keep it basic let player 1 control the flight and contracts and events.

If you want to really spice it up, let the two players compete with eachother with some sort of randomizer. Like two leaders player rock paper scissors to see whose request is granted. Its certainly do able. It's not like turn based coop is some vast complicated thing that no ones ever done before. This isn't revolutionary.

[Werecat101]

Originally posted by Ysil69:

Originally posted by L37:

Also with turn-based games there is always hotseat.
Choose 2 mechs for yourself and 2 for your friend and you've got yourself coop. How fun such coop would be? That's another question and probably the reason why it is not worth implementing as separate game mode.

I mean, that would be fine if your friends come over to your house on a regular basis. For anyone that lives apart it doesn't work.

Multiplayer is already enabled. You can already end up with 2 players controlling mechs against each other. The reason it isn't used is because just fighting lance vs lance is boring. Thats not the battletech game. Its the contracts, the building, the purchasing, and the choosing who you work for that's fun.

Since multiplayer is already available the net code is there. They have the ability to have two PC controlled lances on the same map. The only extra coding to be done is adding the AI back in for each mission, and to have a mech/barracks bay for player 2. Obviously it'd be a lot of work, and I'm not asking for it for free. Just something that should be been implemented. If you want to keep it basic let player 1 control the flight and contracts and events.

If you want to really spice it up, let the two players compete with eachother with some sort of randomizer. Like two leaders player rock paper scissors to see whose request is granted. Its certainly do able. It's not like turn based coop is some vast complicated thing that no ones ever done before. This isn't revolutionary.

No actually the Battletech TT game was lance vs lance, this was designed to be a computer version of that, read the original kickstarter funding page and it was made clear the game was Lance vs Lance. all the map, the contracts, everything else was added as the funding went past certain stages.

[L37]

Originally posted by Ysil69:

I mean, that would be fine if your friends come over to your house on a regular basis. For anyone that lives apart it doesn't work.

Multiplayer is already enabled. You can already end up with 2 players controlling mechs against each other. The reason it isn't used is because just fighting lance vs lance is boring. Thats not the battletech game. Its the contracts, the building, the purchasing, and the choosing who you work for that's fun.

Since multiplayer is already available the net code is there. They have the ability to have two PC controlled lances on the same map. The only extra coding to be done is adding the AI back in for each mission, and to have a mech/barracks bay for player 2. Obviously it'd be a lot of work, and I'm not asking for it for free. Just something that should be been implemented. If you want to keep it basic let player 1 control the flight and contracts and events.

If you want to really spice it up, let the two players compete with eachother with some sort of randomizer. Like two leaders player rock paper scissors to see whose request is granted. Its certainly do able. It's not like turn based coop is some vast complicated thing that no ones ever done before. This isn't revolutionary.

While for tactical part i can see certain appeal - strategical part will not work in session-based p2p multiplayer. Both because time acceleration does not work in multiplayer and because it will not be fun - waiting for half an hour while someone is fiddling with outfitting, or trying to do it ASAP yourself to avoid forcing another player to wait. And the same for all the stuff you mention, " the contracts, the building, the purchasing, and the choosing who you work for". It just is not suited well for multiplayer, even technical difficulties aside.

Also, i am not opposed to idea of having, for example, a way to play story in coop, it is just that it requires a lot of work to make it fun (all missions have to be redesigned basically, to add stuff that makes 2 players useful) and some way to remove or greatly reduce strategical part in this mode (allow to use mech presets etc) for reasons mentioned above. It can certainly be great fun if done right, but it is probably as hard as making another game.

[Gilgamesh]

Originally posted by L37:

Originally posted by Ysil69:

I mean, that would be fine if your friends come over to your house on a regular basis. For anyone that lives apart it doesn't work.

Multiplayer is already enabled. You can already end up with 2 players controlling mechs against each other. The reason it isn't used is because just fighting lance vs lance is boring. Thats not the battletech game. Its the contracts, the building, the purchasing, and the choosing who you work for that's fun.

Since multiplayer is already available the net code is there. They have the ability to have two PC controlled lances on the same map. The only extra coding to be done is adding the AI back in for each mission, and to have a mech/barracks bay for player 2. Obviously it'd be a lot of work, and I'm not asking for it for free. Just something that should be been implemented. If you want to keep it basic let player 1 control the flight and contracts and events.

If you want to really spice it up, let the two players compete with eachother with some sort of randomizer. Like two leaders player rock paper scissors to see whose request is granted. Its certainly do able. It's not like turn based coop is some vast complicated thing that no ones ever done before. This isn't revolutionary.

While for tactical part i can see certain appeal - strategical part will not work in session-based p2p multiplayer. Both because time acceleration does not work in multiplayer and because it will not be fun - waiting for half an hour while someone is fiddling with outfitting, or trying to do it ASAP yourself to avoid forcing another player to wait. And the same for all the stuff you mention, " the contracts, the building, the purchasing, and the choosing who you work for". It just is not suited well for multiplayer, even technical difficulties aside.

Also, i am not opposed to idea of having, for example, a way to play story in coop, it is just that it requires a lot of work to make it fun (all missions have to be redesigned basically, to add stuff that makes 2 players useful) and some way to remove or greatly reduce strategical part in this mode (allow to use mech presets etc) for reasons mentioned above. It can certainly be great fun if done right, but it is probably as hard as making another game.

I mean time skip is time skip. You can have the clock flipping over fast while one person watches the travel screen and the other person is outfitting their mechs or leveling up warriors. I'm not sure I've ever spent 30 minutes outfitting a mech, but you could even have the option of jumping into the other players bay. Look at their mechs, their inventory and help them with ideas. Interaction would easily make the time go by like nothing. Contracts could be a rock paper scissors system to see which one you take same with event choices.

Obviously it's a lot of work. It's not even CLOSE to being the work of en entire game. The systems are all already in place. Mechs are designed items are there stores are there missions and contracts are there. Visuals would be 100% done, audio done, ui done.

The only work left would be to add a multiplayer difficulty increaser so when you're going at it with more people higher level mechs spawn/ more of them spawn and obviously the networking side which would be the most work. Itd be a lot of work dont get me wrong. But not even close to how much a base game takes. Itd need to be sold as a full expansion to make it worth while and I'd be okay with that.

If people had absolutely not patience to wait then civilization multiplayer wouldnt be nearly as popular as it is.

[Di]

how does coop make this game better? at best you'd be operating as if it wasn't co-op

[wesnef]

Thinking about co-op, with each player running their own full lance - that would be a huge amount of work to rebalance all the missions. You need bigger maps (to fit more mechs), redesigned enemy spawns (starting & reinforcements) to add more enemies, maybe some missions have the players spawn together while others have them spawn separated, redesign the salvage system (are both players pulling from the same pool, do they alternate Priority picks? Do they have their own salvage pools, but only from mechs they actually did the kill shot on? Etc)


(I can't see how timeskip would work, for two players with separate ships. You have to keep each player on the same day, in case they run into each other, or end up on the same planet stealing each other's contracts or limited goods in the shop. So while one player is traveling and the other one is fighting a match on a planet, time would have to pause for the traveling player. Ditto for it it's co-op with two ships, instead of competitive - the players can't be on different days, otherwise they could both be on Brinton, but not really because one is on day 432 and the other is on day 446. Can't cooperate on a mission since they're temporally separated.)

[Gilgamesh]

Originally posted by wesnef:

Thinking about co-op, with each player running their own full lance - that would be a huge amount of work to rebalance all the missions. You need bigger maps (to fit more mechs), redesigned enemy spawns (starting & reinforcements) to add more enemies, maybe some missions have the players spawn together while others have them spawn separated, redesign the salvage system (are both players pulling from the same pool, do they alternate Priority picks? Do they have their own salvage pools, but only from mechs they actually did the kill shot on? Etc)


(I can't see how timeskip would work, for two players with separate ships. You have to keep each player on the same day, in case they run into each other, or end up on the same planet stealing each other's contracts or limited goods in the shop. So while one player is traveling and the other one is fighting a match on a planet, time would have to pause for the traveling player. Ditto for it it's co-op with two ships, instead of competitive - the players can't be on different days, otherwise they could both be on Brinton, but not really because one is on day 432 and the other is on day 446. Can't cooperate on a mission since they're temporally separated.)

Ah theres the confusion. I'm talking about one merc company, so you'd both have the same ship. This lets you do things on the ship together. Obviously the building bays wouldn't work, but the rest would. This way you're only doing contracts together, you're only working on mechs at the same time, leveling up warriors etc. There's never a time where you're fighting and they aren't.

Yes the missions would need to be rebalanced. The maps are actually quite big as it is for a lot of missions. I usually don't even use half the map. Salvage system can just be you go I go alternating who picks first each mission. Salvage amount vs money is another rock paper scissors rolloff between the two leaders (You and your coop partner). Maps would be a big time sink, but you're rolling out maps every DLC so I'd assume they have a map editor that makes the work much easier. Its very much doable, and no where near the giant task people assume it to be.

[terrycpa1972]

They don't have a nap editor that I have heard of. The 1st ones were all hand but from what I read on t bv e paradox forum. There are no random generated maps.


As for assumptions being made it is always simple when someone else has has to do the work you want.