Co-op?

I think that this has come up before. All I was able to find from Blair on the topic was "Multiple players controlling the same units is a possibility." Soooo, if you keep crossing your fingers really hard it just might be in there.

yeah in a normal turn-based strategy (say galciv 2) its not a problem for one person to manage 25+ planets and figure out the best way to deal with invading fleets. you have all the time you need. (at least untill people start getting mad) similarly smaller scale RTS dont make you keep track of all that stuff. i know we all like to think we are perfect an dont forget things but with that many possibillities and this much depth in the game it bound to happen. Also i feel that it would add a whole new dimension of team play not just working with an ally empire but another person within your own empire. anyway just some thoughts ill keep my ear to the ground.

Yea having two people control an empire opens up a lot of possibilities, but then it could also lead to conflict as the players might not completly agree on each others actions.

It'd be fun to watch a civil war in Sins.....

no multi player control works great typically you do a gentlemans agreement as to who does the "opening phase" - Starcraft had this feature and it worked well it just never grew to popularity as I don't think people knew about it (its the TEAM MELEE games) I found it was a great deal of fun at lans so you and a freind could team up against 2 other people... lot of fun.

It might work with clan vs clan action where the team would be more organised then randoms vs randoms

I don´t have any experience in Real Time Multiplayer, but I think in an "epic" game like this, being able to assign, for example Fleet Admirals and Planetary Governers could be cool (would likely only work for LAN).

Imagine 2 teams of 4 to 6 players each, each player controling a TaskGroup of several fleets or a group of planets. They might even be getting orders from High Command)

Just a shot into the blue

yeah i agree that it would only work in a more organized manner like clam v clan, but as i saw in the preview (if what i saw was correct) each planet was in a system, each system in a galaxy with multiple galaxy, you could see how with the right intial condition the amount of stuff that would need you attention at the same time would get out of contol. like i said before turn based this easy. in a clan match more ppl may allow you to tackle some of the masive universes that could be generated.

Ahaha ,in no offense to spikyzero, but clam v clan?   just made me laugh, i know its a minor typo, but i laugh easily. Anyways, i think that this game will be a lot more diffrent from Starcraft and how many people will really play the gentlemanly way and actually agree on things. No, i think that there should be a rank system that would define who has ultimate authority over what inside a game.

clam v clan

yes, the clam wins. hands down.

Some thoughts about this...

Obviously, having two people control the entire empire at the same time is doomed to failure. You'd have planets attacking themselves and fleets trying to go in two directions at once. It'd be chaos.

However, it might work (and would be very cool) if you designated one player as the "Leader," and the others as his "Admirals." The Leader controls the entire empire and can give orders to anyone, but he can also assign control of specific planets or ships to his Admirals, who would then fight battles and manage planets for the greater good of the empire. For example:

Emperor Fred, Leader of the People's Democratic Republic of Fredland, has a massive empire that spans two galaxies. He is at war with two other, similarly large empires - the Kingdom of Andromeda and the Earth Federation. Obviously, despite being a god in human form, Fred cannot be expected to manage all the Happy Free Slave Worlds of his Republic and fight two major wars all at the same time.

Fortunately, Fred is not alone. Under his command are the daring Admirals Bob and Steve, and the slightly-less-daring Admiral Mike. Admiral Bob is assigned control of the forces assigned to fight Andromeda, Admiral Steve is placed in charge of conquering Earth, and Admiral Mike is left with managing the Happy Free Slave Worlds, while Fred coordinates the offensive.

Sounds cool. The only thing that would concern me about that though is that to make it interesting you would need a lot more than 10 people. In your example you had a 4-man team. Multiply that by 3 teams and you are already at 12. Too few "admirals" per team means that the leader will get bored. And too many people per team would mean that there is too little to divide up for everybody to keep busy without making the universe HUGE, and then games would take too long.

I like the story you put in Arilias   
But i think your idea can be improved upon, i think that they should just have divided jobs the "Leader" would be the only one making the fleets and managing the planets, while the "Admirals" would manage space battles and the conquest of new worlds. Ofcourse the "Leader" should be able to give complete control of certain worlds to his "Admirals", but if they misbehave, then off with their heads!!

Part of the fun associated with participating in a game like SoaSE IS it's complexity. If you're in a position where you have too many units to keep track of, you're not participating in the game enough. I saw this countless times in the Homeworld series.

A key feature introduced into Homeworld 2 was the ability to transfer units to allies. This feature is far more useful than any multiple-player-control can ever hope to be. It also enables your friends to jump right into battles you need help with, rather than sitting lightyears away at another planet which is in no immediate danger.

~Virtualwolf

Yes the transferring could work. But, as of now i dont know if we actually get allies in this game. I know we can create peace agreements and coduct other forms of dimplomacy but that doesnt mean that a person that at peace with you will risk going to war for your planets.

there's probably a "Fixed teams" button. There has to be, or noone will ever play a teamgame with a random person.

The shared control thing is nice, but don't overdo it. Just have 2 or 3 people have 2 or 3 'bases' as the same side. share units and resources etc, but don't go doing hard stuff like admirals etc. You can fight amongst yourselves who does what. I've had great lan games of EE with 3 players as one faction. Two would attack, while one would build and defend, works perfectly.

Various Roles ive just thought off

Offensive Microer - controls invading fleets and plantary assualts
Defensive Microer - defends against invading fleets and uses weapons platforms

Economic Engineer - Controls development on planets and space resource units
Fleet Engineer - Controls the building of fleets, retirement of fleets and assignment to the microers.

Strategical Overseer - Keeps zoomed out , advises microers where to hyper to and from.
Tactical Overseer - Analyses Enemy tactics and advises on intelligence and scouting.

Supreme Overseer - Gels the team together and has final call on the key decisions. Acts as a diplomat sorting trade alliances and bounties.

you should probably compactify the strategic and supreme overseers with the economic engineer, and the tactical overseer with the fleet engineer, for obvious reasons (all really simple tasks)

so you'd have a group of 3-4 instead of 7-8

Yea i mean i would get bored staying just in zoom and saying "hyper space into x" and such.

I think having two attacks and one builder/defender works great. I'm sure to play like this in Supcom quite often on Lan. The bigger the map the better it is to split up your troops. Three people can work together without a supervisor just fine.

I suggest in a three man team to give two players offensive micro roles and 1 a defensive/economic role, varying with enemy strategy though. A fourth could maybe scout, build, plan and make small raids.

I think the key to making coop style mp or even LAN work well is for the Game to actually Acknowledge the Role a player takes within a team. I think this is very important because players can get pissy with each other and try to take over each others role unless theres something official set in stone.

Even if its a simple change of palatte for the UI or just a tag saying "Defensive Player" or "Eco player" it would make coop work.

Although definitive jobs could be the best way to go about it. I still think that there should be a leader system so if one person leaves the leader can just assign extra tasks to another. Also, maybe, if the leader is doing a poor job the team can coduct of "vote of no confidence" and remove him/her from power.

I for one enjoy playing co-op more than any other form of play. Ever since I saw the Two-people-on-the-same-team mode in Starcraft I've been wanting all games to have that option. In games that have a single player campaign and multiplayer modes, it'd be great to be able to go through the campaign with a buddy on your team if you want. Total War: Medieval II is a great game, but I can't recommend it to one of my friends because he only plays multiplayer and there's no multiplayer campaign mode in it (I'm really hoping they'll add that in an expansion. I'd buy it in a heartbeat.).

Anyways, I really hope they have this feature in Sins of a Solar Empire. I would really like to be able to have friends jump in to help out. Hopefully they could join a game already in progress, but if that's not possible then just having friends on the team would be great. Having some type of "Job Position Tree" or whatever you want to call it, where the Emperor is on top and can create positions below him/her and assign assets to those people would be awesome for a game such as this as well. Each of those people could then be able to create positions beneath them, but could not affect the positions of other people on the same row or above themselves. A person could then be assigned some existing ships, maybe one or more planets.

I don't think backstabbing would be a big issue as some people on here have been saying. It simply needs to be impossible to attack ships and planets of the same Empire.

From what you're talking about you could end up with a Governer (Moff) for each system. Now that wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing but it could be somewhat confusing.

See its not that kind of backstabing im personally worried about, say player x gets pissed at player y for whatever reason, and they are both playing co-op. Now player x sees player z(the enemy) massing fleets towards one of his planets, so he asks player y for some ships to help out the entire empire. However, player y is immature and doesnt want to forget their earlier conflict, so instead he keeps his ships where they are and watches player x strugle.