[MasterDave]

I have been reading these forums and playing SE IV quite a bit for the Last couple of months, and it was this topic that finally made me feel the need to jump in and start posting. Moo2 was the first turn-based computer game that I really dove into multi-player, and it remained a strong favorite of mine for two plus years. Within about two or three weeks of playing the AI in Moo2, I had it mastered on Impossible level, and destroying the AI was getting boring. However, the ability to play against other people kept the game fun and new for years after it got boring beating up on the AI. Every time I thought I had Moo2 completely figured out, another player would show me some new dastardly ship design, or combat tactic, or race combination that would catch me by surprise, and make me a better player than before. There were so many people out there playing Moo2 that some of us formed a Kali league that was still going strong years after the game came out around November 1996 (I think we had 140 members at one point).

Moo2 did have its problems, as Belsarius has noted (I actually remember playing him in the early days). People sometimes took long turns, big battles between human players 1 and 2 could get boring for players 3,4,5 etc. We practically had to become experts at networking to get the game working over Kali. A game with five or six players did take a long time, and usually took more than one session to finish. However, despite all of this, there was very little out there that matched the sheer excitement of squaring off with an old nemisis in a climactic battle of huge fleets to decide the winner of a game. I still clearly remember the some of the specific battles I fought with some of my greatest adversaries in the Moo2 world, and some of the dastardly tactical tricks they taught me in the process.

That being said, I think that SE IV over TC/IP has the potential to be even more fun and addictive than Moo2 was. There is a far greater depth of technologies, strategies, and methods of expanding one's empire than Moo2 had. I do not think the game would take excessively long if played on a simultaneous turn, with strategic combats (if there are more than two human players that is-- with two players human vs. human tactical battles would be pretty fun as long as nobody is kept waiting for them. Human vs. computer battles with two players on line should probably be set to strategic). A simple time limit on turn length that could be set by the players beforehand would help in this aspect as well. Software technology has improved to the point where a lot of the old multiplayer bugs that plagued us Moo2 players would probably no longer be an issue.

For some reason PBEM just does not seem all that appealing to me. It seems like something of a tease to play one turn a day, and I think that the ability to play a complete game over a few evening sessions would be much more satisfying. I have been greatly anticipating the day when I could take on other SE IV geeks on-line, and have been honing my skills with just that goal in mind. The new mods and races that people are making are keeping the game pretty fun for me, but TC/IP is neccessary IMO to really hold my interest over the long term.

Hopefully the TC/IP patch is still an important priority for Malfador, as many of us SE IV fans are seriously yearning for the real challenge of playing human beings in a continuous game setting. Please don't make us wait for Moo3 to get our fix!!!

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