Spring RTS Engine

Any chance our benevolent autohosters would consider making their hosts Mod unrestricted? It's a huge ask, since I realise part of the reason the autohost was set up was to promote their own mod, but looking at the community as a whole, the goal is to allow people to setup games when they want, where they otherwise couldn't...

There's also the fact there are can be up to 6 empty autohost present at a time, yet one can't set up the game they like. >< (Which is the case atm, hence me writing this, rather than playing!)

One of the things I like about autohosts is that allow anyone to setup a game .This is especially important for smaller mods, that frankly don't need any further restrictions to getting a game going. Convincing people to try is hard enough But at least with autohosts, there is always an opportunity to "try".. all players are equal.

This is about maximising the utility of autohosts and that of players, where even if not your mod is being played, at least "a" game is played. Which benefits the community overall.

Anyways, just a rant. Discuss.

Unrestricted autohosts always lead to people hosting most common mod there.
It had been tried

And you know the simplest response; Making those "non BA mod specific" autohosts, mod unrestricted excluding BA? Seeing it is BA we are talking about which will get 24/7 100% usage...regardless of the number of autohosts we have.

And before anyone comments, this change has *absolutely zero* effect on BA any more than the current setup, which also excludes BA, if its non BA autohost.

(Heh, I singled out a mod too much...)

But really, no other mod host ever reaches 100% usage, so its better to share with other mods.

But in the end its based on each hosters discretion, specifics vary...keep a few mod restricted, a few unrestricted etc.

They could, for example, check "Are there any other open games for this mod" before switching, and reset to their default mod after a game is completed.

I will consider it when I get new hosting.

Maybe there should be more BA autohosts (with map restriction to no DSD). If they could be hosted as daemons on Linux I would run some.

Are there any news from the devs concerning a linux autohost? I think bibim was working on one and Licho also once said something about a linux port for Springie...

I was told that something like this may come for the upcoming release but that's probably going to take a while...

A BA-excluded autohost is probably a good idea. That way other mods can get a look in on it, because BA seriously does not need more autohosts and there already are several (Some not even marked as bots, Stalag, etc). One of the successes of CA in nabbing 10-20% of the game share is the fact we have autohosts (Along with advertising and being awesome).

Other mods can probably look to this model in how to get market share- though establishing a small core playerbase who plays often and 'seeds' games is probably the first step to promoting any mod. Beware of advertising backlash though (But seriously, the advantages of advertising your mod so far outweigh the negative backlash- CA's advertisement works, or we wouldnt do it).

SA is a good example of how this works actually. On its first day it was advertised even more heavily than CA, and got 20% market share. Then Day/Tired gave up their advertising/promoting/hosting and it dropped to 10% the day after and into oblivion the day after that. Now BasiC is advertising/promoting/playing it again and its averaging 2% of the market share (which doesnt sound like much but puts it in the top 5 mods).