Would like to jump-start a Fallout Tactics MP community.

J

JPZ1987

First time out of the vault
Hello guys,

The last time I played FoT multiplayer was back in mid-2004, and prior to that I had been an (almost) regular player on Gamespy Arcade going back to the release of the game. To this day I still can't find a game that reproduces the kind of unique fun I had in FoT. After playing through single player once more, I did some research on whether or not people still play.

Apparently it's just scattered across Steam groups, LAN, Gameranger, co-op, and hamachi.

The steam group doesn't respond much, gameranger is mostly empty (you might find one or two people at random hours of the day)...I haven't checked out co-op or hamachi yet but everything I've read indicates that it's dead there too. Another problem with these portals; a lot are people who have never played before and don't know how to design decent characters, making it a completely one-sided, non-fun match.

Are there any websites, communities, clans, etc. that I haven't found that you would recommend, any portals you guys use to play the game? I'd like to create as many contacts as possible and bring them onto gameranger so we can play on weekends.

Ideally I'd like to get 8 - 16 player, 1k or 2k x 6 man squad (no chems) games going. That was what I'd played back then and I dearly miss that fun I'd had playing with S*T, TBC, 7p and the Khans clans all the way back when. I'd like to put this together again and I'd appreciate any advice or directions on how best to get that done.

Thank you.
 
I don't have any advice on how to find more people, but you can count me in. FT is one of my faves, though I've never played multiplayer.
 
With the fanfix mod it would certainly be more appealing.

I've never played it before, but I'd be happy to join in.
 
I would say, mp community is pretty dead.
The last time I was playing like 5 years ago for few months with some groups, but those were remnants, the last one.
However, there are great rules for MP around internet, so opportunity to pay is never lost. :P
So I propably can play too.

Heh, I still remember some funny stuff, like those Spaniards playing with thousands of points and using androids. :lol:
 
JPZ1987, I have a lot of free time on my hands, so I'd be more than happy to help you organize it.

Being able to talk to each other through some kind of instant messaging service would be pretty handy with setup and such. I'm pretty well always on Steam, so if you guys have that, it'd be the easiest for me.

Anyone who's interested in playing with us should post in this thread saying so, and I'll PM you guys each individually to try and figure out how we can chat a little easier. I'd just post my Steam ID here, but I've found that tends to get a shit-ton of random friend requests from bots and shit.


Edit: I PMed all the people who've posted in this thread so far and also made a Steam group for us in case people end up having Steam. I have a large list of friends on Steam and I'll see who else owns FT that I can rope into playing (as long as you guys don't mind non-NMAers playing with us). The Steam group's open to everyone, so feel free to join it if you want to play together!
http://steamcommunity.com/groups/Fallout_Tactics
 
Hey, bitwise I got your PM but I'll just share the details here, no biggie.

I have the steam version of FoT. I was a bit reluctant to do that because I feared some applications might not work with it but I've had no issues with it so far. I don't know what I did with my original CDs - they probably broke, I'm guessing. I got them back in 2001. I joined your Steam group. There was another with more players but it seems completely inactive, there is maybe 1 post every 1-2 months.

My timezone is Eastern Standard Time, I live in New England.

I'm not familiar with the fanfix mod but I think it would be wise to keep in mind that most players would have 1.27 to boot and I'd recommend starting a group around that before moving on to mods. I used to play the WW2MOD and RealWar mods sometimes and I remember there were also sync issues between players so also worth keeping in mind.

It's good that I ran into you here. This will definitely take major initiative to actually work. I guess one encouraging fact is that this game actually can work with a small community and you don't need 1000 people to be on a game browser. Gamespy Arcade got shut down so it's hard to find options for that.

Also, if you use COOPNET or Gameranger, my handle on both is 'Stryke.'

Also I'd recommend that once we gather a good number of people to have a forum or message discussion about building custom characters. If people don't know how to do it, the game is extremely unbalanced (this is probably what caused the game to die). The tactics aspect doesn't really fall into play until everyone's characters are equally built right / right perks, levels etc.
 
I agree with you wholeheartedly on the balancing.

I asked some Orderites in IRC if they'd be into this, and Farmerk has tossed his hat in. I also got one guy off my Steam friends list who seemed pretty excited (his exact words were: "I FUCKIN LOVE FALLOUT | sorry | had to get it out"). Kilus seemed pretty turned-off of the idea because of the number of theorycrafting minmaxers he's played with in the past. He said he liked that in the multiplayer demo, you were only able to use pre-built character templates.

I think it'd be cool if we tried a few games without too many guidelines at first to see where everyone's at, and tweak things as we see which way the scales are tipping. There's at least one person who only has "0.1 hours" logged on the game, so I'm sure there'll be a skill gradient.
 
Kilus sounds like someone I may have played with - what was his GSA name? A lot of us did prefer the MP demo before the game came out for those reasons of balance. That lack of balance has a lot to do with why rules are usually set, because MF/Interplay was too lazy to do it themselves.

There is some minmaxing to custom characters in FOT, that is true, but it isn't overboard. The general idea is to make sure you are choosing between crit / dmg / sneak / dmg resist perks and not just taking random ones - and making sure you don't use Luck as a dump stat. There are 'tricks' like taking Here and Now or Mutate! once the game starts but those aren't that unbalancing. Biggest balance problem with FoT is drugs and automatic shotguns.
 
I'll need to get the mod downloaded and set up and actually learn how tactics mp works (never tried it before tho I've played the single player game for a decade) but I'm totally down with this.
 
Ok - would like to offer my suggestions here for next steps.

1. edit: Nevermind, I never realized until now MSN messenger was moved to skype. We need some kind of message service or chat feature to get this started and see who all we have.

2. I will type up a short, half page 'cheat sheet' for general game knowledge people should have when creating characters (what weapons/perks should be considered, why there are rules, etc.)

3. I suggest we use Gameranger as the launch platform since this is the closest thing to Gamespy Arcade and can be navigated easily.

Ideally, I'd like this 'community' to have the same layout as a clan would - a group of people who get on and play every once in awhile (preferably weekends or weeknights, timezones not a huge deal but North America preferred for me). I am not really savvy enough to create a webpage/forum but that wouldn't be such a bad idea for this either for further communication/planning.
 
I've made and hosted websites before, but so far I've only got about 6 people who said they'd be willing to try a multiplayer game together.

The Steam group I made has a board you can post discussions, much like a forum thread. It also has a group chat feature that supports voice chat and works with the in-game overlay if you have the Steam version of Fallout Tactics. Steam also has its built-in instant messenger, which now supports offline messaging. It also allows for us to set events which will pop-up with reminders to any member of the group that's logged into Steam.

Steam groups aren't necessarily an ideal solution, which is why I think most of them die. They do have a lot of features that we could use which I think go under-utilized, and I think effort spent building something better would be overkill for right now.

These are who replied and said they were in:

From the forums:
  • JPZ1987
    Languorous_Maiar
    Wombatus
I also asked people on The Order's IRC, and only one so far has shown interest:
  • Farmerk
Lastly, I messaged people on my Steam Friends list who I saw owned Fallout Tactics:
  • -SoL- Shadow-Syndrome
    SchwarzFenrir
Total so far(including me): 7

I've been getting people to give me their schedules to see where we have overlap on free time to play. I tried putting these times together into Google Calendar, but it seems to hate Daylight Savings Time and this was actually easier for me to do:
  • name[list:e712e5986a]time zone
    times available (what they told me in their local time)[list:e712e5986a]times corrected to UTC
[/list:u:e712e5986a]bitwise & SchwarzFenrir
  • MDT (-6) & CDT (-5)
    any time
Farmerk
  • CDT (-5)
    07:00 - 12:00 (a few hours every morning)[list:e712e5986a]12:00 - 17:00 UTC
any time Thurs+Fri[/list:u:e712e5986a]-SoL- Shadow-Syndrome
  • MDT (-6)
    07:00 - 00:00 [the next day] on weekends[list:e712e5986a]13:00 - 06:00 [the next day] UTC
any time during weekdays[/list:u:e712e5986a]Languorous_Maiar
  • EEST (+3)
    12:00 - 00:00 [the next day] (afternoons to nights)[list:e712e5986a]09:00 - 21:00 UTC
[/list:u:e712e5986a][/list:u:e712e5986a]
I still need JPZ1987's and Wombatus' schedules.

Edit: Of the 5 people's schedules I have so far, it's looking like we have 13:00 - 17:00 UTC (+0) free every day. For North Americans, this means mornings. For Europeans, this means afternoons.


We have enough interested players to organize a 2v2 test game! The game will be with the vanilla client (mod-free) for now. It doesn't matter if you guys have actually ever played the game or not, I'd just really like to get us all in a game together so we can overcome any technical kinks that may come up and know that it is, in fact, possible for us to play together. We could even do a 3v3 if one more person can tell me their schedule, so please message me ASAP if you want to get in on it.
 
This is partly where I got fucked up.
http://www.timeanddate.com/library/abbreviations/timezones/na/est.html
"Important
Only some locations are currently on EST, because most places there are currently on Daylight Saving Time.
Locations that are on EST part of the year are currently on EDT (Eastern Daylight Time)."

Could you tell me if you're in an area that practices DST, or what city you're in so I can figure out the correct UTC offset?
 
Ok. It wasn't quite a half a page (I forgot many things I am only remembering now) but I recommend anyone inexperienced go over all of this to be effective in MP. It'd also be a worthwhile read for anyone interested in knowing what FoT MP was like when it was popular.

Why this necessary? Why do we need this introduction or any game rules at all?

As was admitted by their own developers, Interplay and MicroForte didn’t spend much time making FoT balanced. This is a primer to help avoid the pitfalls that turned people off from FoT back when the game first came out and lacked the patience to learn.

Player-based game rules:

The less rules there are the better but these are a must for 1k-2k per custom char 6 man squad gameplay (1k-2k is best for tactical gameplay free of God-characters):

-limited big guns (1 or 2 big gunners per 6 man squad)

-NO chems (psycho/gum/voodoo/etc) outside of stimpaks.

-(If point limit is 1k per character) NO Gauss pistol or automatic shotguns (they dominate all other weapons at that level)

Perks:

What perks you take in MP directly impact whether or not your characters are useless or effective. If you don’t get these right you will not do well. I don’t recommend everybody design theirs the same way but in general you should have your luck and agility at 6 minimum (requirement for many good perks) and the perks you should be choosing between ought to be:

-Damage+ perks (e.g. Bonus Ranged Damage, Bonus HtH, Living Anatomy, Pyromaniac)
-Critical chance perks (e.g. More Criticals, Better Criticals)
-Damage resist perks (e.g. Hit the Deck, 1-3 ranks of toughness perk)
-Speed perks (e.g. silent running, tunnel rat, Bonus Rate of Fire)
-Perks to deal with SPECIAL deficits (e.g. Sharpshooter, Weapon Handling)

There are others out there besides the example ones I’ve listed that are useful, but you should weigh the risks versus benefits. Be sure whatever you are taking is a better choice for that character.

Weapons:

Here is a rudimentary list of what weapons are considered good. Some are too costly in terms of points for 1k games:

Pistols: Pulse pistol, .44 magnum (+blue rounds), .44 desert eagle (+blue rounds)

Shotguns: Silverhawk 470 (double shot with green shells)

Autoshotguns (if allowed): Any of them (with green shells)

Big Guns: Flamer, SAW, Lewis MKII, Bren Gun, Vindicator Minigun, Rocket Launcher

Single Shot rifles: Any energy rifle, M1 garand, Sniper Rifle, Gauss Rifle

Assault Rifles: Enfield, FN FAL, M16, AK47

SMGs: MP38 (+blue 9mm), HK P90 (+blue 9mm), Tommy Gun

Melee: Cattle Prod (it is so hard to get close to someone with a ranged weapon in this game you should be sure he will die in 1-3 hits and this is the best weapon for that)

Grenades: Frag or Incendiary are the best choices.

Traps: All forms of mines are good and even better with armed dynamite/C4 placed on top.

USEFUL GAMEPLAY TIPS YOU SHOULD KEEP IN MIND:

-When creating a character, add your desired levels and skill points FIRST before you choose perks. So, when the first window comes up for ‘choose a perk’ press “cancel” and keep adding levels. Almost all perks have SPECIAL, level, and/or skill level requirements. Don’t pick a useless perk at level 3 like many do in single player. The typical level for 1k chars is 6-9 and 2k chars is 12-15 (depends on equipment). You can add levels with the ‘plus’ sign next to where you normally find out what level your character is after you finish SPECIAL/traits.

-Take all SPECIAL points out of Charisma and spend them elsewhere.

-Putting a burst gun on single shot gives the weapon more range.

-Every burst weapon has a different number of bullets fired per burst. Perception determines how many of these bullets will hit a target (so it is not just for snipers) as well as gun skill.

-The more/better the equipment you take, the less character points you have to spend on levels, and the less perks/skill points you will have.

-Have each character be a “specialist”:

Example 1: a pure sniper with 170% skill/perks and maybe 100% first aid as opposed to a sniper/trap/throwing with all 120% skill in each

Example 2: a grunt with small guns at 150% small guns and 120% throwing

-Hit ‘backspace’ to force your character(s) to stop in place (useful if being shot at while running and you want to fight into an ambush)

-If you have hand grenades or launchers of any kind, you can shoot or throw ‘through walls’ by simply right clicking an area within range. This is lame to most at first but it was almost always allowed in FoT games. I never saw a rule against it. This is one of the most game-balancing aspects of FoT because it discourages camping and encourages defensive tactics/perks and sneak skill.

-Don’t always take Fast Shot as a trait. Targeted (single) shots that cause cripples, KOs and blinds are great in MP. But do keep in mind this is based on critical chance and it will not always happen.

-DO take Kamikaze as a trait for almost all your characters. The +25% “bonus damage” is a huge advantage.
Click to expand...
 
i used to play this way back when. name was lithium178
one of my favorite rulesets was a counter-terrorism one created by the clan soldiers of the past. iirc, they came up with the ww2 ruleset which was fairly popular pre-10k 1 man games.

i pretty much would die with pleasure if i could get back into this game and start doing some 2k itb 4-6 mans. i'd need to relearn a lot of shit but, it was a blast back when i used to play.

http://www.geocities.ws/entrappedmind/SotP.html for some nostalgia. some good rulesets in there.

in other tangents, anyone remember boonville? i was just thinking recently about how it was sort of a predecessor to the arma 2 mod 'city life' (and i'm sure many others), it was definitely a first of it's kind in my experience. i always enjoyed it, but it was so hard to get people to not just grief the shit outta everyone.
 
Wow, hahaha...that website is still active huh. Those rulesets do bring back members and I do remember SoTP.

As far as communication, and what venue to use to play on - we are discussing that this morning. I will have further details in a few hours.
 
This is what we came up with today:

-We started with Steam messaging and then moved to Teamspeak (will post the address when I know that's OK)

-We used GameRanger as a launch platform which worked ok. had trouble with direct IP address connections

-We found 2 other people on GameRanger who we added to the group.

-Went over the different game types.
 
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