How Many Players?

[norb]

We have a customer that bought a bunch of copies of the game to host a tournament. I am assuming that it will be played on a lan, but not positive.

You guys have more experience with larger numbers than we do, so I wanted to ask your opinion. What is the max number of players you would recommend for solid MP gameplay with no problems?

Thank you

[jwestfall]

I am the culprit for organizing this tournament. Yes, it will be hosted on a LAN. I also am interested in any advice for setting up this tournament.

Right now we are going 2vs2 with 4 PC's and a server as the host, I hope this is a correct setup.

Thanks for the help!

[KG_Soldier]

I'm pretty sure 17 players is the most I've hosted at once and finished the game with no problems.

Of course, I've had 3 v 3 games freeze, so. . . .

But honestly, almost always, it's a problem with one of the player's computer.

[norb]

We are working at getting some better messages. We had drops too, but everytime there is an explanation in the log somewhere about what the problem was. Thank you.

[JMayer]

If you are going to play on Lan setup there will less chances of crashes due to people alt tabbing out to send text messages and the like. We did have games up to 20 players that worked but few. Again most drops are due to human error not the game. Hope your Tourny works out.

[Jim]

I am the culprit for organizing this tournament. Yes, it will be hosted on a LAN. I also am interested in any advice for setting up this tournament.

Right now we are going 2vs2 with 4 PC's and a server as the host, I hope this is a correct setup.

Thanks for the help!

2v2 on a lan is a very conservative setup. There is no need for a separate server as any reasonably current PC can serve as the host system. We usually test with 3v3 on the internet and that is quite stable. On a lan, you could likely go as high as 5v5 without any issues.

Please note that we have tested the game on WinXP, Vista and Win7. To my knowledge, we have not run it on any flavor of Windows Server. If you try it please let us know whether or not that works.

-Jim

[SouthernSteel]

With the LAN setup, I wouldn't worry nearly as much, as others have mentioned. In general for an internet MP game, with a solid host I wouldn't recommend exceeding 12 or 14. Beyond that it gets dicey. 2v2 should be safe and easily stable.

[jwestfall]

Thank you all for your advice, and experiences, I will keep you posted on how this works.

[SouthernSteel]

If you guys find you like MP well enough, a bunch of us are in the process of starting up a new MP campaign, strategy/map/etc separate and then SoW for the battles. Also, we play almost every night, so if you'd like I think the TeamSpeak server info is in this forum somewhere. That's the easiest way to catch a game coming. Good luck!

[KG_Soldier]

http://www.sow.philipmcg.com/c/platte/p ... _teamspeak