Take On Mars Multiplayer

[Abbey Synnott]

Aneasier approach would be to open the server list and observe how many people are online at various times. There's a few thousand people who play online, averaging it out and allowing for TZs, with the bulk of the playerbase playing offline.

MP co-op is an important focus as to why I play DCS, but my PC isn't powerful enough to run the AI/unit count in most public servers and it only takes a server crash or friendly fire (deliberate or otherwise) to put me off - I'm too old to put up with ### like that.

It's true you can estimate the number of total people in Multiplayer by taking a look at the list at several times of day and week to obtain an average. No idea really how you would estimate the number of people actively playing Singleplayer missions, though.

Trouble with polling like this, as always, is that you only get a result from a fraction of the people who actively use the forums. That bias is probably so big, it renders these little polls fairly useless. I mean, they have been don before, over and over, and they never produce any reasonable result.

It's been quite some time since I played DCS MP. It absolutely has more potential than SP, that's just the nature of humans replacing AI, but whether or not a server reaches that potential is another matter.

I play both, right now I'd say 60% MP and 40% SP. But, with regard to your original reason for asking, AI, I'd say that in my case there's no difference, since I exclusively play in PvE servers like GAW and PGAW; so, yeah, better AI would be great!

Single and use mostly time on mission editor. Played with a friend before because we like to play not too realistic/Advanced but he got tired because we used 90% of the time loading after game crash...

ED have made comments before that multiplayer only makes up a few percent of the population. It's true we don't have hard data, however, if we use the rough assumption of 5% (or less) for online which has been suggested before, it gives you an idea. More specifically, you can do some napkin math for an idea how many people it would take to sustain a company this size, allowing that not every person buys every module everytime one comes out, yet the modules still turn a profit and ED doesn't go out of business.

Numbers presented before suggest the average cost of a module is $200-500k depending on complexity, time required, etc etc, so in order for the ecosystem to work, you need at least 100,000 to 200,000 active-ish people with probably another few hundred thousand that are mostly inactive and fade in and out with the active population.

If it sounds like a lot of estimation and guesswork, it's because it is, ED don't really discuss these sort of things, but they have in passing mentioned vague values for population ratio (part of which we can observe ourselves in the server list), and module costs and timeframes. Between the two you can guess in the neighborhood. It's not very precise by any means, but it's close enough.

One of my favorite games is Terraforming Mars. It has been out for a couple years and has quite a following especially in this age of FOMO (fear of missing out of new and shiny games). While people are adding more and more games to their collection, I like to keep my collection relatively small. I do buy new games here and there, but I am picky on what I buy and Terraforming Mars is one that gets to my table many times.

Terraforming Mars is an engine building game where you need to increase production of ME (mega credits), energy, heat, trees, steel and titanium. This post is for players who play Terraforming Mars and like to play solo rules.

The solo rules are a little different from the regular multiplayer rules. You have to add the Corporate Era deck of cards to the regular deck. The Corporate Era cards has a small icon of a red circle with white arrow in it. These cards do not help with terraforming Mars. They focus on economy and technology.

Also you start the game with 2 neutral cities with a greenery tile adjacent to them. If you play a card that steals resources or reduce production, you use it against the neutral opponent. Though bear in mind, the neutral opponent does nothing and are there to just make cards you play activate. For instance, if a card say decrease any energy production to do something, you don't have to do it to yourself because the neutral opponent exists though you don't need to do anything and the card can be activated. Or if a card says steal two greenery from another player, you just take two greenery from the supply and add to your player card.

Disclosure: Please note that some of the links in this post are affiliate links and if you go through them to make a purchase, I will earn a commission. I link these companies and their products because of their quality and not because of the commission I receive from your purchases. The decision is yours, and whether or not you decide to buy something is completely up to you.

At the beginning you have a choice between 2 corporations. This is important on your overall strategy. Make sure you understand the company's strength to use for your overall strength. Try not to choose a corporation that simply makes money or doesn't really lend a hand to production of resources or help with affecting the global parameters.

What I mean is Cities are good for scoring Victory Points. In a solo mode, you can keep track of your Victory Points and try to be at your score in the next game. But your main objective is to bring all of your global parameters to their winning conditions. Oxygen has to 8%. The global temperature has to be 8 degrees and you have to place all your Ocean tiles on the board. Things like Cities or cards that only score Victory points are not as useful until after you terraformed Mars.

At the beginning of the generation, you have the option of buying up to 4 cards for 3 ME each. Try not to buy all four as that costs 12 ME and you will need your ME to activate cards. Keep your hands small and do not add cards that won't help increase production or help to increase a parameter. Discard the cards that have a high cost to activate at the beginning of the game when you barely produce enough ME. Later when you're producing a lot more ME, you can then start to buy those but only if they affect at least one parameter and increase production.

Cards with blue borders have actions you can use once per generation or effects that always happens whenever a condition is met. When buying cards, find the blue border cards with actions that help with increasing production, decreasing costs.

You may not always win, but these could help you to win the game. Once you are are close to maximizing the global parameters, you can start buying cities to get victory points for yourself for bragging rights. You can even leave space surrounded by greenery for a city to maximize your Victory points.

You already know about the bizarre shift Red Faction Armageddon has made from Guerilla's worthy socialist plot to an "alien invasion". Basically, folks (that's you) seemed to think imposing the story of Das Kapital on a "blowing-stuff-up" shooter held the same socialist fascination as monkey-suited Ed Miliband explaining how he's against cuts whilst in favour of cuts whilst making cross-eyed faces like he's crapping himself, and oh God that BORING voice...

Anyway, I've been tasked specifically with the new multiplayer aspect of that jump, 'Infestation', which pits a fistful of human players against waves of AI attackers. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it's Horde mode!

Infestation is purely co-op; you and up to three other players choose a map, choose your equipment (more on that later) and then shoot aliens until the victory conditions are achieved. As you go along you unlock both weapons, Nano-Forge abilities, and new levels and modes.

Roje Smith, Armageddon's associate producer, is talking us through the design decisions as we're playing. First off, he explains why they've started from scratch after Guerilla's relatively well-received multiplayer.

So why a survival mode rather than Left4Dead style PvP? "We decided that our multiplayer should serve as a complementary offering to single player and still put players in a "backs against the wall" survival setting.

"This meant that our multiplayer would have to be a cooperative and story-based experience so each map in Infestation has its own fiction that helps to fill in the gaps from the single player story. For example, the backstory to the ice levels gives the player better insight into the single player events that take place there."

Moving away from competitive multiplayer sadly meant abandoning much of Guerilla's RPG-heavy multiplayer mode; however, core mechanics of some game modes have transferred, such as Defend incorporating elements of Guerilla's Siege mode.

The standard weaponry from Armageddon's single-player has carried over, so before you enter a mission there's the usual range of pistols, shotguns, assault rifles, sniper rifles, grenade launchers, rocket launchers and so on. However, you can only take a limited selection into a mission, and that includes other special in-game weapons.

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