Anyone up for an IP game these days (17-20.09)?

[Kirov]

All my games ground to a halt and I've got a bit of a dryer season with my clients.

Is anyone interested in playing IP either today (Tue 17.09) or Thu-Fri (19-20.09)? I work flexible hours and can adapt. My zone is GMT+1 (so e.g. you add 6hrs to the New York time). I can't play mornings, though, this is my bed time.

Flexible hours mean that I may also need to cancel on short notice. There are some jobs I simply can't refuse. But once we have a meeting, I'll do my best to shoo most of my clients away.

I have yet to set up and try out my Hamachi, I don't know if everything is going to be fine. But I see no reason why it shouldn't be.

If I can't find anyone this week, I can wait till the next one.

[Kataphraktoi]

Im interested. Im eastern(new york time) by not playing mornings, im thinking your referring to your own mornings? Sounds like your working odd hours. I should be available anytime from 8 AM to 11 PM EST ( 2 PM to 5 AM in GMT+1)

I should probably get the game installed and look into setting up hamachi.

Last time we played 1v1 i got owned and this time i havnt even played recently but ill take a shot at ya 

[Kirov]

Kataphraktoi, well met! I know your face from Apolyton and CGN. As a matter of fact, I believe we met in-game. As a matter of fact, I checked old saves and sure enough, game CGN 23 is owned by Provost Kata!  I was the replacement PK, most of my games were replacements back then. Anyway, I'm scared of you already, so welcome at AC2 and let's play!

Yes, I do work crazy hours, right now it's 4 PM here and I'm only starting to work, having woken up at 2 PM . For the convenience's sake let's use your time zone for reference. I should be available for gaming even tonight, at or around your 6 PM, which gives us 5 hours, ample time I think. If you want to start earlier, please choose either tomorrow or the day after, so that I can fit in my girlfriend somewhere in the schedule.

I have played only a handful of IP games and from what I remember, my main issue was that I tried to push my turn as quickly as possible not to stall it and my performance dropped by ca 30% as a result. Do you have another computer so we can stay in touch (you can't play windowed SMAC) and do something else than impatiently wait for the turn? There is that option of simultaneous moves, but it can play tricks on us in cases like probe infiltration and the like.

I suggest some mid-tier factions, i.e. no Zak/Hive/Domai on the table. Something like PK vs Data, Miriam vs. Santiago. What are your thoughts on that?

I'm looking forward to this game!

[Kataphraktoi]

Those faction choices sound good, i was also thinking about that since posting and definitely agree on something besides the usual big guns...I think we also played a game were i replaced bintravkin as hive and you had gaia, with tons of nerve gas getting used. Im left with the impression your better at combat than i am, so im a little scared too 

Around 6pm tonight my time would be fine, my schedule is quite flexible and am in no particular rush. I could likely play outside the hours i mentioned aswell 

Ive got a couple of laptops the family uses on a LAN, i should be able to grab one and hook up a messaging service. Is there no way to communicate ingame i take it then? I remember in PBEMs often recieving hostile worded messages in faction commlinks but would have expected some kind of press enter and type basic chat functionality in MP 

Ive got the game installed, the GOG stock version, and hamachi installed as well. Should i put one of the patches on?

[Kirov]

Oh, why I don't remember that game, it must've been epic. I can't say about the skill, but it's true that I like to think of myself as "outgoing". Some players could probably go so far as to say that I'm "proactive".

I think there is some crude in-game chat tool, but we can also use some other IM or chat service. I can speak English on a sufficient level, but comes with some effort and it can slow me down, so let's start with typing.

As for patches, I recommend either the latest scient's or Yitzi's. The latter includes the former, but sometimes people report some issues, so dunno. I've copies with scient's, kyrub's and yitzi's, so it's your call really.

OK, I need to get some work done and in the meantime you can think of some faction pairs. In general, I prefer the underdogs, from PK down, except for Morgan, who is strong and cool. The pairs I mentioned are fine for me.

See you later then!

[Kataphraktoi]

Oh, my mic broke and still haven't replaced it, so its all typing here. The yitzi patch is working fine for me so we can go with that.

Cycon was a faction id been thinking about previously, i always found their -growth penalty to be quite severe and never really learned them. Pirates is interesting but doesnt end up working too well in practice. Maybe cycon vs gaia is interesting, but i must say you already mentioned some of the most evenly matched factions already 

[Kirov]

Yitzi's patch it is, then. My Hamachi is up and running.

I've got only one recommendation fo CyCon - grab PTS and ICS like crazy! See, that was easy. Apart from that, I'm in the mist here as well. I believe it is slightly stronger than the Gaians, but since I've got the same with DeeDee - she's good but I never really played her too much - we can try out this scenario. I'd probably want a standard map, so I can feel you up early with some mind worms (or not, we don't know that; maybe you don't need to get prepared and slow down your precious expansion).  Native life at least average.

Speaking of the map - I see no other choice but random, unless you have some cool map. I'm not really fond of the Vets and I never really learnt it, just a couple of replacement games. Unless you don't know through and through as well, then you can try to convince me.

I'll be ready in 2-3 hours.

[Kataphraktoi]

Random map is fine, its not like we will be spending the next year sending turns back and fourth stuck on a bad map. We can restart if its hopelessly lopsided and even if its unfair map its just a IP game.

[Kirov]

Good point. I'm done with my work for today, so I need to do just a things and will be ready soon. I decided to use two monitors instead of two computers, so give me a moment with it.

[Kirov]

I'm not sure if my Hamachi is fine, because there are instructions in this thread I don't really follow:

http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=1437.0

I remember some time ago I didn't have to configure Hamachi in any way, just install it, go online, find a network, play. Is it that simple or do I have to do something specific? Why do these instructions want me to disable TCPv6? I'm a bit confused here.

[Kataphraktoi]

You got me, im not familiar with hamachi either. My connection(im on satellite) should support direct TCPIP without needing things like hamachi, not sure what your situation is. What i did from that thread is simply downloaded+installed that version of hamachi, connected to their test server(got a full\busy message) and called it a day. I assume we can create a network and join

edit;ill make a network and we can just try it out
edit2:network ''katasmac'''password ''smac'' i assume after we are on the same network then we open up smax and do the tcpip

[Kataphraktoi]

We seem to have lost connection, cant get messages through on hamachi.

[Kirov]

From here it looks like it's the issue with your access, i can see my SMAC computer from my talk computer. But you're gone and I can't ping you.

[Kirov]

You're still here and dropped again.   

[Kataphraktoi]

Not sure anyone but kirov and myself read in here, but after many techincal issues and crashes we finally got a game rolling decent(but super laggy especially for kirov) and to 2133, which may not seem that advanced of a turndate but is actually one heck of an achievement. Got tons of lag going on, maybe we could try a direct IP game without hamachi, switch up who hosts the game, maybe play H2H without AI.

For playing a game H2H without AI, one way to set it up ourselves would be to enter either SP or load a map we like, try not to look or cover up the minmap part of screen then activate cheats, and kill off the factions we dont play as, and save and load it in MP. Or we could pick spots on premade map, although this takes alot of the exploration fun out of the game.

Also found some interesting new bug allowing the player to sell the same item multiple times in diplomacy, maybe should be looked into.